CH 142

The human body was a pain. One had to eat regularly and consume a balance of all nutrients. One couldn’t have too little physical activity in a day. It was amazing how I was even still alive so far. I felt so small as I walked along the river wearing a hood over my head for the sake of my health. I took frequent breaks on my walk and stared at the sky dyed in sunset colors.

I was tired.

It took me over an hour just to eat this small whole-wheat sandwich. Everything that I should have done regularly was so tedious. But still, this was a vast improvement from before, when I was cooped up inside the home. Plus, he stayed by my side on my way to recovery.

Perhaps thanks to that, I grew used to him because he always took up a corner of my vision. The excellent adaptability of a living human was quite scary. At the same time, I felt the greatness of time—I was less loathsome of this situation than before. From time to time, I thought that I wasn’t fine with the way things were, but resistance was already futile. What more could I do here?

He probably knew my current state. He was extremely perceptive when it came to me. That was probably why he could so nonchalantly ask me to travel with him. I frowned at this bitter possibility and said, “If I…”

“If you refuse me until the end,” he continued my sentence, even though I didn’t say much. “Although I don’t even want to entertain that possibility,” he added quickly then sighed. He closed the travel booklet that he was reading and tapped his fingers on the cover. His rhythmic tapping made it hard to believe that this body was possessed by an evil spirit.

I couldn’t tell if his neat and trimmed nails were the doing of the body’s original owner or him. According to him, even if the souls switched, the small habits were left by the brain.

“Then, I would remain as a curse in the form of your name. If I can’t love you anymore, the only thing I could do for you is to get revenge.  It’s something that you can’t do or don’t want to do,” he said.

“Something that I can’t do,” I echoed.

I was still unable to hate or have ill-intentions against those who brutally murdered me.

It wasn’t just because I was soft and kind-hearted. Obviously, when I was murdered, I was too young to even think about vengeance, but now, I was a fully grown adult, developed along with Haeseo Nam’s body. But my will to fight was stolen away by my speculation that I wouldn’t have had a happy life even if I weren’t sent to the mansion and the fact that too much time had passed.

When I was too depressed and couldn’t step a foot outside the home, we shared a lot of memories. Thinking back to the stories that we exchanged on the bed in the early morning, I grinned bitterly. “Just like the people in the mansion?”

“Yes.”

I died three or four generations ago. The people who caused the entire thing had long since died. Those who remained were simply strangers who shared the bloodline. Grandchildren, cousins, relatives of far-removed degrees, people married into the family… Even if I killed and tortured them, those suffering were the family who didn’t know that I still walked this earth. They weren’t even aware of my existence.

“They seemed pretty well off after doing all those things. I thought that maybe they would still be in limbo after having some regrets, and I searched for them, but not even a shard of their souls was left. My poor lover,” he had said before, then he kissed my forehead.

“Since the perpetrators are gone, the sons of their sons and daughters of their daughters—those who share their blood, heritage, and family tree have increased, so you’ll be fine for a while. But when all that ends, you’ll be sad and lonely,” he explained.

I thought that he had selected people who didn’t know the TV industry very well, but of course, there was no way that he, who didn’t want to be hated by me, would be sloppy. Aside from the filming crew, Woorim, and Goyeon, the rest seemed to be related in some way to those who had used the mansion at least once. But to me, they felt like third parties wrongfully swept up.