I Don’t Want to be a Villainess

It was a relief that it wasn’t too hard to trace back the actions of that person.

Or should I say, an unfortunate truth.

Every time that person moved somewhere, someone followed them.

Since they had been in the hospital, apparently that person hadn’t shown any particularly unusual traits.

I mean, the usual kind of traits one might expect in a normal person. Health, injuries, peculiar habits, you know, the usual.

However, one thing had certainly changed.

That was their ‘personality’.

“Did I get angry at my fiancé?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Yang Hye-in told me.

Was it such an impressive scene that it left an impression? Yang Hye-in remembered that moment in vivid detail. After finishing my meal faster than her because I was eating with fervor, that person called me a ‘pig,’ and I just shot back at him curtly before storming out of the cafeteria.

…I definitely wouldn’t have done that.

Thanks to the remnants left behind by that person in my body, I could manage to talk to others like this, but generally, I never talked to anyone except for my mother.

I particularly struggled with people who were hostile towards me. I had no need to talk with others, and the only person who would talk to me was my mother, who at least pretended to love me outwardly.

The fiancé was only the second person I interacted with, but they were endlessly hostile.

Whenever I met him, I’d always feel intimidated and scared.

…I did ponder why my mother would engage me with such a person, but… I could never come to a satisfactory conclusion.

And yet, here I was, confronting him and charging out.

“Right, at school, that person even apologized to you.”

Hearing Yoo Ha-neul’s words, I was even more surprised. Could that person really do something like an apology? They always acted as if everything they did was right, after all!

…Ah, I see.

Maybe, just maybe—

My heart raced a little.

A person whose face I didn’t know… No, actually, I did know their face. Since they used my body, they must have had the same face as mine. Whether that person had forgotten me or had simply changed their personality, in reality, we couldn’t even hold hands. We might not be able to exist as separated individuals even meeting.

But still.

Still, I wanted to meet them.

I wanted to meet the person who could take control of my body and enjoy life as they were, yet still chose to hand that body back to me.

Because they were the first person I had ever met who was completely on my side.

Without any conditions, they were someone who genuinely wished for my happiness.

I pressed my pounding heart with my hands and wished for that.

*

“Here we are.”

Shin So-hee said confidently.

The place we arrived at was in front of a shabby store in a residential alley. Even on the weekend, it was quiet. The streets, of course, but even the store in front of me.

The store sign boldly read ‘Tteokbokki.’

I had never tried that food before. I had seen it served occasionally in school lunches, but I usually filled up just eating the main menu, so I never showed much interest in food and typically just ate what was in front of me.

I had heard descriptions about its taste. It popped up sometimes in stories shared by kids around school during lunchtime, it seemed more like a snack eaten together with friends after school rather than a meal.

No, more than that, I had never been to a restaurant like this with friends in my life. And I had certainly never visited a restaurant that was this small and shabby.

I took a little walk toward the store.

There was a smell.

It wasn’t a bad smell. It was a slightly sweet smell, and mixed in, it seemed like it had a bit of spiciness.

Since I rarely ate spicy foods, even that smell felt intriguing to me, along with the faint scent of oil and what seemed like fish boiling.

“C’mon, let’s go in.”

Shin So-hee said as she gently pushed my back.

Being nudged by that force, I stumbled inside the restaurant without thinking. There wasn’t a waiter bowing politely or anything. There wasn’t even a menu on the table. There was a faded menu posted on the wall, but Shin So-hee didn’t even glance at it and immediately raised her hand.

“Five servings of tteokbokki, please!”

The owner of the restaurant, likely an old lady, who had just been staring vacantly at the five of us, slowly got up.

*

I hadn’t particularly eaten much spicy food.

If I said I had never eaten any at all, that would be a lie, but if you asked whether I enjoyed it, the answer would be no.

Most of the food eaten in the mansion was Western-style dishes that didn’t have reason to be spicy. Breakfast was usually bread, and lunch and dinner often consisted of salads and steak.

