CHAPTER 3

“…Do you still have anything more to say to me?”

Siyeon tightly bit her lower lip, suppressing her anger, as she managed to talk with great effort. Seeing her like that, Eunhye’s tone softened slightly.

“Let’s not see each other from now on. To be honest, it’s not like meeting you brings any joy, and at the same time, you’re not at an age where you still need parental support.”

“…Is that all you have to say? Aren’t you curious where your Hannam-dong parents have been laid?”

Eunhye didn’t know where their parents who had raised her until she was seventeen had been laid. She had never asked Siyeon about it.

Seemingly frustrated by receiving an unexpected question, Eunhye let out a scoffing laugh.

“Choi Siyeon. Do you really think it was just a coincidence that I came to your house after my Hannam-dong father’s business failed? Did you really believe that you and I had been switched due to a hospital mistake? Was it not strange at all that our mother and father didn’t even lodge a complaint with the hospital?”

“What are you trying to say?”

Siyeon asked cautiously, her expression growing more guarded. She couldn’t predict what Eunhye was about to say next.

“I really didn’t want to bring up this topic. Before her passing, our grandmother strictly told me never to tell you about this.”

Eunhye’s maternal grandmother, whom Siyeon had known and grown up thinking was her own grandmother, had been a stern and unaffectionate woman. She didn’t treat her one and only granddaughter any differently.

Strangely enough, the neighborhood where her grandmother lived separately was none other than Hannam-dong, the same place where Eunhye had lived until her father’s business failed. After Eunhye moved to Ichon-dong, her grandmother began visiting her there regularly and sometimes even called her separately.

“Do you know how difficult it was for my mother to give birth to me? The Buddhist monk from the temple where Grandma went every day to pray for an easy childbirth said that her family would soon have a granddaughter, but that the child would not live long. He even went so far as to say that the granddaughter would be the last bloodline in the household. How do you think my grandmother felt when she heard that?”

“…”

Eunhye lowered her voice as if sharing a deep secret.

“The monk said that if the grandmother wanted to prolong her granddaughter’s life, the child should be raised by another family in a different household and let the child live as a child of that family for as long as the twelve gods would go around the world, so my grandmother did some digging and found a nurse in a newborn ward and had her arranged for you and me, who were born on the same day, to be switched.”

“You… Are you out of your mind…? What… kind of nonsense are you saying?”

Eunhye grinned as if she expected Siyeon to react that way.

“That monk said that once I reached the age of twenty-four, I would be healthy from then on. Our grandmother hid that fact all along, and when my assumed family’s situation got worse, she immediately told our parents the truth. She couldn’t leave me in a financially struggling household anymore. But if you or your real parents found out, it would have made things complicated as it is. If they demanded to correct the family relationship documents right away, what can they do? So, as an excuse to take care of you instead of the financially struggling parents in Hannam-dong, they raised us to be together, until I turned twenty-four.”

As if something had flashed before her eyes, her vision darkened. Siyeon clutched the bed with her palm, barely supporting her trembling body.

“…Tell me it’s a lie.”

Her body was shaking. If Eunhye’s words were true, she and her real parents from Hannam-dong had been thoroughly exploited by the people of the Ichon-dong family until she turned twenty-five.

Unbeknownst to her, Hannam-dong’s mother had put her through university and even bought her an apartment, while she had no way to repay Eunhye’s Ichon-dong parents.

“I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. But honestly, you haven’t really lost out. You were loved in both our house and also in Gwihyeon Oppa’s house. Your upbringing was filled with love. Grandpa Suwon even bought you land. Dad bought you an apartment when you became independent.”

After hearing Eunhye’s words, Siyeon finally remembered the land that had been registered in her name in Gyeonggi Province.

She had completely forgotten about that land. She vaguely remembered that her parents had sold it not long after Eunhye came to Ichon-dong, claiming that the property tax had increased significantly.

“Now, that land is worth more than 20 million won per square meter, but they sold it for 10 million won per square meter, so it’s a bit regrettable.”

“…A hundred million won.”

Siyeon muttered to herself. They had hastily sold the land, which was now worth more than 2 billion won per 3,300 square feet. Perhaps they were in a hurry to sell it because it was in her name. She was someone else, so they wanted to settle it quickly, even if it meant losing out.

Right after settling their family matters, Eunhye and her parents, under Eunhye’s name, purchased a small building in a prime location in Gangnam. They probably used the money from selling Siyeon’s land to buy it.

“It’s a huge profit. Even if they bought the land for only 10,000 won at that time, it’s 100 million won now.”

“….”

If only her Hannam-dong’s parents had been helped a little at that time, if only they had helped out of remorse for the terrible thing that Ichon-dong’s grandmother had done for her granddaughter, they might still be alive now.

If they had a little more money, they could have made their father’s final days more comfortable. They might have been able to detect and treat her mother’s depression early on.

