“Minhyuk! Choi Minhyuk!”
At first, I thought they were calling someone with the same name as me.
Because no one can recognize me
Not only my face, but also my height and body shape have completely changed.
Nothing of the old days remained.
Of course, it was normal for no one to recognize me.
“Minhyuk!”
But it wasn’t calling someone with the same name.
A strange old woman was coming straight towards me, calling my name.
‘How can this happen!’
It didn’t matter too much who the old woman was.
I don’t understand how the hell they recognize me.
“Minhyuk!”
Grandmother came right in front of me.
I was so flustered that I backed away slightly.
“Who, who are you!?”
“Minhyuk! It’s me! I do not know?”
It was to the point where I wondered if the deceased paternal grandmother might have appeared in front of me possessing the body of another old man in a situation that I couldn’t understand at all.
‘It can’t be!’
Even a demon king from another world is a daunting task these days, but experiencing psychic phenomena would be really hectic.
It was then.
“grandma!”
Someone came running calling the old woman.
was a young man
He grabbed the old woman by the wrist and bowed her head toward me.
“sorry! She’s my paternal grandmother, and she’s like this sometimes… Were you surprised?”
It turned out to be an old woman with dementia.
“Minhyuk! Choi Minhyuk!”
The grandmother also called her grandson Minhyuk.
It seems that the man’s name is ‘Choi Min-hyeok’, the same as mine.
I asked him
“Is your name Minhyuk Choi?”
“no.”
My expectations were wrong.
The man was not the same name as me.
He continued with a bitter smile.
“This is the name of a friend who lived next door when I was young. When my grandmother is not feeling well, I call her friend’s name to anyone.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Anyway, I’m sorry!”
The man apologized to me over and over again and told my grandmother.
“Grandma, let’s go home.”
“Yes, I am hungry.”
“Okay, let’s go home and eat.”
The man took his grandmother and moved on.
I disappeared with ＜invisibility＞ and followed them.
I couldn’t pass by his words that a friend named ‘Choi Min-hyeok’ lived next door.
It was clear that the man was a native of Hongcheon-eup, as he was wearing a T-shirt from the local early football club.
And he looked the same age as me.
I was the only person of my age in Hongcheon-eup who had the name ‘Choi Min-hyeok’.
Choi Min-hyuk, the man said, was me after all.
.
.
.
I followed the man and the old woman to the alley where I lived when I was a child.
The green gated house in front of me is the house I lived in until I was in the first grade of elementary school.
A man and an old woman went into the next door.
‘It’s real!’
They were really my next-door neighbors when I was a kid.
I quietly followed them into their house.
Then he looked closely at the man’s face.
But no matter how I look at it, I don’t know.
I vaguely remembered that there was a boy in the same grade as me living next door.
I think we were in the same class when we were in the first year of elementary school.
But I haven’t hung out with anyone since my parents died.
The kid next door was no exception.
hmm-
I gave up trying to remember the man’s face and looked at the grandmother’s face this time.
There were familiar corners on her face.
‘I remembered!’
Seeing the pea-sized dot between her forehead reminded me of her 20 years ago.
She was Park’s grandmother.
In an instant, old memories that had been forgotten came to mind.
When I was in elementary school, my parents passed away suddenly.
So my paternal grandmother, who lived in Hongcheon, took me in and raised me.
At that time, my neighbor’s grandmother, Mr. Park, treated me well by giving me snacks and candies often.
I think he felt sorry for me when I lost my parents at a young age.
However, due to my actions, the relationship with her was completely ruined.
Memories of that time came to mind.
When I was in the first grade of elementary school, the Hongcheon Police Station conducted a special crackdown on drug cultivation.
Posters were put up all over town, but as a child I didn’t even know what drugs were.
The poster had pictures of flowers.
It was a flower with black spots on red petals.
There was also a message saying that if you see a flower that looks exactly like the picture, you must report it to the police.
‘I saw that flower.’
Since I was young, I had no sociability, but I was a person who followed the words of adults.
I listened to my grandmother and listened to the teachers.
For some reason, I felt like I should follow the phrase written on the poster.
From noble mtl dot com
A police car parked nearby caught my eye.
There were cops inside.
I ran to the car and yelled at them.
“The grandmother next door grows those flowers!”
I climbed into the front seat of the police car and guided the way.
And like a triumphant general, he proudly entered the alley of our neighborhood.
When I went into my neighbor’s house, just in time, Grandma Park was watering the flower beds.
The ‘drug poppy’ was also growing in the flower bed.
Park’s grandmother was arrested as a red-handed criminal.
However, she was released soon after being guided without being charged as a criminal.
This is because the amount of cultivation was very small and there was no criminal record.
However, the shock that Mr. Park received from the incident was enormous.
The fact that he was arrested by the police for the first time in his life while growing poppy without knowing that it was illegal,
The fact that the reporter was the kid next door whom he usually loved,
They acted as complex stress factors, and the grandmother got severe mental illness.
When he saw me, he had a seizure.
That’s why Park’s grandmother and I couldn’t live close by.
Eventually we decided to move.
To be honest, I didn’t do anything wrong.
I even got a citation from the police station for that.
