Even though I knew it wasn’t my fault, I kept repeating the thought to myself.

It felt like the choices I had made had somehow contributed to her death.

I looked at the calendar and counted the days.

One, two, three.

Today was the third day.

Three days since I had kissed that man and left.

I wasn’t sure if I should say that only three days had passed or if it had already been three days.

Lately, my sense of time was a complete mess.

Since the other members were busy rehearsing and performing day and night, I had unintentionally taken a kind of break – and during that time I found myself constantly checking the Internet for news about Lee Seol-won and Heo Yeonseo.

And every time I was disappointed.

All the search results were just standard articles about the traditional music festival.

Not a single photo showed me and Lee Seol-won sharing that deep kiss on stage in front of Heo Yeonseo.

Although I clearly remembered the flash going off behind me.

Did he intervene somehow?

Or was it just that no reporter had realized that the man was Lee Seol-won, so the story never made it to the press?

Yes… there was no guarantee that the lightning was aimed at us.

It was quite possible that the reporter didn’t recognize him.

He had entered quietly just before the performance began, without an assistant by his side, and had avoided the high-profile center seats reserved for VIPs – the ones reporters usually kept an eye on.

Even I didn’t expect Lee Seol-won to suddenly sit next to me.

And more than anything… I couldn’t deny the fact that I had lost control – driven by the cold cruelty of the man who caused Eun-sae’s death – and acted recklessly.

I wondered if Lee Seol-won realized that I wasn’t Hyun Eun-sae.

No. Probably not.

He probably didn’t even know that Eun-sae had a twin sister.

—”Eun-sae, when are you going to introduce me to your boyfriend?”

When I mentioned him once, Eun-sae hesitated.

—”Ah… later. I’m worried that Seol-won might get scared when he sees you.”

—”You haven’t told him that you have a twin sister?”

—”No, not yet.”

—”Why not?”

—”Well… I wanted to surprise him later. Remember? The thing we promised to do when we got boyfriends.”

—”Ah, that.”

Growing up in a country where people dated freely from a young age and couples often planned little surprises for each other, Eun-sae and I once made a pinky promise.

We said that if either of us ever got a boyfriend and the relationship became serious enough to introduce him to our family, we’d try to switch places – pretending not to be twins – and see if the boyfriend could tell us apart.

I’d pretend to be Eun-sae, or she’d pretend to be me, just to see if he could tell the difference.

I guess we looked too much alike for anyone to tell us apart.

In fact, even friends who knew us often confused us and made mistakes.

But Eun-sae disagreed.

She insisted that if it was really a friend, he should be able to recognize his girlfriend no matter what.

Of course, not long after that, I left to study the Gayageum more seriously in Korea, and our little promise went unfulfilled for a long time.

In fact, I had completely forgotten that we even made that promise until Eun-sae brought it up one day.

—Right, we talked about it when we were kids, didn’t we? I’d completely forgotten.

So you’re finally going to try it for the first time.

But… isn’t Lee Seol-won kind of an overwhelming choice for your first try?

I asked laughing without thinking too much about it.

In retrospect, it must have been a desperate lie – something Eun-sae made up because she couldn’t bear to reveal the truth about their shameful relationship.

There’s no way that the man who saw her as nothing more than a s*x partner would have cared about her family or whether she had a twin sister.

Even the few remaining messages on her cell phone made this painfully clear.

Lee Seol-won – that man – only cared about one thing: whether Eun-sae would come over and offer her body to him whenever he called.

The more I thought about Eun-sae’s irreparable pain, the more it felt like something inside my soul was crumbling.

I couldn’t bear it in a sane state of mind.

Sometimes I would fall asleep.

Other times, I would sit in a daze until the wee hours of the morning.

Or I would go to the practice room without a plan and pluck the gayageum for hours.

Even after only a few days off, the calluses on my index finger had softened and red blisters began to form again.

As you rub your skin against the tight silk strings, the friction damages the layers beneath the surface.

The blisters swell and fill with blood, and over time they’re slowly reabsorbed and healed.

Only after this process is repeated dozens of times do these wounds harden into thick calluses strong enough to withstand the tough silk threads.

