Chapter 108
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 108
The first sensation he felt upon opening his eyes was exhaustion.
It was understandable. Eun-byeol had tormented him with a relentless barrage of questions until she got the answers she wanted, cutting into his sleep.
For a moment, his head throbbed as the memory resurfaced. Dokyun rubbed his gritty eyes and pushed himself up in bed.
He was alone in the bed. Eun-seol, having taken over the baton, must have already woken up and left the bedroom.
With that thought, Dokyun left the bedroom and greeted Eun-seol, who was sitting on the sofa reading a book.
“Good morning.”
“Yes.”
Her usual, indifferent reply. Hearing it, Dokyun let out a jaw-splitting yawn, went over to sit beside Eun-seol, and after a moment of silence, spoke.
“…Eun-byeol is really something else, isn’t she?”
He said it, recalling the previous day. Eun-seol’s lips twitched for a moment before she offered a short reply.
“…You went through a lot.”
Hearing that, Dokyun shifted his gaze to look at her. Her expression held a hint of embarrassment.
“You could have given me a heads-up. Something like, ‘Don't go to the baseball stadium’…”
“Even if I had told you, if she threw a tantrum, wouldn't you have ended up going along with it anyway?”
A fair point.
At that, Dokyun’s lips pressed into a firm line.
Eun-seol was right. Even if he had been warned, if Eun-byeol had insisted, he would have been dragged along.
Silence fell again. As Dokyun sat on the sofa, blinking to wake himself up, he suddenly recalled what Eun-byeol had said during dinner the previous night.
That Eun-seol was hiding many things out of concern for him.
Remembering this, Dokyun’s gaze turned to Eun-seol.
He felt a sense of apology. On top of that, a flicker of discontent arose—was he really that untrustworthy? But that feeling was immediately replaced by a surge of shame as he remembered his own behavior up to this point.
Looking back, he had shown her every pathetic side of himself.
A dry laugh escaped him for a moment, but he quickly swallowed it down, closed his eyes, and continued his thoughts.
She was someone who always came up with the right answer. He now understood why she hadn't opened the door for him.
How could he not understand? It was true; he hadn't been ready.
If he had opened that door at that moment, he probably would have started agonizing over it, imagining the worst regardless of what was actually inside.
As his thoughts continued, a question suddenly occurred to him: ‘Would I still be like that now?’
The question grew, and the grown question cast itself over him in the form of a sentence.
The sentence that emerged was: ‘Can you still not open that door?’
A stream of thoughts flowed through Dokyun’s mind.
A lot of time had passed since he first failed to open the door, and many things had happened.
Eun-ah’s condition had gotten much worse. It was a situation where she might even revert to how she was when they first met. On top of that, Eun-chae’s struggles must have been intensifying accordingly.
Besides that, there was the time Eun-ji had popped out during the holidays, his meeting with Eun-byeol, and his confrontation with the doctor.
Those were just the major incidents; if he went through them one by one, there would have been even more.
Mulling over all that had happened, Dokyun posed the question to himself again.
Had he gone through this series of events without changing at all? Was he still afraid of what lay behind that door?
He shook off his daze and focused on the thought.
The deliberation continued, his heart wavering between affirmation and denial.
After a long period of deliberation, his heart finally began to step toward denial.
If asked if he was afraid, he could still say yes.
If asked if he was dissatisfied with his current life, he could answer no.
And yet, the reason he resolved to open the door anyway—even if he was nothing, even if he was just a necessary component in her delusion, even if they would become strangers after Eun-ah was fully healed—was because he could now say that if it made her happy, then that was enough.
From there, they could just build things up again from the beginning, couldn't they?
Many people were being considerate of him. They were also cheering him on.
Eun-seol’s consideration was one example, as was the doctor who, despite being a complete stranger, had offered him advice, and Eun-byeol, who had playfully teased him to ease his impatience.
Funnily enough, despite so many people helping him, he had been turning away from it all because of his own anxiety.
The thought that came to him now was that, to him, that door was probably like the monster in the closet he used to imagine as a child, staring at the tightly shut doors.
Even though nothing had been revealed, he was needlessly swallowing his fear all by himself.
A small chuckle escaped him at that. Confirming that his heart had now completely crossed over to denial, Dokyun spoke.
“Eun-seol.”
“What is it?”
“Would you open the studio for me?”
Dokyun asked the question and looked at Eun-seol. She had lifted her eyes from her book and was now looking at him.
Without another word, Eun-seol simply stared at him for a long moment.
Dokyun met her gaze, and then he suddenly realized that the dark shadows under her eyes weren't dark circles at all, but the shadows cast by her long eyelashes.
Because her eyes were less wide-open than the other personalities', he had mistaken the shadows her lashes cast beneath them for dark circles.
A random realization. As he stared at her with a sense of wonder, Eun-seol finally spoke.
“…Alright.”
Her reply was an affirmation, with no other words attached.
At that, Dokyun’s expression brightened. Just as he was about to offer his thanks,
“Let's eat first,”
she added.
A small laugh escaped Dokyun’s lips at her words. He nodded and replied.
“Sounds good. I'll make breakfast.”
“Fine.”
Their conversation over, Dokyun got up from the sofa and headed to the kitchen.
As he walked, Dokyun checked in with himself.
His heart was in a state of unprecedented peace. Even though the moment to open the door he had so feared was now here, he didn't feel afraid.
It was probably because he knew that if he were to see what was inside and falter, there would be someone beside him to help him back up.
Entering the kitchen, Dokyun was about to open the refrigerator when he turned his head to look back at Eun-seol.
