Chapter 117
Chapter 117
Alright. I'm giving up on rides.
After one more attempt on a spinning ride that whipped us through the air, I reached that conclusion without much fuss. Sara's body wasn't just unathletic; it seemed fundamentally unable to handle anything involving violent motion.
I could probably force myself to adapt if I tried, but... I hadn't come all the way to an amusement park just to spend the entire visit dizzy and throwing up.
Besides, the whole reason we were at an amusement park in the first place was to help Sara feel like living. The goal wasn't to plant the trauma that the world outside her blankets was dangerous.
On top of that... while Sara wasn't voicing complaints directly right now, her displeasure came through plainly. Apart from the mortification I was feeling in this body, Sara was in a very foul mood.
A bit of urgency crept in.
Well, no. Fine. I didn't need results today. I was probably going to spend a very long time alongside Sara, and this was exactly the kind of thing you built up slowly over time.
But first impressions matter in everything, don't they? If someone's first experience with a food leaves a bad taste, they'll be reluctant to try the same thing again even when it's made much better the next time. If Sara's impression soured here, she would probably refuse to come to a place like this again.
As long as I'm controlling the body, Sara can't physically stop me from going somewhere.
But I didn't want to do it that way. I wanted to help Sara, not force-feed her something.
.......
...Huh?
The feeling of displeasure seemed to have lessened somewhat.
"Sara, are you okay?"
As I sat on a bench catching my breath, Ha-neul looked at me with a worried expression and asked.
"Yeah... I don't think I can handle any more rides."
I was honest.
I felt bad saying it to the others who hadn't been here in ages, but if I really got on another one, I might throw up in the car on the way back. Yang Hye-in was a much better driver than I'd expected, but I had zero confidence I wouldn't get motion sickness over a ride longer than an hour.
"Then there's nothing we can do about that."
So-hee plopped down next to me and said it matter-of-factly.
I'd sent the staff members who were tailing us back. When I asked, "Isn't tailing me interfering with your actual work?" they all turned sheet-white and scattered.
...Apparently, tailing me really had come close to paralyzing their work.
They'd even heard those words directly from the owner of this amusement park, so it wasn't surprising they were terrified.
They'd looked so frightened I felt a little bad.
"Let's just take it easy and enjoy ourselves. There's no need to force yourself onto rides."
So-hee gently patted me on the back. Hmm, does patting the back of someone who looks like they'll throw up mean you're trying to make them throw up? I couldn't bring myself to say anything because she was doing it out of concern, and then Yang Hye-in fixed So-hee with a steady look.
So-hee, catching that look, seemed to realize she was doing something wrong and slipped her hand back down.
...She's surprisingly good at handling people.
Then again, she originally managed the household staff.
Choi Na-kyung hadn't sent any additional staff after that. To be precise, the entire household staff had, for all practical purposes, been left to drift. Considering no one had quit, the pay seemed to be arriving on time, but the faces were perpetually uneasy. Maybe they thought they were standing in the eye of the storm.
Though personally, having fewer things to worry about was nice.
"...I'm fine, so you could all go off and enjoy separate rides."
When I said that, So-hee opened her mouth as if to reply, then closed it again.
She considered for a moment, then answered,
"Eh, honestly, rides aren't really my thing either. You just get worn out waiting. You wait an hour and a half for a ride that's over in three minutes."
"Same here," Ha-neul immediately agreed with a nod. "There's lots to enjoy besides the rides."
...At an amusement park, there are things to enjoy besides the rides?
Well, okay, sure. I'd heard this place wasn't originally built for the rides, but as a place to appreciate flower fields and such. In the very early days it really had a European-style village atmosphere, and then later, to compete with other theme parks, they crammed it with all kinds of rides and the image shifted.
But still... considering the per-person admission fee, wouldn't it be a little wasteful to just look at that stuff and leave?
"Let's rest a bit, and if you're feeling better, we'll walk. It's spring, anyway. If we head up there, the flowers should be in full bloom."
So-hee said.
She was deliberately saying this for my sake, and I couldn't refuse. I nodded.
And anyway, if I get a bit healthier later, I can just come back.
I took a deep breath. The crisp air filled my lungs, and I could feel my spinning head settle down a bit.
"Ah, but where's Su-a...?"
I turned my head to look for Su-a, who had suddenly gone quiet, and found her standing a few steps away from us, staring intently at something.
I followed her line of sight and craned my neck, at the end of it was, of all things, a haunted house.
...Is she the type who likes this stuff?
Then again, when I thought about it, this was also a cliché. In these kinds of games, the quiet ones were always secretly into violent or scary movies, and the tough-seeming tsundere characters were especially weak to that sort of thing.