However, my paternal grandmother made me understand, saying, ‘The next door has a lot of family members, so it would be a lot of work to move, so let’s move together.’
After some time, we moved to a place about 500 meters away from where we used to live.
Anyway, I think her trauma caused by me is great.
To hear you call my name when your mind goes back and forth because of dementia.
I looked at my grandmother and said in my heart.
‘I’m sorry.’
Anyway, since I’ve come this far, I’ll have to change my yearbook.
Grandmother Park’s grandson is in the same grade as me, so there must be a yearbook with my picture in it.
I looked all over the house, maintaining invisibility.
There were albums on the chest of drawers in the living room, and the yearbook was also there.
Albums made from CDs were entirely replaced with manipulated CDs.
And in the paper album, only the page with my photo was replaced.
After putting the album into the inventory, ＜deleting＞ the corresponding page, and inserting the pre-prepared revised printed copy, it felt like nothing.
‘okay!’
I headed to another classmate’s house.
.
.
.
I visited the homes of my elementary, middle and high school alumni one by one and handled the yearbooks in the same way.
It wasn’t that difficult because there weren’t that many classmates.
If I had gone to school in a big city, it would have been difficult.
There were 59 elementary school alumni, 123 middle school alumni, and 182 high school alumni.
Most of them lived in Hongcheon, Chuncheon and Wonju.
Some were residing in Seoul and Busan.
A few people also lived on Jeju Island.
Fortunately, no one emigrated abroad.
There were people who became navigators on merchant ships in foreign ports and worked abroad.
However, the house where my family lives is in Korea, so there was no problem switching albums.
Anyway, I met almost all of my alumni while working on ‘photo washing’.
Of course, we didn’t say goodbye.
Because I was hiding with invisibility.
Anyway, what I have come to know for sure is that there is no one among my alumni whose faces I can definitely remember.
Because there was no one I was close with.
So the reverse would be the same.
None of them will remember my old self.
Even if there is, they will look at the graduation album and say, ‘My memory is wrong’.
‘Can I interview the magazine now?’
***
Sizzle-
The pork belly was cooked to golden brown on the grill.
Plant 2 A mat was laid out on the grass in the forest.
Looking up at the sky, the night sky with fake moon and fake stars was beautiful.
The vegetables for ssam were picked from nearby.
Through the gate, forests from all over Seoul moved here, along with someone’s vegetable garden.
Lettuce, sesame leaves, kale, and Cheongyang pepper were all available.
weng-
Several mosquitoes hovered around annoyingly.
Insects as well as birds and squirrels were swept in.
I asked the golems.
“What if mosquitoes completely disappear?”
Then Seoyeon Kim answered.
“There is a report that if mosquito larvae, roaches, disappear, the population of fish that eat them will decrease, and eventually the population of birds will also decrease.”
Mosquitoes are harmless pests from the human point of view, but they perform an important role in the ecosystem.
“But there are also opinions that if mosquitoes disappear, other insects will take over.”
“okay?”
I told the manager
“Kill all the mosquitoes in here.”
I can’t hastily exterminate mosquitoes on the planet, but this is my private property, so I’ll do as I please.
If you kill all the mosquitoes here and there is a problem with the ecosystem of Factory 2, then you can solve it with magic.
So let’s kill them all first.
hiss-
Mosquitoes living in the forest of Factory 2 disappeared in an instant.
‘I feel refreshed inside.’
While eating pork belly, soju was indispensable.
gulp-
The drink was very sweet.
I asked Seoyeon Kim.
“Has the exploration candidate site been decided?”
“Yes, I selected the area to explore first.”
“Where is it?”
“It is Amazon! There is a ‘boiling river’ there!”
Somewhere in the Amazon rain forest, there is a river with hot water of 95℃.
It’s not a hot spring, it’s a hot river,
Besides, it was enormous.
It was 25m wide, 6m deep and 6km long.
The river is so hot that if a wild animal accidentally falls into the river, it is said to be alive.
“There are all sorts of different things in the world.”
“What’s even more surprising is that there are no volcanoes nearby!”
Natural heating of water usually occurs in volcanic regions, where there are no volcanoes within 700 km in all directions.
“Until now, no one has been able to figure out what causes the river to become hot. It is only speculation that the water is heated and rises thousands of meters underground.”
“So you’re saying there might be an elixir extraction facility down that river?”
“That’s right. It looks like you’re using an elixir that exceeds the saturation level to heat the river.”
Scientists have been unable to determine the source of heat in the river.
So Seoyeon Kim’s prediction may be correct.
she continued.
“There is another factor that increases the probability that an elixir extraction facility is hidden there. That’s gold. The Amazon has been famous for a golden town called El Dorado since a very long time ago.”
There is a legend that somewhere in the Amazon River, there is ＜Eldorado＞, where everything including buildings and objects are made of gold.
Spanish conquistadors believed in the legend and explored the Amazon, and many European explorers also set sail to find El Dorado.
“To operate the Elixir Extraction Facility, a large amount of gold is required. Maybe that gold gave rise to such a legend.”
It made sense.
The Legend of the Boiling River and the Golden City.
There may indeed be an elixir extraction facility hidden in Amazon.
gulp-
I emptied my soju glass and opened my mouth.
“Let’s go to the Amazon.”