Chapter 2.2

Chapter 2.2

“Let’s watch the progress for a bit. If it still hurts, I’ll file a request for outside treatment. Don’t worry, Yeohee.”

That single name at the end of her sentence lodged in my ear. Yeohee.

“Doctor, did you just call that my name?”

Her round eyes registered my question. The woman tilted her head, then, as if she’d remembered, her face softened with pity and she opened her thin lips.

“Yes, 7059’s name is Yeohee. Ham Yeohee. Pretty name, right?”

Ham Yeohee.

A faint shaft of light seemed to enter the pitch-dark room. It felt like a possible line of communication with whatever unknown presence I’d been connected to.

Ham Yeohee, Yeohee. So that’s me. No, that’s this body.

The woman took both my hands in hers with surprising gentleness.

“I know you’re hurting a lot. Everyone here is called a criminal, but I can tell you’re a good person. Someone who can weep and repent before the Lord is already prepared, you know that, Yeohee?”

Her plump fingers warmed my long, thin hands. On the white wall behind her I saw a cross. My chest tightened. A hot swell rose from below my sternum and choked me. Tears spilled down my cheeks.

“It’s okay, Yeohee. It’s okay…”

“Huh… sob…”

I didn’t even know why I was crying. The feeling came over me as if I’d been hit by something I couldn’t bear, and the grief welled up before I could stop it.

“It’s okay… Do you remember the day we first met? You cried out looking at the cross that day too… I knew then. I knew you were someone ready to be forgiven… a lamb watched over by the Lord…”

Those memories didn’t belong to me. They weren’t my memories.

Still, this body responded to them as if it had been trained on those recollections, and the sorrow escaped me in ragged sobs. The woman, as if she understood everything, patted my back slowly.

“Our Yeohee… how much must it have tormented a gentle, fragile lamb like you to have committed such a sin. To the point you lost your words and your mind.”

I listened to the woman’s so-called comfort and wept quietly for a while. Strangely, after letting it all out, I began to feel a little lighter inside.

“Yeohee, even if the others all point their fingers and call you a sinner, I won’t. Because I know. I know how much you’ve suffered here, repenting, how much it’s broken you.”

“…I did that?”

I lifted my swollen, tear-drenched eyes and asked. The woman nodded with pity on her face.

“Back then you were half out of your mind. You wouldn’t speak, just sat vacant, then suddenly screamed and raged and rambled nonsense. And then one day, when you came here and looked at the Lord’s cross, you cried for a long time. That was when you began to recover. Now you can even speak like this. You’ll keep getting better, Yeohee.”

“……”

“I’ll help you until the end. So let’s get through this together, hm? Whenever you need me, come find me. I’ll tell Deputy Ki to let you.”

I hurried to gather my thoughts. I realized the infirmary could give me more than I expected. Maybe even the one thing I most wanted to know.

“Um… excuse me…”

“Like before, call me Doctor Ahn, Yeohee.”

“…Doctor Ahn.”

“Hm?”

“…Could you… show me a mirror?”

It felt like fighting an unseen enemy. The owner of this body wasn’t my enemy, but still, I was trapped inside her flesh, and I needed to see it for myself.

Doctor Ahn’s round eyes went even wider. She blinked a few times, then let out a short sigh and stood. From a locked steel cabinet she pulled a leather bag that was clearly her own, and brought something back.

“This will be our secret.”

With a click she opened a compact case and handed it to me. Slowly, I lifted the mirror. My heart thundered like it was rolling downhill.

“……”

I lost my words at the face looking back at me, streaked here and there with smudged cosmetics.

I studied each feature one by one—the eyes, the nose, the lips—then pulled the mirror back to take in the whole face at once. And again, I scanned each detail, the color of the eyes, the curve of the brows, the line of the lips, the straight teeth.

“Yeohee, you must have wanted so badly to see your pretty face.”

Doctor Ahn said it lightly, as if scolding, but I couldn’t laugh.

Because the face reflected in that small mirror was too mournful, too gloomy, too irritating, too unlucky, and also, damnably beautiful. And it was a face I had never seen before in all my memories.