Chapter 107
Chapter 107
I know you're supposed to be happy when someone worries about you or looks out for you.
I've hardly ever experienced it myself, but I saw it often enough around me.
By "around me," I mean physically close, not emotionally. No matter how much everyone at school treated me like I didn't exist, I wasn't literally invisible. There were students beside me, in front of me, behind me.
And, like an invisible person, the kids never felt any need to move away before they started talking among themselves.
Worrying for each other, congratulating each other. Laughing together, crying together.
I knew none of those feelings were real. I went to Hwayeong Middle School, where money decided social rank. Unless you were a special case like me, those kids obviously sized each other up and tore each other apart based on wealth.
But even though I knew the displays weren't sincere—
I was jealous.
The only relationship I had was with Mother, and I couldn't even be sure whether that was real or fake.
Not that those kids ever intended to offer me that kind of relationship.
Yeah, I was jealous. I wanted it.
Yet now that I was finally face-to-face with feelings like that, what I felt wasn't happiness. It was bewilderment.
"......."
Even after hearing Yu Ha-neul's story in full, I couldn't say anything for a long time. I honestly didn't know what to say.
I've only known this girl for a week. That felt too short to thank her for sharing something like this. Saying the words would've been easy enough. But whether I could call them sincere was murkier. I was grateful, I was glad... but it all still felt too distant to really sink in.
"Did that person leave any words for me?"
Not knowing how to refer to the one who took over my body for those three months when I'd lost my memory, I settled on that phrasing. I may say "I," but to me, that person wasn't me. It never felt real.
At my question, Yu Ha-neul hesitated, then confessed with a pained look.
"They asked... if 'you' came back, and they couldn't see them anymore... could I stay friends with them the way I always had...."
Yeah.
I see.
Even hearing that, I still don't know what to say.
Maybe the right word is that I can't understand it.
I'm someone who gave up on everything and threw my life away.
I threw my life away just to try to get Mother's attention even once.
Because I'm that kind of person, I couldn't really grasp what it means to sacrifice your life for someone else.
Someone who spent their whole life suspecting everyone around them could never understand a person who chose death for another's sake. I would never, ever do that.
......That person used every ounce of strength they had to set things right. Somehow persuaded the teachers and students who used to ignore me to create a school where I could live normally. Made a friend who liked me so very much. Turned a servant with no particular feelings into an ally.
Accurately assessed the estate, gauged what could be done with that wealth, and laid plans for the future. Laid the groundwork so that Mother could never harm me again.
And then gave up all of it.
For me alone.
Honestly, aside from the part where they gave it up for me, the rest I can at least understand. If they were the type who didn't obsess over Mother the way I did, the type who could trust other people, the type of rational person who could accurately size up the hand they'd been dealt and play every card at the right moment—then what they did made sense.
Unlike me, who did nothing and simply threw everything away, they actually did what they could to escape their situation.
But then they gave up everything they'd built.
For me.
Almost as if they'd been preparing it all for me from the very beginning.
No. My thoughts have circled right back to the start.
"......I..."
After I'd stood there silently, lost in thought for a long while, Yu Ha-neul, beside me, spoke.
"So I tried, you know. To do what they asked."
"......."
To keep being friends with me, the other person who'd returned to this body, just the same, even after they were gone.
I don't know if you could call it a last request, but that was the favor they'd asked.
This girl must have really loved that person.
So much that she saw me, in the same body, as a completely different being.
"But it didn't work."
Even as I heard her say it almost like a sigh, all I could do was think, Yeah, that makes sense. Because I don't know how this girl came to like that person so much. I don't know how the two of them got that close, or how, in less than a month, they came to understand each other like that.
The only time I'd ever had a real friend was when I was very, very young, somewhere in my hazy memories, so I couldn't properly summon that feeling.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry...."
Yu Ha-neul crumbled as she said it.
"I tried to hold it in. I tried to think of you as the same person as them...."
But it must have been impossible.
Because I am, unmistakably, a different being from that person.
We share the same body, but we're completely different in how we think.
"But... I'm sorry."
On her knees on the hard floor, tears dripping steadily down, she looked truly sorry.
She doesn't need to apologize that much.
"......."
