Chapter 124
Joo Yi-Gyeol thought he must have died.
Of course. He had swallowed so many sleeping pills.
He had poured an uncountable number of pills down his throat as if forcing something thick through it. Even the ones that wouldn't go down, he tried to swallow with tap water. Before the unpleasant drowsiness could take over, he had nearly thrown up several times, but he had desperately covered his mouth with both hands to hold it in.
He had gone so far to die.
‘Why am I still alive…?’
He had heard that when a living spirit transferred to a new body, the previous body usually didn’t last long before dying. Since it was just a body barely clinging to life without a soul, that was to be expected. That was why he thought his body would have died as well.
Was medical technology just too advanced?
How had they kept that corpse-like body alive? They had considered it such a burden, so why had they kept it alive until now?
More than the affection and longing for the family he hadn’t seen in so long, Joo Yi-Gyeol was overwhelmed by the confusion of why they hadn’t given up on him. If he had been completely dead, he would have understood why his family had become so bright.
Joo Yi-Gyeol stood in the middle of the unfamiliar room, filled with a sense of alienation, looking down at his empty shell in confusion.
Time passed, and the once lively house fell into a deep silence. His family, who had chatted happily during the brief time they had dinner, had long since gone their separate ways to work.
Even though no one in the room was awake, it was still filled with bright lights. The only sounds were the ticking of the clock and a faint breath.
Joo Yi-Gyeol, who had been staring endlessly at his body from the farthest corner of the room, eventually found himself unable to think at all.
He was afraid. If he got any closer to that body, he felt as if he would be completely sucked into it and wake up as before. And then, once again, wouldn’t they see him as a burden?
‘Even now, I’m a burden….’
Maybe this was better. They wouldn’t have to adjust their schedules to take care of him, they wouldn’t have to worry about him causing trouble, and he wouldn’t have to hear that tiresome apology anymore.
‘Maybe it’s because I’m not awake… that everyone has changed.’
Was "changed" even the right word? They had always been people who laughed easily, were cheerful, and cared for each other. It was only when he became ill that they started to become depressed. Their original personalities had always been kind.
If he hadn’t been there, they would have been this happy.
The cold faces of his family, which he had forced himself to forget, overlapped with their current bright expressions, and emotions threatened to well up inside him.
Even though he had a body to return to, he couldn’t go back.
No, had he ever really had a place to return to in the first place?
*Everything about you is mine. Even if you want to die, you can’t. You’ll stay by my side forever.*
‘Seth….’
Why was he thinking about him now, of all times?
That was the one place he must never return to.
But once he started thinking about Sethian’s face and voice, the torment only grew stronger.
Beep—
The sound of the door lock startled him, and he turned his head. Outside the room, he heard his younger sister Joo Yi-Jin’s voice. The greeting, which he hadn’t been able to hear properly back when their family’s faces had started darkening, now rang unusually clear.
Instead of going to her own room, Joo Yi-Jin naturally stood in front of Joo Yi-Gyeol’s room. The door, which had remained quietly shut while everyone was out, opened with a small sound.
“I’m home, Oppa. I got back a little early today, right?”
Joo Yi-Jin peeked her head in and took a deep breath, making a show of it.
“Mmm, it smells nice!”
The irises displayed on the dresser must have been giving off quite a strong fragrance. Seeming to like the scent, she immediately stood in front of the dresser. Humming softly, she took in the flower’s aroma and then picked up the music box to wind it.
“The butterfly is so pretty….”
As she wound it, her gaze remained fixed on the butterfly inside.
“Do you remember, Oppa? When I was little, I was so scared of butterflies just because a huge moth frightened me once.”
Joo Yi-Gyeol watched her as he recalled the past.
It was when Joo Yi-Jin was around six years old.
She had left the window wide open, which had no screen, and a large gray moth had flown into her room. If she held her breath, she could hear the faint sound of its wings flapping. As it flew around, the sound of it hitting the walls was even louder than the clatter of a shirt button falling to the floor.
Unfortunately, since the moth kept flying near the door, Joo Yi-Jin couldn’t escape and had no choice but to cower in a corner and cry.
That experience left her traumatized. Not only moths but even butterflies terrified her. She even avoided flowers and flowering trees whenever she was outside, fearing there might be butterflies.
