Chapter 161
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 161
It was Eun-chae, once again, who had to deal with the aftermath of Eun-seol pouring liquor down her throat.
“The witch… is mean….”
At the end of Dokyun’s gaze, Eun-chae was whimpering, curled up on the sofa.
She cut a truly pitiful figure, tossing and turning as she muttered every curse she could think of.
As a wave of sympathy washed over him, Dokyun suddenly recalled the events of the previous day.
…She really did drink a lot.
Eun-seol had a habit of drinking excessively on the days before it was Eun-chae’s turn. She would drink like a madwoman, as if there were no tomorrow.
She’d polished off six bottles of whiskey. No matter how much he’d tried to stop her, she just kept smirking as if something was hilarious and chugging straight from the bottle. Cleaning up after that had been a nightmare.
“Ughhh….”
Another groan escaped her lips.
Dokyun forced an awkward smile and handed Eun-chae a cup of honey water.
“Here, you’ll feel a little better if you drink this.”
“Uung….”
Eun-chae staggered to her feet and slurped down the honey water.
“How is it?”
“The witch… is mean….”
I guess it doesn’t work right away. A troubled look crossed Dokyun’s face. He moved to Eun-chae’s side and patted her back, and she leaned her head against his chest, letting out another pained sound.
Whoa…
The reek of alcohol was no joke.
…She could’ve shown some restraint.
Honestly, he wasn’t in any position to talk, but Dokyun couldn’t help but think that Eun-seol was being incredibly petty.
…It was this retaliatory act of passing on her hangover that brought the thought to mind.
Dokyun knew Eun-seol. She wasn’t passing on this hangover because of some old grudge.
…The notebook.
The personalities’ secret notebook.
Eun-seol was doing this because she was annoyed by the annotation—‘Witch’—that Eun-chae added next to every single thing she wrote.
He had plenty of proof. Hadn’t he seen it with his own two eyes?
=
What’s this week’s rotation? <- Witch
└ It’s you, Go Eun-chae, you fucker. <- Witch
=
Her hot-tempered side, immediately resorting to swearing.
Dokyun shook his head at the memory.
“Honeybee….”
Eun-chae’s voice pulled him from his thoughts. His gaze returned to her.
“Ah, yeah?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Oh, just a second. I’ll make you some porridge.”
“Meat.”
“Huh? But eating something greasy right now isn’t…”
“Meat.”
Dokyun’s and Eun-chae’s eyes met. Even with her deathly pale face, her gaze was resolute as she repeated herself.
“Meat.”
“…Then I’ll make meat porridge.”
“Okay.”
Seeing Eun-chae’s expression finally soften, Dokyun chuckled and got to his feet.
Her love for meat was truly unstoppable.
*
Clatter. The sound of a spoon hitting a bowl echoed in the room. Sitting at the dining table, Dokyun let out a hollow laugh as he watched Eun-chae, who sat opposite him, meticulously picking out only the meat from her porridge.
“You’ll get sick if you’re such a picky eater.”
“…The vegetables are for Eun-ah.”
Oh, for crying out loud.
Her answer, delivered while slyly avoiding his gaze, was a real piece of work.
Dokyun watched Eun-chae pout and pick out another piece of meat, then suddenly remembered something he’d wanted to ask her.
“Ah, right. Eun-chae.”
“Yes?”
“Do you happen to know anything about Eun-byeol? Like, why she appeared, or anything like that.”
It was a long shot.
He desperately wanted to find out something, anything, about Eun-byeol, but she had no intention of talking, and Eun-seol didn’t seem to know much either.
Since Eun-chae had absorbed four other personalities who had a similar origin to Eun-byeol, he wondered if she might know some clues. It was a question born of that slim thread of hope, but…
“…I don’t know.”
As expected, the answer he received was far from satisfactory.
I guess that’s that, Dokyun thought with a small laugh. He nodded and continued, “Well, can’t be helped then. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay….”
“Your porridge is getting cold. You should eat up.”
Nod. Eun-chae nodded her head.
And so, as Eun-chae was stirring her porridge and Dokyun was watching her…
“…Honeybee.”
Eun-chae spoke again.
Her eyes were fixed on Dokyun, her expression thoughtful. Her hands fidgeted restlessly, rubbing the spoon she held.
“Yeah?”
“…I don’t know about Eun-byeol, but I know about the other kids.”
Thump.
Dokyun froze at her words.
A feeling of ‘oh, no’ washed over him.
He understood at once what she was talking about.
She had to be referring to the four personalities she had absorbed.
It seemed his question had made Eun-chae recall a bad memory. Dokyun felt his expression start to crumple in distress.
…No, I can’t.
He forced his features back into a smile.
If he looked like this, Eun-chae would feel like she had to walk on eggshells around him.
“You don’t have to think about it too deeply. Sorry, that was my mistake.”
“It’s not.”
Again, Eun-chae lifted her head. Her expression was a little more determined than before.
“…I hurt those kids. So I have to remember.”
The words hung in the air.
At that, Dokyun suddenly felt his chest tighten.
