Chapter 44
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 44
A short silence followed.
She sat on the sofa, looking up at him placidly, maintaining her silence.
Just as Dokyun was swallowing nervously, wondering if he had made some kind of mistake, a faint smile graced her lips.
“You’re not entirely useless.”
With those words, she rose to her feet.
She walked past Dokyun and headed toward the kitchen shelves, continuing, “You’ve got a decent amount of nerve.”
With a familiar motion, she bent down and rummaged through a lower cabinet, pulling out a bottle of liquor and two glasses before returning to the living room where Dokyun stood.
Then, sitting on the sofa once more, she filled a glass to the brim and spoke again.
“Sit.”
Dokyun glanced back and forth between her and the glass, then swallowed dryly and sat down beside her, leaving enough space for one person between them.
“Want a drink?”
At her words, he looked at the bottle on the table. It was a golden liquor in a bottle with something written in English on the label, looking expensive at a single glance.
His body still hadn't calmed down, and he was tempted to borrow the strength of alcohol, but the sharp scent stinging his nose was so strong he felt he wouldn't be able to hold a proper conversation if he drank it. He shook his head.
“I’m fine.”
“Really?”
Her voice was tinged with a heavy note of disappointment.
She clicked her tongue as she said it, but she didn't offer a second time.
Then, of the two glasses she’d brought, she filled only her own to the top, downed it in one go, and continued.
“Alright, what are you curious about?”
Dokyun watched her as she refilled the now-empty glass.
Her attitude was surprisingly cooperative.
She still maintained an air of indifference toward him, but it didn't seem like she intended to ignore him, either.
Dokyun’s thoughts churned as he watched the liquor rise in the glass.
There were so many things he wanted to ask.
He still knew nothing about her.
Despite having spent half a month with her, all he knew was her name, her age, her preference for a few types of food, and the mental illness she suffered from.
No, he couldn't even be sure of that.
Who was to say if she had other illnesses besides dissociative identity disorder?
Countless thoughts and questions flashed through his mind.
But despite it all, there was one thing he had to ask first.
“Which one of you is real?”
Was the girl he had been watching, the one with the brightly blooming smile and the pitiful warmth, her true self?
Or was that just another fabricated personality?
He had to know.
“Real…”
Hearing Dokyun’s question, she lowered her gaze, rolling the word ‘real’ around in her mouth. She remained silent for a moment before finally giving an answer.
“If what you want to know is who the original owner of this body is, then yes, it’s Go Eun-ah.”
That’s right.
The moment he heard those words, he felt an involuntary wave of relief wash over him.
After speaking, she studied his expression, then let out a smirk.
“So happy to hear that?”
“Ah.”
His body flinched.
Only then did it occur to him that his question might have offended the person he was currently speaking to. He was about to hastily apologize when she cut him off.
“No need to apologize. That’s a normal reaction.”
She replied in a tone that suggested it was no big deal and took another sip of her drink.
Dokyun watched her, tense for a moment, then spoke as she set her glass down.
“Um…”
“Go Eun-seol.”
“Pardon?”
Her gaze shifted to him as she spoke again.
“Call me Go Eun-seol. You can’t just keep calling me ‘um,’ ‘her,’ or ‘hey,’ can you?”
Go Eun-seol.
The other personality introduced herself with that name.
Dokyun committed the name to memory for a moment before speaking again.
“Ms. Go Eun-seol.”
“Speak.”
“Are you the ‘sister’?”
After he asked, she glanced at him for a moment, then nodded in affirmation.
“That’s right. The ‘me’ that Go Eun-ah has defined is, indeed, the sister.”
It was the first of his hypotheses to be proven correct.
Dokyun nodded at her answer and posed his next prepared question.
“Then… does Ms. Eun-ah know that you are one of her other personalities?”
At that question, a smile formed on her lips.
The face Dokyun looked at was tinged with a faint light of satisfaction.
“You’re quick on the uptake.”
It was an affirmation.
Filling her empty glass once more, she kept her eyes on it as she continued.
“She seems to have a rough idea… but yes, she’s a little… scrambled.”
“She can’t properly distinguish what’s reality and what’s delusion.”
She paused for a moment after saying that, then raised the full glass and spoke again.
“Hmm… to be precise, it’s more that she doesn’t want to distinguish between them.”
The answer made his chest feel tight and suffocated.
Even though he had expected it, the reply made Dokyun’s heart ache.