I didn’t really know why the menu was set like that, but… maybe it was because the foods I liked as a child had solidified that way. I certainly had never voiced any desire to eat something on my own.

In that sense, the food that Shin So-hee introduced to me felt somewhat… hmm, interesting.

It was tasty. It was indeed delicious, but still a bit weird. It was different in many ways from the foods I usually consumed. Of course, it made sense that the price was unbelievably cheap.

Though I didn’t have a solid grasp of economic concepts, I understood the food I usually ate was more expensive than average. It was certainly incomparable to this tteokbokki.

The cooking method appeared simple. It didn’t seem like a sauce made by mixing various ingredients and letting it stew, but rather, it seemed like several ingredients were casually tossed in, resulting in a simple and robust flavor.

But… it was delicious.

Even if it was impressive and tasty, I didn’t think it was something that could be called a delicacy or anything like that.

But for some reason, even though it was my first time eating this food, it felt nostalgic.

As if I had tasted it a long time ago.

Could this be the feeling left behind by that person?

This emotion, faintly felt beyond my heart, was surely nostalgia. It wasn’t just three months of longing. Rather, it was a longing for something much deeper, no, for something from ‘long ago.’

“How is it? Does it taste good?”

While I was rolling a forkful in my mouth, Shin So-hee asked me. Her expression was as if she was incredibly eager for my response.

I nodded slightly.

“Right?”

Shin So-hee beamed at me with a big grin.

“Speaking of which, I meant to come here again, but only just now did we make it. Well, it used to be on my way home from school, but now it’s a bit farther off.”

Ah, I see.

It seems that person also liked this food.

Or perhaps, more than just liking it, they might have ‘always liked’ it.

My heart fluttered a bit.

I put my fork down and speared a boiled egg. Then I turned it sideways and sliced it in half with the side of the fork.

The inside of the egg split into two was distinctly contrasted with the part soaked in tteokbokki sauce. The perfectly white egg white that hadn’t absorbed any of the sauce and the bright yellow yolk were visible. The yolk was gradually taking on a more vibrant yellow towards the center. If I’d cooked it just a tiny bit less, wouldn’t the yolk have oozed out like a sunny-side up?

I rolled the egg and placed that cut side atop the tteokbokki sauce. The slightly crumbled, thoroughly cooked part of the yolk mixed into the sauce. When I took a bite with my fork, the egg was fully coated with the tteokbokki sauce on that side.

Nobody taught me to do it like that. It just somehow felt like that was how it should be done.

Was that how that person felt when they saw my mother in my body?

Did they feel the same intense emotions I once remembered?

Thinking that made me feel a bit embarrassed.

On the other hand, the emotions I was experiencing were by no means grand.

Tiny feelings of joy and happiness trickling into my daily life, they seemed small but were deeply rooted memories that made life feel fleeting without them.

Ah, yes. Exactly.

I put another piece of tteokbokki in my mouth and savored the nostalgia it brought.

The people around me were quietly eating. Yoo Ha-neul, Lee Soo-ah, Shin So-hee, and even Yang Hye-in.

The fact that my fear of others had slightly faded must also be due to that person. The one who approached first, without fear of others, who didn’t ignore me and tried to break through that wall.

What that person left behind was all these things.

Though I hadn’t had a conversation with them yet, I felt like I could understand what kind of person they were.

*

Thanks to that, I felt like I could clearly find a way.

Maybe, taking medicine would be the surest way. Just like how my memories returned through my encounter with my mother, I might be able to recover my memories by facing the most intense memories this person experienced with my body.

But, if I wasn’t careful, I could end up failing completely.

If I assumed that person entered my body after my heart stopped, I was uncertain if my body could revive itself if my heart stopped again this time.

Above all, I had already inflicted terrible pain upon that person through that method.

And yet, that person tried their best to give me this life.

…Then, wouldn’t I need to find a bit of a gentler way to call that person back?

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