But while playing the Gayageum with blistered fingers, I had to endure pain that felt like my skin was being sliced by a blade.

I returned only after playing the Gayageum until my blisters burst and blood dripped drop by drop.

It had been a while since I had felt that fiery sting on my fingertips – the sensation of being burned.

As I pressed down on the peeled skin to stop the bleeding, I rummaged through the first aid kit with my other hand, looking for ointment.

I didn’t apply a bandage.

Although bandages help protect the wound from the elements, they also soften the skin, preventing calluses from forming properly.

That’s why most gayageum players try to avoid using bandages whenever possible, even if they let the blood flow freely when plucking the strings.

Brrrrr.

The sudden vibration of a phone shattered the silence.

Instinctively, I reached for my phone-then froze.

It wasn’t mine.

It was Eun-sae’s.

As an American citizen, there were all sorts of complicated steps Eun-sae had to take to open a phone line in her own name in Korea.

So she had used a second phone line that I had opened in my name.

And I still hadn’t gotten around to canceling that number.

In fact, I carried the phone around with me, constantly following her tracks and clinging to what was left.

An unsaved number appeared on the screen.

I stared blankly at the unfamiliar string of numbers for a moment – then answered the call.

“Hello.”
“Hyun Eun-sae.”

A low voice fell bluntly into the line without so much as a greeting.

I wasn’t surprised.

There was only one person who would contact this number.

I took a breath and slipped on Eun-sae’s mask.

“Go ahead.”

“Meet me in the director’s office in the art hall.”

Of course.

This overbearing habit of just announcing one’s agenda without asking the other person’s availability hadn’t changed.

Yes, that’s how you always called Eun-sae, isn’t it?

My voice cooled instinctively.

“What is this about?”

I had to watch his movements after the encounter at the performance hall, but more importantly, I had to be prepared – I had to know in advance what this man intended to do by calling “Hyun Eun-sae”.

If he wants to use Eun-sae’s body again… It wouldn’t be surprising.

After all, the fact that Lee Seol-won didn’t stop after one or two encounters, but kept calling for her, meant that he was at least satisfied with Eun-sae’s looks and body.

Furthermore, he probably found it convenient that Eun-sae, who couldn’t even bring herself to express her sorrows or complaints about something as trivial as love, was always the one in the weaker position, easy to use.

Whenever he called, Eun-sae would go to him – really, without any pride or self-confidence, just letting herself be dragged along.

I bit my lower lip hard.

I am not Eun-sae.

I had no intention of letting myself be used like her, on his terms.

“Have you forgotten the things you left behind that day?”

It wasn’t until I heard Lee Seol-won say this that I remembered the scarf and gloves I had left in the art hall.

I hadn’t even thought about getting them back, and at some point I had completely forgotten they were there.

“And?”

Inside, my mind was a battlefield – chaotic, noisy, a storm of emotions tearing through me.

But Lee Seol-won’s voice remained calm. Unwaveringly calm.

“Come and get them.”

He called… just for a scarf and gloves?

No-more than that, he actually kept the things I’d left behind?

This from a man who had to know exactly what my intentions were when I pressed my lips to his in front of the cameras.

There’s no way he didn’t understand.

That can’t be it.

Lee Seol-won wasn’t the type of man to be that considerate.

“Throw them away.”

“Then are you planning to skip the gathering too?

I heard they’re throwing a pretty big party this time.”

What did that mean?

My heart sank.

It was the first time I’d heard about a gathering.

Since I didn’t know the whole story between Eun-sae and Lee Seol-won, I couldn’t even guess why the topic had suddenly shifted to a party.

And even more puzzling, why would he, who was already engaged, want to take Eun-sae to a party on purpose?

Was this something Eun-sae had originally known about?

Or did he assume that Eun-sae was sulking because of her fiancé’s public appearance – and now he was dangling a carrot in front of her?

Should I act like I already knew about the gathering?

Or would it be safe to pretend it was the first I’d heard of it?

But above all, the biggest question was something else entirely:

Hadn’t he abandoned Eun-sae when he changed his phone number?