“…Was it abuse?”
“Abuse…”
It was the most logical conclusion Dokyun could reach.
Her obsessive behavior.
Her fixation on being a ‘good girl.’
Her life patterns, which seemed mechanical, as if a screw were loose.
At the end of the path all these things pointed to was the hypothesis of abuse.
She seemed to ponder his question for a moment, then stared at her half-empty glass and answered.
“Yes, I suppose you could call it abuse.”
It was a fitting answer.
She said it with just that level of detachment.
“She herself wouldn’t want to admit it, but anyone in the world would call it that.”
As she spoke, her eyes took on a vacant light, as if she were tracing a distant time.
After a moment lost in thought, she drained the rest of the liquor in her glass, set it on the table, and continued.
“Anything else you’re curious about?”
“Many things.”
“Go ahead.”
He wanted to ask for the specifics—what kind of abuse she suffered, what other illnesses she had—but she was clearly maintaining a boundary, refusing to give up any information beyond a certain point.
What he had learned from their short conversation was that this ‘sister,’ Go Eun-seol, was an exceedingly calm and intelligent person.
A sunken exhaustion that bordered on a decadent sort of allure hid behind a veil of ennui as she coolly observed him.
The words that came from her mouth skillfully used the superiority of the information she possessed to control him.
She was someone who knew how to overwhelm an opponent with her demeanor and the sheer force of her presence.
A difficult opponent.
This wouldn't be as easy as the question-and-answer session he’d had with Eun-ah.
What she was showing him was merely the rough sketch.
She wouldn't provide any more information, and if he tried to press for it, she would pour another drink or change the subject after finishing her glass, expressing her refusal indirectly.
Her attitude seemed cooperative, but because he didn't know what kind of person she was or what she wanted, he couldn't recklessly probe for more.
Most likely, she meant for him to figure out the rest on his own.
Dokyun organized his thoughts and asked his next question.
“What… was that?”
It was a question about the empty eyes that had been about to swallow him whole just moments before.
It was a vague question, but he had a feeling she would understand.
As if his prediction was correct, she stopped her hand, which had been about to fill the glass, and stared at him.
What followed was not an answer, but a quiz.
“What do you think it was?”
The question shut his mouth.
As he remained silent, unable to find the words to answer, Dokyun rephrased his question.
“Is that a personality, too?”
It was a question that had been nagging him ever since he learned she had multiple personalities.
That thing had been different from what he knew of DID.
It didn't show enough of a difference to be distinguished from ‘Go Eun-ah’ as a separate personality, yet its tone and gaze were too alien to be dismissed as merely one of her fits.
As Dokyun spoke and stared at her, a smile touched her lips as she offered her answer.
“Excellent. You seem to be smarter than you look.”
“Does that mean…”
“It’s another personality.”
He had an answer, but his frustration wasn't resolved. There were too many things that didn't make sense. Just as he was about to ask another question, one more word escaped her lips.
“For now.”
For now.
That word deepened the mystery.
“…Could you explain in more detail?”
She hadn't poured another drink yet. Her gaze was on him. It seemed she was willing to say more, at least about this part.
Just as Dokyun thought, she leaned back against the sofa, crossed her arms, and continued.
“Alright, where should I begin…”
She closed her eyes as she spoke, as if organizing her thoughts.
After a moment of choosing her words, she began to speak in a calm tone, as if telling an old story.
“In the beginning, there was only Go Eun-ah.”
Her opened eyes seemed to be tracing a very distant past.
“She was enduring it all alone, and then, around the time the trauma surpassed her threshold and she could no longer handle it, that crazy bitch was born.”
After saying that, she tapped her forearm with her finger for a moment, then leaned forward from the sofa and continued.
“Right, it’s better if I explain it like this.”
Uncrossing her arms, she picked up the bottle again and poured the liquor into the glass.
Glug, glug—
The empty glass began to fill with the golden liquid once more.
“This glass is Go Eun-ah’s threshold.”
The liquor in the glass rose past the halfway mark.
“And this liquor is the trauma she received.”
The glass filled to the brim.
“And this part that’s overflowing… that’s the crazy bitch.”
The liquor, having filled the glass, spilled over and trickled onto the table.
Drip.
Only then did she stop pouring. She looked at Dokyun, her face tinged with a smile, and said, “Go Eun-ah created a proxy to endure the trauma that went beyond her threshold.”
