Chapter 95
Chapter 95
Last weekend.
I explained my plan to meet Chairwoman Choi Na-kyung in person to the friends gathered in my room. Since So-hee was my maid, she was staying at the mansion even on weekends. We'd agreed, though, that she wouldn't do maid work on weekends.
She had stubbornly insisted on wearing her maid uniform even on weekends. But the moment I told her that making a minor work on weekends might get her barred from working here altogether, she immediately changed her tune.
Right now she wasn't in her maid uniform. She was wearing a big sleep shirt and dolphin shorts. She herself seemed perfectly at ease, but I still hadn't adjusted to seeing her in that outfit. Then again, if I told her to wear something else, she'd definitely put the maid uniform back on, so I kept quiet.
If she wanted to wear comfortable clothes while resting, who was I to object?
...For the record, the habit of somehow waking up next to me every morning still hadn't changed. At least it was just "sleeping next to me"—nothing seriously uncomfortable had ever happened, so I could count myself lucky. Even if I wanted to scold her for being careless, I wasn't sure my words would carry much weight, given that I myself was currently in a woman's body.
Still, waking up in the morning to find a girl sleeping beside me in nothing but a loose dress shirt was as stressful as ever.
Speaking of mornings, Su-a was still staying at the mansion too.
It had been almost a week and she still hadn't gone home. I was worried, so I asked if she'd been in touch with her family, and the answer I got was:
"I text my parents every day, so it's fine."
It didn't look fine at all.
The words rose to my throat, but I held them back. Because if I told her to go home, she'd probably look at me with that firm expression and say "No."
...I may need to meet Su-a's parents myself at some point. I wouldn't want them to worry too much.
And although Ha-neul wasn't staying overnight, she was here too.
Lately, Ha-neul didn't sleep over, but she would come to the mansion after school and stay until quite late. It wasn't exactly the middle of the night, but I still worried about a girl walking around alone that late. When I brought it up, she answered:
"I go with Big Sister Hye-in, so it's fine."
Yang Hye-in wasn't beside us when I heard that, but when I checked later, it turned out to be true. Well, if Ha-neul was comfortable enough to openly call her 'big sister,' they must have had enough time to get close.
Or maybe Ha-neul, with her characteristic friendliness, just started calling her that first... Actually, come to think of it, having a high school girl call her "Ms. Yang Hye-in" so formally would be odd too. They aren't coworkers. I hadn't seen Su-a address Yang Hye-in or talk with her, so I couldn't say how she handled it. But So-hee just casually called her "senior," so maybe everyone naturally settled into whatever form of address felt comfortable.
Anyway, I was grateful there was someone to escort home the friend who came over every day. Even if nothing had happened yet, just from the glimpse I'd caught of Choi Na-kyung that one time, she seemed like a woman capable of anything dangerous.
Even if I dismissed what I later picked up in passing from Nam Da-un as mere rumors, Choi Na-kyung remained a dangerous figure in my estimation.
Having an adult walking with you when it's dark out, even if it was just two girls, offered at least some measure of safety.
And today, it looked like Ha-neul was definitely planning to sleep over. She had shown up early on Saturday morning, before breakfast, with a bag stuffed full of things on her back.
My daily routine, which had wavered back and forth over the past three weeks, had finally settled almost completely into this pattern. I'd like to say this was something I never could have imagined in my past life, but honestly, the whole premise of entering the body of a villainess and living her life was something I never could have imagined in the first place.
Well, I did watch it in a game stream once. So maybe I'd imagined it a little.
...Anyway.
Getting back to the point. When I told them I was going to contact Choi Na-kyung, both of my friends immediately reacted with deep concern.
"...You're really going to do it? Why?"
Seeing my serious expression must have convinced her I wasn't joking, because So-hee asked that question with an intensely serious look. As she did, she leaned slightly toward me, and since she was sitting cross-legged close to me on the bed, I could see the chest area where three buttons were undone far too clearly, which flustered me.
"......."
I glanced over at Ha-neul. She wasn't one of the "two people who reacted with concern." She just looked at me in silence, as though she had known I would bring this up.
"...I don't think it's a good idea."
Su-a had been thinking with a worried expression for a moment, then carefully offered that opinion.
"That person wasn't normal. If you meet her this time, she's definitely going to do something..."
Su-a's voice had an almost desperate edge, and for a moment my resolve nearly wavered. But I shook my head.
"No, this is definitely necessary. For the future, if nothing else."
"Why?"
So-hee stared intently into my face and asked again.
At first glance she was every inch the stereotypical tanned blonde high school girl, but the more I got to know her, the more So-hee had these oddly innocent moments. The way she'd barged in and declared she wanted to be a maid. The way she'd insisted on repaying me because I'd bought her food...
Hmm. Now that I thought about it, maybe it wasn't innocence but simplicity.
