IAORNHB 4

Chapter 4

Part 1. Hell

Chapter 1. Return (3)

In a dream that lasted only an instant, Jang Hyunji looked into a mirror and spoke to me.

‘This place really feels like a dream.’

‘I was living on borrowed time, and now I’ve possessed someone else’s body… Life really is full of surprises, isn’t it?’

A chance given to a woman who had been dying after receiving a terminal diagnosis. And that chance had come at the cost of stealing my life.

Jang Hyunji’s frail body was dying day by day. She waited for her death in a cramped hospital room. Every night, she screamed as phantom pains tormented her, bringing back the day she had lost her family in a fire.

A girl who had lost her family in a mysterious fire at eighteen, leaving her the sole survivor.

Just when she had finally received treatment and was about to be discharged, she was diagnosed with an incurable disease and told she had only a limited time left to live.

The only people who came to visit her were insurance agents, relatives eyeing the property and enormous insurance payout left in her name, and those waiting to claim the death benefits after she died.

In exchange for having my life stolen, all I got was this sickly body and nights in which I couldn’t sleep.

I couldn’t bear it. Just as Jang Hyunji had said, my life had been nothing but cold indifference, but at least it had been mine.

The death and suffering that crept closer every night belonged to you.

So why did I have to—

‘I am grateful to you, you know.’

‘Don’t feel too wronged. If you were still in your own body, you’d probably be dying alone in some filthy prison by now.’

Even as agony tore through me, painkillers were useless. Amid that unbearable pain, only Jang Hyunji’s voice pierced my consciousness with perfect clarity. I clenched my teeth and cursed her.

Give it back. Disappear. Save me…

Oh, God. If dying would erase that woman, I would gladly die. So please.

Even if I had died miserably, it would have been my life. You stole what belonged to me, so don’t you dare be happy.

Don’t you dare pity me.

I struggled desperately to get my body back by any means possible. Terrified of the agony that descended on me every night, I even tried to take my own life. I couldn’t bear it. The price of having my entire life stolen was this suffering? A life with nothing left but death?

If only I hadn’t known. But even during the brief moments when I fell asleep to escape the pain, I saw that happy woman in my dreams.

Days of being unable to do anything, dying while receiving pity from that happy woman.

I had stopped expecting that I would ever get my life back. The pain had eaten away at any hope I had left, until I found myself wishing that I would die as soon as possible.

If I had just one wish, it was for that woman to suffer as much as I had suffered, to feel the same anguish and injustice that had consumed me.

If I could have my revenge, I would even offer my wretched soul to the devil.

I didn’t know whether the devil had answered my desperate wish or God had finally shown me a little mercy.

What mattered was that, at last, I had been given another chance.

I had a terrible dream.

Whenever I closed my eyes, I could hear that woman’s voice. The only difference from before was that she was no longer happy.

‘It was mine! It’s mine now! Why are you doing this to me all of a sudden?!’

‘No! I want to go back! Linus, save me!’

‘No…’

‘…I don’t want to die…’

She was unhappy.

That was what mattered most.

I had no way to take revenge on the woman I hated most directly, but I wanted to destroy everything she had ever possessed. I hated this world, which had turned its back on me yet treated her with kindness. The hatred that had accumulated within me over the years had become so deeply rooted that it felt as though it were choking me. With nowhere to direct my resentment, it tore through my insides like a muddy mire.

‘You should have been smarter, Florence.’

‘You should have pretended not to know when it suited you and just laughed things off. People don’t like it when you keep arguing every little point.’

‘Nobody in this world cares about how unfairly you’ve been treated.’

‘It’s not as though you’re entirely innocent, either…’

I knew Jang Hyunji’s so-called advice, which she had delivered to me through the mirror, had been right. She had proven it herself. But how could I do that? How could I bury this boiling sense of injustice inside me? Would pretending not to know make it disappear? Would it make everything that happened simply cease to have happened?

The family members who had blamed me for my mother’s death smiled at you.

The man who had never even spared me a glance knelt before you and confessed his love with such heartfelt desperation.

I had prayed to God every day, begging to be granted the ability to use magic or spirit arts, thinking that if I could just become someone useful, they might finally look at me. Yet the very abilities that had been denied to me had been yours from the beginning.

How was I supposed to accept any of this like a mature adult?

I hated Jang Hyunji for stealing my life, and I despised everything that had so readily accepted and loved her.