She lifted the glass, took a small sip, and continued.
“It was a pretty brilliant coping mechanism, in its own way. Splitting herself to erase the trauma that exceeded her limits.”
Having said that much, she suddenly let out a smirk.
“But that was the problem.”
Setting the glass down on her thigh, she lowered her eyes slightly and went on.
“That crazy bitch didn't know how to stop.”
Listening to her, Dokyun was suddenly reminded of what had just happened.
—Stop… please…
—No.
The girl who had torn at her own wrist despite his pleas.
—Heh.
The girl who had let out a laugh tinged with a sort of ecstasy.
Eun-seol glanced at him as if she could see right through his thoughts, then let out a soft laugh and uttered a single word.
“Go Eun-chae.”
When Dokyun looked at her, she added an explanation.
“That crazy bitch’s name.”
“Ah…”
A stupid sound escaped his lips.
“As you’ve seen, once that one starts, she has to see it through to the end, no matter what.”
He thought he knew what she meant.
The thing Dokyun had seen looked as if it would never stop its self-harm.
“So.”
In Dokyun’s vision, the smile on her face faded, and her voice continued in a low tone.
“I was created.”
The words sounded hollow somehow.
She was calmly explaining the process of her own creation.
“A brake was needed to stop that crazy bitch.”
For an instant, Dokyun felt as if all expression had vanished from her face.
“Now, everything was perfect.”
Her lips parted as she continued.
“Go Eun-ah was able to grasp the sweet fruit of being a ‘good girl,’ and Go Eun-chae was able to pour out her desires to her heart’s content.”
Dokyun couldn't read her expression as she spoke. He wanted to ask, ‘Then what about you?’ but he felt he shouldn't, so he kept his mouth shut.
“We lived like that without any issues, all this time, until a problem finally blew up.”
“A problem… you say?”
Sensing that she was about to get to the main point, Dokyun prompted her.
She nodded, having already emptied her glass again, and refilled it as she spoke.
“That crazy bitch started to get greedy.”
Greedy.
The word had an ominous ring to it.
“She doesn’t know how to stop, and she’s impulsive. So she can’t accept it.”
She held the glass in her hand as she spoke.
“She can’t accept having to share this body.”
“…You mean.”
She doesn’t want to share. She’s another personality, for now.
Dokyun opened his mouth, a vague outline forming in his mind.
“Am I to understand that the personality named Go Eun-chae is trying to swallow Ms. Eun-ah… and you?”
As he finished speaking, an expression returned to her face.
“You really are sharp.”
“There’s still something I don’t understand.”
Dokyun knew a little about the illness of DID. In a way, it was only natural.
It was a trope used so often in genre fiction that he couldn't help but look it up out of curiosity.
“I understand that the ultimate treatment for DID is the fusion of the personalities into one.”
The fragmented personalities are stitched together and unified. That was the treatment for DID as he knew it.
“But… if that’s the case, wouldn’t the original personality, Ms. Eun-ah, naturally be the one to survive?”
Her eyes, which were looking at him, narrowed slightly into crescents.
Watching her, Dokyun felt a sudden sense of dissonance, a hollowness somewhere in his chest.
It was the same face, the same expression, and yet he couldn't see Eun-ah in it at all.
“Didn’t I tell you? She’s a little… scrambled.”
“Then…”
“The one being consumed is Go Eun-ah. And if Go Eun-ah is consumed, I’ll no longer be able to control that crazy bitch.”
“…”
“I’m still fine, but Go Eun-ah is already halfway consumed.”
His fists clenched tightly. The truth he now faced was more urgent and dangerous than he had imagined.
Now it all made sense. Why she acted so impulsively despite her mechanical patterns, why she acted like a madwoman once a trigger was pulled.
As a grim expression settled on Dokyun’s face, she finally added one last thing.
“And that’s why.”
When their eyes met, she wore what anyone would call a smile and opened her mouth.
“We brought you here.”
Freeze.
His body went rigid. At the end of his gaze, he could see her staring at him.
We.
The word she had casually thrown out.
Dokyun wasn't foolish enough not to understand its meaning.
“…You and Go Eun-chae aren’t the only ones, are you?”
Go Eun-chae would not be included in that ‘we.’
Furthermore, the atmosphere of her words made him feel that the ‘we’ she spoke of did not refer to Go Eun-ah.
At his question, her smile deepened.
“Excellent.”
The answer that came back was an affirmation.