Joo Yi-Gyeol had made her sit down and told her a foreign legend.
In Italy, there was a famous beauty named Iris. She had married a Roman prince, but he died of illness not long after, leaving her alone. Because of her beauty, suitors endlessly pursued her, but she firmly rejected them all.
Among them, there was a particularly persistent young painter. He passionately courted her, and, moved by his sincerity, Iris gave him a condition for her acceptance.
“Paint a flower that breathes and lives inside the painting.”
The painter poured his heart into his work, and the result was a painting so lifelike that even Iris was captivated. However, though the painting looked like a photograph, it lacked the ‘scent’ that a living flower should have, leaving Iris disappointed.
Just as she was about to reject him, a beautiful yellow butterfly fluttered over and landed on the painted flower. It looked as if it were carefully kissing the flower. Deeply moved, Iris accepted the painter’s proposal and kissed him.
After telling this story, Joo Yi-Gyeol stroked little Joo Yi-Jin’s head and pointed to a small white butterfly fluttering around the flower bed.
“Butterflies aren’t like moths. They’re fairies that carry fragrance.”
“Fairies?”
“Look carefully. In Peter Pan, the fairies have wings just like that, don’t they?”
Following his fingertip, Joo Yi-Jin looked at the butterfly. Instead of fear, her eyes sparkled. The resemblance to Tinker Bell’s wings from the animated movie seemed to convince her. If it had been before, she would have turned away in fright, but now she was staring at it intently.
“These fairies kiss flowers and give them their fragrance.”
“Really?”
“Jin, you like flowers, right?”
“Yes!”
“But flowers, no matter how pretty they are, can’t make fragrance on their own. That means they’re no different from dead flowers.”
He lowered his voice seriously, almost to a whisper, as he told the lie.
“The fairies have to kiss them and breathe fragrance into them. Whether it’s a living flower or a flower in a painting, if a fairy kisses it, it can give off fragrance.”
“But all flowers smell.”
“That just means the fairies are working that hard. So when you see fairies, you shouldn’t be scared. You should thank them for putting fragrance into the flowers. Okay?”
Naive Joo Yi-Jin couldn’t take her eyes off the butterfly, ashamed that she hadn’t recognized such amazing fairies. After that day, she was no longer afraid of butterflies.
Joo Yi-Gyeol remembered it too. It had been a childish lie, but it had helped ease her trauma, and so they both held it as a cherished memory.
“I really love butterflies now... They’re so beautiful.”
Joo Yi-Jin's gaze grew distant. As soon as she let go of the wind-up key, a beautiful melody flowed out, her pupils trembling slightly in tune with the sound.
Joo Yi-Jin could never forget the last conversation she had with Joo Yi-Gyeol.
After ruining her college entrance exam, she had stormed into Joo Yi-Gyeol’s room and unleashed all her frustration upon him. With uncontrollable scorn and fury, she lashed out at him, who, looking at her with boundless guilt, seemed like the greatest sinner in the world. She condemned him, crushed him beneath her words.
That was the last time she saw him.
When she returned home after watching a movie she hadn't even wanted to see with her friends to relieve her stress, the house was already empty. Later, she learned that their mother had found Joo Yi-Gyeol collapsed from an overdose of sleeping pills and had frantically called an ambulance. While the hospital staff worked urgently to save him, her mother, in complete shock from realizing it was a suicide attempt, sat clutching her phone, trembling uncontrollably. She had been unable to make a call or even answer the ones she received.
When Joo Yi-Jin had first come home that day, she hadn't known any of this yet. She had only wondered why the house was in such disarray, whether her brother had fallen ill again, and had waited alone in the eerily silent home.
A house without Joo Yi-Gyeol was far too quiet. The ticking of the clock sounded like the dreadful noise of a moth crashing against the wall.
Had a house ever felt this terrifyingly cold and lifeless?
The white, oval pills scattered across the kitchen floor resembled the cocoons of dead butterflies. The transparent liquid pooled in places kept appearing like blood in her vision.
She couldn’t bring herself to enter her own room near the kitchen. Instead, she unconsciously stepped into Joo Yi-Gyeol’s room, its door left wide open. Strangely, despite the large glass windows in the living room, his room felt even colder. A shiver ran through her shoulders.
