Episode 2. She Was. (1)
It was a day heavy with grief.
My mother sighed that there would be other good men, asking why I had spent four years with the orphan she despised so much. It was the day even you, wearing that same apologetic look, had delayed the conversation about marriage once again.
Maybe all that stress had been the spark that lit the fuse.
I let out a breath and rose from my seat.
“Honestly... it’s hard to marry you. Let’s talk about it again next time.”
Did I really have to say that? Even knowing why you kept putting it off, was it right for me to drive a blade straight into your heart with words that cruel?
There was no one left who could answer that question.
Because you were already there, stabbed by a knife and spitting blood.
That hot spray of blood burst up and soaked my hands. It was warm—so warm it made my skin crawl—and that warmth brought tears to my eyes.
The murderer was still swinging the knife around, painting the world red, but I couldn’t even see him anymore.
“Run... don’t...!”
With blood filling your mouth, you could barely shape the words.
You must have meant for me not to cry, to run. Even now, even as you were truly dying, you were still worrying about me like the idiot you were.
“Siu, Siu!! Don’t close your eyes...! Please, please don’t close your eyes!”
Your eyes were slowly shutting, and even the hand that had been pushing me away dropped limp to the floor.
“Please... please don’t die... I’m sorry, I’m sorry, okay...?”
Maybe this was all my fault for pushing you so hard. If I had only waited—if I had simply waited until you were ready—none of this would have happened.
At that thought, tears spilled down my face.
And then you smiled.
“I lo...”
You started to say that you loved me, and then your voice broke off.
The light in your dim, wavering pupils went out, and only then did reality seem to crash down on me.
“...Ah. Ah, aah...!”
And just like that, you died.
With a sickening wet sound, pain rushed through me.
“Ah...”
Unable to endure that horrible agony, I collapsed over your body.
Then I closed my eyes.
I’m sorry. I really did love you.
********
When I opened my eyes again, I must have been a little over one year old.
It was an unbelievable story, but it seemed I had died after being stabbed by the murderer and then been reborn with my mind intact. Otherwise, there was no way I could have remembered you so vividly.
Even more unbelievable, I had opened my eyes in a shabby house that was little better than a slum.
I’d woken because this tiny body had been hungry enough to burst into tears on instinct.
All around me were children who looked barely old enough to toddle around, along with a wrinkled old woman who seemed to be their mother.
“—.”
“—.”
Voices I couldn’t understand passed back and forth.
Wrapped in a blanket that smelled musty and damp, I lay there under their gazes, as if I were some zoo exhibit on display.
And then I thought of something.
You too. Could you have been reborn like this as well?
Just as I had died and been reincarnated so quickly, perhaps you had also been reborn somewhere else.
I clung to that hope.
If I thought I could never see you again after you died protecting me, I wouldn’t be able to endure it.
So I seized the tiniest thread of hope that we might meet again.
And I prayed.
I begged a god I had never once believed in.
God, please.
Please let me see him again.
I’ll find him somehow, so please let us be tied together once more.
With that prayer, I cried.
“Waaah...!”
Like a child.
Or rather, in a child’s body, I cried miserably and helplessly.
“—!”
“—, —.”
As my crying grew more violent, one of the children—my sibling, I guessed—came over, picked me up, and tried to soothe me.
With those tiny hands, they patted my head, their face still soft with baby fat, and gave me a smile.
Their expression was bitter, as if smiling was the only thing they knew how to do.
But I felt nothing at the sight of them.
My body may have been howling loudly enough to wake the dead, but my mind held only thoughts of you.
I missed you.
I should have waited. I shouldn’t have kept hinting at marriage and pushing you like that.
We had dated for four years; you could have waited a little longer.
If I hadn’t badgered you, maybe you wouldn’t have died.
And maybe that really was true.
If I hadn’t gone to the cafe to talk about marriage, you wouldn’t have taken the knife meant for me and died instead.
If I hadn’t gone out first, if I hadn’t done that... you would never have had to sacrifice yourself.
