Sharing one body between the two of us wasn’t as uncomfortable as I had thought.
Sara wasn’t much of a talker.
She didn’t have many complaints, nor did she intervene in my daily life or demand any specific actions.
…In truth, it felt less like she had no desires and more like she had transcended life itself.
Sara had already given up on life once.
And even the life I returned to her, she didn’t consider her own, so she entrusted it to me.
The faint emotions that came through were “joy”, but I couldn’t help but wonder if that meant she wanted to continue living.
The usual strong desires people have for life—like avoiding dangerous places, maintaining basic health, having hobbies or wanting to learn something—were absent in Sara.
If something pleasant happened, she just thought it was nice in the moment, and that was the end of it.
Even if she desired something, it ended up being just a wish.
She never thought she absolutely had to have it.
There might have been temporary attractions, but nothing became a purpose in life for her.
Well, there wasn’t ‘absolutely nothing’ like that for Sara, though—
The switch that changed personalities, as far as I’d learned, was tied to the most intense memory that personality had.
A memory so powerful that it could pull the hidden personality to the surface, enough to seize control of the body.
It didn’t matter whether the memory was positive or negative.
As long as it was an intense memory unlike anything else experienced in life, that was enough.
And the surest way to recall such a memory was to be with the person tied to it.
“No.”
And Sara didn’t particularly enjoy having her switch triggered like that.
I didn’t know how other people with multiple personalities switched between them.
I had never met anyone with dissociative identity disorder, and frankly, our current situation was different from that ‘disorder’ or ‘identity disturbance’.
It wasn’t a psychiatric issue but rather a fantasy concept where an original personality and an external personality coexisted in one body.
When the body moved, one of the two personalities took the lead.
Surprisingly, this didn’t feel as unsettling as one might think.
I had almost fully adapted to Sara’s body over the past three months, and Sara didn’t pay much attention to how I moved.
If we had been enemies wanting to kill each other, it would’ve been a huge problem, but thankfully, that wasn’t the case.
Still, a bit of a question remained.
There wasn’t much of an issue when one of us took the lead during the day, but what about when the body slept?
What happened when the situation became more equal, when neither of us was in control?
Well, the answer came quickly.
“To do that, I’d have to meet Mother again, wouldn’t I?”
We were currently in Sara’s room.
The layout was slightly different from the room I had seen in Sara’s memories.
With an extra bed and coat rack near the entrance, this was Sara’s room after So-hee became a maid.
But So-hee and Soo-ah were nowhere to be seen.
That was expected, as only Sara and I were here now.
After the body fell asleep, and consciousness slowly sank into the mind, we met like this in some mental space.
“Don’t you have anything you want to do in reality?”
“The things I want to do, you’re doing for me, aren’t you?”
Sara answered my question so straightforwardly that I slapped my forehead with my hand.
In this mental space, my body wasn’t much different from Sara’s.
I hadn’t looked into a mirror here, but my face probably wasn’t much different either.
It seemed like Sara was much freer than me ‘inside the mind’.
Considering the scenes I’d encountered in dreams over the past few days, everything—the background, my appearance—was shaped by Sara’s imagination.
Perhaps because Sara was the true owner of the body.
There were advantages and disadvantages to this.
First, when Sara’s emotions flared up inside this body, I got swept along with it.
Sara had played pranks on me a few times, mostly by flamboyantly changing my clothes.
Knowing she could do that seemed to genuinely amuse her, so I decided to just go along with it.
For reference, the clothes I was wearing now were a lace-filled shirt and black pants, something you’d expect a male lead in a Renaissance-period historical drama to wear.
Though we were sharing this mental space, thankfully, we couldn’t read each other’s thoughts.
Since Sara was the true owner of the mind, she could easily sense my thoughts and emotions while I moved the body, but when we met like this, we had to ‘talk’ to understand each other’s thoughts, just like with anyone else.
If we could read each other’s innermost thoughts, things would probably get very uncomfortable.
“Something you want to do, huh.”
I exhaled softly and sat on the bed.
Sara naturally sat next to me.
Not too close, but not far either.
“So, is there really nothing? Like suddenly craving something to eat, wanting to go somewhere, or wanting to try something?”
