Chapter 27
Chapter 27
......Maybe.
Maybe, just maybe.
She might have been completely broken—worn down by her stepmother's psychological abuse as she tried to make Ye Sa-ra her own. So broken, so despairing about her future, that she simply wanted to let go of everything.
What if Ye Sa-ra hadn't swallowed that handful of sleeping pills? What if she hadn't decided to die?
Maybe she would have become the Ye Sa-ra I saw in that streamer's videos. She might have given up on everything, destroyed herself completely just to hurt the Chairwoman she despised. She might have lashed out at everyone around her, tormented Yu Ha-neul, all so the Chairwoman would finally pretend not to know her and cast her aside.
I used to think that once Ye Sa-ra became an adult, she could escape the Chairwoman's grasp. With that much wealth and the ability to move it, surely she could do anything.
But could she really have?
When I think about it now, the Chairwoman had already spent years isolating Ye Sa-ra from the world. I could live freely and learn all sorts of things, but could Ye Sa-ra, locked away from the world since childhood, have ever seen herself clearly at all?
In the world Ye Sa-ra saw, the Chairwoman was the only one who gave her any genuine reaction. The only one who visited, just four times a year.
That was why Ye Sa-ra loved the Chairwoman. And hated her just as much.
Ye Sa-ra's feelings must have been far more complex than what was written in this will. She wanted to be loved, to be together, but at the same time, she wanted to escape this hell. She fantasized about someone coming from far away to save her, craving rescue so desperately every day that she could spin those fantasies into a novel.
So, maybe.
If Ye Sa-ra had lived and gone to school.
Maybe she really would have destroyed everything around her and herself along with it, just like in the game, making it impossible for the Chairwoman to take her in. Even if death was waiting at the end, Ye Sa-ra might have welcomed it.
As an escape from the Chairwoman at last.
And—
Please, let Mother love me. Love me as much as I loved her when I was young.
—Yes, as proof that her mother had truly loved her.
"......."
I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.
The notebook and the letter I had unfolded were folded back neatly and returned deep inside the desk drawer, to the place where they had originally been. Unfortunately, the torn envelope remained as it was.
The contents of the will were fragmentary. Honestly, no matter how short a life was, a few sheets of paper were hopelessly inadequate to record an entire person's existence.
But the contents alone were enough.
What kind of life Ye Sa-ra had lived until now, what thoughts and feelings she'd carried. Why she chose death in the end.
......And the bruise marks on her back, too. The reason I felt such intense pain when I woke up.
At first, I wondered if my accidental death in my previous life had affected Ye Sa-ra in this world. But I discarded that thought quickly. No matter how I looked at it, the idea that physical injuries from a past life could transfer over seemed a bit strange. There was a much more plausible assumption.
For example, that someone had beaten her.
Right. If the Chairwoman had been physically abusive, that could have happened. Yes, that was a far more plausible assumption.
But Ye Sa-ra hadn't been exposed to direct physical violence. Going by what was written in the will, the Chairwoman apparently gave Ye Sa-ra a kind of limited, careful love on every visit. If the Chairwoman had tried to subdue Ye Sa-ra physically, Ye Sa-ra could never have felt "love as family" toward her.
So, it wasn't from violence.
Then what was the reason her back was so bruised? Why was her whole body hurting as if it were being crushed?
Blood keeps flowing through a person's body instead of pooling in one place because the heart is beating. If the heart stops, blood settles inside the body according to the last position the person was in. Unless a person dies in outer space, Earth's gravity pulls the blood toward the ground, and...... if someone died lying down, the blood naturally pools against their back. And as time passes, it shows up looking like a bruise.
That's called livor mortis. I remember it from a mystery novel I read long ago.
......The reason my whole body felt like it was being crushed was probably because this body of Ye Sa-ra's literally "died and came back to life." I don't know much about rigor mortis or whatever else, but maybe the nerves that had completely shut down suddenly started working again, causing excruciating pain.
"......."
Then what about the sleeping pills that brought Ye Sa-ra to the point of death? Can a genuinely dead body come back to life just because a soul enters it? How on earth is a brain that went without blood supply for hours even functioning?
Countless questions rose, but not a single answer surfaced. I had to assume some sort of utterly impossible supernatural phenomenon was at work. There were too many things that couldn't be explained otherwise. And I myself was originally a person from a different world to begin with.
