Even a Family Reunion Starts After the Meal
"You must be glad, getting to see your family again."
The officer had taken my dumpling soup hostage, and so I was dragged right back to the police station.
I was curious about the family I would be meeting for the first time in this world, but the hunger was big enough to wipe that curiosity clean. Eating the dumpling soup in front of me mattered more than any reunion.
Grrrgle.
"I'm starving to death."
Why did this happen every single time I tried to eat? Thinking back, from the first day I started living in this body up to now, I had failed to get a proper meal every time but once.
"Think I'll actually get to eat this time?"
The moment we reached the station and that familiar room, I asked the officer for the dumpling soup. Strangely, I could search every corner and still not find it.
"Ah, I forgot it in the car when I got out. Sorry about that."
"Then could you at least order from a Chinese place? I'm really hungry."
"Will your stomach be all right?"
"It's fine. Please, just order it."
The persuasion worked. The officer had his phone out when the door burst open and a girl stumbled in, panting.
"Mm. We'll have to order a little later. Enjoy your time with your sister."
The officer smiled, warm and easy, slipped the phone back into his pocket, and stepped outside. Just like that, the girl and I were left alone in the room.
He could've just ordered it.
I swallowed the words and simply watched the girl who had come through the door. All at once her face crumpled in disbelief, and she started screaming.
"Kya—kyaaaaaaah!!!"
The officer had said he would let me meet my family, and that my younger sister was waiting, so the woman screaming her lungs out was probably my sister. I sorted that much out, got to my feet, and tried to go to her, but hunger had taken the strength out of my body.
"I'm too hungry to move..."
"Unni... it was really hard, wasn't it?"
The weakness of an empty stomach, the stress of one misunderstanding after another, and physical exhaustion on top of both—the three of them struck as one and drove my mind to the edge. My head began, slowly, to haze over.
"...Who are you?"
"Huh? Unni! You really don't know me?"
I had only asked so I could be a little more certain, but the woman sank to the floor and started wailing. The officers who had been watching from behind helped her up and led her out of the room.
"You don't remember her?"
"Is she really my younger sister?"
After she left, an officer came in and asked whether something was wrong with my memory. Lying felt like it would tangle everything, so I told the truth.
"Ha... They really wrecked her. Can't even recognize her own family. How broken is she?"
......?
I kept turning the officer's words over, trying to work out what they meant, but a mind worn thin by hunger and fatigue was in no shape for any real analysis.
"Excuse me, Officer? I'm sorry, but isn't there anything at all I could eat?"
"One moment. I'll order something right away."
He must have seen how bad I looked. He yanked out his phone and started ordering something—but the weakness from hunger, the stress of endless misunderstandings, and physical exhaustion struck as one again and shoved my mind past its limit. In the end, I couldn't hold on any longer.
"Ms. Seol Jiyeon? Ms. Seol Jiyeon! Hey, you! Don't just stare off like—"
The officer's shout was the last thing I heard. My hazy consciousness drifted farther and farther away.
"Familiar ceiling."
The moment I opened my eyes on that pure white ceiling, an IV drip swung into view. Apparently I was still alive.
"So I didn't starve to death? Well, they do say a person can last a month without food."
I stretched and tried to sit up, and something heavy pressed against my stomach. Curious, I flipped the blanket back. There, with a familiar mess of hair buried in my belly, sound asleep, was my little sister from this world.
Had she brought me all the way here? Makeup was stamped onto the hospital gown over my stomach, and the makeup on her face was a wreck, as if she had fallen asleep without ever putting herself back together. Even so, the faint smile on her face was awfully cute, and I carefully stroked her hair.
"She's pretty cute, looking at her like this."
Pat, pat.
"Mmm."
"Her hair's really nice, too. Mine's on the dry side..."
Her hair was fluffy, and so soft it was addictive. I kept touching it, and before I knew it my sister had woken up. The instant she came to, she screamed again.
"Hyaaaaaaah?! U-Unni?!"
"You're awake?"
"S-sorry. How do you feel? You okay?"
"I'm a little hungry, but everything else is fine."
Eeeee—
Aside from the ringing in my ears, anyway, from how loud that scream had been. As time passed the ringing faded, and when I took my hands off my ears, my sister spoke to me carefully.
"Unni? There's something I want to ask..."
"Yes. Ask me anything."
"You really don't remember anything? Not even me?"
