Chapter 46
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 46
Five billion won.
The sum was so immense it didn’t feel real.
All that registered was the meaning behind her proposal.
Seduce Go Eun-ah.
In other words, stay by her side.
Of her entire proposition, only that intention carved itself deep into my heart, shaking me to my core.
My fists clenched.
It wasn’t out of revulsion or anger.
The emotion that made me clench my fists was relief.
And I felt a wave of disgust for myself, for feeling relief in a situation like this.
I was relieved that I’d been given a proper excuse to remain by her side.
A small part of me was even… pleased.
It was absurd to be feeling this way, and I couldn’t understand myself, but there was nothing I could do.
The smile and warmth that had seeped into me were staining my heart, leaving a sticky trace that I couldn’t scrape away.
A trace that would shake me even if I managed to remove it, forcing me to turn back and search for her. I had thought her warmth was faint, but perhaps that was a delusion. Her presence had already burrowed deep inside me, tormenting me.
The warmth that had clung to me so desperately was still clinging to me now.
Even though five billion won was enough to live the rest of my life without working, and even though I’d be making a fool of myself if the offer wasn’t real, I didn’t doubt for a second that she would fail to pay.
Perhaps it was because the money itself wasn’t all that important to me.
Seeing how her smile filled my mind more than the monetary figure, it was possible my broken brain was just using her offer as an excuse—an excuse to stay by her side a little longer, to feel her warmth again.
Her voice prodded me once more.
“So? Isn’t this worth a shot?”
Her words, sweet as a devil’s whisper, tickled my ear.
Her low, resonant voice shook my resolve.
I closed my eyes and steadied my breathing, letting out a long sigh.
“Hoo…”
Opening my eyes, I pushed my empty glass—which had sat untouched until now—toward her. Dokyun opened his mouth and forced out the words.
“Pour me a drink.”
“Can I take that as an acceptance?”
Dokyun glared at her, at that face fixed in a perpetual smirk, and replied.
“You already know the answer.”
How devilishly clever. In that short time, she had sized me up completely and offered me the perfect excuse to willingly accept her proposal.
She had tipped the scales of my emotions, which had been teetering on a tightrope between reason and feeling, decisively toward the side of feeling.
She filled the glass exactly halfway and opened her mouth.
“Good. I’ll be in your care. We’re in the same boat now, aren’t we?”
Her cheerful tone was grating, but I found the meaning behind her words quite welcome.
“Yeah, well… I’ll be in your care, too.”
My sullen tone was a final, petty act of defiance.
But she seemed to find even that pathetic, letting out a short laugh as she raised her glass to me.
“Let’s do this right.”
She was proposing a toast.
Dokyun wordlessly clinked his glass against the one she held out.
Clink—.
A clear, sharp sound.
It was a verbal contract, but neither of them complained.
He lowered the glass and brought it to his lips.
My stomach was churning and my head was a mess; I felt I needed to borrow the strength of alcohol. I took a sip, and my eyes flew open as a fiery heat scorched my throat.
“Keuk! Cough! Cough!”
My startled insides tried to expel the liquid, sending me into a coughing fit.
It was strong. Unbelievably strong. It was stronger than any alcohol Dokyun had ever had in his life. My insides burned as if I’d swallowed a ball of fire.
Stunned by the alcohol content, Dokyun looked at her. She was shrugging her shoulders slightly, a smile on her face.
“Pfft…”
She turned her head and covered her mouth, trying to stifle her laughter, but I could tell at a glance that she was mocking me.
Dokyun’s eyes narrowed as he watched her.
Suddenly, he realized why Eun-ah hadn’t gotten drunk the first night they’d slept together.
She shares a body with someone who chugs this stuff…!
It finally made sense why her expression hadn’t changed one bit, even though they had drunk the same amount.
Feeling wronged, Dokyun glared at Eun-seol. With her lips twitching as she held back a laugh, she spoke to him.
“Ah, are you not much of a drinker?”
