I am now walking behind a family.
To anyone looking, they seem like a happy, ordinary family.
No, I might need to think about whether they truly fall into the category of “ordinary”.
If someone were to ask if a handsome father, beautiful mother, and a daughter who could easily be a child actor make up a “normal” family, it would be hard to say yes.
Rather than ordinary, it might be more appropriate to say they are ideal.
They look so ideal that it seems almost artificially perfect, like a scene carefully put together.
If I had seen the three of them without any background knowledge, I would have been completely fooled.
This is Ye Sara’s biological father, Ye In-su, and Choi Na-kyung, who remarried after Ye Sara’s biological mother passed away.
Both of them were showering the young Sara with love and care.
In the endlessly vast meadow, the two people, holding Sara’s hands, looked truly happy.
However, neither of them looked at each other.
Their gaze was solely fixed on Sara.
To sense that something about this was ‘unnatural’, you would need to know what happened after this point in Sara’s life.
The happier her memories, the more unstable Sara’s recollections became.
While the inside of the mansion, especially Sara’s room, was so detailed and vivid that it was nearly indistinguishable from my own memory, places Sara had barely visited were missing parts or were entirely detached from reality.
The older the memory, the more pronounced this became.
At school, the color saturation was so low that it appeared almost black and white, and the faces of people on the street were so blurred that it was hard to make out any features.
Apart from a few voices heard from extremely close by, all other conversations were distorted like static noise.
…The few conversations that were clear often revolved around family matters.
It seems Sara yearned for this period that much.
Compared to the mostly colorless memories of the past, this memory was painted so vibrantly.
The sky was clear, not a single cloud in sight, a deep, piercing blue.
The wide-open field stretched far into the distance, covered in soft green grass.
Was there ever such a place in Korea?
It must be a scene showing how much her childhood memories had been romanticized.
Even as Sara harbored such deep hatred for her only remaining family, she loved them just as fiercely.
Seeing this scene made it clear that such feelings were inevitable.
After all, all Sara had left was Choi Na-kyung.
It was a beautiful, yet sorrowful sight.
I could barely hear the voices of the three as they spoke.
Even though I wasn’t far away, their words were muffled, like distant murmurs or as if the sound had been forcibly muted.
It seems even Sara doesn’t fully remember the conversations from back then.
The three of them walked for a while before they stopped in place.
I, following the memory from a few steps away, also halted.
Maybe they were planning to have a picnic and eat their lunch.
Though none of them were carrying any such items, I had already witnessed several instances in Sara’s memory where things that weren’t there suddenly appeared or disappeared.
After all, human memory is not a perfect simulation, and things outside one’s view are left to be guessed.
Especially when it comes to childhood memories.
But the three remained still in place.
Was this the end of the memory?
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed since I entered this place, but I had been continuously traveling backward through Sara’s memories.
Not because I wanted to, but because I was swept along by the flood of memories, walking and walking without end.
…In the process, I realized that Sara was not just a character in a game.
No, it’s not just Sara.
Everyone I’ve met in this world must have a past like this.
Though I don’t know how this world came to exist or how I ended up here, it’s clear that this world has existed for a long time, and that everyone living here is not much different from me.
“……”
Without a word, I circled around to face the three of them.
…Radiant light was pouring from the faces of Choi Na-kyung and Ye In-su.
The reason Sara couldn’t trust Yoo Ha-neul.
The light pouring from their faces might seem positive at first glance, but that wasn’t the case.
It wasn’t because they were good people or because they were someone who would help her.
This light was merely a visual representation of Sara’s personal intuition.
It was probably her own unique way, her ability, to clearly distinguish people who could change her life.
…And both of them did indeed change Sara’s life.
In various ways.
The fact that the light from Choi Na-kyung’s face gradually decreased over time could also be interpreted in this way.
Though Choi Na-kyung had negatively altered Sara’s life, after that change, she remained the same.
After revealing her true nature, Choi Na-kyung became an unchanging figure in Sara’s life.
Had she been left alone, Sara’s life too would have continued on unchanged.
Therefore, in the face I saw of Choi Na-kyung, there was no light.
“……”
There were no more memories flooding in.
It seemed this was the last of Sara’s memories.
The origin of the being called ‘Ye Sara.’
The source of Ye Sara’s twisted relationship with Choi Na-kyung.
The happiest moment in Ye Sara’s memories.