It had been years since she last took a good look at his room. She knew it barely had any furniture, but now, with just a mattress, a blanket, and an old dresser, it looked unbearably barren.
Despite the light being on, the room remained dim. She couldn’t recall the lighting in the living room and his room ever being this different before.
Then, her eyes fell on a single violet artificial flower and a memo placed on the dresser. Wondering why there was a flower, she looked closer and belatedly realized it was the cheap irises she had bought years ago and clumsily placed in a vase. The iris, whose flower language was "good news," had once been her way of encouraging Yi-Gyeol. But now, seeing it abandoned on the dresser, she could only click her tongue.
'At least throw your trash away.'
Frowning at the dust-covered fake flower, she noticed the memo beside it. If she had to name the only thing in this room that still retained a vivid color, it would be this stark white memo. She had never seen Joo Yi-Gyeol write on memo paper before, yet somehow, this one remained pristine, untouched by time.
Looking at it indifferently, she soon noticed faint indentations on the paper, as if something had been pressed onto it. Curious, she picked it up to examine it and was startled.
[I'm always cheering for you, Yi-Jin.]
Though it was only an imprint, the deliberate effort in each stroke made it clear what had once been written there.
The moment she understood the words, it felt as if her heart had dropped to the floor. A suffocating anxiety gripped her as she clutched the empty memo, her hands trembling.
Then, she suddenly remembered the white paper butterflies he had given her the day before her exam. Where in this room had those butterflies been made?
She rushed out of the room and overturned the cylindrical trash bin near the entrance. Amongst the assorted garbage, crumpled white butterflies spilled out in a flurry. As she unfolded them one by one, tears welled up in her eyes.
Each butterfly carried words of encouragement and support. They were filled with warm, hopeful messages, as if written by someone who had never known despair.
[I wish for you to be happy, always.]
She had no idea how many tears she shed upon reading that.
'What about you, Oppa?'
The question came to her naturally.
Would Joo Yi-Gyeol have responded with a forced smile, as he always had? Or would he have genuinely smiled at her?
But when Joo Yi-Gyeol returned from the hospital, he never answered Joo Yi-Jin's question.
Of course. He had swallowed so many sleeping pills.
He had poured an uncountable number of pills down his throat as if forcing something thick through it. Even the ones that wouldn't go down, he tried to swallow with tap water. Before the unpleasant drowsiness could take over, he had nearly thrown up several times, but he had desperately covered his mouth with both hands to hold it in.
He had gone so far to die.
‘Why am I still alive…?’
He had heard that when a living spirit transferred to a new body, the previous body usually didn’t last long before dying. Since it was just a body barely clinging to life without a soul, that was to be expected. That was why he thought his body would have died as well.
Was medical technology just too advanced?
How had they kept that corpse-like body alive? They had considered it such a burden, so why had they kept it alive until now?
More than the affection and longing for the family he hadn’t seen in so long, Joo Yi-Gyeol was overwhelmed by the confusion of why they hadn’t given up on him. If he had been completely dead, he would have understood why his family had become so bright.
Joo Yi-Gyeol stood in the middle of the unfamiliar room, filled with a sense of alienation, looking down at his empty shell in confusion.
Time passed, and the once lively house fell into a deep silence. His family, who had chatted happily during the brief time they had dinner, had long since gone their separate ways to work.
Even though no one in the room was awake, it was still filled with bright lights. The only sounds were the ticking of the clock and a faint breath.
Joo Yi-Gyeol, who had been staring endlessly at his body from the farthest corner of the room, eventually found himself unable to think at all.
He was afraid. If he got any closer to that body, he felt as if he would be completely sucked into it and wake up as before. And then, once again, wouldn’t they see him as a burden?
‘Even now, I’m a burden….’
Maybe this was better. They wouldn’t have to adjust their schedules to take care of him, they wouldn’t have to worry about him causing trouble, and he wouldn’t have to hear that tiresome apology anymore.
‘Maybe it’s because I’m not awake… that everyone has changed.’
Was "changed" even the right word? They had always been people who laughed easily, were cheerful, and cared for each other. It was only when he became ill that they started to become depressed. Their original personalities had always been kind.
If he hadn’t been there, they would have been this happy.
