Chapter 53
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 53
Her words stabbed at my heart, one after another.
Unable to say anything, I simply covered my face with my hands and remained silent.
After a long moment, I heard the sound of a tongue clicking from above me.
“Tsk.”
I flinched.
My body trembled, but I couldn’t find the courage to move my hands and face her.
“How old are you to be acting like this?”
It was a fair point.
Dokyun, who had been silent until then, finally spoke in a trembling voice, stung by her rebuke.
“...Please, don’t say anything.”
Can’t you just pretend you didn’t see me? The words were laced with that desperate hope.
“A fine job you’ve done. Is this what a man who’s thirty fucking years old does? Make a child cry?”
But what came back was a cold, sharp reprimand.
Grind—.
I gritted my teeth.
It seemed that vicious little brat had finally tattled on me about what happened today.
In a corner of my heart, already muddled with self-loathing and shame, anger began to blossom into a flame.
‘Next time I see her, I’ll kill her.’
I thought we could be secret friends, but that little brat had trampled all over my pure intentions.
As Dokyun was fuming, Eun-seol, who had changed her clothes at some point, sat down on the sofa, sighed, and spoke to him.
“Get up. You look pathetic.”
Dokyun, who had been lying on the floor with his face covered, peeked at her through his fingers.
The emotion painted thickly across her face was pure disdain.
Feeling another pang in his heart at her expression, Dokyun opened his mouth.
“...Please don’t look at me like that. It hurts.”
“Then act in a way that doesn’t make me.”
She was right, but couldn’t she have been a little gentler?
“Ugh...”
With a miserable heart, Dokyun pushed himself up. His whole body ached from rolling around on the floor.
After getting to his feet and patting his stiff back, a crazy thought struck him. He looked at her and blurted out a question.
“What the hell is that little kid, anyway?”
He stared at her, thinking, Surely she can tell me this much. She looked down on him before opening her mouth to answer.
“You can see for yourself. She’s a child.”
“No, that’s not what I’m asking...”
“Figure it out yourself.”
She cut him off, her refusal firm.
It seemed she had no intention of giving him any information about the other personalities.
Frustration welled up inside him. Feeling that he had to find out something to lessen the sense of injustice, Dokyun began to complain, his voice thick with emotion.
“Seriously, do you have any idea how much I went through today? It started in the morning...”
His rant went on and on.
Dokyun poured out his grievances, hoping she would understand even a fraction of his miserable state, but what he received in return was a clear statement of contempt.
“You fucking idiot.”
“...”
“You should be ashamed of yourself. What’s your mental age, anyway?”
“...”
He was mortified.
His hands came up to cover his face again.
Unable to bear showing his face, Dokyun trembled with shame.
“No matter how childishly she acted, what did you expect to happen if you stooped to her level?”
“Please, just stop...”
It was a plea filled with sincerity. He had no energy left.
Suddenly, he missed Eun-ah.
It had only been two days since he’d last seen her, but he longed for the face that would smile at him as she hugged him tightly, and his eyes grew moist.
What new thing would pop out tomorrow?
Only two days had passed, but worry for the remaining days was already starting to weigh on him. With a deep frown, Dokyun asked her a question.
“Please, just tell me this.”
“What.”
“Are the other personalities... like this?”
It was a vague question, but as always, she understood his meaning instantly and gave her answer.
“...The kids are nice.”
Her words, spoken as she averted her eyes, held a flicker of unease.
At her answer, Dokyun’s expression crumbled even more wretchedly. Glancing at him, Eun-seol spoke again, a reluctant look on her face, as if to console him.
“Two.”
Had his face looked that pitiful? The woman who, just moments before, had shown no intention of saying anything, let out a sigh and offered a hint in a drained voice.
“There are two left. This time, only one of them will come out.”
Including Go Eun-ah, there were a total of six personalities. That’s what she was telling him.
It was a relief to hear.
At least he wouldn’t be tormented by new personalities popping up at all hours.
As Dokyun let out a small breath of relief, she took a smartphone from her pocket, handed it to him, and continued.
“Use it while I’m here. If you’re out of contact for too long, people on the outside might get suspicious.”
“Ah, thank you.”
Dokyun took the smartphone and looked at her. She had already turned her gaze away from him and was opening a book.
As if she had entered a state of immediate focus, her eyes began to dart back and forth, staring intently at the pages.
His gaze, which had been fixed blankly on her, shifted to the book she was reading.
It was a philosophy book whose title alone was enough to give him a headache.
‘She reads difficult stuff.’
Looking back, the books she read always seemed to be of that type.
It was a taste he could never understand, but she seemed to like those kinds of books so much that once she started reading, she rarely looked elsewhere.
Sensing that she would now ignore anything he said, Dokyun let out a deep sigh and leaned back on the sofa.
There was just enough space for one more person.
Maintaining that distance from her, Dokyun sat on the sofa, turned on the powered-off smartphone, and continued his thoughts.
‘First... I need to do some research.’
He couldn’t repeat the mistake he’d regretted this morning.
While he could use the internet, he had to gather as much information as possible about multiple personalities.
He thought about what he had to do.
Just then, the phone powered on, and the background screen lit up before his eyes.
Dokyun moved his finger to open a search engine, typed “Dissociative Identity Disorder” into the search bar, and hit enter, beginning his research in earnest.
‘I hope I can find something useful.’
Academic papers were beyond his comprehension.
What he needed was simple information he could understand and tips on how to deal with a patient.
