Kang Mari.
Kang Mari.
In the darkened hospital room, Dad lay on one side.
Seeing him so shockingly gaunt, I figured Park Ji-hoon had been right when he said I'd been asleep for two months.
"Si-yoon... Si-yoon... Daddy... Daddy needs you..."
Even in his sleep, he was looking for me.
Watching him mutter in his sleep like that made my head spin.
Suddenly, a nosebleed streamed down from my nose. Park Ji-hoon, who was next to me, roughly wiped it with a tissue and then shoved the tissue up my nostril.
I turned back to look at Dad again, now seriously emaciated.
"Ah... holy shit... what the hell is this..."
I dragged my uncooperative arm with some effort and took hold of Dad's sleeping hand.
The moment my hand touched his, he instinctively clutched it even in his unconscious state.
Then, as if word had spread that I'd woken up, one after another, people began arriving at Dad's hospital room.
From CEO Jang Seong-man to Grandmother, Grandfather, and the entire Lee Gi-seok family.
I explained the situation and quickly sent them all back out.
"Hey, Tae-oh. Ji-hoon. Take Da-yeon and wait outside."
"You sure you'll be okay without us? You can barely move."
"I'm fine, so get out."
"Got it. Call if you need us."
Once both of them had gone outside, I was alone with Dad in the room. I struggled to crawl up onto his bed.
"Ah, fuck... this is goddamn brutal..."
I flopped down and stared at Dad, whose mouth was hanging open.
My eyelids grew heavy, and my body was telling me it wanted to just fall asleep like this, but I casually ignored it with sheer willpower.
"Dad."
I spoke to him with a smile, but there was no response.
"I'm... hungry."
At those words, Dad slowly opened his eyes.
Even though he didn't have the strength to move, he tried to sit up.
Even in this situation...
At a single word from me, he was trying to haul up a body that had been practically dying like a goddamn fool...
"Did you sleep well?"
"...Si-yoon...?"
"It's been a while... hasn't it?"
"Si-yoon...!!!"
Dad pulled me into a trembling embrace and then began sobbing for a long while.
"Did you not wash because I wasn't around? You stink."
"Heh heh..."
I spoke from within his arms, and he seemed both pitiful and pathetic.
"I'm sorry..."
I didn't see it, but even if my daughter ended up becoming a mother... well, what can you do...
No matter how much reality feels like a god's prank, no matter how fucked up it is...
I've decided to just live as I am now.
I'm already perfectly adjusted to this body anyway, so as long as I get my head straight, there won't be a single problem.
What's done is done, after all, and there's no undoing what's happened.
And I know that fact better than anyone else...
Two months, my ass. When I checked the calendar, twenty-one days had passed.
And Dad, next to me, had been stuck by my side for more than four hours a day.
The fact that my body wouldn't listen to me after not moving for just twenty-one days was seriously... a fucking headache, but...
I started rehab exercises to recover quickly.
Kim Tae-oh and Park Ji-hoon wheeled my chair outside.
"Tae-oh."
"What're you calling me for?"
"You connected to this too?"
".....?"
At my statement, Park Ji-hoon naturally planted his forehead on the ground.
I smirked and said to Ji-hoon,
"Get up, dumbass."
"Yep..."
"The method was seriously fucked-up, but, haah... you did good."
"...Really?"
"I figure if it weren't for you, Dad really would've died."
"......Heh heh heh... as expected, my judgment is out of this world~"
"But you still touched my chest, so as a mitigating factor, let's just cut off both your hands."
"......Excuse me?"
"Honestly, I was planning on cementing you and dumping you in the sea, so this is pretty lenient, isn't it?"
"I misheard you...?"
"Didn't you hear me just fine?"
Park Ji-hoon smoothly planted his head back on the ground.
"Tae-oh."
"Yes."
Kim Tae-oh, having read the room, promptly switched into formal speech.
"I gotta piss. Let's go to the bathroom."
"Yessir."
As Park Ji-hoon tried to get up, I said in a low voice,
"You tryna get up?"
Park Ji-hoon, apparently knowing his mistake, promptly corrected his posture.
I'm the type who feels zero aversion to the pain of muscles tearing during a workout or to breaking a sweat.
And I've had hands-on experience making unresponsive muscles move.
Specifically, from back when I was a newborn.
So now too, I'm finishing my rehab at a pace you can't even compare to an ordinary person,
but even so, I wanted to take it a bit easy, so I stayed in the wheelchair until I was fully recovered.