The cold faces of his family, which he had forced himself to forget, overlapped with their current bright expressions, and emotions threatened to well up inside him.
Even though he had a body to return to, he couldn’t go back.
No, had he ever really had a place to return to in the first place?
*Everything about you is mine. Even if you want to die, you can’t. You’ll stay by my side forever.*
‘Seth….’
Why was he thinking about him now, of all times?
That was the one place he must never return to.
But once he started thinking about Sethian’s face and voice, the torment only grew stronger.
Beep—
The sound of the door lock startled him, and he turned his head. Outside the room, he heard his younger sister Joo Yi-Jin’s voice. The greeting, which he hadn’t been able to hear properly back when their family’s faces had started darkening, now rang unusually clear.
Instead of going to her own room, Joo Yi-Jin naturally stood in front of Joo Yi-Gyeol’s room. The door, which had remained quietly shut while everyone was out, opened with a small sound.
“I’m home, Oppa. I got back a little early today, right?”
Joo Yi-Jin peeked her head in and took a deep breath, making a show of it.
“Mmm, it smells nice!”
The irises displayed on the dresser must have been giving off quite a strong fragrance. Seeming to like the scent, she immediately stood in front of the dresser. Humming softly, she took in the flower’s aroma and then picked up the music box to wind it.
“The butterfly is so pretty….”
As she wound it, her gaze remained fixed on the butterfly inside.
“Do you remember, Oppa? When I was little, I was so scared of butterflies just because a huge moth frightened me once.”
Joo Yi-Gyeol watched her as he recalled the past.
It was when Joo Yi-Jin was around six years old.
She had left the window wide open, which had no screen, and a large gray moth had flown into her room. If she held her breath, she could hear the faint sound of its wings flapping. As it flew around, the sound of it hitting the walls was even louder than the clatter of a shirt button falling to the floor.
Unfortunately, since the moth kept flying near the door, Joo Yi-Jin couldn’t escape and had no choice but to cower in a corner and cry.
That experience left her traumatized. Not only moths but even butterflies terrified her. She even avoided flowers and flowering trees whenever she was outside, fearing there might be butterflies.
Joo Yi-Gyeol had made her sit down and told her a foreign legend.
In Italy, there was a famous beauty named Iris. She had married a Roman prince, but he died of illness not long after, leaving her alone. Because of her beauty, suitors endlessly pursued her, but she firmly rejected them all.
Among them, there was a particularly persistent young painter. He passionately courted her, and, moved by his sincerity, Iris gave him a condition for her acceptance.
“Paint a flower that breathes and lives inside the painting.”
The painter poured his heart into his work, and the result was a painting so lifelike that even Iris was captivated. However, though the painting looked like a photograph, it lacked the ‘scent’ that a living flower should have, leaving Iris disappointed.
Just as she was about to reject him, a beautiful yellow butterfly fluttered over and landed on the painted flower. It looked as if it were carefully kissing the flower. Deeply moved, Iris accepted the painter’s proposal and kissed him.
After telling this story, Joo Yi-Gyeol stroked little Joo Yi-Jin’s head and pointed to a small white butterfly fluttering around the flower bed.
“Butterflies aren’t like moths. They’re fairies that carry fragrance.”
“Fairies?”
“Look carefully. In Peter Pan, the fairies have wings just like that, don’t they?”
Following his fingertip, Joo Yi-Jin looked at the butterfly. Instead of fear, her eyes sparkled. The resemblance to Tinker Bell’s wings from the animated movie seemed to convince her. If it had been before, she would have turned away in fright, but now she was staring at it intently.
“These fairies kiss flowers and give them their fragrance.”
“Really?”
“Jin, you like flowers, right?”
“Yes!”
“But flowers, no matter how pretty they are, can’t make fragrance on their own. That means they’re no different from dead flowers.”
He lowered his voice seriously, almost to a whisper, as he told the lie.
“The fairies have to kiss them and breathe fragrance into them. Whether it’s a living flower or a flower in a painting, if a fairy kisses it, it can give off fragrance.”
“But all flowers smell.”
“That just means the fairies are working that hard. So when you see fairies, you shouldn’t be scared. You should thank them for putting fragrance into the flowers. Okay?”