His eyes, fixed on the screen, began to scan the information that appeared.
*
As he was focused on his phone, he heard a voice from beside him.
“Hey.”
Dokyun lifted his head toward the sound and saw her looking at him.
“Ah, yes.”
“Let’s eat.”
Had it gotten that late already?
Slightly surprised, Dokyun glanced at the time on his phone and saw that the clock showed 7:00 PM.
As he checked the time and started to get up, a question that had been nagging him surfaced in his mind. He turned to her and asked.
“By the way, why are there no clocks in this house?”
It was a question he’d had since he first stepped out of the bedroom.
At first, he thought it was just a way to destroy his sense of time and break him, but considering Eun-ah’s subsequent behavior and Eun-seol’s attitude, that didn’t seem to be the case.
As Dokyun looked at her with questioning eyes, she remained silent for a moment before finally opening her mouth to give him the answer.
“Because she can’t be allowed to perceive the flow of time.”
Perhaps feeling it didn’t matter if she told him, her answer was a surprisingly straightforward explanation.
“If she accurately perceives the passage of time, she’ll become aware of the gaps when other personalities emerge. That’s an unnecessary element in Go Eun-ah’s happy world.”
“Ah.”
He understood instantly.
To Eun-ah, the other personalities were strangers or delusions.
They were figures who were only supposed to exist in her head. If she saw a clock, she would become aware of the time that went missing while they were out.
That would shatter Eun-ah’s world.
Eun-seol was telling him that was why there were no clocks in the house.
Suddenly, he felt a tightness in his chest.
A heavy feeling began to settle in his gut.
The emotion welling up inside him was pity.
He was probably feeling this way because of the traces of her life he saw scattered throughout the house.
That world of delusion was so precious to her that the furniture in the house, painstakingly removed and replaced to protect it, remained as traces of the life she had lived. It was those traces that made her seem so pitiful to him.
Funnily enough, the more he got to know her, the more his hatred faded, its place filled by pity.
A hollow laugh escaped him.
Stockholm Syndrome.
The victim who pities their captor and defends them.
That was exactly his state right now.
Like being soaked by a slow drizzle, the emotion had seeped into him, shaking him and making it impossible to hate her.
He was already falling for her, to a point where it felt too late to turn back.
As he was lost in thought, Eun-seol’s voice cut in again.
“What are you spacing out for?”
Her words were a reprimand.
When Dokyun looked at her, she was speaking to him with the same weary eyes as always.
“I said, let’s eat.”
Finally snapping back to reality, Dokyun wore an awkward expression and offered an apology.
“I’m sorry.”
Hearing his words, she replied as if it were nothing and demanded a meal.
“Forget it. Just go make some food.”
“Yes.”
Dokyun nodded at her reply and was heading to the kitchen when he felt a sense of wrongness and stopped in his tracks.
‘Wait a minute.’
His head turned back toward her, where she was reading her book.
‘Somehow...’
A scenario where he was naturally the one making food had just been created.
Realizing this, Dokyun narrowed his eyes and glared at her. Sensing his gaze, she looked up at him and opened her mouth.
“What.”
Her tone was domineering, pressing down on him.
Feeling his body shrink back slightly, Dokyun forced a smile onto his face and spoke.
“Is ramen okay?”
It was the only thing he knew how to cook in this house.
A moment of silence hung in the air before she gave a short reply.
“Jinsun.”
“Yep.”
Hearing her answer, Dokyun’s body turned back toward the kitchen.
He had shown too many pathetic sides of himself today; he didn’t have the confidence to tell her to cook.
*
A while later, after they had finished eating, cleaned up, and washed up, he entered the bedroom and saw her already lying in bed, ready for sleep.
Dokyun moved carefully so as not to touch her, settled onto the bed, and spoke to her.
“Are you sleeping?”
“Not yet,” came the reply, her eyes still closed.
Dokyun watched her for a moment, then a new question popped into his head, and he asked.
“Will another personality be out tomorrow?”
It was a question about the day to come.
“Yes.”
A short affirmation.
Judging by her attitude during the day, he expected a formidable opponent.
As tension began to build inside him and he was about to ask another question, her lips parted once more.
“The car owner.”
“Ah.”
The car owner. The words sent another wave of tension through him.
“Um... what kind of person are they? Is there anything I should be careful about?”
The thought of a person who owned eight luxury foreign cars made him use honorifics without even realizing it.
As Dokyun fired off his questions, she seemed to think for a moment before answering.
“You two will get along well.”
His head tilted.
It was too abstract an answer.
As Dokyun stared at her, unable to fully grasp her meaning, she opened her eyes, glanced at him, then closed them again and continued.
“...Good luck.”
A sudden word of encouragement.
A sense of dread washed over him.
*
The next day, Dokyun understood at once what she had meant by “good luck.”
As he left the bedroom, he saw a figure.
Hair pushed back cleanly from the forehead with a headband.
A stretched-out white t-shirt and black shorts.
A woman was lying sideways on the sofa, a smartphone in one hand.
Just like the little brat, her distinctive attire made it clear at a glance that this was another personality.
As Dokyun stared blankly, the woman, who had been scrolling through her phone, turned her eyes toward him.
Her face, which had been caked in an expression of annoyance, broke into a lazy grin as she spotted him.
“Sup, Honeybee-dude.”
His gaze fell to her hand.
The screen of her smartphone, briefly visible, showed the main page of the online community he frequented.
A hand rose to his forehead of its own accord.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
After the princess, it was a forum addict.