Cameraman Never Dies-Chapter 279: Exactly two hundred and seventy-nine

"Wahh?!…"

Judge jolted awake, breath hitching as his body reacted faster than his thoughts. His eyes snapped open, unfocused at first, staring into a space that took a moment too long to recognize.

Weirdly, it felt as though he had been awake the entire time. Not drifting, not gone. As if he had been lying just beneath the surface, listening, waiting. And yet, at the same time, his limbs were heavy with the dull resistance of sleep, his mind lagging behind the sudden return of awareness.

As his vision slowly settled, what greeted him was not the battle site where he had fallen asleep after hugging his grandfather. Nor was it his bedroom, which would have been the sensible destination, had the world been feeling cooperative.

No. He was somewhere else.

Somewhere all too familiar, despite having been here only once.

The recognition came quietly, without shock. The space felt unchanged, preserved in the exact way memory refused to distort. That alone was enough to unsettle him.

"Clio…"

His voice trailed off as his gaze found the throne, and the figure seated upon it. Blue hair, blue eyes, both carrying a softness that struck far too close to something he had lost. She wore a simple white tunic, untouched by time or circumstance, and sat with a stillness that made the space feel ordered around her.

She looked too much like his mother.

The resemblance was sharp enough to hurt. If he hadn't known better, if he hadn't already met Clio before, he might have believed it was her. Some foolish part of him still wanted to. He found himself hoping anyway, quietly and without expectation, even though there were no gods left to hear prayers like that.

The thought lingered, unfulfilled.

It should have been confusing. Seeing her should have pulled something loose inside him. Longing, grief, anger, anything. His mother's image should have stirred the ache he carried so carefully.

But it didn't.

Instead, he felt calm.

Not numb, not hollow. Calm in the way untouched water is calm, undisturbed by wind or stone. The stillness was unnatural, but it didn't frighten him. It simply existed, wrapping around his thoughts and smoothing them flat.

For once, there was no turbulence inside him at all.

And that, more than the place itself, felt strange.

"Welcome back, Judge." Clio smiled.

The smile irritated him on instinct. Too calm. Too knowing. The kind of expression that suggested she had been expecting him all along. And yet, beneath that irritation, there was something else. Familiarity. Comfort. He realized, against his will, how much he had missed seeing it.

That realization bothered him more than the smile itself.

Clarity snapped into place a heartbeat later.

"You? How…?"

The question left his mouth before he could temper it. His mind was already racing ahead, tearing through possibilities and discarding them just as quickly. There was no path he could trace that would allow this. No condition could justify him seeing Clio again.

That left only one answer.

An illusion.

It was the neatest conclusion and the safest. He clung to it immediately. But even as he did, the idea felt wrong. The space was too stable. Too complete. Illusions shimmered, warped, betrayed themselves in small ways, and he could tell even a strong illusion apart from reality. This did not. It felt solid in the way reality insisted on being.

And even if it was an illusion, then who could have cast it?

Certainly not him.

And under Gereon's watch, that narrowed the list to something uncomfortably small. His thoughts drifted, reluctantly, toward the only figure who might have been capable of something like this without asking permission.

Maybe it was his grandfather himself.

The thought gave him more questions; one stood out — Why?

Whatever this was, it wasn't accidental.

"I know what you are thinking, Judge."

Clio rose from her seat, her movement smooth and unhurried as she floated toward him. There was no sound to it, no disturbance in the space, as if the space itself had agreed to step aside for her.

"But this is not an illusion," she continued, "and you are safely being carried to your house at the moment."

The words should have eased something in him. They didn't.

Judge didn't let himself relax. The calm he felt sat wrong in his chest, too even, too undisturbed. It unnerved him more than panic ever could. He watched her closely, searching for something to react to, but finding nothing that demanded it.

"How can we still meet after you said you couldn't?"

His voice came out neutral, steady to the point of sounding detached.

"I am getting to it."

Clio lowered herself to the ground near him, abandoning the throne entirely. She sat casually, unguarded, as though this were a familiar place to pause rather than something grand or forbidden. Her tone matched the posture, light and patient.

"Care to listen?"

The question hung between them. She didn't rush him.

And Judge, still wrapped in that unsettling calm, realized he hadn't even considered refusing. He nodded, finally lowering his guard, even if only slightly.

"Min Jae… Judge," she said as he sat beside her. "You have had several more names than that."

"…."

He stayed silent and let her continue. Questions pressed at the edge of his thoughts, but none of them felt urgent enough to interrupt her. Strangely, he felt at ease. Not shocked, not disoriented. Just… understanding, as though the words were not new, only remembered.

Clio noticed the shift. Her smile softened, losing its earlier teasing edge, and she leaned in, resting her head gently against his shoulder.

"And among those identities," she continued quietly, "you lived one life between Min Jae and Judge. You might have already heard of it. You were quite famous."

Her voice carried a faint warmth now.

"The founder of the Drakonis family. Rey Drakonis. The princeps." 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

The title echoed, heavy and distant, like something half-buried in fog. Judge didn't react outwardly. His breathing stayed steady. Yet somewhere deep inside, something stirred, not violently, but with the slow ache of recognition.

"And before your life as Min Jae," Clio went on, "the wealthy tyrant…"

She paused, just long enough for the weight of the words to settle.

"You lived exactly two hundred and seventy-nine lives."

The statement should have shattered the moment. It should have demanded disbelief, anger, and denial. Instead, it passed through him like a quiet current. Absurd, yes. Impossible, certainly. And yet, it did not feel false.

He didn't raise his voice. He didn't laugh. He didn't even frown.

Clio kept speaking, uninterrupted.

"And in each one of those lives," she said softly, "I... I relished my life as your mother."

Her head pressed a little closer against his shoulder.

"And another part of my soul lived as your father."

The calm finally cracked.

Not explosively. Not dramatically. It fractured in silence, like glass breaking underwater. Something tight and ancient gave way in his chest, and suddenly the stillness he had been wrapped in felt unbearably thin.

Memories he did not see pressed against him anyway. Feelings without images. Comfort without faces. A thousand small moments of being held, guided, scolded, and loved. Repeated. Lost. Repeated again.

His throat tightened.

All the grief he had carried, all the longing that never seemed to empty, suddenly had a shape. A reason. A history far too vast to fit inside him.

Clio didn't move. She didn't pull away. She stayed there, steady and warm, as if she had done this countless times before. She instead put her hand on his shoulder, holding him tightly.

And for the first time since waking up, Judge felt something other than calm.

He felt found.