Eunjo parted her lips and let out a long sigh.

“When I wanted to see you that badly, I couldn’t.”

Then the window appeared again.

First, we have received approval for one year of Na Eunjo’s memories.

Only one year’s worth of memories.

But it was better than nothing.

“Okay. I’ll look at at least one year.”

You may refuse. Depending on the case, it could be a rather unpleasant experience.

Of course it would be unpleasant.

‘It’s peeking into someone else’s life—into the life of someone who even attempted suicide.’

And yet, she was a little hopeful. Because somewhere in those memories, Jooheon might be in them.

Recalling Jooheon she had met a moment ago, Eunjo steeled herself to accept another person’s memories.

Would you like to view the memories?

“Yeah. I’ll see.”

Any memory, whatever it was.

If it was something needed to take revenge on the people who drove her father to death, stole the company, and even murdered her.

Then that much.

The moment she released the lip she’d been biting down on, the smell of blood filled her mouth completely.

The bloodstained blouse she’d seen at dawn today came to mind. Nausea rose.

We will proceed with synchronization.

In an instant, unfamiliar memories invaded her mind. Tears poured down endlessly.

* * *

After tossing and turning all night, Jooheon got up at dawn and put on a black suit. It was to see Eunjo off on her final road.

Lee Eunjo.

Lee Wongyu’s daughter and a fairly famous painter.

And Jooheon’s first love.

Jooheon loved her, three years his senior, with truly aching tenderness.

At first, he fell for her voice.

Then he fell for her paintings, and he fell for the sound of her clear laughter, and he fell for her unique, light, careful footsteps.

He fell for the fingers that lifted a coffee cup, and he fell for the lips that nibbled on lemon shortcake.

To twenty-one-year-old Jooheon who first saw her, Lee Eunjo was a woman overflowing with beauty.

Her face was lovely, but above all, her soul was beautiful.

To twenty-three-year-old Jooheon who had no choice but to part from her, Eunjo was someone he couldn’t have, and so she was even more precious; too noble to be trampled. Because her soul was beautiful at every moment.

Would that soul now depart.

Tying a black necktie, Jooheon left home.

* * *

8 a.m.

Arriving at the crematorium, Jooheon watched from afar as the limousine carrying Eunjo came in.

Someone got out from the front seat of the limousine holding Eunjo’s memorial portrait, and then Kang Jinwoo got out.

The moment he took Kang Jinwoo into his eyes, strength naturally gathered in his fist. Kang Jinwoo had once been a mountain he couldn’t dare overcome, but now he was nothing but pathetic.

A pathetic human who had Eunjo and still couldn’t protect her.

No—rather, the scum of a man who drove her to her death.

Jooheon set his molars firmly.

It didn’t take long for Eunjo, who had arrived at the crematorium like that, to come out as a handful of ash.

Eunjo, placed in a small urn, was in Kang Jinwoo’s arms.

Unable to bear looking, Jooheon turned his gaze away, then narrowed his eyes.

Because of something out of place caught at the end of his sight.

“……Na Eunjo?”

Na Eunjo was there.

She looked quite different from the figure he had seen in front of the funeral hall the day before yesterday.

Neatly dressed in a black one-piece dress, she was looking at Eunjo with a bare face without makeup.

With her yellow hair tied back into one and her face fully revealed, she watched Eunjo’s end with a resolute gaze.

There was so much force in her tightly interlocked lips that her left cheek dimple hollowed in.

The person who had been shocked enough by Eunjo’s death to come out in shoes that didn’t match.

The person who cared about Eunjo enough to come not only to the funeral hall but all the way to the crematorium.

“What the hell is it?”

What is it that makes you act like this?

It was when Jooheon’s eyebrow tilted crookedly.

“Unni! Eunjo unni……!”

A woman following behind Kang Jinwoo cried out, wailing.

She’d been like that at the funeral hall too—she must have been close to Eunjo in life.

“What do we do, poor Eunjo unni…….”

Even so, Jooheon frowned, displeased at the way she was staining Eunjo’s final road with pity.

But Na Eunjo’s eyes as she looked at that woman were not ordinary.

With contempt in her coolly lowered eyes, she didn’t take her gaze off until Kang Jinwoo and the woman got into the car.

Then, after the limousine carrying Eunjo grew distant, Na Eunjo bowed politely toward the limousine. That sight was impressive, if it was impressive.

Na Eunjo stood still until the limousine completely disappeared, then let out a shallow sigh and began to move.

Watching that, a vein bulged on one side of Jooheon’s forehead.

Light, weightless footsteps taken with a soft swish.

Because, for a very brief moment, Eunjo’s figure overlapped faintly with Na Eunjo.

* * *

There is no Lee Eunjo. There is only Na Eunjo.

The moment Lee Eunjo’s shattered body came out as ash, she realized it.

That she could not turn back now.

Because there was no body left that she could return to, so from now on she was not Lee Eunjo, but Na Eunjo.

After paying her respects to the body of Lee Eunjo, who had lived 34 years like a single peony blossom, she stared at the departing limousine and fell into thought for a moment.

It had been earlier, in the crematorium restroom.

Maybe she thought no one was there—Kim Nain had been on the phone with someone for quite a while.

“Yeah. Now all of Lee Eunjo’s property belongs to our darling, you know?”

Up until she entered the restroom, she’d been sobbing her eyes out, but it seemed she couldn’t stop the good mood from coloring her voice.

“A wedding? Of course we have to. But it’s still kind of… like this. We should cry a bit more for the dead woman, comfort each other, fall in love—something like that, right?”

It seemed the other person asked whether people wouldn’t curse them.

But Nain, completely excited, said she was already prepared to be cursed properly.

“CX is becoming mine—do you think curses matter? I could even eat a curse grandpa.”

Nain’s lightly ringing laughter was coy.

“Yeah. I was just about to suggest we register the marriage first. I need to set up a safety device too. Would a person who betrayed once not betray twice?”

After washing her hands neatly, Nain left the restroom.

Only then did Eunjo, who had been hiding, reveal herself and slowly follow after Nain.

After turning the corner and reaching a place where people’s eyes could land, Nain started crying.

‘Unni, unni. Anyone would think your real older sister died.’

Holding back the urge to smack that disgusting face, she had to endure the pain of her nails digging into her palm.

In the end, once Nain got into the limousine as if fainting and disappeared with Jinwoo, peace finally settled into Eunjo’s heart.

“You’re saying you’ll register the marriage first?”

A laugh slipped past her lips.

“No chance.”

And then she slowly started walking.

On the way here, she’d taken a taxi, but on the way back, she wanted to walk a little and take the bus.

It was a little embarrassing that she’d lived as a precious princess and never once ridden a bus in her life.

Leaving the crematorium like that, Eunjo slowly walked, savoring the autumn sky of mid-September.

That was when it happened.

A car horn sounded lightly, and a black sedan slid up alongside her.

A deeply tinted window lowered, and the person who revealed his face was Jooheon.