"You want to go?"
"Huh? H-huh?"
Startled when I suddenly spoke to her, Su-a stammered for a moment.
"Ah... oh, yeah. I want to go."
She seemed to catch on to what I was asking and nodded quickly. Maybe she was embarrassed at having her true feelings read—her face had gone a little pink.
"Oh, nice. You won't get motion sick in there, at least."
Still lounging on the bench, So-hee looked over toward it and brightened.
...No? Maybe that cliché doesn't apply here?
In the highlight videos I watched, there hadn't been an amusement-park event. Honestly, it felt like the kind of event that should've appeared at least once, and it wasn't so unimportant that it would've been cut from a highlight reel. The fact I'd never seen it probably meant exactly that: no such event had ever happened.
Why?
Hmm. Well, based on what I'd personally experienced, Yoon Da-ho wasn't the type to come to a place like this. A date at an expensive restaurant with a nice view, maybe.
In the Shin So-hee route, it didn't seem like there was the mental bandwidth to enjoy this kind of thing. The story was about her being bullied and sidelined at school, and considering the runaway arc where she skipped school, it definitely wasn't a story about leisurely amusement-park dates.
So, I didn't really know these girls' tastes.
Well, in a way, you could call this by-the-book. Even if we're close, we'd only been dating for about a month. I could just think of it as the phase where we're still learning all kinds of things about each other.
Having sat long enough that my condition had improved a lot, I stood up and said,
"Alright, shall we go check it out?"
"Are you sure you're up for it?"
Ha-neul looked at me with an extremely worried expression.
"It can't hurt, right?"
I wasn't exactly great with horror movies, but getting startled by something like a haunted house was a different matter. Maybe because deep down I'd always firmly believed there's absolutely no such thing as ghosts in real life. At the very least, I had no memory of being especially scared during school-trip courage tests and the like.
It's all just people in makeup jumping out at you, isn't it?
In movies, the premise is that it's real, and they do CG and everything, but practical makeup has its limits. No matter how good, it's basically zombie-movie makeup, isn't it?
The haunted-house staff aren't going to hit us, so I had no reason to be scared.
Are you okay?
I was fine, but just in case, I asked Sara that internally.
Well, do whatever you want.
Still seeming not wholly appeased, Sara only said that much. Her demeanor was a bit sulky, but not overwhelmingly angry, so it wasn't particularly frightening.
But isn't it jumping to conclusions to claim ghosts don't exist? From a stranger's point of view, one of us might as well be a ghost. Wouldn't be strange at all.
....
Uh....
Wait, when you put it like that, it actually starts to scare me a little.
She was right. It wasn't blatant, but this place was definitely closer to "fantasy" than the world I'd lived in. When you got down to it, wasn't a dead person coming back to life as a different soul basically a form of necromancy?
A ghost being afraid of ghosts—that's pretty funny. I like it.
No, I'm telling you, please don't.
*
Was it because of what Sara had said earlier, or was it because the haunted house was unexpectedly well-made?
From the moment I stepped inside, I was completely terrified and an absolute mess.
That's right. Even if you assume there are no ghosts in the world, there are people.
And in this world, I was currently a person who, if someone so much as poked me in the ribs, would shriek out a bizarre noise. Regardless of whether my original body had been good at courage tests, in Sara's body, every single time something leaped out, I panicked and screamed.
"Hyeeek!"
"Hyeek!"
"Hiiik!"
The staff in ghost and zombie makeup must've liked my screaming, because they were incredibly dedicated about jumping out.
And beside me, during all of that—
"Are you okay?"
—was Su-a, calming me with a completely unruffled expression.
....
Yup, clichés are clichés for a reason.
After we got shunted into our assigned group at the last second, Su-a had flinched in surprise a few times, but unlike me she'd never let out an ugly scream.
...Granted, I still don't know whether the other girls are easily scared or not.
For reference, the emotions I picked up from Sara were twofold.
One was fear.
Despite acting earlier like she wasn't scared, every time I screamed she was screaming right along with me internally. Probably, if she'd been physically here, she would've been clinging tightly to me or Su-a.
And the other emotion was displeasure.
Every time I screamed, and every time I unconsciously glued myself to Su-a's side, waves of irritation came across from Sara.
Was she annoyed at me for choosing to come into a place like this instead of somewhere else?
"It's okay. We'll be out soon."
When Su-a, utterly reliable, hugged my arm tightly and said that, the displeasure peaked.
...Alright, let's get out of here as fast as possible.
And I made a resolution: never set foot in a place like this again.
...That's not entirely why I'm annoyed.
For the record, Sara kept up that bravado right to the end.