The Wish That Came True
I came home at dawn, still clutching the orb of unknown origin.
Fortunately, Mom had cried herself into exhaustion, and she was fast asleep—so deep that she never even noticed me coming in.
Lyin g on my bed, I held the orb up and turned it over and over, turning the words of that mysterious woman over and over in my mind—the same ethereal woman I'd met in a dream just hours before.
Inside the orb, she had said, was the worst demon of all—the one that had brought humanity to ruin.
For reasons unknown, the demon had chosen me, and it would grant me a single wish.
It was utter nonsense.
I couldn't bring myself to believe that demons existed in the first place.
And yet…
The impossible things I had experienced just hours before lingered in my mind with a vividness that felt dangerously real.
A wish… a wish, huh.
I had resented my little sister, yes—but I had never truly wished her dead.
And if she had died because of my wish, of all things, then accepting her death became all the more impossible.
Even now, the guilt still clung to my heart, sticky and unrelenting.
But that wasn't all.
If things went on like this, I could see Mom doing something terrible before long.
Just days ago, unable to bear the grief of losing Jia, she had tried to slit her own wrists, and I had barely managed to stop her.
Even if she never attempted it again, I doubted she would ever return to anything resembling a normal life.
Even though I was still alive… Mom's eyes, now and forever, were fixed only on my sister.
Which meant that if I truly could make a wish, then the wish had already chosen itself.
I wanted my little sister to come back to life.
I wanted Jia to return to us.
Maybe I would end up resenting her all over again—but even so, I wanted her back.
Gazing down at the orb, I wished with everything I had.
Wished for my little sister to come back to life.
I pleaded desperately in my heart, and—just in case—said the words aloud as well.
But…
Nothing happened.
There was no dramatic burst of light, no sister materializing before my eyes.
"Was I so worn out I was hallucinating? Ha…"
The moment I realized that everything I'd hoped for was nothing more than my own delusion, a wave of hollow exhaustion washed over me. Having let go of hope, I dropped the orb carelessly onto the floor and slowly closed my eyes.
Everything had become a bother.
Demons.
All of it.
Right now, I just wanted to sleep.
I just… wanted to die like this.
"Dohyun! Dohyuuuun―!!!"
The sound of my name, called out in a frenzy, snapped my eyes open.
Realizing the voice was Mom's, my heart began hammering wildly at the thought that something dreadful had happened, and I bolted out of my room.
There she was—Mom, hugging someone standing in the open front doorway, sobbing her heart out.
Naturally, my gaze went to the one other figure in that house—someone who should no longer exist there, besides Mom and me.
"Ah…"
A low groan escaped me the moment I saw her.
She—three years younger than I—stood there dazed beneath the dim moonlight, completely bare, her skin without a single blemish, as though she had just been born into this world.
Swhoosh.
From within Mom's sobbing, from inside the embrace she was clinging to, the girl's eyes lifted and found mine.
She wore the exact face and body of the sister I had last seen at the moment of my death, and as our eyes met, a faint smile slowly spread across her expressionless features.
At the sight of that smile, I felt a colossal shudder well up from somewhere deep inside me and trickle down across my skin.
My heart began pounding like a madman, and my face twisted in horror.
Some instinct told me this could not be real—and that it should not be.
Something was wrong.
Something had gone deeply, fundamentally wrong.
An existence that had no right to be—a contradiction—an impure something wearing my sister's skin—should never have appeared at this point in time.
Driven by a sliver of hope, I twisted my head back to search the room for the thing I had left on the floor.
The floor was empty.
The thing that should have been there was gone.
The orb was gone.
And the orb was said to contain the demon.
Which meant that if the orb had vanished… then the demon had been released.
Then where was the demon that had been freed?
The moment I turned my head back, my eyes met my sister's once more.
And when I saw her smiling more deeply than before, I knew.
My wish had been granted.
"Mom! I got into the same university as Oppa!"
Someone had wrapped her arms around Mom's back from behind as she folded laundry in the living room, announcing it in a voice brimming with joy.
"Aigoo~! That's my girl!"
Embracing her daughter Jia in return, Mom wore the happiest expression in the world.
