The Academy Geniuses I Raised and Dressed

Chapter 185 : If Coincidence Happens Three Times (2)

It was back when I was in the army.

Like everyone else, I’d applied for enlistment and ended up as a rifleman in a regular infantry unit. After finishing boot camp, I was assigned to a division up in Gangwon Province, one of those mountain GOP units.

Not an easy place. Of course, there’s no such thing as an easy posting in the military, but on night duty you fought sleep and the cold, and in the daytime you served as entertainment for your seniors.

I grumbled at fate for dumping me in a place like that, and just dragged myself through each day.

Eventually, I got used to life as a guard. “Home” stopped meaning society, and started meaning the guard post. That was when I met him.

Six months after I’d been stationed there, my very first direct junior arrived.

My first impression? He had this blank expression, kind of vacant. His speech was awkward, and the way he interacted with people was clumsy—like someone who’d spent years shut in a room before suddenly being dropped here.

Not a bad kid at heart, but being around him gave you this uncomfortable feeling.

Still, he was my first direct junior. I wanted to get along with him. And besides, my seniors constantly reminded me: if he messed up, it was my fault too. So I felt a sense of responsibility.

But it wasn’t easy.

No matter how many times I taught him—dozens, over and over—he kept screwing up.

Spilling a food tray on a senior when he tripped.

Forgetting to set aside a meal for a senior on duty, making the guy go hungry.

Falling asleep at a post with his senior, only to get caught by the battalion commander on inspection.

Those were the small mistakes. Honestly, some weren’t even fair.

But then he left his personal gear behind at a post.

Forgot his ammo can there when we returned to the barracks.

Dropped and broke surveillance equipment.

Lost a radio battery out on patrol.

If I listed every mistake he made, we’d be here all day.

Within just a month of arriving, he’d earned the reputation of being our company’s number one problem child. He was so infamous that even the company commander—and sometimes the battalion commander—would ask on their rounds, “Has he caused any accidents lately?”

And in that month, he probably got cursed at more than most people do in a lifetime.

Most of my memories of him are of him hanging his head, wearing that beaten-down look after being chewed out.

Even so, I kept encouraging him. Kept consoling him.

“Everyone makes mistakes. I made tons at first. The point is to learn from them, not repeat them. You can do it. Hang in there.”

Whenever I said that, he’d look like he was about to cry and whisper, “Thank you.”

Time passed. He was promoted to Private First Class, and more juniors came in.

But sadly, the mistakes continued.

I started to wonder—did he actually have no intention of improving? Was he just saying thank you while secretly laughing at us?

The seniors laid into me constantly.

“It’s your fault he’s like this.”

“You need to lay into him harder. Swear at him. Break him so he wakes up.”

“If you don’t, you’ll just keep suffering.”

I heard that three or four times a day, minimum.

Every time I got dragged into the smoking area to be chewed out, my chest felt heavier.

It’s not like I’d never cursed him out. I did. But I kept to a line.

I never went after his family, never tore into his personhood the way the others did.

Because if I did, I’d be no different from the seniors I despised.

More time passed. He reached the final pay grade of PFC.

But rank meant nothing. He’d long since lost all authority with his juniors.

Our seniors had told them outright: “Don’t treat him as your superior.” Even the guard post commander and vice-commander had given up on him, letting that slide.

And then the incident happened.

That night—

I was on guard duty again. Standing the first half of the night shift with a junior who’d arrived three weeks prior. Our shift was ending, almost time to rotate back.

Then—

Bang!

A gunshot.

From the next post over.

I remember the wide-eyed, frozen look of the junior standing beside me.

And I froze too, realizing who was manning that post.

One was my direct junior.

The other was the company’s “alpha senior”—the one who despised him the most.

I radioed back to the barracks. The guard post commander, who was on patrol nearby, ran straight past our post to the next.

Later, the radio operator who accompanied him told me what he saw:

That senior lay sprawled on the ground, clutching his face with both hands. Blood pouring out.

My direct junior was slumped against the wall, his face pale as death.

On the floor beside him lay a rifle—safety off.

The verdict? The senior lost an eye to a blank round fired at close range.

My junior insisted it was an accident.

No one believed him.

Everyone said there was no way the safety could’ve come off on its own.

The senior testified that he hadn’t been facing him at the time—he’d just turned to tell him they were rotating out when the shot rang out.

The last time I saw my junior was right after the MPs arrived at the post.

He was being held in the commander’s office. As they led him down the hall, he looked back at me.

“It wasn’t me. It was an accident. Corporal Hong Heecheol, you believe me… don’t you?”

That’s what he said.

And I—said nothing.

When I stayed silent, he made a face I’d never seen before.

Then, wordlessly, he got into the MP vehicle and was taken away from the post.

The investigation eventually ruled it an accident.

But I never saw him again.

A few months later, I heard the news—he’d been transferred to another unit, and there, he took his own life.

Even after I was discharged, I was haunted by his image for years.

The way he’d looked at me that day, eyes fixed on me, lips trembling.

In dreams, eight times out of ten, it was him.

And in those dreams, he always said the same thing:

“I believed you.”

I’d open my mouth, trying to speak, trying to say something. But my lips would never part. No words ever came out.

