SATURDAY 1

I killed my twin.

We were walking together under an umbrella. The rain poured down as if it were piercing the earth. It was to the point where a single umbrella could not possibly hold out, and the raindrops falling on my body were so thick they were painful.

And… at some moment.

I was standing alone, staggering.

All sorts of sirens flickered disorientingly through the rainwater, and urgent shouts mingled with the sound of rain, coming and going from all directions.

What happened?

I looked at the ground reflected in the car headlights. The light, bright enough to make my eyes ache, vividly illuminated the sight of blood pooled on the ground being diluted by the falling rain and flowing into the sewer. It was the first time in my life I had seen such a massive amount of blood.

The one collapsed on the ground was me. It was the exact same face as mine. Oh, did I perhaps die? However, the other person was nowhere to be seen. Inha…. Where is Inha?

A moment later, I realized my delusion. Paramedics wearing raincoats rushed over in a swarm. “Are you okay?”, “…how”, “…Mr.!”, “Over here….” I couldn’t hear well what they were saying. When the fragmented letters and words reached my ears, mixed with the sound of the rain, they sounded like a foreign—no, an alien language.

What are they looking at to ask if I’m okay…. I was confused. I was just simply confused. The faint thought that I was strangely hurting somewhere occurred to me, but I couldn’t point out exactly where. If I had to pick, the raindrops hitting my body hurt the most.

Among them, someone jumped up and walked toward me through the rain. As the vivid fluorescent clothes came into view, the fog in my head cleared a little.

“Mr. Yoon In…, is that right? For now, this way, do you think you can walk?”

For the first time, words that sounded like actual speech entered my ears. Snapping out of it, I replied “Yes” as a reflex and moved my steps. Perhaps because I was staggering, the paramedics supported me.

Soaked like a drowned rat, I climbed into the ambulance. And over there…. Inha was…. It was definitely Inha. The one lying on the ground in an unbelievable shape was Yoon Inha, my twin brother.

“In, Inha….”

I muttered without realizing it and jumped out of the ambulance, falling with a thud. Even so, I jumped up and ran toward the ambulance where Inha was being loaded.

Someone called me from behind, but I didn’t hear them. Inha, Inha was… it was an immense loss of blood. A massive terror rushed in. It felt as if my heart had turned to lead and completely hardened.

“In….”

“What is your name? And your age?”

A paramedic was desperately talking to Inha, who was almost losing consciousness. I’ve heard of this. The reason they talk like that is that if he loses consciousness like this, he might never wake up again. Inha? Not wake up? However, Inha opened his mouth with great difficulty.

“It’s… Yoon Inyoung, twenty-two years old….”

“Pardon? …Inyoung? What…”

Ah…. What was that?

What did he just say? Standing dazed in front of the ambulance, I locked eyes with Inha. He frowned deeply. Whether it was because of pain, or some other….

“…Inha.”

Whether it was for some other reason…. He called me by his own name. I stood there stupidly, frozen without even being able to say a single word like, “What are you talking about?” I couldn’t understand this situation. Inha said in a hoarse voice:

“Why did you… push me?”

At that moment, every gaze inside the ambulance, and even the eyes of the paramedics who had come to get me, all turned toward me. I was dazed for a moment but soon regained my senses.

“I, I will go as, as the guardian….”

“You cannot. The patient is also heavily injured.”

“No, I am….”

“I don’t, want to go together.”

It was Inha’s voice that stopped me.

“Inha pushed, me with the car. I don’t want to go together…. I’m, I’m scared.”

his way of speaking… was just like the usual “me.” A stupid, clumsy, stuttering way of speaking. Ah. Tinnitus rushed over me. Covering both ears at the sharp and violent ringing that felt like scratching glass, I collapsed right there.

It was a Saturday, three months before my wedding.

∞ ∞ ∞

My deeply submerged consciousness slowly surfaced. I feel like I should open my eyes. It wasn’t easy because they were stiff, as if they had been closed for a long time. Even though I want to rub my eyes, I have no strength at all, so I can’t do as I please. My hands won’t move.

Still, forcing one arm up—since the other felt as if it were held down by something and couldn’t move at all—I barely managed to lift it and rub my eyes. Then, a stinging sensation rushed in, and both eyes became so unbearably prickly that tears trickled down.

I squeezed my eyelids shut and opened them, then kept them tightly closed because I couldn’t open them at all, and the moment my vision finally returned, albeit blurrily, I saw the ceiling. A white, clean ceiling.

‘….’

I slowly turned my gaze. I was in a hospital room… decorated like a hotel. Around me, I could see a few small machines, and two IV bags and one round bottle were hanging from an IV stand.

I was startled when I saw my arm. All that fluid was flowing into me. It seems this was the cause of that vague sense of discomfort in my forearm.