She felt an uncontrollable surge of anger, resentment, and sorrow. It was as if her heart could burst from these emotions at any moment.

“… You knew about all of this, and yet you didn’t help our parents from Hannam-dong?”

Siyeon shot her an intense, fiery gaze.

“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”

“Thanks to our parents from Hannam-dong, you lived well and ate well. You traveled abroad during vacations and even received private tutoring for each subject. And yet, you never helped them when they were struggling. You never even visited them again.”

While it might not matter to others, it was something that Eunhye couldn’t just ignore. She shouldn’t have turned away from the parents who had raised her when they fell into poverty.

“Do you think I didn’t feel anything? Dad suddenly collapsed and was lying in the hospital, and Mom cried every day. What could I do when I was just a young child? And then, And then Hannam-dong mother told me not to visit. She said if I lived well under my biological parents’ care, she would come to see me later!”

“Don’t make excuses. You just didn’t want to be burdened by your now-poor parents.”

“It’s you who’s shamelessly trying to mooch off us!”

The mother from Hannam-dong, despite Siyeon being right beside her, occasionally looked towards the door with a weary gaze. Perhaps it was because she had been waiting for her daughter Eunhye, whom she had nurtured with love for seventeen years.

“…You’re just like your parents, aren’t you? Yes, the saying ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’ is meant for moments like this.”

“What did you say? Are you finished talking?”

Eunhye suddenly sat up with wide eyes and got up from her seat.

“Eunhye, today is our birthday, and I haven’t made a wish yet. I’ll tell you my wish now so that it can come true if you join in. My wish is for you to become as miserable as I am.”

“What kind of cruel joke is that? This is really…!”

“Eunhye!”

As Eunhye raised her voice, the door suddenly swung open along with a mix of sobbing voices.

Eunhye’s mother’s face turned pale as she entered, collapsing to the floor, and her father’s face showed great shock, and he was staring only at Eunhye’s face. Siyeon seemed invisible to both of them.

“Gwihyeon… Gwi, Gwihyeon was… on his way home…”

Her mother couldn’t finish her sentence and began to sob in agony. At that moment, something in Siyeon’s mind snapped.

* * *

On his way home, Gwihyeon had been in a traffic accident and died. Siyeon’s wish had come true, even though she hadn’t meant it seriously. Now Siyeon’s and Eunhye’s birthdays had become the anniversary of Gwihyeon’s passing.

“Bring him back! It’s your fault he’s dead, you killed Gwihyeon! So you should die too! Die! Die right now!”

At Gwihyeon’s funeral, Eunhye shook Siyeon’s body while crying out, and the Ichon-dong stared at Siyeon with cold eyes.

Siyeon, without saying a word, collapsed onto the marble floor, dazed and unresponsive. The people around her were shouting, but she couldn’t hear a thing they were saying.

She had never wished for Gwihyeon’s death. In fact, no one had. The words she had uttered had come from anger and sorrow, but ironically, right after she had spoken them, Gwihyeon left this world due to an accident.

Guilt pressed down on her like a weight, squeezing her breath away. She felt as though she had single-handedly caused Gwihyeon’s death. It was as if her words had somehow brought about his demise. Someone guided her to sit in a long hallway chair, but Siyeon quickly stood up and shuffled down the corridor.

Siyeon returned home and sat huddled in a dark corner of her room. The air inside the house was cold, and her lips were parched. She wrapped her arms around her body and tapped her arms against each other to ward off the chill.

She found a candle, lit it, and placed it in front of her. The candle flickered faintly in the dim darkness.

Staring at the candle with hollow eyes, Siyeon lifted her gaze to look beyond the window. The square window framed the white moon.

She stared at the moon and, in a trembling voice, whispered her wish.

“…Please, let me not wake up tomorrow morning.”

After making her wish, a sense of relief washed over her, and she collapsed to the side as if her strength had given out.

Because she had visited the Ichon-dong house, it was her fault Gwihyeon had died. Just as Eunhye had suggested, it should have been her who should have died, not Gwihyeon.

“…Your grandfather also enjoyed writing. Your great-grandfather too. It seems you’re following in their footsteps, Siyeon.”

Before her mother had passed away, she had softly spoken these words, watching Siyeon as she wrote.

“I haven’t done anything for you… I’m sorry that I’ve become nothing but a burden.”

She tried to divert her thoughts to something else to escape the agony, but happy memories refused to surface in her mind.

She had been immersed in a life of lethargy for far too long, and the sudden encounter with reality in her vulnerable state was too painful. Perhaps, like her biological mother, she too was gradually withering away, bit by bit.

Sleepiness overwhelmed her. Struggling to keep her eyes open, Siyeon watched the candlelight gradually brighten the dark room in a listless manner. Her gaze shifted to the white moon beyond the window, visible in the darkness.

White night.

Her eyelids became too heavy to bear, and they slowly closed.

“Shall I follow you?”

A faint memory surfaced, and tears rolled down her cheeks along with it.