episode_0143

Since starting their relationship, Siwoo had found stability in many ways.

The fact that he had a girlfriend who always trusted him and had his back.

Just that alone made his heart so at ease.

Chaewon always made an effort to do something for Siwoo, trying her best to show only pretty and good sides of herself…

But there was no need for that.

Siwoo was just happy when Chaewon was by his side.

It was like having a totem that restored his vitality just by standing still.

“Lunch… how is it?”

“It’s delicious.”

“Really?”

“You’re good at cooking anyway. Especially at making dishes that suit my taste.”

“Isn’t it just because we have similar tastes…?”

“If something tastes good to you, it will taste good to me too. If you’ve been making dishes that you like, then of course I’ll like them too.”

“… What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means it’s delicious.”

Siwoo lightly squeezed Chaewon’s cheek as she leaned on his shoulder.

When he turned around, he saw Chaewon’s slightly blushing face.

Didn’t he say it like that?

Inside the current Min Chaewon lived Jung Siwoo.

But to anyone else, it was still Min Chaewon.

Min Chaewon who wanted to be loved by Jung Siwoo.

“Since it’s a lunchbox you made with love, it’s really delicious.”

She was truly a picky woman.

She needed to be told why and how something was good in detail to be satisfied.

But for Siwoo, giving detailed compliments like this was not difficult at all.

Min Chaewon always tried to draw out a ‘specific answer’ from Siwoo.

So the quizzes Chaewon gave were too easy for Siwoo.

Everything Siwoo thought,

Chaewon thought too.

When Siwoo expressed his thoughts as they were, it became the story Chaewon wanted to hear.

“It’s a taste I want to have often.”

Chaewon’s cheeks turned pink.

It was the color that expressed the emotion of love.

“Do you have any side dishes you want to eat? I’ll make them all for you!”

Siwoo chuckled as he gently stroked Chaewon’s forehead.

The cool autumn breeze tickled the two as it passed by.

“What you want to eat is what I want to eat.”

***

It was a happy date by the Han River.

The clear blue sky and the cool breeze.

The quiet park lawn on a weekday morning.

Riding bicycles together for about 2km, they enjoyed watching boats and cruise ships on the river.

They stopped their bikes in between to take pictures.

They picked cosmos flowers that were blooming and took pictures with them.

The picture of Siwoo with cosmos flowers in his hair, taken that day, was my favorite scene among the photos we took that day.

Probably because Siwoo was smiling the happiest in that picture.

I felt the same way too.

“Did you have fun?”

“… Yes.”

In my dream, Aklerkt, whom I met again, was holding a photo album.

I sat on the cloud sofa she pointed to.

With a few flicks of Aklerkt’s fingers, cloud coffee in a cloud cup and cloud cookies on a cloud plate were placed on the cloud table.

Curious, I picked up a cookie and took a bite, and it tasted sweet like a milk biscuit.

“What are you looking at?”

“Your date yesterday.”

“I see.”

It seems that what I saw is being recorded in an album like that.

It’s a strange world of self.

When I lived as Jung Siwoo, I was busy fighting my selves in a dark space.

“… Sigh.”

Aklerkt clicked her tongue with an annoyed expression.

Letting out a sigh while looking at happy date photos.

I sipped on my cloud coffee and sneakily glanced at Lady over the cup.

“You look happy.”

“I was happy.”

“… I see.”

With a sharp gaze coming my way, I raised the cup again and hid behind it.

Why is she like that, seriously. Just say it outright.

I couldn’t just take it. After all, haven’t I become more accustomed to cooking while learning recently?

Practical swordsmanship and cooking knife skills are completely different, though.

It felt like my Aclert was waking up inside me…

I thought I could take a chance at least once.

“Why do you look so displeased? I’m living happily…”

“….”

No change.

A sharp gaze that made it scary to reply pierced me.

I put down the cup and confidently straightened my chest.

“Tomorrow is the first round of the Xiwoo concours preliminaries, and I’ll probably pass easily. I’ll breeze through the second round next month.”

“We’ll compete in the finals at the end of October. If we get a good score and accept it, it’ll already be the end of October. If you help Xiwoo, time will pass quickly.”

“You just have to wait until January next year. It’s not like I have any objections. I’ve already adapted enough to this body. I can do anything. It’s just a few months.”