Dad saw my belly pudge sticking out and smiled.
"What're you smiling at?"
"It's cute~"
"Sure..."
Dad touched my belly, and it was a little annoying, but I just let him.
After all that he went through, if I told him he couldn't even touch this much...
I'd be the worst unfilial daughter around.
The only thing I'm a little worried about... is that his displays of affection have gotten way more intense than before.
Almost to an obsessive-guy level...
As fast as Dad and I recovered our health, we just as quickly regained our psychological stability.
Aside from the ticklish sensation of moving a body that had been motionless, I was back to normal now.
Right after my body recovered, I started exercising.
Even more intensely than before...
Dad, who had lost a lot of weight, gained it back to a point where he looked good again.
And the songs Dad released...
The moment those songs—the kind that dragged your mood down to its creepiest low—went up on Neotube, they dominated the view counts.
And once again, the three-syllable name Kim Ji-ho was etched into people's consciousness.
During all that, even if it meant missing school, I poured all my time into filming My Love Was a Gumiho.
That was because we were about a month behind on the backlog, so the filming schedule had gotten quite hectic.
During the time I was filming, the bright and cheerful songs Dad made—songs that felt like witnessing the end of all brightness—carved his name into every chart in the world once again.
A peaceful day, after Dad and I had both fully recovered and the busy schedules were over.
I lay on the sofa and looked at Dad.
Whatever had happened that day, Dad never, ever asked me about it.
It was the same for everyone else around me...
Dad was humming while he cooked.
"Dad."
"Yeah?"
"Call Uncle Han Jeong-min for me."
He flinched, and then his demeanor turned sharply cold.
"......No."
"It's okay now, so call him..."
"......No, I think it's not okay after all."
"I remember everything. I'm fine. Do you want me to start by telling you why I did what I did?"
"......"
I stopped sniffing Beta's paw pads midway, got up from the sofa, and sat down at the table.
Dad slowly followed and took a seat.
"I think... I have memories from a past life."
"...?"
"But, I don't know exactly whose memories they are."
I'd decided I should tell Dad a certain amount of the truth, but I couldn't reveal absolutely everything.
Because I can't exactly go, 'I'm Kang Han-seong!'
"Remember the 138 I painted? The painting of Mom that's in Switzerland right now."
"Ah... yeah."
"That's Grandmother."
"...Huh?"
"Amy Allen. The moment I suddenly heard Grandmother's name from Da-yeon's grandfather, my head felt like it was splitting open. And then the memories came stabbing into my head."
"......"
"In my memories, Grandmother, Amy Allen, had no teeth, and her fingernails and toenails were gone too... She wasn't wearing clothes, and she was even missing one of her breasts... Her genitals were torn up, and her bare white body was covered in all kinds of tattoos, as if someone had sent a message."
Dad looked extremely shocked by what I was saying.
"And her body was frozen stiff, like ice... The fact that I have memories of cold probably means it was winter."
"...That... was Grandmother?"
"Yeah. It definitely wasn't Mom. But after hearing what Grandfather Lee Gi-seok said, I became certain that it was her."
"Do you know who did it?"
"No, but the man who was sobbing and crying while looking at her like that—maybe because he was in shock—he gradually started turning into a murderer. On his right shoulder, there was a long, big scar from a bullet grazing him, and on the opposite collarbone, there was a mark that looked like an 'M.' On his chest and shoulder, there was a tiger tattoo."
Dad nodded silently, as if he'd heard something from Lee Gi-seok.
"But... no matter how I think about it, the man looked Korean."
"That's Si-yoon's maternal grandfather..."
"Really? That explains why he was handsome."
"......"
"Anyway, I have way too many questions... These memories that popped up out of nowhere aren't organized at all, and I want to know more. Call Uncle Jeong-min..."
"Alright..."
Dad went into his room and explained the situation over the phone.
And the next morning, for the first time in several years, Uncle Han Jeong-min was standing right in front of me.
I felt a little bad for suddenly thinking this, but he really was ugly.
"Hello."
"Si-yoon!"
He hugged me tight the moment he saw me, and I said to him,
"Still as ugly as ever today, I see?"
"Aha ha ha."
Han Jeong-min pinched my nose. I'd heard from Dad that he'd stopped by once while I was unconscious.
After exchanging some everyday small talk, I got down to business.
"Do you know Grandmother's name?"
"Amy Allen."
I showed Uncle Jeong-min a photo on my phone.
"Her face—is it exactly like this painting?"
