Plagiarism and Knockoffs Are Not the Same

The funeral was a modest thing. No cousins, no parents, and no telling who would come—or whether word had even reached any of Doona's acquaintances. Still, sharp as she was, she'd had a funeral plan in place.

"Haaah..."

The service people handled everything. And me? I sat there and took the money. Counted it. Stood back up and bowed. Stared blankly at Doona's photo. That was the whole of my job. Even the mourners amounted to nothing but the cops who'd interrogated me, and once they left there was nothing left to do, so I stepped outside. There's always a smoking room beside a funeral hall.

"What's a kid doing out here..."

"I'm not a kid."

"How old are you?"

"Sevent—... Twenty-seven."

"What, you're older than me...? Ma'am?"

I glared. A college student, drowning in a suit that didn't fit him yet.

"You've got a really unusual look, though."

"What."

I ground the cigarette out and pulled another. The student stared at me like I was some kind of lunatic, then vanished. Now the smoking room was mine alone. The smell of a chain-smoked pack felt like home.

We couldn't find a suicide note, but under the circumstances we have no ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠choice but to rule it a suicide...

I got up and went back to Doona's side. Strangely, the tears wouldn't come. It felt as if the white chrysanthemums were weeping in my place. I counted the condolence envelopes. Maybe the cops had pitied me; they'd left fifty thousand won. About forty dollars.

Fifty thousand won.

"Ugh."

The plan had a ten-year term, didn't it? She couldn't possibly have finished paying it off. So what was I supposed to do about the funeral costs? It would crack ten million won without even trying—seven thousand dollars and then some. My head hurt.

"Haa."

I sighed and leaned against the wall. Pulling my phone out in a place like this felt all wrong. I was sitting there doing nothing when the noise outside started to swell.

"What now."

I went out. Funeral wreaths, they call them. When somebody dies, the flowers get delivered, and quite a lot of them had arrived.

"What is all this?"

"Ah, these. Every one of them says where it came from, so you can check for yourself."

Not one. More than twenty, easy, coming in at once. In a moment the path to the mourning room had turned into a field of white flowers.

"Mm."

So Doona really had lived hard. I read them one by one. I wanted to see just what kind of grateful people they were.

"Huh?"

Not what I'd expected.

"Why...?"

Every last one had come from a company that fancied itself somebody.

Even...

Even the place I'd worked, back in my first life.

A long while later, the procession of mourners followed. In a flash the mourning room felt like a dinner for the political and business set, and when I tried to rush around among them my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠body simply wouldn't hold.

"Cough. Ugh."

"Aigoo, miss. And you're so frail..."

Unable to watch any longer, the older women from the funeral service told me to stay put. Truly, I was grateful. They even took the condolence money for me. All I did was bow to the mourners like a machine.

"This must be terribly hard. Miss Doona was such a remarkable talent."

A mustached man from some major corporation said it with a bitter little smile. A talent—though from where those companies stood, the word they meant was the other one. Not a gift. A human disaster.

"Here, please take this. You've been through a great deal."

And he wasn't the only surprise in the room. My old boss showing up, I could let that slide. There was also a face I was glad to see and bitter about in the same breath. The friend I'd been closest to, back when I worked at Lonabel.

"Ah, hello."

"Thank you for coming."

"Yes... Doona..."

Baek Seoyeon was there too, dark brown hair falling to her shoulders. To think she and Doona had been friends.

Time tore past in the confusion. Only when the funeral was nearly over did the thought arrive. Am I dreaming?

"Before the procession... you'll need to confirm things in the mortuary."

I took my place in line outside the room because some man had said so. They told me to wait. I couldn't see why there was a line at all. I was the only one who needed to see her face. Soon enough they let me in. It was cold inside.

No. It can't be.

On the hard bed lay a woman covered in white cloth.

"..."

It was Doona.

"Ha... haha."

A laugh came out of me. I dropped to the floor.

"If you have any last words you'd like to offer..."

"Last?"

