CH 122

“I said that,” he replied.

Woorim said that we had no choice but to be influenced by the brain, the body’s memories. As long as we were inside a body, we were influenced by the body’s past, habits, physical characteristics, and illnesses. He was the one who told me to give it to him if I was in such pain.

He nodded. “My mom truly loved me, so I thought she would love me even if something like that was there.”

Looking distant, perhaps he was trying to recall that moment as he continued, “I felt so sorry for you, so I wanted to help you.”

The lofty sympathy, nosiness, and thoughtless sacrifice…

“But when I asked if your mom would stop saying bad things if you gave those to me, you weren’t very thrilled. Your answer was rather vague.”

I remembered that too.

“If you give it to me, would you not hear that from your mom anymore?” he asked.

The Child replied hesitantly, “…Maybe.”

“So, I said that we should completely switch,” he said.

The faint and distant memories started to blend together. The order was completely messed up, making me feel vertigo. Everything surfaced, from things that I didn’t remember and things that I didn’t actually experience. I covered my face with both hands. My head throbbed.

“If you receive it… You’ll have a very hard time,” the Child said.

No, that wasn’t it. Those were memories that my brain made up.

So I could continue to live as Haeseo Nam.

“If we switch… You’ll have a very hard time,” I muttered.

He chuckled. “Right. Do you remember?”

He squeezed me tight and stroked my head, whispering in my ear, “But you also want to be loved.”

“You also want to be loved.”

Right, I wanted to be loved.

An emotion that couldn’t merge with the body’s memory surfaced in the back of my head.

‘I wanted to be loved so much, because…’  Droplets of tears fell from my eyes. ‘Nobody loved me until I died.’

Perhaps it was because they were memories not recorded by this brain, the emotions that I recalled caused a splitting headache. He made a sympathetic face at my crying one. The gaze full of pity and sympathy wasn’t unfamiliar. It was slightly different from the face that Yeonseon often made.

My body trembled—my shallow sympathy, mercy, the desire to do a good deed, goodwill, and nosiness. Who was the child who bestowed those on the other? The seven-year-old Haeseo Nam? Or the eight-year-old me? The two children were shocked when they saw the difference in each other’s circumstances.

“I told you. I was confident. I told you that my mother was so kind that she would love you. Switching moms—children that age often said that as a fun joke.”

Seven-year-old Haeseo, who grew up with love, fearlessly extended his hand to the Child who became a vengeful ghost at eight. The Child looked at the hand, miserable but tempted.

The Child had comforted himself by taking the luck of others in exchange for extending the lives of many because he longed for the kindness of others. However, some things couldn’t be fulfilled with just that. Luck was simply “good fortune”—the positive energy that those souls carried. The Child wanted love and affection—those were fundamentally different from what he took.

However, the Child couldn’t take the hand of Haeseo that easily. It was because it was such a high-risk gamble. He died young, but the Child lived in this mansion that he died in for a very long time. The adults who died here always wailed and moaned in the basement. Their cries and the maliciousness of those who built the mansion raised the Child.

The Child knew the world slightly better than seven-year-old Haeseo Nam.