Come Back

“Save me, then.”

“……”

“The princess will wait with her eyes closed.”

His voice was layered over the sound of air flowing within the palm of his hand, which covered her ear. It felt like hearing his call for help from underwater, distant yet carrying a deeper resonance.

Even after he left the entrance, after his footsteps faded as he took the elevator and completely disappeared, Choi Hong-seo remained standing in the same spot.

She didn’t know how much time had passed. She could hear Tiffany’s cry from inside the house, as if scolding her for not coming in yet. *Nyaa*, *tok, tok*, *dodo dodo*. The cat, having jumped down from the cat tower, walked toward the entrance. Choi Hong-seo crouched down and began gently petting her back. Since the day the first call came under the name ‘Carrot Seller,’ Tiffany had allowed this much affection.

“Are you mad because I stayed out last night? Were you waiting for me?”

There was an automatic feeder, so there was no shortage of food or water. Tiffany probably hadn’t been anxiously waiting for her return either. Still, Choi Hong-seo spoke to her as if she were a beloved pet, just for the sake of it.

She stroked the long fur from her back to the tail multiple times while reflecting on the events that had happened since yesterday. It was hard to believe that she had only been gone for a single day. It felt as though she had just returned home after a long adventure, exhausted and barely making it back to her hometown.

“Could I hold you the same way as Choi Hong-seo?”

She thought that they would only end up hurting each other in the end. Even so, Lee Hae-sung must have suggested it with that same thought, and Choi Hong-seo, too, could not refuse, even while thinking the same thing. If they could embrace each other, even with all the imperfections, the scars left would not seem like a high price to pay.

The situation had been a mess until the moment he tried to end things prematurely.

But once he desperately approached and began writing on her back, things changed.

She had fallen into a sleep so deep that she hadn’t even realized she had drifted off, but she hadn’t expected him to stay with her in the room during that time. Since then, he had been kind, but it was a different type of kindness than before.

When he had visited her home before, deliberately treating her like ‘Yun Hye-an,’ it was not the same kindness. This time, it felt different.

Choi Hong-seo stopped petting Tiffany as the thought crossed her mind.

After waking up, until he brought her here and left, she realized that he had never once called her ‘Yun Hye-an.’ No matter how much she searched her memories, there was no time he had addressed her that way.

It felt like a big clue in the story of the princess and the prince, and her heart began to race again. *Nyaa?* Tiffany meowed, urging her to continue petting, but Choi Hong-seo was lost in thought.

He had stayed with her until the morning, prepared meals for her, and without minding people’s opinions, he openly showed that Lee Hae-sung of ARA was with Yun Hye-an.

Above all, the way he had cupped her cheek and ear at the end felt no different than before. And because of that, Choi Hong-seo hadn’t suspected it.

She hadn’t expected him to vanish from her sight after that.

—

The road to the memorial hall in Hanam was wide and clear. The sky had cleared as if the rain that had poured earlier had been a lie.

“It’s almost winter now. They said it would drop to 0°C tomorrow morning, but it’s only 5°C today with the sky so clear,” said Yong-jae, glancing at the phone holder in the driver’s seat. Choi Hong-seo, who had been absent-mindedly staring out the window, shifted her gaze to him. Since the rain had stopped a few days ago, the temperature had dropped significantly, and as Yong-jae had said, Choi Hong-seo had prepared by bringing a thin padded jacket.

“Sorry for asking you to come with me on a day off,” she said.

“Even if you’re free, I’m still working, so don’t apologize for that.” Yong-jae laughed lightly as he exited the highway, following signs toward Gwangju.

“Can you believe it’s already been a year? Time flies,” he said.

“……”

“After that incident, your accident… everything was such a mess that the Choi Hong-seo case got buried,” he continued.

The “incident” he referred to was when Choi Hong-seo died in Thailand. Yun Hye-an had jumped from a building months later during the X-guy scandal trial. The agency, ENA, probably didn’t have the resources to care about something like the X-guy scandal, not with everything that had happened. That was how the world worked. No matter how big a public event was, personal matters always took precedence.

“It’s so empty around here… maybe it’s because it’s winter, but the trees have shed all their leaves, and it’s so desolate,” Yong-jae commented as they pulled into the memorial hall’s parking lot.

The memorial hall wasn’t far from the IC exit. As Jae-woo carefully surveyed the area, Choi Hong-seo put on her outerwear and picked up a small bouquet of chrysanthemums she had brought from the passenger seat. Last time she had come here, she couldn’t even bear to bring flowers, but this time she had prepared them.

“It’s 20 minutes, right? If you don’t contact me or come out after 20 minutes, I’ll come in to check,” Yong-jae asked.

“Yeah, please do,” Choi Hong-seo replied.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come in?” he asked with concern.