...Anyway, maybe it was because of that straightforwardness and simplicity, but when So-hee asked me something, she genuinely seemed to be asking out of pure curiosity. That naive expression wasn't something you could fake.
"......."
I looked over at Ha-neul once more. She gave me a small nod.
I let out a quiet breath, then said:
"It's about my memories, actually."
"Memories?"
So-hee and Su-a echoed the word at the same time.
*
Since Ha-neul had told me these three had read the suicide note Ye Sa-ra wrote, I could talk about the memories straight away without extra explanation.
They knew that "Ye Sa-ra" had attempted suicide, but they didn't know when or how. It seemed that the memories from before that attempt had vanished. But when I saw Choi Na-kyung's face, old feelings surfaced...
And so, I genuinely believed the way to recover those memories was to meet Choi Na-kyung again.
I described everything that "Ye Sa-ra" had done as things that "I" had done.
The two of them reacted in fairly opposite ways after hearing my story.
"Hmm..."
So-hee folded her arms, closed her eyes, and thought for a while. Then:
"If that's how it is for you, then it can't be helped."
That was her response.
"I'm your maid, after all. If my master says we're going somewhere, I have to go with you, don't I?"
And then she said something a little embarrassing like that.
...She had the kind of look that screamed she had tons of friends, the type you'd expect to find in every class, the kind who might bully the class otaku, yet every so often she'd deliver lines straight out of a manga, which was kind of funny.
When I snorted with laughter, she got flustered and said, "What? Why?" It was a little cute.
"I..."
Su-a hesitated for a moment, then gripped my hand tightly and spoke.
"Yeah, I agree with that too. Whatever you're thinking, whatever memories you have, Sara is still Sara."
"...Yeah."
Her face slightly flushed. She held my hand in both of hers and looked at me with glistening eyes as she said it. It made me strangely embarrassed, so I looked away as I answered.
Finally, I looked at Ha-neul once more. She had been watching me wordlessly the whole time, and now she smiled brightly and nodded.
It was that same bright smile she'd shown me that day.
*
What went wrong?
Where did it start to go wrong?
From that moment until now, those were the only thoughts that filled her mind.
She had so much to do, but nothing would stick. Thoughts of Sara, far away from her, came before the business matters directly in front of her.
...Not that the distance was so great. It was less than an hour by car.
She could rush over at any time. If she set her mind to it, she could even hold Sara in her arms. She had arranged things that way.
...No. Had things really been "arranged" that way?
"Huuuh..."
She let out a long breath and set down the pen she'd been holding. There wasn't much paperwork in front of her. The documents that made it all the way up to her were few in number to begin with. Everything unnecessary was filtered out, reduced and reduced again before reaching her desk. A company this large had plenty of capable subordinates, which was how she, someone without formal economic training, could manage to run things, at least to a degree.
Though in the early days, there had been considerable noise.
"That incident" remained a major vulnerability for her even now. It had overlapped with her already poor early image, and the other party had backed down out of sheer intimidation, letting it slide. But if another major problem arose later, someone would definitely bring it up again.
It had at least allowed her to swat one of the flies buzzing around Sara far away.
...But the suspicions trailing behind it would have to be properly dealt with later.
And once they were dealt with, the shell protecting Sara would start to crack.
No; it was already cracking. Slowly but surely.
"......."
She had thought Sara would take after her mother.
A pitiable woman trapped in a cage, doing nothing but gazing out the window.
...The kind of woman you'd want to step in and save, just from watching her...
But the hand she took hadn't been Choi Na-kyung's. Before Choi Na-kyung could even reach out, someone else was already holding her hand.
Holding her hand, kissing her lips, and then—
"......."
Choi Na-kyung ran a hand down her face.
She missed her.
No matter how much time passed, she couldn't forget.
That was why, even if only through the child who resembled her, she had wanted someone to love her and her alone.
"...What's the best way to handle this?"
Choi Na-kyung murmured.
If she followed her impulses, she wanted to do to those interlopers exactly what the rumors said she did. But she knew how unrealistic that was.
She had remarried with no real connections and secured her position, just that alone had been enough for countless rumors to spread as though they were established fact.
The moment she acted on even "one" of those rumors for real, she would lose all the power she currently held.
And probably, she would lose Sara too.
Bzzz—
As she drifted through her thoughts, the smartphone on her desk vibrated.
"......."
She moved her hand and picked up the phone.
The name on the screen was "The Mansion."
Had something happened?
While her personal servant was away from the post, she had instructed the other staff to monitor Sara thoroughly. She hadn't received any reports so far.
Did that mean the interlopers had finally made a move?
She answered the call.
And the voice that came through the phone—
[Chairwoman, I hope you've been well.]
It was, at the very least, a voice that would make sure she was not well at all after hearing it.