The Kid I Raised Ends the World in Sixteen Years

At thirty-two, I was murdered by the kid I raised.

He'd grown into the strongest esper alive — the one man who could turn a city block to ash with his bare hands and call it mercy. The whole world learned his name the day it ended. I just learned it first, because I'm the one who taught him to tie his shoes.

Then I woke up. Sixteen years old, in my old bedroom, in a Seoul that isn't burning yet.

Riho is fourteen. He still calls me hyung. He still hasn't killed anyone.

He grins and says, "Hyung, when I grow up I'm gonna be a villain." In sixteen years it stops being a joke — and he'll be the last one to see it coming.

Last time, I tried to stop the end of the world with my fists. I lost. I died. The city burned anyway.

This time I remember all of it — every death, every fault line, every night he ate dinner alone at an empty table. So this time I'm not throwing punches. Whatever money can fix, money fixes. Whatever a lonely kid needs, he gets it — long before the loneliness ever teaches him to burn.

I raised a villain once. I'm not doing it twice.

And this time, he never eats alone.

No system screens. No status windows. Just a thirty-two-year-old mind in a sixteen-year-old body, a countdown only I can see, and a little brother worth saving the world for.