The Story of How Casey Became Eris
I had once asked Eris if she had ever killed anyone. She said no. I had also asked if she had killed a girl to steal her body. She said that wasn’t the case. Even to me, it didn’t seem like it. Eris simply didn’t have the personality for something like murdering someone to take their body. Besides, Fantasia was already a ruined organization. The boss had even gotten a small tattoo because a ruined organization’s leader shouldn’t have a flashy one. Would someone like that kill an idol to steal her body? But Geum Tae-yang had said Eris used to be a man. Casey Selenor. Since Geum Tae-yang had no reason to lie about something like that, if anyone was lying, it had to be Eris.
The cold, sharp side of her that she had shown in front of the police. I couldn’t tell which was the real Eris. But if the version of her that she had shown me all this time was fake, it would be enough to send chills down my spine. Of course, when I looked back on the past, there had been hints that Eris was originally a man. Not only did she feel no discomfort undressing in front of me, a guy, but she would sometimes even forget that she was a woman.
So was Eris a liar? That would be a big problem. How could I serve as a boss someone who had killed people yet lied about never having done so, all while pretending to be an idiot? That was the question behind the words I had blurted out, but—
The cheerful answer instantly cooled my anger. But why reveal that she used to be a man now? It didn’t add up at all.
“When I asked you before, you said it wasn’t like that.”
“Huh? Think back to exactly what you asked me.”
What had I asked again? Something like, Did you kill a girl and steal her body?
“I did go from being a man to entering a woman’s body, but I’ve never committed murder.”
Indeed. The one who had messed up the communication was me. Let’s just say the idiot who misunderstood was me.
“Then whose body is that?”
“This body… belongs to my little sister.”
Little sister. At those words, I sucked in a sharp breath. Come to think of it, Eris had once mentioned having a twin sister. And that her sister had been frail and died from illness.
“S-sorry. I made you recall a painful memory. And I even suspected you, Boss…”
I was genuinely sorry. Even thinking about my missing friend made me sad, so how much worse must it be for Eris, who had lived with her sister for so many years? Using the body of a sister who had died from illness and then being mistaken for a murderer—I was definitely in the wrong.
But Eris shook her head.
“No, it’s fine. Hyun-woo, you didn’t do anything wrong. I should have told you sooner, but I forgot.”
“Still…”
“Honestly, it doesn’t make sense, right? Why I would deliberately take the body of a sister who died from illness.”
She wasn’t wrong. There was no reason to take the body of a sister who had died from illness.
“Of course I don’t fully understand. But I figured it would be a sad story, so I didn’t ask. Everyone has their circumstances, after all.”
“Circumstances… Yeah, I do. It’s the story of how I ended up carrying a sin I can never repay for the rest of my life.”
A sin she could never repay in her lifetime? What on earth was this about?
“Since it looks like I’ll be with you forever, Hyun-woo, I’ll tell you. This is a story only Siz knows, because she’s stayed by my side all this time.”
Eris stepped onto the chair, reached up to the bookshelf attached to the desk, and pulled out a photo album. Inside were pictures of a black-haired, black-eyed Eris and a boy.
“Here. That’s me and my little sister.”
So Eris’s pure white hair and red eyes really were characteristics of her soul. The pieces of the story were finally fitting together.
“When I was thirteen, Fantasia fell apart. I inherited the boss position and worked like crazy. I wanted to save Fantasia no matter what.”
“At that time, you never thought about changing your body into a woman’s?”
“I didn’t. My mother had killed a woman to take her body, but… I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to sacrifice someone who had nothing to do with the organization.”
“What a pushover. No wonder you weren’t qualified to be an organization boss.”
“That might be why I failed.”
Eris gave a bitter smile and continued.
“Anyway, while I was so busy working, my little sister Eris was going to school. But she didn’t really like it. She said she wanted to help save Fantasia too.”
“Then you could have let her help. Why didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t want to make my little sister do hard work. No matter how much we were twins, a little sister is still a little sister. I had to take care of her.”
“You were a good big brother.”
“Good big brother… That’s not right.”
Eris turned the page of the photo album. There was a picture of Eris lying in a hospital bed, smiling with great effort. In that photo, Casey had a gloomy face full of guilt. His mouth was smiling, but it didn’t look like a real smile.
“I think it was when she was fourteen… One day, Eris said she felt really sick. Like she was going to die. So she said she couldn’t go to school. I brushed it off, telling her not to play hooky. I thought she was just pretending to be sick because she didn’t want to go to school.”
“But it wasn’t pretend?”
“Yeah… Siz and I were both so busy that we didn’t pay much attention, but as Eris’s condition got worse, Siz got worried and took her to the hospital. That’s when they said it was magi poisoning. Her body’s growth stopped right then too.”
Eris let out a short, self-mocking laugh.
“The doctor told me that the magi poisoning had become chronic not long ago. There must have been early symptoms—why hadn’t I brought her to the hospital sooner?”
After hearing that Eris had magi poisoning, I had looked it up. In the early stages, magi poisoning apparently showed the same symptoms as a cold or flu. So people often brushed it off thinking it was just a cold, and by the time they realized, it had already become chronic. In Eris’s case, it wasn’t that they had thought it was a cold—they had thought it was her playing hooky, so they had completely ignored it and let it worsen.