Aclert brought her hand to the scabbard, but that was all.

She didn’t threaten me or draw her sword.

“…Lady?”

No.

She wasn’t staying still on her own.

“…Tsk.”

The tip of Lady’s leather glove blurred.

It was like a fading phantom.

“Sigh. I wanted to see a perfect ending. It might be difficult. Why bother with cooking as a hobby.”

Unlike the other selves of Chaewon from 0 to 24, Aclert survived as separate selves for a long time due to two special elements, command and sword.

However, as I started cooking, she also naturally began to merge with me.

It was a completely unexpected result.

“Ah… I didn’t do it on purpose…”

“I know. It’s not wrong to practice cooking because you want to treat Xiwoo with delicious food.”

Lady slowly untied the red ribbon that fixed the scabbard to her waist.

Clatter. Lady’s sword, which fell from her waist, soon floated up towards me.

I hung her sword on my waist.

It was a heavy iron sword, but it felt as light as a feather on my waist.

Curious, I looked down at my waist, and instead of the scabbard, there was a baton and a key ring instead of the red ribbon.

“I show such obsessive behavior because… there’s a reason for it.”

“A reason… you say?”

“You probably won’t understand even if you hear it. All twenty-six of us, including me—.”

Lady looked down at the scabbard with a despairing expression.

“Couldn’t marry Xiwoo.”

Couldn’t marry?

“Because… you couldn’t date? Or because you had to go back to Austria?”

It’s understandable if you wanted to say that you couldn’t marry because you failed in love.

“No. It’s not a relationship issue. Confessing and dating. Even if we did, we couldn’t get married in the end.”

“…?”

With a puzzled expression, I looked at Lady, who smiled kindly at me.

Her warm hand covered my cheek.

“I physically couldn’t get married. I couldn’t bring myself to meet Xiwoo in that state.”

At that moment when doubts were piling up.

Lady revealed the truth in a cool, form of showing past memories.

One day in March 2024.

“You have been infected with TSVID.”

“We cannot disclose the detailed infection route. We apologize for the lack of medical staff. The number of cases reported worldwide is still less than ten thousand. As reported so far, 99.99% of infected individuals change gender.”

“You must prepare for a man’s life.”

“…I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.”

After finishing the consultation with the doctor that felt like a death sentence, Chaewon ran home.

She locked the door, threw herself on the bed, and cried out loud.

“Ugh… Uwaaaa! Aaaaa… Aaaaaaa!!”

April 2024.

“Miss, where are you going?”

“…Just going out for a bit.”

It had been about a week since Chaewon stepped out of the room again.

Completely soaked, Chaewon walked out into the pouring rain without an umbrella.

“Are you really going out without an umbrella?”

“…Just need some fresh air.”

“Miss… I’ll follow you. Please wait here for a moment.”

“No.”

With dead eyes, Chaewon told Kanghwi.

“Don’t follow me.”

Splash.

A heavy object seemed to fall onto the surface of the water.

Cold things enveloped her body.

It was water.

The cold she felt in the river just before she died.

I opened my eyes wide.

“How is it?”

Lady looked at me with sad eyes.

We faced each other in the dark water where almost no light penetrated.

“Could it be…?”

“Yeah. I jumped into the water.”

“What?”

“But I couldn’t die. Uselessly good at holding my breath. Kanghwi saved me before I could sink.”

“If you knew that, you should have walked Relka less. Hehe.”

I clenched my lips tightly and grabbed Aclert’s shoulder, who was smiling coldly.

“So… what happened next?”

“…What do you mean?”

“After that, you lived for another ten or twenty years, right?”

Lady saw a distant future.

“Well… the laws change over time…”

“Will the legal age decrease in ten years?”

“The definition of an adult becomes more ambiguous as time goes on.”

“You lived longer than I thought?”

“Apparently.”

If what she said before was not a lie.

Even after becoming a man, she would have lived for quite a long time.

And then, by chance, she regressed to the past and became her parallel world self.

The time of regression varied.

All twenty-five Chaewons lived for quite a long time———.

“And then a few days later, I died in a car accident. That’s how I became the me in this parallel world.”

I exclaimed as if sighing.

“…You lived for a long time? Was that a lie?”