Chapter 62

For a moment, there was silence in the room.

Mother’s face, which had been red with anger, gradually turned white. It seemed to be a characteristic of the people of this world, that rapid change in the color of the face.

I glanced at my doll once, looking at her face gradually turning white.

Perhaps because she felt the movement of my gaze, her body trembled.

‘Well, I didn’t mean to burden you.’

“So… that, I mean… Uh… I’ll send someone to pliment Jane! Yes, I was just trying to pliment her. Because you gave me such an original and powerful doll!”

“Just now, it was a cursed doll…”

As I exhaled quietly, Mother faltered again. She was probably thinking of the next excuse.

I didn’t mean to embarrass Mother, but to be honest, she was more responsive than I expected, so I mumbled without realizing it.

“Cursed… But now it’s a good curse! Uh! A happy one! Such a curse? A curse of goodwill, like a white lie.”

It was pathetic to see her crafting nonsense so desperately. And at the same time, I was a little grateful.

To try and cover it up like that just because I made a doll that made the person who taught me cry and scream that it was cursed the first time she saw it.

Mother quietly glanced into my eyes. The twitching of her fingers seemed to show her nervousness.

“I’m glad you said that. I was worried that Mother would not like it.”

When I pretended not to know, Mother let out a long sigh as if she had relaxed a bit and smiled.

“How can that be, Selena? It’s a gift from you, so I will be happy no matter what.”

Mother’s outstretched palm turned towards me. She held her palm wide open, as if asking for the doll.

Today was a really strange day.

No, actually, it had always been strange.

Ever since that day, the strange days kept repeating. As Eunji said, I thought I could be happy, but I was caught in the neck of the shadow of the past and fell into that abyss… Everything went back and forth and was precarious.

Even now, the weather was like the doll, and even that palm… Wasn’t everything leading to the past?

My mother in my previous life used to stretch out her palm to me. Although the palm did not stop in front of me. It was used for violence.

There was pain and soreness all over the places she hit with her palm. Despite all that, the most difficult thing to bear was the eyes looking down at me.

I put the finished messy doll into Mother’s empty palm.

Mother took the doll and she slowly looked at it with warm eyes. Her expression didn’t show a single lie.

A look as if admiring something really lovely. When I looked at the teddy bear that I received as a gift, I must have looked like that.

The moment I looked into those eyes, the afterimage of the past disappeared again.

Really, it was like Jekyll and Hyde.

***

Yesterday, Mother brought the doll to dinner and showed it off to the other family members.

When they did not know the doll’s origin, Father and Brother looked at it as if they were looking at something strange, but when they found out that it was something I had made and gifted, their eyes twinkled as they looked at me.

Yes, but I wouldn’t make any for them. It took quite a while to make one like that cursed doll.

‘But do you want me to make two more?’ I honestly couldn’t. In that sense, I just pretended not to know and ate the food with my eyes on the plate.

‘I guess I’ll have to find a new hobby.’ I would be doing hobby activities like this until the foundation ceremony in three weeks.

I thought about finding another hobby today, and rolled violently on the bed.

“Wow! Miss. You roll well!”

Unlike Aiden, who stood up and applauded in surprise, Jane laughed in admiration.

“I guess I should give up on making dolls.”

Jane didn’t say anything to me. She smiled calmly even when I rolled forward… Yet her face hardened slowly when I talked about the doll. Then she awkwardly nodded her head.

“Yes, miss. Giving up isn’t always a bad thing.”

…So, I just wanted to try something else. But I didn’t have the guts to challenge things that couldn’t be done.

“Shall we go see Brother this time?”

I don’t know much about hobbies here, so I decided to learn the hobbies of the people around me. First, I had to roll around a little more and then go find Brother.

This time, with Jane behind me, I visited Brother’s room. My brother greeted me with a wide smile.

He seemed to look at my hands at a glance to see if I made him a doll.

Oh my, unfortunately, there were dolls…

“Brother.”

“Yeah?”

My brother, who had been glancing at my hand, raised his gaze and looked at me.

“What is Brother’s hobby?”

***

Brother and I sat facing each other. A chessboard was placed in the middle.

“I don’t remember ever playing chess.”

“It’s okay, Brother will tell you. In the past, you often played chess.”

Well, if I did well in the past, was there any guarantee that I would do well now?

I didn’t trust myself.

I was listening to Brother roughly explaining how to play chess, but I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. White was white, black was black……. Yes, so now I was the black piece and my brother was the white piece, but if I threw a black piece and hit that biggest white piece, would I win?

As I was thinking of my own nonsensical rules, I suddenly heard a knock.

‘This. I know this sound.’

“What’s going on?”

“My dear friend’s dear sister came to this room.”

“Dear friend, why don’t you just turn around and go?”

“Oh, chess.”

Lucas lightly ignored Brother’s words and sat down on an empty chair. Seeing this, Brother shook his head and sat across from me again and looked at Lucas. Lucas smiled casually.

‘Ugh, these teenage boys.’