And the dream would end there.

I kept telling myself the same thing over and over:

It wasn’t my fault he died.

I tried not to think of him. Tried to forget.

After years of effort, I stopped dreaming about him.

But whenever I heard anything about the army, or saw something military-related on TV, he would appear in my dreams again without fail.

That was why I hadn’t wanted to go to HAUT. Because I knew it would be held at a military base.

“Brother. Why aren’t you answering?”

Lee Hanye looked straight at me as she spoke.

“…You asked me if I’d ever driven someone to their death.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know why you’re asking me that, but no. I haven’t.”

“…Are you telling the truth?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t kill him.

He gave up on his own.

I repeated the same words I’d told myself countless times before.

“It doesn’t have to be direct,” Choi Yuri said. “What about someone close to you… committing suicide?”

My heart dropped at those words.

“…Yes.”

“Ha.”

Yuri let out a sharp laugh.

“Then tell us honestly. This matters.”

“Of course it does. It’s the most important thing right now. Because both Hanye and I… we’ve been through that too.”

“What?”

“My ex-boyfriend. He killed himself a few days after we broke up.”

“……”

I was speechless.

“…Same for me,” Hanye whispered. “A friend from school.”

Both of them were staring at me, waiting.

I exhaled heavily and finally spoke.

“Yes. A junior from my unit.”

“Ha!”

Yuri let out a bitter laugh.

“…I see. So that’s how it was.” Hanye murmured.

“What’s going on here?” I asked, looking between them.

“A few days ago, when I was listening to Sister Yuri’s story, I realized something was off,” Hanye said.

“Off how?”

I turned to Yuri. She shrugged.

“It’s strange, but the more we talk, the more I notice our pasts overlap in eerie ways. Hey, are your parents alive?”

“…No. They passed away.”

“I knew it.”

“…Mm.”

Yuri sounded like she’d expected that answer, while Hanye made a small sound in her throat.

“Then one more question,” Yuri said, her face expressionless as her eyes locked on mine.

“You started playing Latessai… to forget that junior’s suicide, didn’t you?”

“……”

I caught the way Hanye’s expression darkened at that.

“…Yes.”

“Then it’s settled.” Yuri leaned back slightly. “All three of us lost someone close to suicide. All three of us tried to escape that grief by playing Latessai. And all three of us don’t have parents anymore. If we kept digging, I bet we’d find even more similarities.”

What the hell is this…?

What were the chances that three people like that would end up together?

Or that all of us would have played Latessai… and all of us had someone close take their own life?

“Too much to just be coincidence, isn’t it?” Yuri said quietly.

“Could that be why we ended up in this world?” Hanye put a finger on her chin, thinking aloud. “We all lost someone, and we all tried to bury it by playing Latessai.”

“…No.”

For some reason, my gut told me that explanation was wrong.

“If that’s true, it would mean someone specifically chose people with those pasts and brought them into this world. But what reason would they have to do that?”

And who even had the power to? Was this supposed to mean a god existed?

“Or…” Yuri said.

“What?” Hanye asked.

My mouth went dry.

A suspicion I’d been trying not to voice filled my head.

“Hong Heecheol. Don’t tell me you’ve already guessed what I’m about to say,” Yuri said, eyes fixed on me.

Why do we all share such similar memories?

There is something in this world that could make that possible.

“Latessai.”

“What? Huh?”

At first, Hanye looked blank. Then her eyes went wide.

“Yes. There’s a chance our memories have been tampered with. By Latessai. The same way I altered little Nam Yein’s.”

“But brother, you said it yourself! Latessai’s power doesn’t work on us!” Hanye shouted, as if refusing to accept what she’d just heard.

“Maybe so. But this is a world crawling with creatures that can rewrite human memories like it’s nothing. Doesn’t it make sense there could be something even stronger than them? Or something with a unique ability?”

Yuri’s lips curved slightly as she said that.

“But we never saw anything like that in the game,” Hanye said.

We did.

There are beings above the Latessai.

Yedum. Horima. Valo.

Entities so absolute that the usual hierarchy meant nothing.

The hidden bosses of Latessai.

These two never played hardcore mode, so of course they’d never encountered them.

But even then—Yuri’s idea was just a theory.

Even if those hidden bosses had brought us here and tampered with our memories—why?

To them, we were nothing but obstacles.

Why would they go to the trouble of dragging their enemies in, altering our memories, and letting us live here? It didn’t add up.

“In summary…”

Both of them were watching me closely now.

“It’s clear this isn’t coincidence. There’s a reason we ended up here. A cause—and an intention behind it.”

“An intention…”

“Well, there’s no smoke without fire.”

“But we don’t know who’s behind it, or what they want. So that doesn’t change what we need to do.”

I looked at both of them in turn.

“We survive. No matter what. We stay alive, and we see this scenario through to the end.”

“…Yeah. You’re right.” Yuri nodded.

“This difficulty was made for us, after all. If we clear it, there must be… something waiting.”

“…Yes.”

When Yuri said that, Hanye nodded too.

But what if even that final message—when we beat the game—what if that’s just another memory someone planted?

My head was a mess.

(End of Chapter)