It was after the Red Book incident had ended, during a hectic time when everyone was busy preparing for the final exams.
One day, Sunah suddenly called out to me and said she had seen me in front of her house.
"Joon... I saw you yesterday..."
"Huh? Where?"
"Near my house..."
Sunah fidgeted nervously with her hands.
"Why did you come to our apartment...?"
"Why would I go there?"
I looked at Sunah as if dumbfounded.
Typical of her, she must have been having some absurd delusion.
"I never went. If I had, of course I would have contacted you, or at least said hello if I was nearby."
"Uh, yeah... sorry..".
Sunah apologized timidly and stepped back.
But Dukhun wasn't the same.
"Hey. Actually, I saw you on the street a few days ago too. We made eye contact and I waved at you, but you just walked away."
"What? Where?"
"Yongsan Station Exit 1."
"Yongsan?"
Of course, if someone like Dukhun had approached me pretending to be friendly and greeted me with Hisashiburi or something, I might have just walked away, but as far as I remembered, nothing like that
happened.
As I was wondering about it, Gyeongwon pushed his glasses and nodded.
"Prez, maybe this is one of those doppelgänger ghost stories."
"Doppelgänger. Hmm..."
According to Gyeongwon, a doppelgänger is another version of yourself that suddenly appears before your friends and acquaintances one day, flaunts its existence, and gradually begins taking your place by, pretending to be you.
"Then this is exactly the stage where it's starting to reveal itself. We have to catch it quickly before it does anything strange."
I came up with a few ideas on how to get rid of it, and also told the club members that if they saw the thing, they should catch it first and question it later.
A few more days passed after that.
After several incidents where club members would suddenlv grab me whenever they saw me in the hallway, I finally managed to come face to face with the thing.
Ding~
"I'm home~"
"..Joon?"
One day, when I got home, I saw my mom showing a shocked expression at seeing me.
Wondering what was going on, I followed my mom's gaze, and there I was already lying sprawled on the sofa watching TV.
And the moment I saw it, a strong shock hit my heart.
Throb-
"Ha..!""
I collapsed from a heart attack and went back in time.
And as soon as I came to my senses, I
informed the club members of the situation.
"It's finally started showing up in my house and pretending to be me."
"....Prez, you gathered us just a moment ago and explained exactly that."
"What?"
I immediately rushed out of the clubroom and wandered around the school chasing the Lee Joon who was said to have given that explanation, but I couldn't find him.
And then one realization flashed through my mind.
'....Did it regress too?'
If it could also regress and even use the Status Window, then it was a serious problem.
And at the same time, I thought of one
weakness I had.
".....I still haven't fully reconciled with the club members yet.'
If the doppelgänger returned and exploited that weakness, things would get quite complicated.
I immediately gathered the members and apologized.
"Uh, okay, Prez... But honestly, we were at fault too, so I don't really think this is something you should have to apologize for. But if that's how you feel, I get it."
"Thanks. And could you each slap my cheek once?"
"What?"
"Partly as an apology, and partly because I want to leave a mark."
"Okay....."
I took turns getting slapped by the members, and the one who slap me hurt the most was Hayoon's.
'No, shit, that hurts so much...."
Unlike her slender build, Hayoon had a
surprisingly fierce hand.
And then, later that day after school, while I was using the restroom, I suddenly heard the sound of the front door opening.
Dring~
"I'm home~"
The thin, high-pitched voice of a boy who had just finished puberty.
Even the habit of greeting the house when coming in, despite there being nobody home, was exactly like mine.
I quietly stayed hidden until the guy went into his room, and as soon as I heard the door close, I immediately crept over to the front door, slipped on only my slippers, and rushed outside.
Since my phone, wallet, and everything else were in my room, I was literally left with nothing but myself, so I headed to Sunah's house for the time being.
***
"Joon..."
At the sound of the doorbell, Sunah answered the door, her face startled like a frightened rabbit.
I explained the situation and hid at Sunah's house.
"....That's what happened."
"Oh my god..."
Sunah covered her mouth with both hands, looking as if she didn't know what to do.
"Sleep in my room, Joon... I can sleep with Grandma in the living room..."
"Thank you. I'll trouble you just for one day."
It wasn't that I didn't have money to stay somewhere else, but there was no lodging place that would accept a minor anyway.
I borrowed Sunah's phone and explained the situation to the club members and the Detective, then spent the night in Sunah's room for the time being.
And while I was in a deep sleep.
Swoosh-
"...."
I opened my eyes groggily and saw that the gap in the door was wide open.
Even though it was dark and I couldn't see beyond the door, I could feel a presence that had been watching me for quite some time.
With a sleep-induced face, I opened my mouth toward the door.
"Come in, Sunah..."
The door slid open, and Sunah,
wearing pink pajamas and holding a
pillow, came into the room.
I made an empty space next to me.
"Sorry for taking your room... If you want to sleep, lie down here..."
After saying that, I closed my eyes, and with the faint rustling sound of Sunah coming over to my side, I finally drifted back into sleep.
"Is this what it feels like when a younger sister comes looking for you at night after having a nightmare...."
**
The next morning, I woke up to a sudden call from the Detective.
[Joon, this is serious. The doppelgänger ghost story you told me about, looks like it's happened to me too. That thing stole all the evidence from the police headquarters and left it in my room, and even took my phone. When I went in to work, my colleagues were already looking at me strangely, asking why
I'm coming again if I had already been
here. I left immediately. I'm calling from a pay phone right now.]
