SATURDAY 16

“How amusing.”

“…Wha-what is…?”

“Is it because you’re originally twins….”

I flinched and looked in his direction. Thanks to being lightly groomed for the party, Mr. Taeseon looked slightly better, yet his face remained pale and exhausted as he leaned against the steering wheel as if seeking sleep.

“You said it before. That you, you’re fallen into the delusion that you are Yoon Inyoung. It’s ridiculous. Were you envious of Inyoung in your daily life?”

“….”

I was at a loss for words. I didn’t know how to answer. Inha being envious of me? It was a nonsensical story. Why would Inha, who had everything, feel that way? But I had been caught in my own trap. I had to find a suitable answer here.

“…It’s not like that.”

“Why?”

Unexpectedly, Mr. Taeseon readily engaged in the conversation. However, the voice asking “Why?” sounded extremely displeased.

“Why would I be envious of Inyoung? He was treated like a beast or a ghost in the family, even his parents sincerely disliked him, and the only place he could attach his heart to was you, CEO.”

“No.”

Without realizing it, I stared blankly at Mr. Taeseon.

“No, Yoon Inha. Inwardly, you must have been envious of Inyoung. Because Inyoung, unlike you, was a human.”

“….”

I made a mistake. In Inha’s case, it was a situation where he would have immediately screamed and gotten angry, asking what on earth that meant, but I was so shocked that I just stayed still. Mr. Taeseon also tilted his head as if finding that strange.

“You aren’t saying anything. Are you staying quiet because I hit the mark? No…. That’s not like your personality.”

He was right. Inha was not the type to stay quiet when his weak point was poked; he would flare up and jump around. Most people are like that, but Inha especially… had a side that particularly hated admitting he was wrong.

“What do you mean, that he was a human?”

However, I couldn’t imitate Inha in this situation. It was because I was too flustered by Mr. Taeseon’s words. Until now, I had been treated as something other than human within the family. I was a beast, a wicked thing that stole a mother’s womb and was born as if human… a demon wearing a human mask.

Yet, he called Inha—who had stolen the fate and come to live an ordinary life—not a human, and called me a human. It was the first time I realized Mr. Taeseon thought this way.

“…I should have said this to Inyoung before he died. Now that I think about it, I never said it once. Because I took it so much for granted.”

Mr. Taeseon straightened his body and rested his head against the driver’s seat. He looked incredibly tired. As he brought up the name Inyoung, his eyes sank darkly. I could see how much turmoil he was in regarding my death.

“The people in that family believed the nonsense of some insignificant shaman and didn’t even treat Inyoung like a human, but does that even make sense? A beast stealing a womb to be born? There’s a limit to crazy talk…. Whether it’s the person deceiving with such words, or the people who revere and believe it.”

“….”

But unfortunately for Mr. Taeseon, because that was the truth, I couldn’t say anything. From my childhood until now, countless pieces of evidence that I was actually a terrible beast had been discovered.

Dead animals appearing in the bed where I slept, or pets dying while vomiting blood…. Also, the way animals followed me to a strange degree, or the misfortunes that happened in the house.

“There was plenty of evidence.”

“What evidence? Can there even be evidence for bullshit?”

I flinched. Since Mr. Taeseon started thinking of me as Inha, he often used such coarse language. He was a person who had always used only gentle speech in front of me. Occasionally, profanities would pop out unintentionally, but he apologized every time.

Is it because he’s tired…. Or is Mr. Taeseon originally a person with a rough way of speaking? I didn’t know for sure, but it was certain that I had to get used to it now.

I mentioned a few things I had experienced until now. First, the corpses of animals that hadn’t been dead long were often in my bed. Sometimes they were covered in blood. Every time that happened, the Bodhisattva was called in, and claiming my bed was full of impurity, she performed something called a “cleansing of the spot.”

Throughout the ritual, which lasted about two hours, I had to sit kneeling in front of the bed and be struck by the red beans and peach branches that the Bodhisattva threw and brandished.

When the ritual ended, my whole body would be covered in blood from minor wounds. Cleaning up afterward was also my responsibility. All the bedding where the animal was found was burned, and I slept curled up on a bare bed until new bedding that had undergone a purification ritual arrived.

