Chapter 93
Chapter 93
Ironically, hearing those words really did put me at ease.
There I was, taking comfort in the arms of a kid who, in my old life, would have been smaller than me, someone barely seventeen. It was a bit pathetic, I admit. But Ha-neul's promise to stay by my side, no matter what I did, was that reassuring.
Maybe getting caught was a good thing. It meant I'd found someone I could open up to.
The relief of not having to spill everything myself. It reminded me of being a kid—getting caught doing something bad by your parents and feeling oddly liberated, like it was better this way.
For a while I stood still, feeling the warmth of Ha-neul's body. She waited until I spoke first.
"......Alright."
That came out of my mouth in the end.
"I'll tell you. As much as I know."
Only after I said that did Ha-neul loosen her arms from around me. A little space opened between us, and a cold wind swept through it.
"Whatever the story is, I'll listen."
Ha-neul said it with a bright smile.
*
I didn't drag the story out. Not that I had much to tell in the first place.
I couldn't say I used to be a man living in another world. If she believed me, that was a problem. If she didn't, that was also a problem. And honestly, the odds she wouldn't believe me were a lot higher. Who'd seriously buy talk about other worlds and all that? The truth was, I still tried not to think too deeply about that side of things. The more I thought, the more absurd it felt, and there was never an answer.
So all I could tell her about was what I'd been through since arriving in this world. A story spanning barely two months and two weeks.
"So......"
After hearing me out, Ha-neul asked,
"You mean you yourself don't know if this is just amnesia, or if you're a separate personality from the original 'Ye Sa-ra'?"
"Yeah."
'I' was clearly not some entity Ye Sa-ra had conjured up to protect herself. I'm no genius who remembers every moment of my life in perfect detail, but I held memories packed with specifics a child locked in a room could never have imagined.
The Seoul of this world wasn't it; it was the Seoul of the world I'd lived in. Memories of Jongno and Myeongdong, the city's central hubs, the university streets and shopping districts I used to frequent, were still vivid.
And it wasn't just that. I remembered my relationships with the friends I'd had, my family, my job, things from my military service, all kinds of food I'd bought and eaten outside. Every one of them was a memory Ye Sa-ra couldn't have fabricated through 'imagination' alone.
So I could stay confident that my personality wasn't a fake and my memories weren't manufactured.
But because my sense of self was so clear, another worry arose.
If I was a personality that had come over from somewhere else, what happened to Ye Sa-ra's original personality, the one this body belonged to?
Did it die the moment I crossed over? If so, what was that reaction this body, this heart, showed when I saw Choi Na-kyung? If the body retained memory, did she exist as mere 'memory,' or was Ye Sa-ra's consciousness sleeping somewhere deep, deep down?
I hadn't managed to figure out a single thing.
So to Ha-neul's question, I could only answer that I didn't know.
"......."
The two of us stood leaning against the rooftop railing.
Carelessly enough, there wasn't a single tall fence up here. If someone really wanted to, they could jump right over. The rooftop wasn't locked, and nobody seemed to manage it.
Did the school assume no one here would ever think of that?
Voices from kids in PE class down in the schoolyard drifted up. Laughter here and there, and some shouting too. In the distance, the sound of cars passing by, the occasional honk, but strangely, it didn't feel noisy from up here. Just a brief escape during class, yet the sense of detachment was so overwhelming it felt like being severed from the world.
I'd felt this disconnection plenty of times before.
When I was a kid and went home sick from school. When I left the house on a vacation morning. Those rare times I got a day off from work.
......Whenever I was at Ye Sa-ra's mansion.
It wasn't that there was no noise. But the noise came from somewhere far from me, or from the other side of a wall. That sensation made me feel like a person who didn't quite belong to this world.
For Ye Sa-ra, the only moments she could feel truly connected to the world were when she met Chairwoman Choi Na-kyung.
......Yet no light shone from Choi Na-kyung's face.
What had Ye Sa-ra been feeling toward that woman?
"What do you want to do?"
Ha-neul asked me.
A question she'd asked just a little while ago.
Right. Ha-neul didn't know Ye Sa-ra. It wasn't just Ha-neul, none of my 'friends' at this school knew Ye Sa-ra. They'd all talked with me. They were all friends who'd gotten close to me.
Which meant this question was directed at 'me.' Not 'Ye Sa-ra.'
"I want to get her memories back. No, I don't care if they're not even memories. I want to find them again."
I wanted to grant the wish written in that will.