So if this was how things ended, then it was my own damn fault.
Idiot that I was, I kept blaming myself and crying, while the children gathered around me fussed and soothed me in a flurry of movement.
“—!”
“—?”
But none of it mattered.
After all, the only meaning left in my life was the hope that you were still alive.
***
Time passed, and I turned two.
When I had first opened my eyes, I could barely crawl, but now I could at least walk on my own.
“Aria, you hungry?”
“No.”
“Just wait a little. The potatoes are almost done boiling.”
“Mm.”
By then, I could understand some of the other children who looked after me. My mind may have been that of an adult, but learning the language itself wasn’t very difficult.
I padded along on unsteady feet, deliberately ignoring the children trailing after me with round, worried eyes.
They were all my brothers and sisters.
I didn’t know why my parents had gone and had so many children despite having nothing, but I guessed the idea was to make us work the fields.
People in Korea used to have lots of children in the past too, so maybe it was something like that.
That was what I thought as I opened the door.
Because the house was just one cramped room, opening a single door was enough to reveal the world outside at once.
The blue sky and fierce sunlight spilled through the opening and shimmered across the room.
The sky was so blue and clear it looked untouched, and it was beautiful.
And then I saw it.
Shabby shacks as miserable as the one I lived in, all hemmed in by mountains, filled my view.
Since the village had been built in the middle of the mountains, the land was poor and barren, and the streets of this place that barely deserved to be called a village were full of children in clothes little better than rags.
The adults were all clinging to the fields and paddies, working the earth with their thin arms and legs, and their faces were lined with fatigue and worry.
It was the picture of a future with nowhere to go.
The children called this place Penrin Village, but no one knew what lay beyond it.
Of course, the adults weren’t much different, so everyone here was a frog in a well.
That was why, whenever I looked at this landscape, I came to the same conclusion.
This wasn’t Earth.
There were too many things that made no sense even for some rural backwater on Earth, and the longer time went on, the more painfully obvious it became.
If I had to put it into words, it was another world with a medieval sort of feel—unless I had somehow gone back to a much earlier age in the past.
“Huh? Ella’s already outside? Then I’m going to go play with Ella! You guys eat first!”
I heard the voice of one of the children, Noah, my second older brother, and he ran off toward the village.
This was a place without even the most basic means of contact, let alone proper electronic devices.
Maybe because of that, or maybe because it was only this village, the general level of education seemed far too low as well.
A world where people looked like Westerners, yet lived in poverty and squalor like this.
Having been dropped into a place like this, I felt a little lost.
How was I supposed to find you?
That was all I could think about.
“Aria, and you too! The potatoes are done, so come eat already!”
“Waaah, looks so good!”
Even as I thought that, the children smiled with delight at the sight of a single boiled potato.
I could only stare at them.
I wanted to marry you and raise children like these.
We used to joke about how many we’d have, laughing until we were breathless.
Now that I knew I could never have that, tears slipped down my cheeks.
“Aria, what are you doing not coming over yet... Hey, our little one’s crying again! It’s because you all want to eat the potatoes first!!”
“N-no! We were saving yours for Aria first...”
The children came over to me and held out the potatoes, still steaming hot.
Because I was crying, every one of them looked awkward and kept sneaking glances at me.
But that wasn’t why I was crying.
“Aria, it’s still hot, so be careful when you eat it!”
“...”
I took the potato the child offered me.
The children looked back and forth between me and the potato with bright, expectant eyes, hoping I’d eat it right away.
Unable to withstand their gaze, I bit into the potato.
The potato was warm.
Yes, it was so warm—just like your blood.
So I did nothing but cry.
I missed you.
“Ah, Aria! You got startled because it was hot! Sophia, hurry and bring some water!”
“Y-yes! Aria, don’t cry...”
Sorry to say, I’d ended up worrying them.
Still, the crying wouldn’t stop so easily.
This was a village called Penrin, with not a single person I knew.
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