She smiled at Yong-jae, stepped out of the car, and felt the cold air sharply, even though it wasn’t a long distance from Seoul.

*Haa…*

She took a deep breath while staring at the memorial hall, and her breath formed a mist in the air.

Her own death anniversary was just a few days away. The memories and feelings of Choi Hong-seo still lived on in someone else’s body, but she was still struggling with the fact that her anniversary was approaching. It was a constant internal conflict within her.

She had known that fans would be holding an event on the anniversary, so she decided to visit today instead.

She wanted to come back once more. She wanted to face death properly once again. She felt that if she did, she would be able to take another step forward, even though she couldn’t really say where she was going, only sensing that there was something important ahead.

Even though she had visited this place before, the atmosphere was colder than she remembered, probably because the season had changed.

When she first came here, still unable to properly accept that she had awoken in Yun Hye-an’s body, she was mentally unstable. She couldn’t even remember the location of the VIP resting room.

She checked the map in the central hall and slowly moved towards it.

There was one more thing she needed to confirm while here.

This was where she had first fainted after waking up in Yun Hye-an’s body. Afterward, the next incident had occurred at Lee Hae-sung’s house in Seocho-dong, and although she had experienced symptoms in the director Kang Woo-hyun’s living room, she had never passed out again.

She wanted to understand the cause of the symptoms.

After several script study sessions at Kang Woo-hyun’s house, the symptoms hadn’t repeated. The only time it had happened was when she had been with Lee Hae-sung.

She guessed that the symptoms might be triggered by recalling memories or emotions strongly connected to places deeply tied to Choi Hong-seo. But for now, she could only speculate. Still, she had no answers.

Since there was a possibility that the symptoms could appear suddenly, she had asked Yong-jae to accompany her today. She had told him that if she didn’t contact him or come out within 20 minutes, he should come inside to check.

—

As soon as she entered the VIP resting room, she started feeling unwell. Her reaction was much faster than when she had first visited. It wasn’t so severe, just a feeling like motion sickness, but it was bearable.

In the center of the VIP room, a new flower offering stand had been added, something that wasn’t there before. It was set up in preparation for an expected increase in visitors for the 1st anniversary of Choi Hong-seo’s death. Flowers, gifts, and messages from fans who had already visited were placed there, and the stand itself was meticulously decorated. Choi Hong-seo immediately recognized who had put such care into this memorial.

Suddenly, a wave of dizziness came over him, and cold sweat began to pour down. It seemed unlikely that his body would allow him to calmly examine these items.

Choi Hong-seo hurriedly captured every detail of the offering stand with his phone camera. His hands started to tremble. It felt like being trapped in an airtight room with a gas leak, and the terror came rushing in.

When he had first visited, he hadn’t known anything. He hadn’t anticipated such events, and the symptoms had come on suddenly. But now, he knew that these symptoms would eventually lead to him losing consciousness, and he understood that this phenomenon, like some supernatural occurrence, couldn’t be explained by medicine or science.

It was terrifying.

What scared him was not the symptoms themselves, but the fact that he was being exposed to these strange phenomena without any way to prepare for them.

No, his very existence was a phenomenon. He was a monster that no one could accept, and to the world, his existence was a lie. Who would ever believe in such a being?

Tears welled up more than sweat. Before the symptoms could worsen, he quickly left the VIP room. He hurried outside and collapsed onto a bench, breathing in the fresh air.

Gradually, he began to feel his body returning to normal. Even this response felt frightening. He couldn’t tell if the tears were from sorrow or fear.

“Am I a ghost, or am I a corpse?”

In an instant, the voice of the shaman from the shamanic ritual in Gangwon-do struck his mind like a lightning bolt.

“Even if the living imitate walking, talking, and chewing food, they are corpses, and whether they are happy, angry, sad, or joyful, in the end, they are ghosts. How did a ghost obtain a body, and how did a corpse get a soul?”

At the time, he had been terrified by her energy and had shaken in fear, but she had said exactly that.

A ghost exists without a body, and a corpse is a body without a soul.

If the shaman truly knew this situation, then the ghost was Choi Hong-seo, and the corpse was Yun Hye-an. A ghost that had obtained a body. He, in his current form, was that grotesque existence. He had no idea when his soul might leave again, leaving him without hands, without a voice, wandering as a formless being in the universe.

When would he lose consciousness again? Would he be able to wake up again, just like before? He couldn’t make any guarantees.

The merciless, cold wind scraped his tear-streaked cheek painfully. Choi Hong-seo wiped his tears carelessly with the back of his hand.

Facing vivid terror, the reality behind it became clear. In his tear-filled eyes, a new resolve glinted.

He would tell him.

Even if he wasn’t believed, even if he was treated like a madman, he would beg and plead, clinging to his legs if necessary, to ask him to listen to his story until the end.