Bottomless Swamp

If you know the truth, your perspective also changes. After learning that Ellie had lied, I rethought what had happened from her point of view. And I finally realized when her lies had started.

With the confession as the end, I barely managed to regain my balance, which had been tilting powerlessly forward. I felt empty, as if all the blood had been drained from my body. Even light breathing was difficult, as if my heart and lungs were being squeezed. The obvious evidence that the Constraint had been activated made me feel like a corner of my heart was collapsing, even though I had braced myself.

“…Are you okay?”

Ellie approached me with a worried expression. I now know that that appearance was perfectly calculated.

I spoke slowly so that Ellie and Ross inside me, who must be watching all of this, could clearly hear me.

“Ellie, you knew the truth, didn’t you?”

At my out-of-context question, Ellie lowered her gaze.

“…About what?”

“That I was actually planning to hinder your confession, not help you.”

Ellie didn’t say anything to my words. She just stared at me blankly with a blank face.

After the conversation about Nelson and Ellie, one question arose for me. The essence of plausibility is that it makes sense. Although it didn’t appear in the original novel, plausibility is when the connections and fate that have accumulated in the novel naturally flow. Plausibility creates a plausible past based on the current story that appeared in the novel.

I tried to understand Ellie anew using plausibility as a clue, using the perspective I learned from Nelson. And I came to one possibility. Ellie is endlessly greedy. She is stubborn and quick-witted. She comfortably used Ross with the excuse of being kind. With that as a clue, I rummaged through my memories.

I have a Constraint that allows me to figure out Ellie’s lies. It’s a vague condition of Ellie’s belief, but that makes it easier to figure out Ellie’s thoughts.

“You noticed my plan to keep you by my side from the beginning and used it against me.”

If Ellie knew from the beginning about Ross’s plan to use her feelings to keep her by his side, everything would fit.

Ellie calculated that if everyone was to be happy, I had to take her first experience. If Ellie really intended to give me her first time, the Constraint should have been activated as a price for rejecting the offer. But even when I proposed to end the relationship completely, the Constraint did not activate. From the beginning, Ellie knew that I would reject her offer.

From that moment on, I went back through my memories. I remembered the moments in my conversation with Ellie when I rejected her words and betrayed her trust. And I found the first moment when the Constraint didn’t activate. It was when I confessed Ross’s sinister plan to Ellie after the end of the duel finals.

Ellie was betrayed. She even made a shocked expression at my confession. But the Constraint did not activate. Clearly, Ellie was betrayed by Ross, whom she had believed in, but the Constraint did not activate. Rather, Ellie was thinking of killing Bella by taking advantage of my guilt.

The reason why the Constraint didn’t activate at my confession can be easily inferred. If Ellie knew Ross’s plan from the beginning… If she was using it in reverse, she wouldn’t have broken her trust, so the Constraint wouldn’t have activated.

In the novel, Ellie undergoes a mental awakening due to Ross’s death. The death of a long-time childhood friend will surely be a great mental shock. But what if the world thought that Ellie’s plausibility to awaken was insufficient to that extent? So, if they created an independent past for Ross and Ellie for the sake of plausibility… The story so far makes plausible sense.

From the beginning, Ellie knew Ross’s plan. Ellie pretended not to know and was rejected as Ross intended, showing a difficult appearance. By using Ross, who comforted her while feeling guilty, she became closer to Roel. Using the guilt of the two people as a method.

Using Ross, who has a crush on her, is a safe method without risk that Ellie has used since a long time ago. If she just shows Ross the sight of Roel brushing off the pollen on her clothes, Ross, who misunderstood the sight, will surely explode on his own. Roel would feel sorry for Ellie, who is struggling with Ross’s obsession, and the plan was to get closer little by little while comforting her.

But Ellie didn’t calculate that a fraudulent artifact would appear in the Academy as a variable. Ross, who she had comfortably used with the excuse of being kind, became corrupted and died in her plan, so she was really shocked. This is a more plausible story as to why Ellie awakened. She did something bad, but the regret that she didn’t intend to kill him. That was her awakening point.