A remarkable person.
That was the thought that came to mind. Even though their conversations were always brief, she was someone who always seemed to grasp his thoughts as if by magic.
A person he was grateful for, and also sorry to.
A warm feeling filled his chest, and a slight smile touched his lips. But then another thought occurred to him, and he tilted his head.
‘But why can't she figure out that I can't eat cilantro?’
He pondered it, but no answer came to him.
Truly, a person you could never fully figure out.
*
The click of a key turning in a lock echoed in Dokyun’s ears.
Dokyun looked up at Eun-seol as she opened the studio door.
There was a reason he hadn't been able to find the key.
The key had been tucked away in a corner of the study, between the pages of a philosophy book he would never have thought to open.
Once again swallowing his surprise at Eun-seol’s thoroughness, Dokyun tilted his head as he watched her open the studio door and step aside.
“Aren't you coming in?”
“I already know everything that's in there. Why would I go in?”
She tossed the words out nonchalantly. Dokyun gave a slight nod, watched her for a moment, and then stepped into the studio.
He fumbled along the wall for the light switch. When he found and pressed it, the once-veiled studio was revealed under the bright light.
“Come out when you're done,” Eun-seol said.
Dokyun nodded, and the studio door closed.
Dokyun stared at the closed door for a moment before he began to survey the room.
It was just about larger than the dressing room but smaller than the study. Books filled one entire wall. In front of them were a desk and a computer. A little further to the side, a large window offered a panoramic view of the garden.
The studio looked as if it hadn't been touched in a long time, with a fine layer of white dust settled everywhere.
He took a few steps, taking it all in.
Where should I start? With that thought, Dokyun glanced around before walking toward the computer on the desk.
Seeing the powered-off computer, he wiped the dust from the desk with his hand. Then, he noticed a small picture frame right next to the monitor and picked it up.
The frame's design was quite familiar to Dokyun.
‘Where have I seen this before?’
He furrowed his brow, trying to remember. Then it hit him—this was the same frame he had found on the shelf behind the bed on the first day he was brought here. His eyes widened.
He swallowed his surprise at the memory, calmed himself, and with tense eyes, examined the photograph inside.
Inside the frame was a picture of a woman who appeared to be her mother and a toddler-aged Eun-ah, who had just started walking.
A familiar background.
Sensing this, he turned his head toward the window.
‘The garden.’
The background of the photo was the wooden swing in the garden, visible beyond the window.
Dokyun’s gaze returned to the frame.
A woman sitting on the garden swing and a small child beside her.
Dokyun let out a small laugh at the sight of Eun-ah standing there blankly, tightly holding her mother’s hand. Then, he looked at the woman who appeared to be her mother and tilted his head.
‘I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere before…’
The face of Eun-ah’s mother in the photo gave Dokyun a sense of déjà vu.
It was a face that made him think this is what Eun-ah might look like when she was a little older.
He could have chalked up the déjà vu to that resemblance, but this felt different.
He was sure he had seen that face somewhere before.
An unfounded certainty.
It made no sense when he thought about it, but Dokyun couldn't ignore the feeling.
An unease rising from deep within made him frown and stare at the frame for a long time, but no clear answer came.
A deep sigh escaped him. Dokyun put the frame back in its place and started moving again.
The answer must be in here. With that thought, Dokyun moved again, heading toward the bookshelf that filled one wall and began to scan the spines.
There were so many books that he was wondering what to look at first when he spotted a familiar one among them.
A discolored notebook. Eun-ah’s childhood diary.
Finding it, Dokyun thought, So this is where it was, and pulled it out for a moment before pushing it back onto the shelf and continuing his search.
Unlike the books in the study, most of the books here were untitled notebooks.
Some were binders filled with printed pages, others were thick, leather-bound notebooks.
Opening them one by one, he saw pages filled with sentences written in a flowing, elegant script.
Most of what was written down were impressive phrases from books—expressions that inspired awe or made one think.
After looking through it for a while, Dokyun concluded there was nothing more to find in that notebook, slid it back onto the shelf, and picked up another.
I have to be thorough.
With that thought, he went through the notebooks one by one. Then, while examining one of them, he held his breath.
A different handwriting from what he'd seen so far. A handwriting that was familiar to him.
It was the crooked and charming handwriting of a young Eun-ah.
It seemed he had finally found a clue.
With that thought, Dokyun, filled with tension, began to turn the pages one by one.
And then—
‘…This is.’
As he read on, Dokyun’s expression began to harden.
Déjà vu.
No, it wasn't anything like déjà vu.
This was content that Dokyun knew for certain.
Content he couldn't possibly not know.
Why was this here, in this form, written in Eun-ah’s handwriting?
At that thought, his heart began to pound.
Dokyun’s hand began to tremble as he turned the pages.
Written in the book, which was easily over several hundred pages long, was—
‘The Rusty Sword and the Hummingbird's Tomb.’
It was the world-building bible for the fantasy novel Dokyun had read for the first time so long ago.
Realizing this, Dokyun stared at it with wide eyes. Then, he finally understood the source of the déjà vu he’d felt looking at the picture frame.
Dokyun closed the notebook and strode quickly back to the desk. He picked up the frame he had put back in its place and looked at Eun-ah’s mother’s face once more, finally understanding why it had been so familiar.
‘Seo Han-gyeong.’
The author of The Rusty Sword and the Hummingbird's Tomb.
The person in the picture with Eun-ah, her mother, was—
‘…Why.’
—his childhood idol, the author who had committed suicide with only one volume left until the series finale, setting all the online communities ablaze at the time.