Naive Joo Yi-Jin couldn’t take her eyes off the butterfly, ashamed that she hadn’t recognized such amazing fairies. After that day, she was no longer afraid of butterflies.
Joo Yi-Gyeol remembered it too. It had been a childish lie, but it had helped ease her trauma, and so they both held it as a cherished memory.
“I really love butterflies now... They’re so beautiful.”
Joo Yi-Jin's gaze grew distant. As soon as she let go of the wind-up key, a beautiful melody flowed out, her pupils trembling slightly in tune with the sound.
Joo Yi-Jin could never forget the last conversation she had with Joo Yi-Gyeol.
After ruining her college entrance exam, she had stormed into Joo Yi-Gyeol’s room and unleashed all her frustration upon him. With uncontrollable scorn and fury, she lashed out at him, who, looking at her with boundless guilt, seemed like the greatest sinner in the world. She condemned him, crushed him beneath her words.
That was the last time she saw him.
When she returned home after watching a movie she hadn't even wanted to see with her friends to relieve her stress, the house was already empty. Later, she learned that their mother had found Joo Yi-Gyeol collapsed from an overdose of sleeping pills and had frantically called an ambulance. While the hospital staff worked urgently to save him, her mother, in complete shock from realizing it was a suicide attempt, sat clutching her phone, trembling uncontrollably. She had been unable to make a call or even answer the ones she received.
When Joo Yi-Jin had first come home that day, she hadn't known any of this yet. She had only wondered why the house was in such disarray, whether her brother had fallen ill again, and had waited alone in the eerily silent home.
A house without Joo Yi-Gyeol was far too quiet. The ticking of the clock sounded like the dreadful noise of a moth crashing against the wall.
Had a house ever felt this terrifyingly cold and lifeless?
The white, oval pills scattered across the kitchen floor resembled the cocoons of dead butterflies. The transparent liquid pooled in places kept appearing like blood in her vision.
She couldn’t bring herself to enter her own room near the kitchen. Instead, she unconsciously stepped into Joo Yi-Gyeol’s room, its door left wide open. Strangely, despite the large glass windows in the living room, his room felt even colder. A shiver ran through her shoulders.
It had been years since she last took a good look at his room. She knew it barely had any furniture, but now, with just a mattress, a blanket, and an old dresser, it looked unbearably barren.
Despite the light being on, the room remained dim. She couldn’t recall the lighting in the living room and his room ever being this different before.
Then, her eyes fell on a single violet artificial flower and a memo placed on the dresser. Wondering why there was a flower, she looked closer and belatedly realized it was the cheap irises she had bought years ago and clumsily placed in a vase. The iris, whose flower language was "good news," had once been her way of encouraging Yi-Gyeol. But now, seeing it abandoned on the dresser, she could only click her tongue.
'At least throw your trash away.'
Frowning at the dust-covered fake flower, she noticed the memo beside it. If she had to name the only thing in this room that still retained a vivid color, it would be this stark white memo. She had never seen Joo Yi-Gyeol write on memo paper before, yet somehow, this one remained pristine, untouched by time.
Looking at it indifferently, she soon noticed faint indentations on the paper, as if something had been pressed onto it. Curious, she picked it up to examine it and was startled.
[I'm always cheering for you, Yi-Jin.]
Though it was only an imprint, the deliberate effort in each stroke made it clear what had once been written there.
The moment she understood the words, it felt as if her heart had dropped to the floor. A suffocating anxiety gripped her as she clutched the empty memo, her hands trembling.
Then, she suddenly remembered the white paper butterflies he had given her the day before her exam. Where in this room had those butterflies been made?
She rushed out of the room and overturned the cylindrical trash bin near the entrance. Amongst the assorted garbage, crumpled white butterflies spilled out in a flurry. As she unfolded them one by one, tears welled up in her eyes.
Each butterfly carried words of encouragement and support. They were filled with warm, hopeful messages, as if written by someone who had never known despair.
[I wish for you to be happy, always.]
She had no idea how many tears she shed upon reading that.
'What about you, Oppa?'
The question came to her naturally.
Would Joo Yi-Gyeol have responded with a forced smile, as he always had? Or would he have genuinely smiled at her?
But when Joo Yi-Gyeol returned from the hospital, he never answered Joo Yi-Jin's question.
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