TRPM 208

chapter 208

It seemed my mother had come to Shinsegyo intending to retrieve the time capsule.

After all, the time capsule contained belongings of my father and my uncle.

It only held letters to our future selves and childhood photos, so the police probably wouldn’t have taken it as evidence of a case.

However… for some reason, there was an SD card in the capsule that looked suspicious to anyone who saw it.

“This is in much better condition than the photos and letters. Still sealed in plastic—it seems to have been added relatively recently.”

The detective said this upon seeing the SD card, then instructed a police officer in the Shinsegyo building via radio to bring a laptop.

Of course, it was to check the contents of the SD card.

“I’ve brought it.”

“I want to see what’s on this SD card.”

The officer inserted the SD card into the laptop and examined its contents.

“This… looks like footage from the body cams that Awakened use when entering dungeons.”

“Body cam?”

“Yes. They’re not commonly used these days, but before the Artist appeared, crimes happened frequently in dungeons. Since evidence of crimes disappears when the dungeon collapses, most Awakened would wear body cams when entering.”

I nodded inwardly at the officer’s explanation.

Nowadays, Korean law enforcement is reliable enough that body cams aren’t widely used, but before my regression, anyone entering a dungeon wore one.

Of course, some Awakened still use them, but it’s rare.

“…Hmm? Wait a second. All the other footage was filmed 18 years ago—or earlier—but this one is from 12 years ago. And it wasn’t filmed in a dungeon.”

“Play it.”

“Understood.”

The officer played the suspicious video for everyone.

[Huff… huff…]

The video started with someone blowing on the body cam lens and wiping it clean.

The person wiping the lens checked to see if their face was properly captured.

“…Brother-in-law…”

The face in the video was my uncle.

‘…Is this really my uncle, not a doppelgänger?’

Twelve years ago… that would roughly be around the time my uncle was replaced by a doppelgänger.

[If anyone found the SD card I put in the time capsule, it would probably be my sister-in-law… or her son, Geonwoo. Among those who knew about the time capsule, only my sister-in-law and I are still alive.]

The uncle in the video confirmed that his face was properly recorded.

[I don’t know exactly who will watch this video, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll speak as quickly as I can since time is short.]

Taking a deep breath, my uncle addressed the camera:

[Yesterday, someone made me a strange offer. They said they could bring my brother back to life and let me resume my work as a mage.]

…Reviving our father was the condition told to me by the doppelgänger.

It seemed the Oracle had made a similar offer to my uncle before he was replaced.

‘And the offer to resume work as a mage…’

If it was the Oracle, it could even fix my uncle’s heart.

Thinking of that, it seemed the Oracle was genuinely willing to honor the proposal. But what exactly did the Oracle want from my uncle? Why make such an offer specifically to him?

I continued watching the video.

[I don’t know who this person is, but I believe they have the capability. At first, I was tempted to accept the offer—especially the promise of bringing my brother back. But the price they demanded was suspicious. I refused.]

He had refused. My uncle had been tempted by the offer, but the required price seemed too suspicious, so he declined.

What kind of price could it have been…?

[They asked me to expand the scale of Shinsegyo, promising to fund it.]

“…Hmm?”

Expand Shinsegyo? That was all?

[Surely they had some benefit in mind if Shinsegyo grew, but I wasn’t a cult leader. I created Shinsegyo as a group to serve and study theology, not to expand its scale. So I refused… but it bothers me that they didn’t give up so easily.]

My uncle concluded the video:

[They said they would come back. If I find out more about their plan then, I’ll leave additional footage. That’s all.]

The video ended. If there were no additional videos…

“It seems the next time that person returned, that’s when something happened to him.”

Perhaps a person who refuses a proposal once never gets a second offer.

Anyway, my uncle seems to have realized something suspicious and tried to leave some information about the Oracle. Unfortunately, he was compromised before leaving complete information.

‘…Still, it’s not like we have no information.’

Everything else was already known or predictable. But the fact that the Oracle proposed expanding Shinsegyo is completely new information.

“Would expanding Shinsegyo benefit the Oracle?”

“They wouldn’t try to make money from it, right? Shinsegyo didn’t charge followers anything.”

“Maybe it was for money laundering. A larger Shinsegyo would make laundering easier. They even sent money under the guise of sponsoring Shinsegyo, didn’t they?”

“If it were just money laundering, there would’ve been easier methods.”

What exactly was the Oracle’s goal in expanding Shinsegyo? And was it important enough to necessitate replacing my uncle with a doppelgänger?

‘This happened when I was around five… long before I started as the Artist. So it can’t be a butterfly effect from my actions after regression.’

It’s likely the Oracle made a similar offer to my uncle even before my regression. My uncle would have been replaced by a doppelgänger before that.

However, the recent disappearance of Shinsegyo followers likely only occurred in this timeline. The Oracle kidnaps Awakened to create doppelgängers, and before regression, it hadn’t used doppelgängers so actively.

Thus, the Oracle had another reason for wanting to expand Shinsegyo.

‘I need to carefully recall what Shinsegyo was like before regression.’

Moreover, the fact that this SD card still exists is significant.

If the SD card remained, it means neither the Oracle nor the doppelgänger imitating my uncle knew of its existence. In other words, the doppelgänger was not a perfect 100% copy of my uncle’s memories.

Perhaps this could provide a way to distinguish the original from the doppelgänger.

The police kept the SD card, copying its contents to another storage device at my request.

Even though the final video was important for estimating when my uncle was replaced, the other videos were essentially an album of my uncle’s body cam footage from his Awakened days.

‘Especially since he worked with my father as an Awakened, my father appears in many of my uncle’s body cam recordings.’

After that day, my mother would occasionally watch the footage quietly whenever she thought of my father.

“……”

After confirming my mother was watching the body cam footage in the living room, I went into my room.

As if on cue, my phone vibrated—it was a call.

I answered and asked:

“…Do you have something to report?”

[Yes, Master, I confirmed what you told me to check.]

The caller was Yeon Mirae, and she was at the police station’s interrogation room.

[As Master suspected, doppelgängers don’t inherit all the memories of the original. They lack self-awareness, and when we interrogated them based on body cam footage, we found gaps in their memories.]

Even the doppelgängers being interrogated seemed confused.

“So they didn’t copy minor memories? Or…”

[No. There were gaps even in important memories. This wasn’t only true for the doppelgänger imitating your uncle, but for nearly all doppelgängers we’ve captured.]

Some doppelgängers didn’t remember why the original joined Core Earth; others had no memory of the original’s family. Gaps varied, but nearly all had them.

[Even those without confirmed gaps may still have memory gaps outside our investigation scope.]

“Right.”

This confirmed that doppelgängers do not perfectly copy all memories of the original.

And that means…

“Those around them might notice something’s off.”

Even minor things could make close acquaintances sense the difference—like my mother feeling something was wrong with the replaced uncle.

[It would be more efficient for the World Awakened Association to release this information than us.]

“Agreed. I’ll make sure President Richard receives it responsibly.”

About a week after suppressing the doppelgängers, President Richard announced he would officially visit Korea tomorrow.

The official reason: a technical exchange meeting with Awakened in Korea.

…but the problem is…

[Are you okay with this meeting…?]

I, too, will have to participate as the Artist. The Korean association had no choice but to request my attendance since President Richard specifically mentioned the Artist.

‘And the meeting with President Richard, me, and the Korean Awakened Association President will be broadcast live…?’

Although I’ve done many interviews as the world’s only martial arts Awakened, this is my first time attending a meeting like this.