Leaving out those parts of the story… I just conveyed the facts of what happened. The corpses of dead animals, animals that even fell and died in front of me while I was walking, and the misfortunes that occurred in the house whenever something good happened to me.

As I conveyed those things by changing them to “Inyoung was,” or “To Inyoung…”, the expression of Mr. Taeseon, who had been listening quietly, gradually turned cold. Dry saliva went down my throat involuntarily. To the point that the air in the car changed, Mr. Taeseon was terrifyingly enraged.

“They did all sorts of dog-like things just to kill one person. I can’t even fathom the reason.”

“….”

The “person” here must be me, after all.

“…It wasn’t like that. The family members and the Bodhisattva tried hard to raise Inyoung, who shouldn’t have been born as a human, into a ‘human’.”

At that moment—Bam!—a sound rang out. Mr. Taeseon had struck the side window with his fist. The entire car shook. I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them. Looking at Mr. Taeseon while flinching, I saw him glaring at me with a horrific face.

“You, your family, you’re all crazy. Idiots who can’t even recognize their own child because they’re playing along with a shaman’s nonsense. Do you know why Inyoung is a human? It’s because he grew up without becoming crooked at all in the midst of you beastly bastards.”

“….”

“The only thing like a human in that family is Inyoung. And the most beast-like one is you, Yoon Inha.”

“I, am?”

“Yes. You, who bullied your brother like that and finally killed him, and then shamelessly clung to me, begging to get married.”

I found it hard to know whether I should be happy or distressed. I was grateful that Mr. Taeseon spoke of me that way. Though he had never told me until now, he had been thinking of me as a human. That’s why he agreed to marry someone like me.

He had been so angry at the people in my family….

But simultaneously with that joy, the outpouring of emotions of blame was difficult to endure. I know well that he is saying these things to Inha, not me. Nevertheless, the anger pouring out unilaterally in the cramped space of the car was directed at me.

In any case, I will soon become Inha. Then those words will be directed squarely at me. Right now, my ego still remains. According to the Bodhisattva, it’s not that the ego will completely disappear. It’s just that Inha’s ego will become stronger.

Perhaps that’s why, even though the words were clearly meant for Inha, they came and struck my heart as if they were meant for me. Even though they were words that Inha would have heard and felt nothing about.

“The wounds Inyoung received because of your family….”

“Inyoung.”

I abruptly opened my mouth. It was because there was something I desperately wanted to say.

“Inyoung wasn’t wounded. Because he didn’t feel anything.”

“….”

Mr. Taeseon stared at me for a moment with a blank face. It couldn’t be helped. It was the truth. I didn’t feel anything. Because I thought it was a natural thing. It was a natural thing. So I didn’t feel anything. Not anything….

While I was turning my head away, I thought I heard the sound of a seatbelt being unfastened, and then my vision went dark in an instant. Before I could even realize that it was the shadow of Mr. Taeseon, a large, dry hand gripped my neck and slammed me back with a thud. My head hit the window.

“Ugh….”

After opening the eyes I had squeezed shut at the impact, my eyes met Mr. Taeseon’s. He… he was making a truly horrific face. It was to the extent that I was afraid he might kill me right then and there.

My body froze with terror, and as a chilling sensation spread from my constricted neck, my whole body trembled uncontrollably. I was suffocating.

Mr. Taeseon strangled my neck just enough so that I wouldn’t die. Since I already knew the extent of his hand strength, I could perceive that this was the result of him exercising restraint.

However, his expression was too ghastly to be described as restrained. The emotion of truly wanting to kill me washed over my body in its entirety. Pheromones soaked in anger, to the degree that even someone other than me could feel it, filled the car densely.

“….”

I clenched my teeth, suppressing the urge to call him Mr. Taeseon without realizing it. My body trembled uncontrollably at the fear of death, and my hands and feet became cold as ice. Because I was scared to face Mr. Taeseon, I squeezed my eyes shut.

At that moment, Mr. Taeseon loosened the strength in his hand.