“Even while suffering from magi poisoning, Eris still went to school. Because I had told her not to play hooky. At that time, nothing was going right for me, so I was really struggling. She didn’t want to make things harder for me.”
Eris was currently experiencing magi poisoning herself. Because she had entered her little sister’s body. So she would know exactly how painful magi poisoning was, and how difficult it must have been to go to school in that condition. When she first learned the truth, when she first felt the pain of magi poisoning—what must her heart have felt like?
“That’s why I committed a sin against Eris that I can never wash away. Even though a cure for magi poisoning has been developed, it’s still a disease that can kill depending on the patient’s physical condition. In the end, Eris died when she turned twenty.”
Eris’s face was twisted with sorrow. She tried to force the corners of her mouth up into a smile, pretending to be okay, but it wasn’t working.
“But Eris was such an idiot. Even though it happened because I ignored her and sent her to school anyway. She told me she was sorry. Sorry for becoming a burden. I was the one who should have apologized, but she apologized instead and left me. I was supposed to apologize to her for the rest of my life, but she didn’t even give me that much time.”
Eris looked like she was about to cry. She was on the verge of breaking down. But she widened her eyes, wiped away the tears with her forearm, and spoke in a determined voice.
“So, that’s when I made up my mind. For Eris, who had wanted to revive Fantasia, I would revive Fantasia using Eris’s body.”
So that was how it had come to this.
“Boss, Eris died from magi poisoning, right? But you don’t die from magi poisoning?”
“Because this is a possessed body, it’s not directly connected to my soul, so I don’t die. I just hurt enough to want to die.”
“I see.”
If she didn’t die, that might actually be a good thing. If souls really existed, then Eris would be able to watch her big brother revive Fantasia. Of course, if I thought about it coldly, it was a foolish decision. Throwing away a perfectly healthy body to take one whose growth had stopped at fourteen and that came with the pain of magi poisoning—it was nothing but a reckless act driven by guilt and a tangle of emotions.
But I didn’t want to say anything cold about this sad story. And it felt awkward to offer any words of comfort or encouragement to the grieving Eris. Comforting and encouraging someone about something that happened so long ago felt meaningless. So instead, I balled up my fist and gave Eris a hard flick to the forehead.
“Ouch! Why did you suddenly hit me?!”
“You stupid idiot.”
“W-what? Stupid idiot?!”
“Yeah! You are a stupid idiot. Feeling so guilty toward your little sister that you even possessed her body to try to save the organization, and then what? Suicide? Self-murder? Seeeelf-muuuurdeeeeer?”
I flicked her forehead again. Before Fantasia was disbanded, Eris had definitely said she was going to commit suicide. She had said she wanted to have one last round of Leori before she did. Remembering that made me suddenly angry. Even though it had reached the point where Siz was about to sell her body, still—how could she think about killing herself while borrowing her little sister’s body?
“Do you repent for thinking about suicide back then or not? Yes?”
“I-I repent. I was wrong…”
Eris sniffled and lowered her head. Yeah, yeah, what a good girl. I stroked Eris’s head and said,
“Very good. Please never think like that again.”
“Okay…”
When I stroked her head, Eris seemed to feel better and leaned against me. Sometimes I wondered if this person was really three years older than me. Still, while I had my mom, Hyeon-yu, Eris had lost her parents at a young age, so she must have craved this kind of touch.
“Still, I’m glad.”
“About what?”
“That you’re here, Hyun-woo. Now I don’t have to die, Siz doesn’t have to sell her body, and I think I can revive Fantasia with Eris’s body…”
Good grief.
“Just because I showed up, you think everything’s going to work out that easily?”
“But you’re amazing, Hyun-woo. You’re big and cool and strong, so I’m sure everything will work out. Everything…”
Eris fell asleep mid-sentence. It must have been mentally exhausting just to talk about it. By the way, wasn’t she trusting me a little too completely? My combat power was only 190 right now. Barely enough to beat someone like Bandalgom from Gangnam Sam-ung or whatever. Still, I had to get stronger if I wanted to get revenge on Choon-sik, so I couldn’t stop here. And if I could find my missing friend too—
─Ding.
After laying Eris down and covering her with a blanket, a text message arrived on my phone. It was from Siz.
She was going to do that after finishing her part-time job? Her loyalty to Eris was truly incredible. Was there a reason she went this far? Still, if that researcher could help cure magi poisoning, it would be a huge gain. I sent a reply hoping their conversation would go well.
She was just a child who had been forced to become strong because of a painful past. The environment must have been far too harsh for her to grow up mentally mature.
A necktie, huh. But why was a necktie the symbol of a man? Even after taking her little sister’s body, she didn’t want to forget that she was a man. That must be why she thought hair wax was the symbol of a man and insisted on using it, and why she stuck to wearing pants. Honestly, hair wax, neckties, and pants were all pretty ambiguous as symbols of manhood, but if that was what she believed, there was nothing I could do about it. The shops probably weren’t closed yet, so I should slip out and buy one.
And at that time, I didn’t know yet.
That leaving Eris alone was dangerous.
That this was the world of gangsters.