I hadn't understood it, looking only at the portrait. I understood when I saw my little sister right in front of me, her face made up in stark white.

"Last words. That's a thing to say... Yeah. Easy, isn't it."

I bit down on my lip, trying to stay calm, and kept swallowing. My mouth had been dry for a long time. Even so, I didn't want to send her off looking like I was crying. People say this is what always comes back in a moment like this—the last moment you had with the dead, and what you did with it. What had I done? Like a goddamn idiot, I'd asked her to fetch me some water. Sent her some useless texts.

"Hhk... hk..."

"If you have nothing to say..."

The white cloth quietly covered Doona's face.

"This is the invoice, including the unpaid balance."

"She kept paying, didn't she?"

My sister had always been like that. Insurance, funeral plans—if you could sign up early, you should. In my first life I'd joined every plan the company recommended. I'd only skimmed the contracts, so I didn't remember them well.

"It was a ten-year coverage product. The problem is, the payments weren't actually being made."

"Hold on. My sister's a patent attorney, and you're telling me the payments didn't go through? She missed them?"

"Precisely. Even very important people skip payments and end up in the news, don't they? Being a patent attorney is no exception. If you're curious how capable our legal team is..."

Separately, I did remember that legal teams are terrifying. An assistant manager at my old company used to talk exactly like this funeral rep. If you want to see how good the company legal team is, go ahead and cause an incident. In a different sense, my sister's diligence seemed to have come back around in a big way. A whole patent attorney, and she signs up for a funeral plan this shameless. If Doona had been standing here instead of me... she was smart. She'd have had something to say, wouldn't she?

"Would... paying in installments be possible..."

"Of course, valued customer."

The funeral man put on his sales smile. What was I supposed to say when I barely understood any of it? I came home with my own stupidity sitting heavy on me, and I was tired. I peeled my clothes off any which way and dove into bed. All that had come back with me was the bill, and my sister's funeral portrait.

Maybe it was the black bands slashed diagonally across both sides. I couldn't decide where to put it. Even so, if I knew my sister, she'd want to look at me every day. Beside the alarm clock at the head of the bed seemed right.

By the way, has your older sister signed up for a plan? We offer appliances and all sorts of benefits. Pay your dues and we'll even send you on a cruise...

Bastard. Those were his parting words?

I hammered the pillow with my fist. I was beginning to understand why stress relief existed. By the time the pillow had burst completely and the stuffing spat out like scraps of flesh, I just sat there and thought.

"It's a second life anyway."

Couldn't I just end it here? I was getting tired. No. Not tired, exactly. Just... well...

"Haa."

I didn't know. I didn't know what I was feeling.

I ate lobster crackers. They'd been in the house. A huge bag, of all things, zipper and everything. Looked like my sister had hidden them to eat herself.

Unnie should only eat healthy things.

And a kid like that was going to buy me chicken.

"Haa. Suicide."

The moment I pictured her face, question marks filled my head like fog. Why had she killed herself? She'd smiled at me every single day. Had something out there been that hard? I couldn't find the cause and effect.

The elder said he was grateful today. He had no idea registering a patent mattered this much.

She'd seemed like someone living content with her work. I couldn't begin to guess. If there was one thing I could pin it on... maybe it was me. The one who'd already failed a life as a chain-smoking pest. I didn't know, and the lobster crackers had left my throat dry, so I dug through the fridge. Maybe it was thanks to my sister, the Dr. Pepper fanatic. The fridge was packed with cans.

"Dr. Pepper is a god."

Click. Gulp, gulp. Crunch, crunch.

...

"Doona..."

Why doesn't any of it taste like anything, Doona.

Time went on whether I wanted it to or not. The only difference was that nobody sat beside me. Life drifted, quietly, back into an ordinary day. Today, too, I read web novels.

"What. Another female-lead story."

A heroine novel, sure enough. You'd better succeed more than I did. I went into the gallery the way I always did. Today I started to write something, then stopped. I just couldn't be bothered. I read other posts instead.