The university I attended was in Seoul, but within it I ranked only in the lower-middle tier. For Jia, who had been accepted into Haneul University—the country's absolute pinnacle—this was an absurdly easy admission, a deliberate step down. But to Mom, none of that mattered.
Even if Jia had decided not to go to university at all, Mom would have smiled and embraced her daughter's decision all the same.
It was only natural.
The mere fact that the daughter she'd thought was dead had come back to life was, for Mom, a happiness too enormous to measure.
"Oppa, I got in! Ta-da!"
Jia, seated at the living room table, thrust her phone screen toward me—displaying the word ACCEPTED—where I sat quietly watching the two of them.
"…Good for you. Congrats."
"Thanks, Oppa. It makes me so happy when you're happy for me."
When I forced a smile and offered my congratulations, Jia's face bloomed into a beaming grin.
Looking into her two dark eyes as they curved with laughter, I found myself thinking what I thought every single time.
She's beautiful.
Black hair falling flawlessly to the small of her back without a single strand out of place. Skin that was silky and flawlessly white, as though it had never once touched this world since birth.
Her face was delicately framed, and the body beneath her clothes—a woman of one hundred seventy-odd centimeters, an ideal height—showed no trace of excess fat or anything of the sort.
Her movements carried the suppleness of someone who had practiced yoga for years, and her body held a moderate, balanced tone of muscle that made it impossible to believe she hadn't exercised in ages.
Though two years were fast approaching since Jia had gone missing, she looked exactly as she had at her high school graduation, as if age itself refused to touch her.
Girl and woman, woman and girl—an impression that was both at once coexisted in her, and she retained that noble, divinely wrought beauty just as she had on the first day, like a creation God had labored over with loving care.
It was identical.
Even after half a year had passed since Jia returned to life, I could not find a single difference between that face, that body, that personality, that voice, those memories—and the Jia of the past.
It was genuinely difficult to believe that this thing was a demon wearing my sister's skin.
"In just a few days, I'll be living at the same university as you, Oppa? I'm so happy…"
Jia slid up close to me and took both my hands in hers, letting her joy spill out openly.
The warmth that flowed from her clasped fingers was living proof that my little sister existed here, vividly, in reality.
The moment I felt this impossible phenomenon with my own hands, goosebumps erupted across my entire body, and I yanked my hands back before I could think.
"Ah…"
At this gesture of refusal, Jia flinched in surprise—then, as if it were nothing, gave me a soundless smile once more.
Feeling a stab of guilt at her usual, tender manner, I nonetheless denied it again, with great difficulty, inside my own heart.
That thing… is not my sister.
"Oh dear… Mom's going to run to the mart up the street real quick. I just remembered today's the sale on matsutake mushrooms—our Jia's favorite."
Mom suddenly recalled something she'd forgotten, and Jia smiled warmly as she asked,
"Should I come with you?"
"You stay home with Dad— I mean, stay home, sweetie~ Daughters should stay home and rest."
"Aww~ and I missed my chance for a date with you, Mom."
"Hoho, my girl does have such a sweet tongue."
"Hehe!"
Mom and Jia exchanged words and glances brimming with love and happiness, sweet enough to drip like honey—a pair of doting lovers.
Half a year had now passed since my sister came back.
Mom had fully recovered the woman she used to be.
The self I had worn myself out trying to bring back, day after day at her side and failed—Jia restored her to normal on the strength of a single reason alone: that she had simply come back alive.
"I'm off then~ Dohyun! Take good care of your sister!"
"…Yeah."
I was the one who knew the secret Mom didn't, and living uncomfortably between the two of them, I realized this was my chance.
A moment when only the two of us would be left in the house.
To be honest, such moments had come a few times before—but back then, I hadn't been ready.
Now, with half a year behind me and a resolve I'd built up in my own way, I could finally speak.
Leaving my sister behind on the sofa, engrossed in her phone, I tucked the knife I'd hidden away into the back of my waistband and walked over to her.
"Jia… no, rather…"
At my call, the thing looked up from her phone at the figure standing before her, gazing at me with eyes that were innocent and faintly puzzled.
"[Demon of Existence]"
The moment I murmured the demon's name—the name I'd heard from that monster—she blinked slowly and studied me for a long moment.