I fiddled with the piece in my hand, thinking again about the rules of chess. ‘Yeah, I don’t know.’

In the end, I lost four rounds of chess. At the disastrous results, Brother looked at me awkwardly, and Lucas was smiling next to me.

Jane was looking out at the distant scenery near the window, perhaps because she couldn’t bear to see me like this.

“It’s okay, Selena, because each person is good at something different. For example, instead of playing chess, you might be good at making dolls.”

Lucas, who was laughing next to him, said that it was his own fort, but the example of his fort was not quite appropriate.

I followed Jane and looked out the window into the distance. I didn’t think chess was my hobby, either. Still, it felt a bit bad to just lose and end it like this.

Wait, they were black and white…

“Brother, do you have more chess pieces?”

Brother, who was quietly watching me, nodded his head and pulled out another set of chess pieces. They were of slightly different design from this one, so it seemed that they could be easily distinguished even if they were mixed.

‘Good.’

I took a large piece of paper from Brother and drew several large squares. Satisfied with the checkerboard shape, I nodded and looked up.

Lucas and Brother looked at me with puzzled faces at the same time.

After a while, Jane, who was standing next to me and watching our game, had to look towards the window again, looking out into the distance.

I didn’t have a talent for chess, so I switched to five-in-a-row. Honestly, I was confident.

As Eunji had been lying in the hospital for a long time, she quickly got tired of this and that.

Today she’d read a novel, tomorrow she’d watch TV, the next day she’d play bingo, or, if she got tired of those things, we would play five-in-a-row. Those days were repeated.

Among them, it was five-in-a-row that we shared most often. After lowering the bed in the hospital room, I drew lines on a notebook or a piece of paper, and then made the pieces with a ballpoint pen.

The winner was me most of the time.

‘Ah, please let me win. Let’s take turns!’

After I won, Eunji used to grumble so much. At times like that, I thought I secretly called Eunji a ‘grumbler’ in my heart.

So, if I had experience, I had to be confident. I briefly explained the rules to Brother. Unlike explaining chess, 30 seconds was enough to explain this. ‘As expected, five-in-a-row is a great game.’

So I won the first few rounds. As I got a little more victorious, Jane sneakily approached the area and looked around.

However, there was one thing I overlooked. It was the reason why Selena, who was originally bad, became even more of a villain.

Aaron was in first place during school. A senior that graduated early.

In other words, the genius of this empire.

Soon I started losing again, and as the defeats continued, Jane had to go back to the window. Brother, who was winning, was also keeping an eye on me. Perhaps he didn’t feel fortable.

“Shall I do it for you?”

Lucas, watching my 12th defeat, smiling from the side, raised his hand.

Brother glanced at me and looked at me, then slowly nodded his head and got up.

“Selena. My hand hurts a little.”

“Ah, yes.”

You won so much, your hands might hurt.

To be honest, it wasn’t a believable excuse, but I couldn’t stop him, so I just let him go. Lucas, sitting next to me in place of Brother, spun a chess piece in his hand.

“Should we bet on a wish, since we’re peting?”

Lucas, who was meticulously examining the checkerboard, rolled his eyes and spoke to me.

As usual, with such a suggestion and that villainous smile, it really felt like some kind of devil was whispering to me.

‘Yes, I have to get past the devil’s whispers.’

Lucas was also a genius, but that was on the swordsman’s side. So… hopefully, he would lose. I nodded in affirmation. Lucas raised a smile, and the game of making a wish began.

Human greed was endless, and the same mistakes were repeated. The mistake I made here was that Lucas was the male lead.

“Checkmate.”

Even though it wasn’t chess, Lucas, who put down his piece while spewing chess terms, even though this was not a chess game, raised his hands. Signaling the game was over.

“I lost.”

“I won.”

The winner of the game was Lucas. It was a perfect victory for the main character who defeated the villain.

“What is your wish?”

“I don’t know… I have nothing right now. I’ll wish for it later.”

Lucas’s smirk gave me a bad feeling, but the loser had nothing to say. As I nodded, the corners of Lucas’s lips rose even deeper.

‘Again, the devil’s whispers should be ignored.’

I left Brother’s room with a bitter lesson, a series of defeats, and an obligation to grant a wish.

Brother, who was seeing me off, was restless, so I politely bowed my head to distinguish between public and private affairs and turned around.

No matter how he interpreted my greeting, the face I saw before turning was filled with contemplation.

“Aren’t you going to say goodbye to me?”

As I turned back, Lucas spoke to me.

“Is that a wish?”

“Let’s leave without saying goodbye.”

I could picture the face that would have been smiling even without seeing his face.

“Miss… Shall I prepare a snack?”

On the way to the room, Jane spoke to me.

She seemed to think I was in a bad mood, but I wasn’t that narrow-minded. So what if I lost at chess and five-in-a-row?

I shrugged my shoulders at Jane and started walking again.

“Yes. Two strawberry cheesecakes and two cups of hot chocolate.”

Only my voice and our footsteps echoed in the quiet hallway.