A life starving to death one day at a time. Reading the gallery was where I found my joy. Horror Poker had a fairly thick fanbase. Horror Gambling had ripped it off. Thanks to that, the gallery was blazing, and I was dying to know how His Majesty the King of Kindling felt about being the firewood.

"Life's fucked."

An already fucked life, and the only pleasure left in it was lurking the galleries. That feeling every full-time NEET gets at least once. A sense of crisis washed over me, thick and sour: if I didn't do something, I was finished.

"What I've still got to pay... inheritance tax... the funeral plan... what else is there..."

The more I thought about it, the more I felt like I'd turned into a complete idiot. Enough thinking. Turn on the TV, maybe. Or do something else. Even at the end ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the worrying, no answer came. So I'd been less bored than I realized, just because Doona was there.

"Why did you make that choice?"

I asked her photo. She only smiled. She didn't answer. If something was hard, she should have said so first. A second life anyway, nothing left to cling to. If the problem had been someone else, I'd have killed them. If the problem had been me, I'd have erased myself. The way regret arrives once a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠person is gone, useless thoughts chewed through me. If I kept this up and my head cracked open, that wouldn't do, so I decided to stop. I buried my face in the pillow.

Doona, let me off the hook for today.

...

Wait.

An idea flashed.

"You know, I did write web novels for a while, right?"

Wasn't plagiarism just another kind of fraud? Our Doona had hated scammers so much. I wasn't fond of them either.

"All I ever got for living in the galleries every day was people cursing me out."

Maybe this was my chance to show Doona what a cool unnie looked like.

"Doona... this unnie knows exactly how to drop a gallery nuke. Scarily well, you know?"

Not some worthless shitpost. Something extremely, extremely productive. And if Doona's soul happened to be wandering around—well. Like watching a YouTube stream from heaven, wouldn't she smile if she saw me?

"The original author and the platform both have to be tearing their hair out over the plagiarism, right?"

Thirty-two years of a first life at a major corporation. Twenty-seven years of a second life as a shut-in in the corner of a room. Fifty-nine years combined. A great sage, no less.

"Looks fucking pathetic."

Bedroom web-novel critic, Lee Hana. Today, right here, I decided I would become an older sister my little sister could be proud of.

A plagiarist? You just ran into the wrong person.

"Heh heh heh. Let's see you eat a loss."

At first it had been half a joke. But the more I looked, the more problems turned up that I hadn't expected.

"What. They just ran the original through an AI."

2026, the Year of the Fire Horse.

I had discovered the locusts infesting the platform.

"So that was Doona's little sister?"

"Older sister, I heard. She doesn't have a little sister."

"Older sister? That kid was the older sister?"

Baek Seoyeon, white-hat hacker at Lonabel. Today, at her friend's funeral, she had met a peculiar person.

"I'd heard plenty of stories about Doona's sister complex, but..."

Snow-white hair. Red eyes. Dark circles sunk deep beneath them. She had looked, to anyone watching, like a sickly, fragile little kid...

"And that person is the older sister. Will wonders never cease."

Baek Seoyeon stroked her chin.

"You heading over?"

"There's something I need to deliver. She told me absolutely not to come inside, but still."

Once she'd steadied herself, she let out a long sigh in the tent bar. They were calling Doona's death a suicide, and she couldn't help wondering if the cause was sitting at home.

Could the one they're calling her older sister...

No. Doona had seemed to love that sister to a pathological degree. While Seoyeon shook her head hard, the friend drinking with her spoke as if the whole thing were pathetic.

"Shouldn't you quit chugging straight from the bottle?"

"One bottle before I go is fine."

"...This is your sixth bottle of chugging."

"Huh?"

Baek Seoyeon, thirty-one. She had been fairly confident she could hold her liquor.

"Oh... haha."

Thud.

Today, she confirmed exactly what she was like drunk.

"Sleep it off. I'm gone. The tab's yours."

The friend left her side without a second thought.