"Oh...? It's exactly the same?"
"...Did she come to Korea from Russia?"
At that, Han Jeong-min looked at Dad, sighed, and nodded.
"If you go around talking about this, it'll be really dangerous... You absolutely must not mention it, especially not publicly in front of people, understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Ji-ho, same goes for you."
"Yes."
"The thing is... there's a massive organization in our country called Taebaek..."
""We know.""
"...? Just listen."
""Yessir.""
When Dad and I said the same thing at the same time, Han Jeong-min chuckled a little and went on,
Skipping the explanation about Taebaek.
Amy Allen had been chased by someone and hid herself away in an orphanage in East Russia where there were ethnic Koreans, he said.
And there, she gave birth to Mari and nursed her for some time, he said.
Because Amy Allen barely knew Korean, she gave her the most Korean-sounding name she could think of: Kang Mari...
But she grew more and more anxious even there, and one day, she made a request to Han Jeong-min, who was the brightest child in the orphanage.
She asked him to take her daughter and go to Korea...
Han Jeong-min had been on the verge of departing for Korea at the time, so he accepted that request, he said.
And with those parting words, Amy Allen left Mari behind and vanished somewhere.
Han Jeong-min then took Mari and headed for Korea, he said.
And as time passed, Han Jeong-min, wanting to achieve the goal he'd harbored since childhood and using his exceptionally sharp mind, massively grew his wealth, he said.
Han Jeong-min had always been curious about why Amy Allen had been so anxious and so constantly on edge.
And then one day, Han Jeong-min, who had been making his money work for him in Korea, finally learned the truth of that day... and the identities of the ones who had done that to Amy Allen, he said.
"Those people... are they dead?"
"...In a horrifically gruesome way... They were killed by a monster, the founder of Tiger in Taebaek... a man named Kang Han-seong..."
"May I know the names of those criminals?"
"Hmm... I don't know their names, but they were members of the Suka Family."
What a relief... Truly... truly... what a relief... that he'd been a member of the Suka Family...
"So do you also know that I'm the granddaughter of that person called Kang Han-seong?"
"...Of course I do."
Han Jeong-min knew far more than I'd expected.
He also knew that the current ruler of S Company had given the order to kill me, Kang Han-seong.
And having heard rumors that S Company was searching for Kang Han-seong's child, Han Jeong-min had started in Korea, then moved through Turkey, India, and even China to protect Mari.
With hundreds under his command and using ghost companies, he'd threatened S Company's financial lifelines worldwide to draw their attention away.
And even now, he said, he was pouring money into cutting off Taebaek's funding.
"Isn't that too dangerous?"
"...Even so, I made a promise to Mari. I vowed that the world you live in, Si-yoon, would be clean..."
Taebaek is... looking for Mari?
If... and hypothetically if... they so much as touch the people around me...
I'll make it look like Russia all over again.
I looked at the photo of Mom that was hanging up.
Kang Mari.
Ever since the past, I've spent my whole life thinking about how to erase sadness.
And the conclusion I reached was simply to laugh like an idiot and have fun, or keep myself busy.
Because the more you dwell on how sad you are,
or the farther you spiral into delusions that never even happened,
or the harder you try to brand something into your head—the deeper it gets.
Notflix kept sending me endless messages of thanks.
Something about how they were so truly grateful that as soon as I recovered, I'd set aside everything else to help them out, and so on.
As a result, the filming schedule, which had originally needed to stretch all the way to winter break of my second year, had been shortened considerably.
So by now, with the first semester finals just ahead, filming was more or less in the can.
If there was one disappointment, though, it was that I'd unavoidably had to skip the school field trip this time around as well.
During the filming period, whenever I lay down in my lodging, Dad came by every single day, slept beside me, and then went back.
Today was no different; Dad stopped by, and he fell asleep with me.
Maybe it was because he'd had to spend such long stretches apart from me.
He burrowed deeper and deeper into my arms and started breathing deeply.
And I stroked his head.
There probably aren't many families where an eighteen-year-old daughter sleeps with her dad,
but I only grew in body; the memories of when we slept together all day long back when I was a newborn still come back to me as if it were yesterday, and it hasn't felt any different.
Dad might look like he's about to fall asleep straight away, but it's always me who drops off first.
I can confidently say my sleep-onset speed is faster than anyone's.
Within thirty seconds of thinking, 'Time to sleep~,' I'm already out.
Like right now...
Hwaaaaahhh... fuuuuuuuu....