Her feigned innocence stoked his anger.
“Yeah, I guess not…!”
As I answered through gritted teeth, she shrugged and downed her own glass in one go. It was infuriating.
“Oh dear. How do you expect to get by in the professional world?”
The classic lecture from a condescending elder.
Hearing it from someone who looked like she’d never worked a day in her life made it even more infuriating.
“I manage. Just. Fine.”
I felt a vein throbbing in my neck, but what little reason I had left dutifully kept my tone polite.
Watching Dokyun seethe, Eun-seol let out another smirk and replied nonchalantly.
“Well, whatever. It’s not my problem.”
The way she spoke with that slight smile felt like she was deliberately trying to get under my skin.
What could I say? Honestly, I’d let my guard down. Since she’d been drinking it like water, I’d assumed it was, at most, as strong as beer or wine. I never imagined it would be a monster like this.
Dokyun stared at the remaining alcohol in his glass, thinking that another sip would really make him sick. He placed it on the table, sighed, and changed the subject.
“So, how long are you going to be in that body?”
I didn’t want to continue the draining emotional tug-of-war, so I switched topics.
Judging by her current attitude, it didn’t seem like she planned on leaving anytime soon. It was a fairly important question; all this talk of seducing Go Eun-ah was only possible if Go Eun-ah was actually in control of her body.
At Dokyun’s question, Eun-seol stopped sipping her drink and held up her left wrist.
“Until this is all healed.”
A bandaged wrist was faintly visible. It was the same wrist Eun-chae had been digging into with a knife just before she appeared.
“Go Eun-ah’s happy little world has no need for things like the pain after self-harm.”
Her tone was mocking. From her words, Dokyun was able to deduce a few things.
First, that she was the one who had always cleaned up the messes Eun-chae made.
And second.
The reason she never seemed to care about the scars on her wrist…
It was because she wasn’t even aware the scars existed.
Another question that had been nagging at me was answered, but the frustration in my chest only grew heavier.
It was because of her attitude toward Go Eun-ah, which I could sense from her tone. It wasn’t good.
While not as hostile as her feelings toward Eun-chae, it was clear her reaction wasn’t positive.
Her general demeanor was tinged with mockery and condescension.
Given how she treated me, it was possible she was like that with everyone, but I couldn’t shake the growing sense of unease.
As Dokyun remained silent, wrestling with his mounting anxiety, Eun-seol, who had been observing his expression, spoke again.
“I’ll say it again. If I wanted to take over this body, I would have done it more than ten years ago.”
I didn’t think I’d shown any sign of it, but she had read me again.
With an embarrassed look, Dokyun quickly followed up with an apology.
“…I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Your thoughts are your own, so it’s not my place to say anything, but it feels a bit unfair.”
Dokyun’s gaze fell upon her face.
She protested that it was unfair, but her expression was placid, betraying no particular emotion.
No matter how hard he tried to read her, Dokyun couldn’t decipher a single thing from her face.
What was her goal? What did she want? He couldn’t read anything at all.
As Dokyun continued to stare at her, lost in thought, her lips parted once more.
“Oh, right.”
“What is it?”
“There’s something I forgot to tell you.”
With those words, she cast her gaze toward me and continued in a low tone.
“Go Eun-ah probably won’t remember what happened today.”
“What happened today… you mean?”
“Yes.”
Having already emptied her glass again, she refilled it and spoke.
“Like I said, any stimulus that exceeds Go Eun-ah’s threshold is shouldered by Go Eun-chae. Today is no different. The fact that you saw her secret, that she put on a self-harm show in front of you—all of that is stimulus beyond Go Eun-ah’s threshold.”
“…”
“Go Eun-ah will probably act as if nothing happened today. So you should act accordingly.”
Her continuous explanation, combined with what she’d said just before, created a point of confusion.
Filled with doubt, Dokyun looked at her as she lifted her glass and posed a question.
“That’s strange.”
