Chapter 113
Chapter 113
I followed a family.
At a glance, they seemed like a perfectly ordinary, happy family.
Actually, whether they truly qualified as 'ordinary' was debatable. If you asked me whether a handsome father straight out of a life insurance commercial, a beautiful mother, and a daughter who could pass for a child actress were 'ordinary,' I'd have to say no.
Perhaps 'idealistic' was a better word than 'ordinary.'
A family so harmonious that it almost seemed artificially constructed, precisely because it looked too ideal.
Had I seen the three of them without any background knowledge, I would have been completely fooled.
Sara's biological father, Ye In-su, and Choi Na-kyung, the woman he remarried after Sara's mother passed away.
Both of them were doting terribly on young Sara.
Holding little Sara's hands on either side as they walked together through an endlessly green meadow, their faces were the picture of perfect happiness.
But neither of them ever looked at the other. Their gazes were fixed solely on Sara.
To find this scene 'unnatural,' I suppose one would have to know what became of Sara afterward.
The happier the memory, the more unstable Sara's recollections became.
The mansion where she was confined for so long, especially her room, was as detailed and precise as my own recollection. But places Sara had only visited a few times were partially blank, and often completely divorced from reality.
This was even more pronounced for her earliest childhood memories.
The inside of the school was so lacking in saturation it nearly looked black and white, and the faces of people on the street were so blurry you couldn't distinguish their features. Aside from a few snippets of voices heard up close, the rest of the conversation crackled like static.
...The handful of conversations I could hear clearly were usually about her family.
I suppose that meant Sara missed this time in her life that much.
While most of her past memories were nearly monochrome, this one was painted so vividly.
The sky was clear, without a single cloud. A piercing, brilliant blue.
The flatland stretching into the distance was a soft bed of lush green grass.
Did such a place even exist in Korea?
Probably, this was a scene that showed just how much her early memories had been idealized.
Sara both loathed and loved her one remaining family member that much.
Seeing this, it made sense why it had to be that way. Choi Na-kyung was the only one left for Sara, after all.
It was a beautiful, heartbreaking scene.
I could barely hear the three of them talking, even though they were only a few steps away, like a distant murmur, as if the sound had been forcibly muted. It seemed Sara didn't remember that conversation either.
They walked for a while before finally coming to a stop.
I had been following the memory slowly from a few steps behind, so I stopped as well.
Were they going to have a picnic lunch out here? None of them were carrying anything like that, but in Sara's memories I'd seen things appear out of nowhere and vanish just as suddenly. After all, human memory wasn't a perfect simulation, anything outside a person's field of view got filled in by assumption.
That possibility was even more likely for a childhood memory.
But the three of them simply remained standing there, frozen.
Was this where the memory ended?
I wasn't sure how much time had passed since I arrived, but I'd been endlessly backtracking through Sara's memories. It hadn't been by my own will; I was just swept along by the flood of memories, walking and walking.
...In that process, I realized Sara was not merely a character in a game.
No, it wasn't just Sara. Everyone I met in this world likely had a past like this. Even if I couldn't understand how this world existed or how I came to be here, I knew for certain that this world had existed for a very long time, and everyone living in it wasn't so different from me.
"..."
Wordlessly, I took a wide detour around the three of them and walked to a spot where I could see their faces.
...Radiant light was shining from the faces of Choi Na-kyung and Ye In-su.
The reason Sara couldn't trust Yu Ha-neul.
At first glance, the light radiating from a face seemed positive, but the reality was different. It wasn't light that shone from someone because they were good or because they would help her.
To begin with, this light was simply a visualization of Sara's personal intuition.
It must have been Sara's unique way, her ability, to clearly distinguish the people who could change her life.
...And both of them had certainly changed Sara's life. In more ways than one.
The way the light from Choi Na-kyung's face gradually diminished as days went by could be interpreted similarly.
She had changed Sara's life in a profoundly negative way, but after that 'change,' things remained static ever since. Once Choi Na-kyung revealed her true colors, to Sara, she was simply an unchanging entity. If left alone, Sara's life would have continued on its path without deviation, so it wouldn't have 'changed.'
That was why no light shone from the Choi Na-kyung I had seen.
"..."
No more memories came flooding in. It seemed this was indeed the last of Sara's memories.
The origin point of the existence called 'Ye Sa-ra.'
The source from which the twisted relationship between Choi Na-kyung and Ye Sa-ra was born.