Should I pretend to have amnesia, or should I lie and play the part of this person's older sister? I thought about it for a moment, but the deliberation didn't last as long as I expected.
I decided. I would mix truth and lies. A story made of nothing but falsehoods is easy to catch, but if you weave the facts into a lie just so, the truth becomes remarkably hard to dig out.
"I'm sorry. I can't remember anything."
I closed my eyes, the better to lie, and began to speak—calmly, and exactly as things were.
"I can't properly remember who you are, or who I am. All I know is the brief information about me on my ID, and the house where I lived. Beyond that, I don't remember a thing."
At that, my sister burst into tears and started crying as if her heart would break.
"You... you really don't remember? What happened to you? What was so awful that you wiped every memory away..."
That was what I wanted to ask. What in the world had been done to me, that the police and my sister looked at me with such aching pity? No matter how sickly a person looks, it isn't easy to be regarded with quite that much sorrow.
There was too much to think about, and my head tangled up again. To sort it out, I reached over and started stroking my sister's hair once more.
"Your habits are still the same."
"Who knows? If something's cute, you pet it. Isn't that just everyone's instinct?"
"No. Unni especially loved petting things. Every time I saw you, you were stroking something."
I picked up scraps of knowledge about this body from my sister, and the conversation was more enjoyable than I expected. We had been talking for a while when she asked again whether anything had come back.
"Is there anything you remember, even in pieces?"
"No. Nothing."
"I thought talking might bring a little of it back. Guess not."
Would inherited memories have helped? But the three wishes I had made coming here were all about the details of a body that looked sick, and the god had even thrown in another perk, converting the money I had saved and never spent in my past life into this world's currency. I had nothing to regret.
"Well, it's fine. If we live together, your memory will come back someday. Anyway—were you someone who had feelings?"
"There are people without feelings?"
"Yeah. You, before you went missing. You felt like a machine. No emotions at all."
The moment I heard that, something the god had said flashed through my mind.
"An empty shell... kuh—cough..."
Damn. The penalty.
A slip of the tongue, and my heart tore with a sharp, ripping ache. Something foreign rose in my throat. I coughed at once, and a considerable amount of blood came away on my hand.
"Unni! Are you okay?!"
"I'm fine. Cough..."
But the coughing didn't stop easily. The blood I had brought up ran along the back of my hand and down my arm, quickly staining the hospital gown, so I smiled faintly and asked my sister for a tissue.
"I'm sorry, but could you bring me a tissue?"
"A tissue is the problem right now? I'll get the doctor!"
"It's fine. It's nothing."
"Like hell it's nothing!"
"This just happens sometimes."
"What?"
I wiped my hands and the area around my mouth with the tissue she handed me. I had only broken the contract and paid for it in pain. I didn't actually have a fatal illness. Leaving my worried sister where she was, I sank back into thought.
So had the original owner of this body been nothing but an empty shell, just as the god said? Or had that being called a god laid some arrangement in advance, so he could put me into this body?
"I'm sorry, but I have one question."
"What?"
There was something I needed to confirm.
"Could you tell me, briefly, how I lived when I was little?"
"Hmm... you always went around with the same expression, and you lived an incredibly regular life. Why?"
"I just wanted to know about myself."
So it wasn't some arrangement the god had prepared ahead of time. It felt as if something complicated was tangled up with this body.
I'll say this ahead of time. You don't need to know.
I'm not even allowed to ask?
It's something like a contract between higher beings. It isn't the serious problem you're imagining, so don't worry about it too much. Sometimes there is knowledge in this world you're better off not having.
The moment I kept sinking into thoughts about the body, the god left those words—don't dig too deep—and vanished again. Knowledge too dangerous for someone like me, then.
Once I had sorted the tangled thoughts away, the hunger I had been ignoring lifted its head.
Grrrgle.
"What time is it?"
"Now? Eleven forty. Why?"
"Because I'm hungry."
I wanted a proper meal for once. I hadn't even gotten to eat the dumpling soup I bought with my own money.
"They said lunch would be out soon, actually."
"Oh? What's on the menu?"
"No idea. I didn't hear. Sorry, Unni."
They say speak of the tiger and it comes. A nurse appeared, carrying a tray.
"Meal's here~"
She took one look at the enormous amount of blood soaking the hospital gown, shrieked in horror, and bolted out of the room.
"Kyaaaaaaaah! Doctor!!!"
"Hey... at least leave the food..."
And she took the tray. The tray. You absolute asshole.