Suddenly, my chest tickled and a small cough came out. As if that were a signal, a sharp and loud clatter, the sound of something breaking, rang out.

Following that, the sound of footsteps rushing over in slippers. Blinking my eyes, I recognized that it was Mom. Mom had broken the vase she was holding.

Mom approached with a desperate expression, as if the sky had collapsed… no, as if a crack had been seen in the collapsed sky, and gripped my hand tightly. And with her other hand, she hurriedly pressed the nurse call button.

It’s the first time I’ve seen that kind of expression on Mom. Mom was someone who always wore a face of being fed up whenever I was sick or hurt, so what’s going on this time? Without me knowing, had I been so seriously injured that Mom would act like this?

I quietly felt Mom’s touch. It would be a lie to say I didn’t feel good. It’s a childish thought, but what can I do. It’s rare for Mom to send such a warm gaze my way, even though I don’t know where I’m hurting….

However, at the words that came out of Mom’s mouth in the next moment, I had to freeze stiffly.

“Inha. Inha, are you okay? Look at Mom properly. No, why did you cry so much? Inha?”

“…Pardon?”

“Oh my, look at this face. With bruises like this….”

“….”

Inha…?

“…Mom.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“I’m, Inyoung….”

At my words, spat out in a voice that didn’t even come out properly, Mom’s expression turned strange. And before Mom could react further, doctors and nurses burst in. The doctor quickly approached, checked me here and there, and asked.

“Patient, do you know your name and age, your parents’ names, and where this is? Can you speak?”

“…Yoon Inyoung…. Twenty-two years old, and, my parents’ names are, my father is Yoon Jaekwon, my mother is Hong Sayoung, and here… I think it’s a hospital….”

“…Patient, could you say your name again?”

The doctor’s expression also wavered slightly.

“Yoon, Inyoung.”

Regardless, the reaction around me when I said my name was strange. I don’t know at all what’s going on or how things turned out like this.

“You said Yoon Inyoung? Is that really the patient’s name?”

The doctor asked pressingly. I nodded, becoming extremely anxious. At that moment, Mom shouted out as if she couldn’t take it anymore.

“What are you talking about, Inha, Inyoung is dead!”

For a moment, silence pervaded the hospital room. I became dazed. I’m dead? Hic, as I sucked in a breath, Mom cried and frantically rubbed my body. The doctor soon restrained her.

“Mother, please calm down…. It won’t be good for the patient. If you’re okay, why don’t you go outside and catch your breath for a moment?”

“How can I go out in this situation!”

“Inha’s mom, I saw the doctors going in….”

The hospital room door opened and even Father appeared. Seeing me awake, Father ran over at once and took my hand.

“Inha!”

“No, Father, I….”

“The child is strange, honey. He keeps saying he’s Inyoung….”

At Mom’s words, Father also widened his eyes in surprise. Father immediately grabbed the doctor and asked.

“What happened?”

Leaving me alone, my parents talked with the doctor for a long time with serious faces. But I remained tied to the words “Inyoung is dead.” Dead? Me?

What exactly is this situation? Am I dreaming? I wish it were a dream instead. In the midst of that, the doctor called me Mr. Yoon Inha again.

Inha is. Inha should be somewhere, so why come to me, why call me Inha—when I thought that far, something came to mind.

Him lying on the rainy ground, that gasping breath, the body twisted in a strange direction…. The paramedics rushing in.

“Is Inha dead?”

I spat those words out without realizing it. The one who died isn’t me. Although he was transported by ambulance, there was absolutely no possibility of resuscitation. If someone died, it had to be Inha, not me…. However, at my words, Father and Mom’s expressions hardened even more.

I felt the atmosphere becoming increasingly strange. I shook off the doctors and nurses hanging onto me and jerked my upper body up. I staggered for a moment from a massive dizziness, but I brushed away the approaching hands again and kicked off the blanket. My ankle was immediately visible.

The moment I saw the area above the protruding ankle bone, I had no choice but to keep my mouth shut. There was a tattoo there, with reddish skin around the dots, depicting the three stars of Orion.

It was a small tattoo Inha had gotten after returning from a trip, saying he liked the stars he saw there so much that he wanted to remember them. A tattoo that definitely shouldn’t be on my ankle….

“Inha, you’re okay, right? Hmm?”

Mom grabbed my hand with a face that was beyond flustered and even had a few tears welling up. It’s the first time I’ve seen this kind of face from Mom directed at me. Mom only ever made this kind of face for Inha. It was the same for Father.

“Doctor, what on earth is this….”

“It appears to be a temporary confusion of memory. There were no problems in the test results, so it’s not a functional issue. You don’t need to worry.”

“But the child’s state right now…. Inha, look at Mom properly. What should I do….”

Maybe, just maybe.

Could it be that I… died,

And ended up inside Inha’s body?