I lowered my gaze to the young Sara and was startled.
Sara wasn’t smiling.
She was simply looking up at me, expressionless.
She wasn’t looking up at Choi Na-kyung or Ye In-su either.
Despite it being the happiest memory, young Sara’s face showed no emotion.
“……”
After a brief silence,
“…How much did you see?”
Sara asked me that.
*
“How, in the world?”
‘That person’ asked, clearly flustered.
Honestly, how am I supposed to react when someone who had taken over another person’s body looks so shocked?
And not just someone else’s body—it was my body.
This is inside my memory.
And this is my most precious, oldest memory.
…How embarrassing.
Though I had lived almost entirely within that mansion after the age of nine, that doesn’t mean I hadn’t had any thoughts.
I’m still human, and naturally, I needed something to pass the time during those tedious days.
So I often daydreamed, and sometimes I even wrote those daydreams in a notebook.
A story about a princess trapped in a cage, rescued by another persecuted being, a vampire.
Looking back now, it had too many flaws to be called a ‘novel’.
The setting, the plot, it was just a clumsy mess of my fantasies.
In fact, when I first started writing it, I had no intention of finishing it.
I simply strung together what I thought were cool ideas as they came to mind.
But the thing I had the most of was time.
Eventually, the fantasy turned into a plot and then into a full-fledged story.
In the end, I completed the story.
I only read through it once and then tucked it away in a drawer.
…Because I thought that story had nothing to do with me.
No one is coming to save me.
No one even cares that I exist.
That’s why I stashed that story deep in my drawer and never read it again.
…Did this person read that story?
“……”
I looked up at that person, who was much taller than me.
There was light there.
A dazzling light, so bright I couldn’t even see their face.
None of the people I’d encountered in my life had ever shown such light.
Even after changing so much, there was still more left to change.
Though it wasn’t a logical conclusion drawn from reason, but a purely emotional instinct—I didn’t care.
For the first time in my life, I met someone who wanted to save me.
Someone who was just as ignored and treated as invisible as me, and yet, for that reason, understood me and broke the cage I was in.
“Now that you’ve seen this far, where were you planning to go next?”
So I asked.
This memory was the earliest one I had.
The most beautiful memory I had with my mother.
If this person had walked from the end of my memories, there was nowhere else to go.
If they were to go further from here—
In truth, I don’t know what would happen.
I don’t have any professional knowledge about the human brain, nor do I know much about dissociative identity or anything like that.
But,
But, my intuition was screaming at me.
This person is not ‘me’.
This isn’t just the ‘me’ who lost her memories.
Some might think I’m crazy if they heard this.
If my mother knew, she might have had a reason to send me to a mental hospital.
But to me, this person was undeniably real.
“Where were you planning to disappear to?”
“…I.”
The being of light hesitated for a moment.
“That body is yours—”
And tried to make an excuse that didn’t even make sense.
“Yes, that body is mine, but that wasn’t my life, was it?”
I spoke firmly.
Was it because this person was inside me?
Or was it because of the urgency I felt?
I could speak in front of this person without any hesitation.
…No, this is all because of the influence of this person.
My intuition was screaming that at me.
This person, who lived my life in my place for only three months, changed everything I couldn’t change.
…This person, who effortlessly achieved everything I had ever wanted.
This person, who, even in the same situation as me, never despaired and kept pushing forward.
And this person, who gave up everything for my sake.
The only person who saved me.
I let go of my mother’s and father’s hands.
And reached out my hand—to that person, to that light.
“You lived my life in my place, so you should see it through to the end.”
I didn’t want to part with them now, just when we had met.
So this was just me being selfish.
To that person, who thought they had finished their role, my words must have sounded like a child’s tantrum.
“…If you’ve taken responsibility once, then see it through to the end.”
I was utterly sincere.
“……”
The person said nothing.
Because of the pouring light, I couldn’t see their expression clearly.
Were they dumbfounded by my words?
Were they frowning?
No matter what they were feeling, it seemed they had decided to listen to me.
From the mass of light, a beam of light stretched out, as if someone was extending their hand.
That beam of light soon reached mine.
A warm sensation slowly traveled from my hand to my heart.
…Thank goodness.
Thank you, for indulging my selfishness.
I looked up at the pouring light and quietly reflected.
Now that I think of it, didn’t the story I wrote also end with a scene like this?
Maybe I should take the time to read it again when I get home.