"Hey… Aren, are you okay? Aren, look at me!"
"Bring some water—he might've gotten heatstroke!"
"Aren!
You're awake. Do you feel any pain? Should we take you to the hospital?"
"Tsk. What a delicate little boy… We've only been walking for an hour and he's already playing the sick one."
"Harry, don't say that. Look at his face—it's completely pale."
Too many voices.
Too much noise.
Too close.
Aren felt everything and nothing at the same time—voices calling his name, hands hovering around him, words he understood yet couldn't piece together into meaning. His skull pulsed viciously, each throb like a hammer striking bone, sharp enough to wipe out the very idea of who he was.
And in that splitting agony, something else surged forward—foreign memories crashing into his mind like a violent tide. They clawed, shoved, pushed, trying to overwrite his own, forcing their way in as if intent on erasing Aren himself.
But who was Aren Bach?
He was the strongest assassin in the world—physically unmatched, mentally untouchable.
Take over his mind?
In their dreams.
Gritting through the agony, Aren forced himself to fight—organizing thoughts, locking the intruding memories away, suffocating them inside a dark corner of his consciousness before they could infest him like a spreading virus. If he didn't, he was sure these foreign memories would kill him before turning him into someone else entirely.
"Aren! Aren, can you hear us?!"
"Lift him off the ground first!"
"Don't move him! He's holding his head—he might be hurt!"
"Stop fussing. He's probably acting. What a waste—he's an idol; he should've become an actor."
Each voice slammed against Aren's already-fractured mind.
The storm inside him roared, twisting tighter and tighter.
And finally, he snapped.
"Everyone… shut up—damn it!"
The burst of cold fury was sharp enough to cut the air itself.
Aren had always been like this—sharp, cold, incapable of warmth. A man forged by blood and isolation. A man who had never learned the meaning of affection because he had never tasted it.
The lethal aura of someone who had taken countless lives wasn't something ordinary people could ignore.
The instant his voice struck, every person froze.
Not even breathing dared to continue.
The cameraman stumbled, his camera nearly slipping from his shoulder. His legs simply gave out.
Silence finally returned—heavy, suffocating, reverent.
Aren, still kneeling on the harsh ground with one hand digging into his throbbing skull, felt clarity slowly seep back in. Awareness settled on him like a weight—unwelcome, yet grounding.
Five long minutes passed before the young man—the boy—finally moved. Then he rose to his feet.
The camera caught everything: the graceful figure, the pale skin that seemed carved from moonlight, the tall, slender build, the golden-brown hair shimmering under the sun. He looked like a prince who had stepped straight out of a fantasy painting.
Those peach-shaped eyes flicked toward the camera only for a moment before he turned away with visible irritation.
Once he stood—once that terrifying aura faded into a quiet, lazy calm—everyone finally remembered how to breathe.
Harry flushed red. Not from embarrassment. From pure, boiling rage.
"You arrogant little rookie! How dare you yell and curse at your seniors?! Do you have a death wish?!"
He jabbed a furious finger at Aren, looking seconds away from grabbing the beautiful boy by the collar.
"Harry, calm down! Calm down. Aren wasn't in his right mind. Look—he's still pale. He just felt dizzy. He didn't mean it."
The man restraining him—Mel—had the soft beauty of a gentle second male lead who never gets the girl in the end.
"Let go of me, Mel! I'm teaching this brat how to respect his seniors today!"
[My God… this new Spark member is really… something.]
[Right? I swear I almost peed myself when he yelled. I even covered my mouth so I wouldn't breathe loudly.]
[He's got personality, sure… but yelling at the people helping him? That's too much.]
[Maybe his brain really did get cooked by the sun. That fall earlier wasn't a joke.]
[You saw that? I swear there was a bit of blood on his forehead. He hit that huge rock over there.]
[Rocks are everywhere. Did you expect him to fall on flowers? But seriously… why film in a place like this? Even for idols, this is brutal. A freezing mountain? Really?]
[The show pays a lot to get celebrities. Season six already—and I've watched every one. I want to see Spark suffer—Mother Nature edition.]
[Don't get too excited. They're not sleeping in tents. There's a villa built in the middle of the mountain. They'll stay there.]
[A villa. On a mountain. Unreal.]
[Not unreal. Just money, sister.]
"I… I'm sorry."
The soft voice broke through all the muttering. Nothing like his earlier icy scream.
Aren bowed his head.
Some people assumed he was arrogant—born into privilege, spoiled by wealth, raised with the elegance of the Bach family.
But Aren didn't care. Not anymore.
After his entire family was assassinated—over a hundred people from two of the world's most powerful families—he abandoned everything.
The name. The legacy. The etiquette.
He tore himself away from it all for revenge.
He had learned to swallow dirt and call it breakfast.
Apologizing for things he didn't do? That was nothing.
This moment was nothing.
"I apologize for my rudeness. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I was just… disoriented earlier. I didn't mean to be disrespectful."
And really—what could anyone say after a beautiful seventeen-year-old boy apologized with such delicate sincerity?
They handled it maturely.
Of course they did.
They wouldn't bully a child.
Even Harry clicked his tongue and looked away, reluctantly dropping it.
When the group resumed walking, Aren pushed himself forward, ignoring the subtle pain in his leg from the fall. Pain like this wouldn't slow him—not when he had survived knives plunging near his heart.
Still—
Aren looked down at his hand, eyes dark with tangled, conflicting emotions.
Somehow, he had been sent to another world.
Another life.
If he could choose, he would return to the past—save his family, stop the tragedy before it happened.
He shut his eyes.
He breathed slowly, pushing those dangerous emotions deep down where they couldn't control him.
(…Fine. Reincarnating in a peaceful world, in the body of an ordinary boy… isn't bad either.)