Sohee, with eyes shaking like jelly,
“Uh, so… what did you say?”
She seemed to be about to say something, but her thoughts were still a jumbled mess, so she asked again.
“So, what I’m saying is, right now, the ‘Sara’ in front of you isn’t the ‘Sara’ you know. Technically, calling her ‘Sara’ is kind of inaccurate; she’s more like a different entity, but to you guys, she’s ‘Sara.’”
“Uh, um…?”
Sara seemed to be intentionally making her words complicated, leaving Sohee flustered once more.
Ha Neul wiped her face in exasperation.
“… Simply put, it means there are two personalities of ‘Sara.’ There’s the one we’ve always known, and then there’s that other ‘Sara.’”
“Uh… Oh, so you’re saying it’s like split personality or something? Like in movies or dramas?”
Sohee barely managed to catch up, and Sara and Ha Neul nodded in sync.
“So then, what does ‘the original owner of that body’ mean?”
From the side, Sua, who had been quietly listening, asked, and Sara replied.
“It’s exactly what it sounds like. I was the original personality using this body. And the Sara you guys know later came in… or should I say, ‘appeared’? Anyway, that’s her.”
“…Since when?”
When Sua asked again, Sara shrugged her shoulders.
“Probably the moment I took the pills.”
“……”
The room descended into silence.
“You don’t need to make such a serious face. I didn’t die or anything. We’re meeting like this now, so honestly, it doesn’t matter, right?”
“No, that’s not the important part…”
Ha Neul had been continuously holding her head in frustration, while Sua was deep in thought. So, it was Sohee who spoke on behalf of her three friends.
“So what I’m saying is, we’re focusing on the weight of what happened, so saying ‘it doesn’t matter’ feels a bit…”
Sara looked at Sohee, as if she was completely caught off guard by such a response.
“Because I took those pills, you got to meet her, right? And that’s true for me as well. So I don’t regret taking those pills. If I hadn’t died once, I wouldn’t have been able to live like this now, or even speak properly in front of people.”
Sohee struggled to keep up with the widening gap in understanding.
“No, what I mean is, meeting us was lucky, but… you really died before? What are you talking about?”
“That’s also exactly what it sounds like.”
But Sara’s expression as she said that seemed less certain than before. She looked as if she wasn’t quite sure.
“I took the pills… and well, my body died once, and during the process of coming back to life, my consciousness fell into a deep sleep, and in that time, the ‘Sara’ you know took over my body.”
“…So you’re saying you were resurrected once?”
Sohee already had one hand on her head. Too much information that didn’t make sense in reality came at her all at once, making it hard for her mind to keep up.
“I think so. She thinks so too.”
“……”
Silence filled the room again. This time, Ha Neul looked seriously at Sara.
It wasn’t that she believed what Sara said, but rather, the expression on her face seemed to ask, “Is she even in her right mind?” After all, it was a story that most wouldn’t believe. Only the kind of religious people who take resurrection seriously would consider such a tale credible. Even they wouldn’t easily believe that an ordinary person had come back to life.
Are you Jesus or something?
It wouldn’t have been surprising if someone had said that.
“It seems you guys don’t believe me at all.”
“Well…”
Sohee mumbled, clearly in a predicament.
And of course, that was to be expected. All of them liked Sara. Even if the ‘Sara’ in front of them were different, they likely thought their feelings wouldn’t change.
However, no matter how much they liked someone, it was impossible to believe everything they said, especially if the story crossed the line into the supernatural.
Ah, but if you think about it seriously for just a moment, it would also be fantasy to find out that a girl who fell from the sky turned out to be the richest teenager in the world, probably destined to become the owner of the largest company globally, and that one was working for her, earning 500 million won a year.
A fantasy that would never be believed until experienced firsthand.
But, essentially, humans don’t easily believe stories that they think are ‘absurd’ unless they’ve experienced them firsthand.
“…On that day, the hospital’s examination results said everything was normal.”
Ha Neul asked Sara.
That’s right. The hospital had declared everything normal. If Sara had died and then returned as Sara, that was something that should have been reported to academia, not simply sent away with a clean bill of health.
“Weren’t you already aware of that from me?”
When Sara asked Ha Neul, both Sua and Sohee’s gazes shifted to Ha Neul.
“Well… I heard, but I thought you just fell into a coma and woke up.”
“Oh, really?”
Sara accepted that with a nonchalant attitude, which surprised her.
“… Can I know why you thought that?”
As Ha Neul spoke, feeling a bit uneasy despite Sara discussing her death with such little emotion, she felt a prick of discomfort for the first time.
“Because of the bruise on your back.”
Sara replied.
“When a person dies, blood collects in their back. That causes a bruise on the skin. It can’t happen to a living person with a beating heart. Even if someone falls into a coma, that doesn’t mean they’re dead, right?”
“……”
Silence enveloped the room.
It seemed like Sara was somewhat enjoying the situation.
“But I’ve never been abused like that. My mother never laid a hand on me. Instead, she just saw me as an extremely fragile jewel—something that would chip if touched wrong. So, she made sure to create a situation where I could only be hers, hidden from others.”
Sara shrugged her shoulders.
“Thus, there was only that situation where a bruise could be formed. I died and came back to life. How exactly that happened, I don’t know.”
Then she slightly turned her head towards the door.
“Right, maid?”
“……”
Only then, the three people still processing Sara’s words turned their heads toward the door.
The slightly ajar door creaked open, revealing Yang Hye-in standing there, her face clearly pale.
Only then did the people in the room realize it was still morning. They hadn’t even had breakfast yet.
Most likely, Yang Hye-in must have arrived shortly after Sohee came up to prepare for work.
She just hesitated to enter the room.
“You were the first to enter this room that day. Go ahead, tell us what happened in there. I’m curious too.”
Sara smiled brightly.
“Perhaps I was too busy screaming to notice anything.”
Silence.
No one could even breathe out loud.
Sara’s attitude seemed incredibly casual, as if she were asking, “Oh, what happened that day again?”
Even the moment she was giving up on her life seemed trivial to her.
Or rather, that moment wasn’t even her own, according to Sara.
If we follow her words, then at that time, the Sara known to the people in this room was the one who had opened her eyes.
“… I smelled a ‘scent.’”
Yang Hye-in said, clenching her fist.
Her face remained expressionless, but that unreadable expression was unstable.
It looked like her face could shatter at any moment, revealing a vulnerable side.
“I smelled… something.”
“Uh-huh.”
Sara rested her hand on her chin.
“That makes sense. They say the moment a person dies isn’t particularly beautiful.”
Some people say that when one dies, they may release fluids. The muscles relax, causing the sphincters to lose control as well.
Most likely, the scent that Yang Hye-in detected was that smell.
“However, you handled it well. They said there wasn’t any smell when you returned. The bed was immediately changed—”
Sara, while objectively figuring out her state at that time, couldn’t finish her sentence.
“—Ugh!”
Suddenly, something gigantic loomed over her face.
That big and squishy thing that could cover her entire face was probably—
“Sara, I’m sorry…!”
…Sohee’s chest, it seemed.
“Uh, what…?”
Sara didn’t expect Sohee to rush towards her, momentarily failing to grasp the situation.
What in the world is happening…?
