The Reason I Keep Avoiding My Childhood Friend - Chapter 6

None of them were actually concerned for me. They were only responding for their own interests.

The video did not mosaic my face. It wasn’t very clear due to the distance, but it was enough for anyone who knew me to recognize. That’s probably why my friends contacted me.

Calls from friends and acquaintances were streaming in. It was horrible to think that everyone I knew would have seen it. The misery made me want to kill myself.

I switched off my phone since I didn’t have the energy to answer each of them. Then I drank way too much alcohol despite not being a good drinker.

I wanted to escape from the dark, harsh reality. Soju was bitter, just as my life was. It made me nauseous and was hard to swallow. But I kept on drinking, not confident I could deal with it all while sober.

(T/N: Soju – A Korean alcoholic beverage.)

Since I kept drinking on an empty stomach, I quickly became drunk. I poured my tears into the water and mixed it with alcohol.

Like that, I fell asleep drinking more alcohol than I could stomach, cursing at the world.

The sweltering heat woke me up. I was drenched in sweat when I noticed a smokey smell. I immediately came to my senses.

The smoke billowing from the doorway scared me. I was still drunk and couldn’t entirely make sense of the situation, but there was a mounting ominousness.

Surprised, I grabbed the handle to open the door but immediately recoiled, shaking my hand.

“Ahh, It’s hot!”

By the time I had wrapped a blanket around the handle and jarred the door open, the building was already engulfed in flames. The fire was so strong that I couldn’t pass through the doorway. The windows were the same— I was trapped.

It was surprising that the fire could spread so much in such little time. I could hear the sharp whining of the fire truck outside.

I realized that while I had been asleep and unaware of my predicament, the flames had spread to a frightening degree. The fire raged like the gateway to hell and approached, devouring everything in its path. The oppressive heat made my skin burn.

Surrounded by the blazing flames, I intuitively felt that I could not escape from here and that my life was ending in vain.

And just as I predicted, the building was burnt to the ground as the blaze swallowed it whole.

Thus, I was abused by a customer and then killed by a fire on that dreadful day.

At first, I didn’t even realize that I had reincarnated. Even though what I saw changed and what I heard was strange, I thought I was living in heaven because I died unjustly.

I, who was just a baby, ate, slept, and went on for months before realizing that I had been born again in another world, and that it was not heaven.

In the meantime, I was baffled since I still had all the memories of my past life. It could’ve been a dream, but if it was, then my imagination was indeed brilliant.

Fortunately, there was nothing to do in a child’s body, so I had a lot of time to think. I thought about it and organized my situation, and then came to a conclusion.

I should accept my new life. I had already been reborn, so what could I do? Rather than criticizing the past and regretting all of it, we should live our lives to their fullest. Recalling the bad experiences of my past, I decided to live a splendid life this time around.

As soon as I became old enough to flip on my stomach, I started taking note of my surroundings.

First of all, I didn’t have a mother. She died when I was born. I thought it was my mother who took care of me, but no, it wasn’t.

My father was a very blunt, enormous, bandit-looking man. I was honestly startled when I saw my father’s face for the first time. If I didn’t have memories of my past life, I would’ve cried upon seeing his face.

I also realized that the clothes, surroundings, and other conditions were very different in this world. But what made me even more wary of the situation was that there was a status system here. For me, who had suffered from the abuse of power, this was extremely distressing.