I hated everything I had loved, everything that had never loved me in return.

I opened my eyes. The bedroom was submerged in the dim light of dusk. The day was not yet over. I felt relieved to know that not much time had passed. I still needed time. Time to sort through my confused memories and emotions, and time to devise a plan for what I would do next.

I couldn’t stay like this.

The most horrible things buried in my memories were threatening to claw their way back to the surface. I could feel the nausea I had barely managed to suppress rising again.

I had to get away. Quickly. Otherwise—

“You’re awake, my love.”

A sweet voice rang in my ears.

Startled, I lifted my eyes.

A shadow that had blended into the darkness took on a distinct shape as the light behind it illuminated its features.

“I heard you had woken up and rushed over, but they told me you had fallen asleep again.”

His face was more mature than I remembered, yet more haggard than he had been in my memories. He was a knight with long black hair and skin so pale it was almost white. His elegant, delicate features remained unchanged. At first glance, he looked like a young nobleman who had never held a sword in his life. In reality, however, he was the youngest Sword Master in history, one of the most formidable warriors not only in the Kingdom of Yulia but across the entire continent.

“I was watching over you because I was afraid you might have had a nightmare. I wanted to be there the moment you opened your eyes.”

The man who suited the word beautiful so perfectly was Linus Shane Lindquist.

My fiancé, and the male protagonist of the novel.

His dark eyes, which grew rich and sweet whenever he looked at me, were exactly as I remembered them.

Linus approached me. The brief moment when I hadn’t even noticed his presence seemed like a lie now; his presence was so vivid that I could almost reach out and touch it. He gazed at my face for a moment before dropping to his knees beside the head of the bed, as though his legs could no longer support him.

Then he took my hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it.

“I believed you would wake up. You would never leave me behind…”

His lips against my hand conveyed every tremor of emotion and relief he felt. He looked as though tears might spill from his eyes at any moment.

“You wouldn’t do that, my love. You could never do something so cruel. Right, Hyunji?”

“…”

“The doctor said there was nothing wrong with you. He spouted some ridiculous nonsense about you simply falling asleep because you were too exhausted to stay awake. He insisted there was nothing wrong with you at all. I couldn’t even call a priest. I was afraid doing so might harm your fragile soul. Even while you lay there asleep, I couldn’t do anything for you. Do you know how terrifying those helpless hours were…?”

His heartfelt confession continued. I couldn’t bring myself to say a word.

“I’m sorry, Hyunji. I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything for you. Thank you for coming back. Truly…”

Linus finally began to cry.

Clutching my hand, pressing little kisses to its back, and bowing his head as he wept, the man looked large yet fragile, like a child.

Those tears were genuine, I was sure of it. He truly loved Jang Hyunji. And Jang Hyunji had loved him just as much. They had shared a love as beautiful as something out of a storybook.

With my body.

By stealing my life.

“Thank you. I love you. I love you, Hyunji.”

Beautiful love, my ass.

Not yet. I had to hold back. I needed to figure out how to escape completely, how to hurt him even more deeply. I had to come up with a plan.

But—

He knew.

He knew that a different soul had inhabited this body instead of me. And even knowing that, he hadn’t saved me. He hadn’t even looked for me.

Because it didn’t matter to him.

What had happened to me, what I had been reduced to…

It meant nothing to him.

It was so hard to breathe.

I couldn’t let him find out. Linus was a dangerous man. I had no idea what he might do, and as long as I couldn’t move around on my own, I couldn’t let him discover that the woman was gone.

“Hyunji, Florence, my one and only flower.”

Florence, my one and only flower. I love you.

Florence.

Ah, no.

I knew I was about to do something foolish again, unable to resist the impulse and anger. But my rage spread like a wildfire, burning my mind white.

That name was given to me by my grandmother.

You have no right to call anyone your one and only flower.

That woman doesn’t deserve to be called that.

“…Hello, my love.”

My voice emerged in an unfamiliar tone, hoarse and tight.

The man who had been weeping with his cheek pressed against the back of my hand lifted his head.

A glint as sharp as a shard of ice appeared in the dark eyes that were looking at me through my face.

I couldn’t hold back my smile.

More than the anxiety of what might happen next, I was overwhelmed by the anticipation and exhilaration of knowing that, in this very moment, I could hurt him.

“Long time no see.”