I don't really know what I'm supposed to do in a situation like this.
If I weren't me, if I were the me who faintly surfaces in those memories, I probably wouldn't just stand here staring blankly.
All at once, I grew curious. What kind of person were they?
*
"What's wrong?"
Over the past week of living something like a normal life, I realized one thing: normal people pick up on other people's emotions far more easily than I thought.
For years, I'd done nothing but suspect everyone around me, and I don't know how to read people. A past spent believing everyone close to me was rotten and secretly after something of mine doesn't change that easily.
Even now, receiving this much attention, somewhere in the back of my mind I'm still suspicious of these girls.
Two girls living with me, brazenly, in my room.
......They probably haven't missed my shift over this past week. Not completely. Unlike Yu Ha-neul, they hadn't recognized me as "a different person," but it's more natural to assume they know something.
Without answering, I sat up in bed. Then I walked to the desk I normally use.
Since my memories came back, I've never once opened the bottom drawer.
Was the suicide note I'd written still there?
Mother looked at my face and acted no different from usual. Was that because even after reading my note, her feelings didn't change? Or because, seeing me alive, she thought the whole thing was no big deal?
The three girls who are always at my side must know what that note said.
They probably wouldn't act surprised if I pulled it out now.
When I opened the third drawer, the letter I'd written came into view.
A plain, unadorned sheet of white stationery, neatly folded on top of the notebook I'd been using.
There was no envelope. And the bottle of pills was gone.
It should've been about half full.
......Thought so.
When I straightened up and looked back, two girls stood there watching me with worried expressions.
"What's going on?"
Shin So-hee asked again.
"Nothing. I just had something I needed to check."
I went back and sat down on the bed.
And I tried my best to act normal.
*
I couldn't sleep.
During that past week... what was I thinking?
Did I think of my amnesiac self as "me"?
Maybe I did, a little.
At times I'd thought: maybe the memory loss was just from shock, and after my failed suicide, I'd spent those three months trying my best in my own way.
But no.
No matter how I think about it, I'm not the kind of person who does those things.
Even seeing those four people whose faces shone, I probably wouldn't have thought to change anything.
No, maybe I would've tried, a little?
......Though I'm not so sure I could've changed exactly what needed changing with that kind of precision.
"......."
Yeah. That one week was unbelievably fun. So fun it wouldn't be strange to call it the most amazing week of my life.
But.
Is this my life?
Can this life, built by someone else, really be called mine?
I'm not trying to get into complicated talk about self-identity or agency.
More simply, I'm wondering whether it's okay for me to just enjoy this life however I want.
Yes, even if that person made that choice at the end.
It's still a different life from the one I ended.
I can't say I had no lingering attachment to my own life, but it wasn't something I planned to continue, either.
These two who know nothing, and the other who's longing for someone who isn't me.
None of them are things I get to take for myself.
Yes. Maybe I could've had them.
If I hadn't swallowed the pills and lain down that day.
If I hadn't given up on my life and had instead believed there could be another possibility.
If I'd decided to change other people, resolved to make new connections.
If I could have trusted even one person around me.
My life might have been different.
Maybe I could've broken free from Mother's grip and managed somehow.
Maybe I could've made new friends and stopped thinking about miserable futures.
But I didn't.
And that choice can't be undone.
Yeah. This is someone else's life. Not mine.
Someone else's life.
*
"......I was thinking."
The next day, I skipped class again.
The teachers no longer ignored me. That's bound to affect my grades. But what can I do? If I take the exams, I won't be able to write down proper answers anyway.
So I just breezily skipped once more.
I felt a bit sorry for Shin So-hee, left standing at the rooftop entrance. I felt even sorrier because she'd given Yu Ha-neul the time with me, saying, "I'm with you every day anyway."
Because now, I was slowly starting to think... maybe I could trust these three.
Well, what can I do even if I don't trust them?
That person trusted them.
That's the thought that came to me.
I still haven't recovered those memories. It's just a faint feeling.
But every time I see these three, I feel like I want to trust them.
That's probably a fragment of that person's feelings.
"I want to meet them too."
Yeah. That's why I'm curious now.
The person who lived my life for me.
The person who, in that short span, could completely change my life.
I want to meet them.