"..Huaam, you did the right thing. If you see it. you'll die... Iet's meet up first and talk."
[Okay. What about your school?]
Hearing that, I checked the time and realized only 10 minutes left untilI was late.
Sunah had just finished showering and was drying her hair.
Wheeew
'No wonder she's always late.'
Even though Sunah looked like she was in a hurry, to me she was moving slow. I checked my backlog of messages on KakaoTalk while watching her.
There, I saw messages from my club members saying I was already at school and asking if it was really me.
"Yeah, the school is fine. It seems the
doppelgänger is already there."
[Is it really okay to just leave it alone like that?]
"Your doppelgänger is already going to work in your place too, Detective."
[I see.]
A doppelgänger that had already blended into the boundaries of my daily life.
If I tried to deal with it carelessly, it would immediately attract people's attention, so I couldn't mess with it recklessly.
Especially in my case, it seemed like my doppelgänger even shared my regression ability, so I couldn't afford to approach it carelessly.
"We need to plan carefully and take them both all down at once. Let's meet first, Detective."
[Alright. I'll head over there.]
After hanging up the phone, I walked to the front door and saw Sunah waiting for me with her bag on her shoulder.
"Let's go to school, Joon..."
I couldn't help but think Sunah was slow to catch news as always, and didn't even check her phone. But then I realized the phone I'd been using all this time actually belonged to Sunah, so I handed it back to her while explaining.
"That's how it turned out. From now on, I think Il be staying with the Detective. If he's around, we can book hotels or motels anytime."
"Okay.."
"Thanks for today. Have a good day at
school."
"Yeah.."
Sunah slowly waved her hand and then headed off to school.
After seeing Sunah off like that, I also started getting ready to go out.
"Eeeh, who is it, who...?"
"It's Sunah's friend, Grandma. I greeted you yesterday."
"Eeeh, it's a thief..."
After briefly bowing to Sunah's grandmother, who was making weak, groaning sounds, and expressing my gratitude, I left the house.
Then I met the Detective, and we went to a nearby Starbucks and began discussing what to do next.
***
"Wait, you mean that's how it is? This is serious. If it's my doppelgänger, I can just kill it off, but if your doppelgänger shares even regression, what are we supposed to do about that?"
"We'll have to figure that out from here on out. So, about that, Detective, if your doppelgänger has a 100% identical personality to you, would it be Someone you can trust?"
"....Hm? What do you mean by trust?"
"For example, in the case of my doppelgänger, it's not the kind you can trust. If I told it it's fake, it would probably freak out and deny it then ran away and because it doesn't want to die."
Because I'm exactly that kind of person.
Soon after, the Detective, as if understanding what that meant, slowly nodded and then opened his mouth.
"If it's truly 100% identical to me, then I'd probably be able to believe it. If you explain it well and show me evidence, it'll accept it."
"Then I'll show you the evidence. Please look at the person outside the window."
".....?"
The Detective turned his head and looked outside the café window.
There, across the street, a man in a gray coat was standing with his back turned.
In that instant, the doppelgänger Detective's expression hardened abruptly.
As promised, I met with the real Detective Park Gangwoon in the morning and finished all discussions, then I called out the doppelgänger Detective sitting before me.
And after continuing the conversation along similar lines, as soon as I became convinced that he was someone I could reason with, I immediately showed him the evidence.
"The person outside with their back turned is the real Detective Park Gangwoon. There's more evidence."
I pointed out that when I looked at him through the phone camera, the machine malfunctioned, and that he came to meet me as soon as he received the call, almost as if teleporting.
"..."
"....."
the Detective stay silent for moment then sigh deeply he clasped his hands together with a thoughtful expression.
Soon after, he nodded and readily admitted that he was the fake.
"If that's how it turned out, I suppose there's no helping it. Is there anything I can do to help?"
"First, I have a question, why on earth did you steal the evidence?"
"Well...I don't remember."
The Detective, with a troubled expression, tapped his finger.
"As far as I remember, when I came to work today, the police station was already in chaos. However..."
Suddenly, his tapping finger stopped, and his eyes grew deep as if recalling something from long ago.
"....However, those pieces of evidence were items that had been kept at the National Police Agency in connection with strange incidents, cases that remained permanently unsolved because ordinary investigations
yielded no answers. They are items that I personally have lingering regrets about, wishing I could reopen and reinvestigate them at least once."
"....I see."
"If I did steal them, it was probably related to those subconscious thoughts. In any case, I have no awareness of having done something like that."
"It might be because, after you were first brought forth as a ghost story, your sense of self wasn't fully formed yet. There was a time when only fragments of your form would
appear, remember? Even my own
doppelgänger is supposed to be studying for exams, but right now it's just slacking off."
True to my tendency for cramming, as the system pointed out, I was always someone who would burn out midnight oil over the weekend right before exams, but strangely, my doppelgänger that I observed through
the wiretap was just playing games and
having fun.
And it seemed like he didn't even remember that we met before and that he regressed and time went back.
Just as the real Detective and I have become a team starting from that day, it seemed that the fake detective on the other side and my doppelgänger had also begun officially pretending to be each other, going to work and school and fully starting to play our respective roles.
After thanking the fake Detective, who readily acknowledged everything, I made one request.
"Detective, may I ask you for one favor?"
"What is it?"
"On Monday morning, wait in the clubroom in advance, and when that guy comes in, shoot him. And tell him to come find you after going back."