As if demanding an answer, I glared at Ellie, forcibly supporting my tired body as if my whole body was being crushed. After a moment of silence, Ellie straightened her body. And then she gave the bright smile she had always shown.

“How did you know? I thought you wouldn’t notice until the end.”

Everything feels distant at Ellie’s nonchalant voice. The hollow laughter that comes out may be Ross’s instinct. It won’t be easy to accept that he has been deceived and manipulated all along. But no matter how difficult it is, you have to accept it. That was the truth.

Even in all the moments when she smiled brightly by my side, was jealous of Luna, and had her first kiss with me that I couldn’t understand, Ellie never loved me even once.

What she wants is not to be in a romantic relationship with me. That was the reason why the Constraint was activated as a price for confessing her love, not the usual answer of rejection that she wanted.

I made a confession that I didn’t mean in order to know the truth. If I was really sincere, my heart would have stopped because my love for Luna had changed. As a price for the false confession, I finally found out the truth.

It was a cloudless night. The cool night air passed between us. I was in a state where I felt like I would collapse at any moment, but I endured it. The story is not over yet.

“The reason you trusted me in Destin Village… was because you believed that I wouldn’t do anything that would harm you, who you thought was the only one?”

When I asked that, Ellie said with a slightly bitter expression.

“Ross, I just thought of you as a real friend.”

I immediately replied to that brazen lie.

“No, you never even thought of me as a friend. I sincerely loved you, but you just wanted to possess me, who was easy to use as you pleased…”

Ellie’s obsidian eyes narrow like a cat.

“So…? Even if I thought of you as a possession rather than a friend, it wouldn’t be harmful to you, would it? You were satisfied just being by my side.”

I was speechless at Ellie’s brazen words. But Ellie continued, looking like she really didn’t understand.

“I was your whole life. You had no reason to live without me before you lost your memories. I saved you from trying to commit suicide several times. Then of course your life is mine…?”

My vision wavers. Emotions suddenly surge from within me. It feels like someone is grabbing my heart. It’s cruel. The only person Ross trusted was the person he shouldn’t have trusted the most.

“All of that was what you intended. You were sure that I would have no choice but to love you even if I lost my memories. Because you… made me that way.”

Ellie once said that to me. That she believed in me, that I would like her again as always. That even if I didn’t have memories, my heart would remain the same. Ellie was sure that I would never abandon her in any situation. The reason for that certainty was simple. Because I was Ellie’s possession.

Ellie wants to be loved. It was a twisted and distorted self-love. Even if she turns away, she wanted Ross, who roams around her and only looks at her, to always be by her side. The desire to be obsessed with. For Ellie, Ross was just that kind of role.

“If it weren’t for that stupid cripple bitch, you would have come back to my side. If that bitch hadn’t stolen my things in the middle… we wouldn’t have had to have this conversation. You were mine from the beginning.”

I felt like I wanted to shout loudly at Ellie’s voice, as if it were natural. I wanted to express my emotions, not words, and tell her about the pain in my heart that felt like it was about to explode.

But my voice was calmer than the fierce impulse.

“I sincerely loved you. Even though I knew you liked hyung-nim… Even though I knew I had no chance, to the point where I couldn’t give up.”

Now I know clearly. Ellie is a bottomless swamp that you can never escape from once you step into it. She mistook the swamp that suffocated her, made her lonely so that no one could approach her, as something that supported her and was the only thing that embraced her. Emotions that I couldn’t hold back turned into tears and flowed down. My lips were numb. I might be trembling. In my blurry vision, I stared straight at Ellie and asked as if pleading.

“Why, why did you do that to me?”

Ellie raised her head and looked at the night sky. After a moment of silence, Ellie lowered her head and met my gaze. Her obsidian eyes drew an arc. With a soft smile, Ellie said in a low voice.

“I just wanted to be an unconscious word coming out of your mouth.”