“…You don’t have to.”
That was Dokyun’s reply, and as he said it, he thought about how cowardly his words sounded.
When you got down to it, those personalities had been absorbed by Eun-chae against their will.
Even if they were personalities that were meant to be integrated, they must have had their own pain, their own desires.
But they had lost all of that and been integrated into Eun-chae.
Logically, Eun-chae should be held responsible for that.
But to Dokyun, Eun-chae was more precious than the four personalities he had never even met.
He had never once spoken directly about those four personalities—he had always steered the conversation away so that Eun-chae wouldn’t even have to think about them. That was how much more precious she was to him.
And so, Dokyun didn’t want Eun-chae to be sad because of them, but…
“Hurting someone makes you a bad person. So I have to apologize.”
Somewhere along the way, Eun-chae had become a much stronger child than Dokyun had realized.
As Dokyun stared at her with a stiff expression, his lips parting and closing silently, Eun-chae spoke once more.
“Not apologizing makes you a really bad person. Eun-chae can’t be like that.”
“Eun-chae….”
“But, Eun-chae doesn’t know how to apologize very well. So… can you teach me, Honeybee?”
Her calm, lengthy words ended in a request for his help.
Looking at Eun-chae, who was watching him and waiting for an answer, Dokyun felt an indescribable emotion welling up inside him.
When had she started thinking like this?
And had she been worrying about it all this time, all by herself, without letting it show?
As these questions ran through his mind, he felt a sense of pride in the girl who had agonized over this and finally come to him for help. His expression softened, and he nodded.
“…Of course.”
*
After agreeing to Eun-chae’s request, Dokyun found himself back in the living room, sitting across from her and staring down at a sketchbook spread open on the floor.
To explain how they’d ended up in this situation, their agreed-upon method for apologizing to the personalities was to resolve their lingering regrets.
Let’s apologize, albeit belatedly, by resolving the regrets they couldn’t resolve themselves, the things that still remained as trauma.
That’s how the conversation had ended. And so, to resolve the regret of the first personality—the one who had wanted to draw—they had prepared for this.
It was art time.
Dokyun watched Eun-chae, who was gripping a colored pencil tightly and staring intently at the sketchbook, and asked, “So, what should we draw?”
Eun-chae looked up.
Her face was full of contemplation.
Their eyes met for a long moment. Finally, Eun-chae tilted her head and opened her mouth.
“Fish?”
Dokyun squeezed his eyes shut.
I expected this, but…!
He felt a little devastated.
Eun-chae’s integration wasn’t a harmonious merging like Eun-ah’s.
It was a one-sided absorption by Eun-chae.
Therefore, the personalities’ memories hadn’t fully fused with hers but existed as separate elements. As such, their traits hadn’t been passed on to her either.
The result? The disastrous combination of Eun-chae, who knew nothing about art because she hadn’t inherited the trait, and Dokyun, who knew jack-shit about it.
Dokyun glanced back and forth between the tilted head of Eun-chae and the blank white sketchbook.
“Should we just… try drawing something?”
That was all he managed to say.
Eun-chae nodded, and what began to take shape was a school of fish that filled the entire page of the sketchbook.
As he watched the fish fill the empty space—truly packing it, without a single gap—Dokyun felt a strange sense of unease.
Why was he feeling this way?
No, what did that drawing even mean?
After a moment of thought, Dokyun realized what the problem with the drawing was.
“…Eun-chae, hold on a second.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t think this is it.”
Dokyun said, picking up the sketchbook and flipping to a new page.
…So I have trypophobia.
It was a fact Dokyun was discovering about himself for the first time. He had trypophobia. And Eun-chae’s drawing of fish filling the page was triggering it without mercy.
“It’ll hurt your eyes to look at them if you draw them so small. How about we try drawing them a little bigger this time?”
“Okay.”
Eun-chae nodded.
She took the sketchbook from Dokyun, lay on her stomach on the floor again, and began to draw a fish with intense concentration.
A large body. Big, round eyes. And…
You don’t have to render the scales in such detail!
His trypophobia flared up again.
Dokyun squeezed his eyes shut and forced a smile as he spoke to Eun-chae.
“Wow, Eun-chae, you draw with such detail. You didn’t even forget the scales.”
“Yep, carp scales are pretty.”
A hint of excitement was in her voice.
Hearing that, Dokyun no longer had the courage to stop her.
All he could do was shed tears of blood as he watched Eun-chae complete her drawing of a carp with densely packed scales.
“Wow, waaaah… It’s so pretty.”
“Yep, carp are pretty.”
After saying that, Eun-chae gazed at the carp she had drawn, swallowed hard, and added another comment.
“…And they’re delicious.”
Shiver—.
The moment he heard her words, goosebumps broke out on his skin.
Filled with alarm, Dokyun forced an awkward smile and replied, “Is, is that so?”
“Yep.”
Dokyun’s gaze fell on Eun-chae.
There was a dangerous glint in her eyes.
A thought automatically popped into his head.
…Is this really the right way to do this?
The question came far too late.