"I didn't want to give up."
But Ye Sa-ra gave up. Because she couldn't feel a reason to go on living anymore.
The Ye Sa-ra of this world wasn't the Ye Sa-ra I knew from the game.
When I really think about it, it couldn't have been otherwise.
Even if I had never crossed into this world, even if Ye Sa-ra hadn't chosen suicide before the main story began.
Maybe she could have taken a different route.
Maybe a Ye Sa-ra Route with Yu Ha-neul was waiting for her, not one where she played the villain in a male lead's path. Maybe an ending was waiting where, after suffering her whole life, she was finally saved by Yu Ha-neul and lived happily for a long time.
No, no.
Maybe she could have walked a path completely different from any Ye Sa-ra in the game.
Maybe she wouldn't have chosen to destroy herself.
Maybe she would have struggled to make a friend somehow.
Maybe she would have eventually gotten close to everyone at school and escaped the Chairwoman's grasp.
Maybe she would have finally gotten the ordinary life she longed for.
Maybe, maybe......
Yes, it's all "maybe."
Because the Ye Sa-ra of this world is already dead.
Because she simply lived a life of suffering and took her own life.
Because now, there's no chance of Ye Sa-ra ever going to school.
No chance to make friends, no chance to apologize for the past, no chance to meet someone she loves and spend a happy life with them.
None of it is left.
Because Ye Sa-ra spent every single one of those chances on one last revenge.
In that sense, I'm an uninvited guest. I showed up out of nowhere at the very last moment of Ye Sa-ra's plan and invalidated the all-in blow she'd staked everything on.
"......."
It felt like someone was pressing down on me, slowly, heavily, as I lay on the bed.
*
After thinking for a long time, I reached a conclusion.
I still don't want to die.
In my previous life, I didn't exactly lead a life worth bragging about. A life without any real presence—I just did what everyone else did, ate and scraped by like everyone else, found some unremarkable job and commuted to work every day.
But even so, I never once thought I wanted to throw that life away.
In the gaps between that boring life were things Ye Sa-ra had never had in her entire lifetime.
Family, friends, hobbies, places she wanted to go, things she wanted to eat, things she wanted to try.
There were way more reasons not to die than reasons to die. So I didn't give up on my life.
And it's the same here.
I don't particularly feel like giving up on life. Whether I go back to my original world or not, my current life...... if not all of it, at least a good portion of it is something I quite like.
Do I really have to die when I can eat food that delicious? No, I don't think so.
I finally have female friends, and in a world that doesn't reject homosexuality, I'm supposed to just give up without even trying? No, absolutely not.
I can potentially get my hands on what amounts to a major conglomerate's entire fortune, and you want me to give that up? Are you joking?
Right, absolutely not.
I pulled myself up from the bed. A corner of my heart was still heavy. The life I was enjoying in this body wasn't mine to begin with. Now that I knew what happened to its original owner, of course it was heavy.
But, Ye Sa-ra, I'm sorry, but I can't play along with your plan.
I'm going to live my way.
Maybe, just like when I arrived in this world, I'll suddenly be sent back to my original world one day. I might open my eyes and find myself waking up in the home I remember.
And this body might have the soul of the Ye Sa-ra who died re-enter it. She would probably be confused.
Why am I not dead?
Why do I have friends?
Why is no one interfering with me?
Well, obviously, because I'll make it that way.
Ye Sa-ra threw away her life dreaming of revenge, but not me. If you're going to get revenge, you have to do it right. I have to live happily while the other side despairs. That way the cost balances out at least. Isn't that how the formula is supposed to work?
Whether it's a novel or a game, it's human nature for the one doing the possession to somehow bring down the villain who was originally unbeatable. Now that I've entered Ye Sa-ra's body, I have to drive out the Chairwoman, who was probably the source of that game's evil. That's only natural. Right?
So...... well, that's what it is.
Ye Sa-ra, you don't need to worry about a single thing.
Because someday, if you wake up, you'll definitely get to spend a perfectly ordinary week, the kind of week you dreamed of.
Because you'll be living a life so happy that you won't care about revenge or anything else.
......And that life won't end after just one week.
Because I'll make sure of it.