CH 135

When I shoved my hand under my pillow, I felt a piece of paper. I thought I heard something other than the mattress creaking every time we moved, but this seemed to be the reason. I pulled it out from under the pillow and held it up. The other man in my arms grew tense.

The item was quite eye-catching. It was a thin, yellow paper with red pictographs scribbled on it. I smirked. “It’s a paper talisman.”

“…”

When did he receive this? Last time, he brought a cross, and this time, it was a talisman.

I was going to gripe about whether I looked like some monster to him but stopped. Although I moved from the mansion to human bodies, I technically started as a spirit bound to a haunted house. Perhaps such charms would have worked on me back then, before my love and I switched places.

Now, charms didn’t work on me at all.

“These things are useless against me because I didn’t rob this person of their body. I just ended up sharing it through reasonable methods. Besides, when we switched, I ate up all the power that you left behind in the mansion… Something as shabby as this will never work, don’t you think?” I looked down at him and chuckled. He watched as I crumpled the talisman and threw it across the room.

“Maybe it’ll work when there are no more humans left in this world who prefer to live over dying. There’s probably no other method than that,” I said, and his face fell. As a human, he knew that this was an impossible feat.

People were afraid of death. To me, death felt like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, but those whose cocoons had never been torn open thought differently.

Frankly speaking, I couldn’t relate to that even when I thought back to when I was human. To me, the memory of death was merely the moment when I saw the car right in front of me. Afterward, I painlessly wandered through the mansion and met the Child. That was all.

I didn’t have the pain of parting nor lingering regrets about the living world.

Death was merely reincarnation as a different being. That was probably why I could easily detour from the mind of a human. I heard that only human beings could muse about death and believe in gods and religion.

A child’s soul unacquainted with religion was free from all teachings.

“But if it makes you feel better, you’re welcome to bring anything you want. You can use as much of my money, so do what you wish since you’re probably bored,” I added, pitying how discouraged he must be about his failure. Eventually, he covered his face with his hands. It seemed like he didn’t want to show me the despair written on his face. Even so, I knew that only I could see his face, so I didn’t feel anxious.

Instead, the scars on his wrist caught my eye. The scars never passed the middle of his wrist. His scars would always be incomplete, and that was endearing in my eyes. His assortment of weapons that were useless against me was cute. Slapping me with a bouquet would be more painful than any of those.

I bowed my head down and kissed his wounds.

His shoulders flinched. Since he covered his face, I didn’t know what expression he was making, but his exposed lips were trembling. I bit his ashen lips then whispered in his ear, “If you don’t want to stay in that body, I’ll do what you wish for.”

“…”

“There are plenty of dying people.” I pulled away, and as expected, he shook his head. Face white in fear, he hurriedly pulled me toward him.

“N-no, you don’t need to… Haeseo,” he muttered.

Seeing as he called me by my name, he must have felt desperate. I stared at him then grinned. I pushed back his sweat-drenched hair and gave him the answer that he wanted. “Okay.”

Relieved, he released all his tension. I kept fiddling with his bangs. He was so pitiful and cute. He must have believed that he overcame a big hurdle, but that was far from reality.

…Unlike my nuance, I wanted him to stay in that body for as long as possible. I was planning on letting him have the futile dream that he could one day return my body. I knew that this would improve our relationship.

‘Do you know how long it has been since I left that body? You raised 80% of that body. The growth of those arms, legs, vocal cords, lungs, eyes, and brain were all according to your willpower. I could no longer call that my body. It’s yours. Even if you return it, nothing will end or change,’ I thought to myself. However, that truth would harm him, so it seemed better to hide it.