The happiest moment in Ye Sa-ra's memories.
I lowered my gaze to look at young Sara, and flinched in surprise.
Sara wasn't smiling. She was just staring up at me, expressionless.
She wasn't looking up at Choi Na-kyung or Ye In-su. Even in this memory of what should have been her happiest moment, Sara's young face bore no expression at all.
"..."
After a moment of silence,
"...How much did you see?"
Sara asked.
*
"How on earth...?"
'That person' asked, clearly flustered.
Honestly, what was I supposed to do when the person who'd taken over my body reacted like that?
And it wasn't just anyone's body; it was mine. And this was inside my memories.
Not just any memory, but the oldest, most precious one I had.
...Embarrassing.
I'd lived nearly my whole life since the age of nine shut inside that mansion, but that didn't mean I'd lived mindlessly. I was human too, and naturally, I needed something to fill all that boring time.
So I fantasized alone, and sometimes jotted those fantasies down in a notebook.
A story about a princess trapped in a cage, rescued by another persecuted being—a vampire.
Looking back on it now, it was far too lacking to be called a 'novel.'
The setting, the plot; it was all just a clumsy patchwork of my daydreams. Actually, when I first started writing it, I didn't even plan on finishing it. I just listed whatever cool-sounding words came to mind at the moment.
But the one thing I had in abundance was time.
The fantasy soon developed a plot, becoming a full-fledged story. In the end, I completed that story.
Even though I only read it through once before burying it in a drawer.
...I felt like that story had absolutely nothing to do with me.
No one would come to save me. No one cared that I was here.
That was why I tucked the story deep into a drawer and never read it again.
...Had this person read that story?
"..."
I looked up at 'that person,' who was much taller than me.
The light was there.
A dazzling light shone toward me—a brilliant, beautiful light so intense I couldn't even look at the face.
No one I had met in my entire life had ever shone that brightly.
Did it mean that even after changing so much, there was still more left to change?
That thought wasn't based on logical reasoning, but a purely emotional intuition. But I didn't care.
For the first time in my life, I had met someone who wanted to save me.
Someone who, just like me, was ignored and treated like they didn't exist, and because of that, empathized with me and broke my cage.
"After seeing this far, where were you planning to go?"
That was why I asked.
This memory was the earliest one I remembered.
The most beautiful memory I had of Mother.
If this person had walked here from the very end of my memories, there was nowhere left to go.
And if they tried to go even further—
The truth was, I didn't actually know. I had no professional knowledge of the human brain, and no real understanding of multiple personalities or anything like that.
But,
my intuition screamed.
That this person was not 'me.'
Not just some 'me' who had lost their memories.
Someone might have called me crazy for this. If Mother found out, she might have used it as a reason to lock me up in a mental hospital.
But to me, this person unmistakably existed.
"Where were you trying to disappear to?"
"...I was."
The mass of light hesitated for a moment.
"That body is yours, so—"
Then it tried to come up with some flimsy excuse.
"That body is indeed mine, but that wasn't my life."
I said it firmly.
Was it because this person was inside me?
Or was it the desperation I was feeling?
I could say anything in front of this person without a single hesitation.
...No, this was all because of this person's influence. My intuition was shouting that at me.
You lived my life for only three months, and you changed everything I couldn't change.
...You achieved everything I ever wanted, so effortlessly.
Even in the same situation as me, you never despaired and stubbornly pushed forward to the end.
And you gave all of that up... for my sake.
The only one who saved me.
I let go of Mother's and Father's hands. And I stretched one hand toward that person—toward that light.
"You lived my life, so see it through to the end."
We'd only just met, but I didn't want to part ways already.
So this was simply my stubbornness.
It must have sounded like the whining of a spoiled child to this person who thought they had finished everything they came for.
"...What I'm saying is, once you take responsibility, you should see it through to the end."
I was completely sincere.
"..."
The person said nothing. I couldn't even see their expression because of the torrent of light. Were they dumbfounded by my words? Were they frowning?
No matter what that person felt, it seemed they ultimately decided to indulge me.
From the mass of light, a single beam streamed out. As if a person was extending their hand.
That beam soon touched my hand.
A warm heat slowly rose from my hand all the way to my heart.
...What a relief.
Thank you, for letting me be stubborn.
Quietly, I looked up at the torrent of light and thought to myself.
Come to think of it, I think the story I wrote ended with a scene like this.
When we get back home, shall I take it out and read it again, slowly this time?