“What is?”
“You said you’ll be out until the wound heals, which will take at least a week. If a different personality is out for that long, won’t Ms. Eun-ah feel a sense of temporal dissonance when she wakes up?”
That’s what I didn’t understand. I’d heard that was usually how people with dissociative identity disorder became aware of their other personalities.
No matter how much she might dismiss it as a delusion, wouldn’t she still feel that gap in time? How was that possible?
“Is that all?”
Her tone was dismissive, as if she’d heard something utterly trivial.
As she continued, the mocking air she’d had before returned to her expression.
“As long as she ignores that one thing, her happy world can be maintained. What’s a few days in the grand scheme of things?”
“Ah…”
I understood completely.
She was saying that Eun-ah consciously erased any dissonant elements that approached reality in order to maintain her delusion.
I had been so focused on the multiple personalities that I hadn’t paid much attention to it, but her words made me realize just how severe Eun-ah’s delusional symptoms were.
Silence followed. She continued to sip her drink, while Dokyun sat on the sofa, simply organizing his thoughts.
As he did, Dokyun felt a heavy, hollow emotion welling up inside him.
Perhaps this was what sadness or pity felt like.
Throughout this entire conversation, this was the emotion he felt for the person named Go Eun-ah.
It was a feeling born of pity for her, for this woman who had to split herself apart and view the world through a filter of illusion just to survive. Pity that he, a man with whom she had barely any connection, was her one and only lifeline.
It was heartbreaking that the simple act of him entering the study was a stimulus beyond her threshold, that he was that important to her.
In her desperate search for someone to lean on, the person she found was just one of her many readers. That was how lonely her life had been.
I shifted my gaze slightly to look at her drinking beside me.
Perhaps this was what she had been trying to tell me. Perhaps her intention was to make me pity her, to make me want to protect her.
I had a vague sense that her only answer would be silence, so I didn’t bother asking.
I just lowered my head again and organized my thoughts.
And so, after a long silence, when the bottle of alcohol was nearly empty, she, who had been drinking all this time, rose to her feet and spoke.
“We’re going out tomorrow. Just so you know.”
When Dokyun looked up, she met his gaze and added an explanation.
“We’re going out together.”
Unable to comprehend her words, he froze for a moment. Then, as the meaning dawned on him, his mouth fell open in a daze. She continued in a low tone.
“Don’t you have things to take care of outside? Places you need to contact?”
Of course I did.
But I never expected to hear those words from her mouth.
“Take care of it all while we’re out. I don’t want to create any unnecessary variables.”
She was laying down the law. Unable to understand her intentions, Dokyun stared at her for a moment, then opened his mouth in an attempt to figure her out.
“What will you do if I run away?”
It was a statement that could be seen as a provocation.
Hearing it, she stared back at me, then a corner of her mouth lifted slightly as she answered his question with one of her own.
“Are you going to?”
Her expression was brimming with confidence.
Even as she answered with a question, she was certain that I wouldn’t leave.
“…Never mind. What’s the point?”
It felt like I would be the only one losing out if I said anything more, so I declared my surrender. I saw her smile.
“Tidy up a bit up here. I’m going to bed first.”
After saying her piece, she turned and entered the bedroom. Left alone in the living room, Dokyun let out a sigh and leaned back against the sofa. Then, a sudden thought made him shoot up and stare at the table.
…Wait a minute.
I looked at the table. It was a mess, with an empty bottle and glasses rolling around. In one corner was the book she had been reading just before I came out.
The alcohol she had spilled while explaining things earlier left a sticky residue on the tabletop, and now, I was the only one left here.
Suddenly, as he pieced it all together, Dokyun let out a hollow laugh.
Did I just get stuck with the cleanup?
His gaze shifted to the closed bedroom door.
She had left so naturally that I hadn’t noticed, but I had definitely just been pawned off with the dirty work.
My eyes narrowed slightly.
As I thought.
She was not going to be an easy opponent.