I tried my best to explain what it meant to want something, but it was incredibly hard to explain to someone who had never desired anything.
…Come to think of it, this was like trying to convince someone who was considering suicide.
Wasn’t this the kind of thing that required professional knowledge?
They say careless words of comfort could backfire.
Thankfully, Sara, who was quietly looking up at me, didn’t seem to have that kind of aura.
Sara thought for a moment before replying.
“You’re already doing all those things for me.”
“….”
I ran my hand over my face.
Well, I had been acting with that intention.
I had once thought how nice it would be if someone else could live my life for me.
Like studying for me, working out for me…
Well, I had never actually made someone study for me, and I wasn’t too keen on making them exercise for me either.
Of course, going back to school and spending time with friends, or living lavishly by draining an endless bank account, was fun.
But aside from that, I was worried about Sara.
It felt like having a younger sister who never left her room.
“…What are you thinking about right now?”
Sara narrowed her eyes and looked up at me.
She was so beautiful, no matter what expression she made.
Her sharp gaze could feel a little intimidating when she glared at me, but I wasn’t really affected by it.
Other people, though—they must have been terrified, knowing that ‘the richest teenage girl in the world’ was looking at them like that.
“Nothing really…”
I sighed deeply.
I knew very well the reason Sara so strongly resisted coming out into the world was because of Choi Na-kyung.
Sara loved Choi Na-kyung as family.
In fact, if you went back far enough, she was more like a mother to Sara than her real mother.
Sara’s biological mother had passed away when she was so young that she barely had any memory of her.
Because of that, Sara loved her but also hated her at the same time.
She was, after all, the person who had ruined Sara’s life.
It wasn’t just hatred.
She also felt fear—that one day, this ‘Mother’ might leave her completely.
The fear that she might not love her anymore.
It was a deeply complicated emotion, as if she was feeling all the world’s emotions toward one person.
That was how Sara felt about Choi Na-kyung.
Naturally, it was enough to serve as a personality switch.
But to do that, Sara would have to face those emotions again.
Not just once, but every time she switched personalities.
Since it was about accessing the ‘most stimulating’ memory, she might need an even stronger stimulus each time she switched.
That’s why Sara was refusing to return to her life.
Maybe if it had been the time when Choi Na-kyung was all she knew, it would’ve been different, but Sara had experienced ‘other emotions from the outside world’ during the past week of living through the life I had built.
Gentle, pleasant feelings from a calm life, rather than the mix of extreme emotions, which was no different from mental violence.
So she didn’t feel the need to face those kinds of emotions by meeting Choi Na-kyung again.
“Can’t we just stay like this?”
As I pondered, Sara softly placed her hand over mine.
I turned to see her looking directly at me.
“We can keep going like this. During the day, we’ll go together, and at night, we’ll meet and talk like this… We’ll live, feeling and remembering things together. Isn’t that enough?”
“….”
This was also a problem.
It felt a little arrogant to say it out loud, but I had ended up saving Sara’s life.
In some ways, I was the closest person to her.
Because of that, even if it wasn’t to the same extent as Choi Na-kyung, Sara felt this way about me.
I was relieved that it wasn’t a sexual feeling, and it didn’t make me feel burdened either, but it still worried me a lot.
It was as if she was completely entrusting her life to me.
“Are you thinking of leaving?”
“…No.”
I knew that one day, I would have to leave.
Like those imaginary childhood friends often depicted in American TV shows or cartoons.
We couldn’t keep living like this.
No matter how much I was inside Sara’s body, I was still someone else.
I couldn’t be responsible for her life forever.
Right now, Sara was relying on me like this, but as time passed, her world would broaden, and she would experience more.
Of course, she would make more friends.
One day, she might even meet someone she likes, or find something she wants to do.
And all of those things might not align with me.
In such a situation, could I stand by without interfering in Sara’s life?
Could I really take responsibility for her life from beginning to end without giving in to my own personal desires?
“Right? You’ll stay with me, won’t you?”
Sara said with a smile.
“Yeah. I’ll stay.”
So, once again, I lied.
…It was such a relief that Sara couldn’t read into the deeper parts of my consciousness.