I was nothing to Ye Sa-ra. Even at this very moment, that was true. I was just an uninvited guest who'd suddenly burst in at the most crucial moment of Ye Sa-ra's life and derailed her plans.
Of course, a part of me found that fortunate. If it had to be hopeless either way, having this faint hope was better. Thinking about it coldly, for me personally it had been an unqualified good thing.
"Even if that means the you right now, the person you know yourself to be, stops being you?"
Ha-neul asked, still not looking at me.
"......."
If Ye Sa-ra's 'memories' merged with mine, could the result still be called 'me'?
If Ye Sa-ra's personality returned to this body, what would happen to my personality, which had occupied it until then?
Just imagining any of it was terrifying.
I've never thought of myself as exceptionally good. I hardly have any memory of donating to charity. Giving blood once in a while for a free movie ticket was about the extent of my regular good deeds. At my core, I wasn't the type to do something nice for others unless there was something in it for me.
Not that I was saying I was purely calculating...... well, you get the point.
But since coming to this world, without Ye Sa-ra knowing, I'd ended up receiving all sorts of good things.
I'd eaten at high-end restaurants I could never have afforded normally. I was getting three excellent meals a day. I'd lived in a room bigger than any house I'd ever called home. And now I'd become friends with a whole crowd of girls who could be unabashedly called 'beauties.' All things I'd never experienced in my previous life.
......On top of that, the life I should've lost was being extended because of Ye Sa-ra's sacrifice.
All of it was a debt money could never repay. And even if it could be repaid with money, I didn't have the means to settle that kind of debt anyway.
So this was the bare minimum of decency I could imagine.
If I could build a future where the unhappy girl who'd spent her whole life locked in a cage could step outside, live freely, live happily—well, then I'd figure that more or less counted as repaying the debt.
That was why it was what I wanted to do.
"Yeah. Even if that means the person I know myself to be stops being me."
I'd known it dimly already, but I'd been fated to die anyway. Clinging desperately to someone else's body and trying to stick around would only be ugly.
Right now I was looking for a way, sure, but if the original owner came back, common sense said you gave it back.
"......."
After hearing my answer, Ha-neul just gazed down at the schoolyard without a word.
"There's one promise I'd like you to make."
At my words, Ha-neul's shoulders gave a small flinch.
"If I lose, and the original 'Ye Sa-ra' returns to this body...... could you still be friends with her? The same way you treated me?"
"......."
Ha-neul didn't answer for a long moment.
*
"If I lose, and the original 'Ye Sa-ra' returns to this body...... could you still be friends with her? The same way you treated me?"
She'd been expecting this.
From the moment she'd heard the 'thing she wanted' Sara spoke of, Yu Ha-neul had guessed, to a degree, that Sara would say something like this.
But when she actually heard the words, every single one of them landed with such weight.
If I lose—
Why, why are you thinking like that?
I hate it. Being separated from you; I'd rather die than have that happen.
If the original 'Ye Sa-ra' returns to this body—
Then that wouldn't be 'you' anymore.
Could you still be friends, the same way?
......No. I couldn't do it.
I could become friends, probably.
But it couldn't be the same as with you. Because the person in your body then wouldn't be the 'you' I knew.
Two weeks.
A friend of barely two weeks.
If someone else heard, they'd scoff. Who treats a friend they've known for two weeks like a lifelong friend?
Maybe if her past self had heard it, she'd have thought the same thing.
But, but; Sara was different.
The only person who, when she was growing more and more isolated, had taken the hand she offered with an easy smile. The person who simply accepted whatever she did, and who, whenever she drew close, casually made room beside her.
She'd liked that Sara.
Because she liked her so much, she hated this.
But Yu Ha-neul had already made up her mind.
Whether she liked the outcome or hated it, trying to cling to Sara and hold her back would only bring Sara pain.
So, because she liked her—she'd do as Sara wished.
She'd already resolved on that.
And so Yu Ha-neul answered.
"Yeah. Definitely. I'll do that for you."
Hearing those words, as if she truly had no lingering attachments, Sara merely narrowed her eyes and gave her a faint smile.
The wind blew. Sara's hair scattered. Her skin shimmered under the pouring sunlight.
She looked so beautiful.
That was why Ha-neul smiled.
"I promise."
Even as she made that vow.
Even as, in a corner of her heart, she hoped that she might not have to lose her 'Sara.'
She sincerely hoped, desperately hoped, that the smile she wore might truly look like a bright one.