Chapter Text
. . .
Ah.
So this is how it all ends.
. . .
A vial of a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and soluble liquid lays on the floor, leaking onto the plush carpet. In the far distance, past the wide-open doors of the large balcony connected to the room meant for entertaining guests, the sound of chaos ensues as lingering faction enmities are finally allowed an opportunity to erupt after the unrelenting oppression since your reign. The main house of the estate would have to be rebuilt from scratch, as tradition called for in the event of dethronement, but by the enemy’s destructive movements, it seemed as if your ancestor’s primary choice of land for the construction of the head’s house would need to be relocated entirely.
You can hear the familiar crow of your assistant by your side next, more of an overqualified butler, really, demanding an answer from you on your current status. You wonder if the blood pouring from your mouth in coughing fits is just for show, or if it’s actually drool unbefitting of your image. Honestly, his thoughtful subordination even in the face of your impending death should warm your heart, as loyalty in your choice of profession was a pain to be found, but you’ve long since grown numb to the world; any reactions were simply for publicity and business’ sake, and as the head behind a nation-wide, long-withstanding conglomerate built from decades of ancestral history behind it, appearances had decreased to few and far in between.
As your rationality begins to return in the final moments before your death, you deign a thought to the legacy you will leave behind in your death.
You attempt to muster up the strength to order your butler one final time; asking him to forget about you, a cause long lost, and to focus on burning any lingering documents inside the portion of your office, within the mansion. The clash of your family and rivals, against the few on your side, will soon overtake the hallways of your newly renovated abode, and he won’t be allowed free reign around the property soon.
You don’t get even the first word in as coughing racks your chest with long, heavy rasps. Your form, collapsed on the ground, surrounded by nothing but plain novelty you never had anything to do with but to use for show, limits your view. Every shuddering breath falling from your shoulders increases your tunnel vision, and you can feel when your butler is rashly pushed away before you realize he has disappeared from your sight.
Clothes ruffle and muffled shouts echo within the deteriorating nerves of your eardrums. The figure of a man larger than you pulls you from your resting position. It’s with a sudden start filled with resistance that you realize your butler has been thrown aside by your younger brother, who you could recognize in an instant, even if he was one within a crowd in a stadium.
He’s the last of your true kin in blood, he who you had solely spared out of all of your shared siblings and family members in the heated battle of ascension each of you were thrown in from the womb. The only true speck of innocence you had believed to be left in the blood-spilling world you grew up in, from the moment his scrawny form was introduced to everyone belatedly as he would be living within the head’s home from then on, until he was the remaining life out of the others who had disappeared, were involved in accidents, or had seized to exist from the very start. You can barely hold back the immediate tremble of your body, but your eyes give way to your honest feelings about him.
He raises your head to lean against the crook of his arm, so you’re looking up at him, and he’s looking down on you. You want to scoff, trying to find the last spark of life in you to show him your best smile, filled with the most vile stubbornness made specially for him. You want to have the last laugh between you and him, so your death doesn’t end as the most pitiful one to be of all your predecessors who have been heartlessly backstabbed. As if you hadn’t created the best of all worlds he could possibly live in, through the blood, sweat, tears and struggles of you and the many others who have fallen; so he could find peace and love even amidst his rebellion, and despite all that had changed when he decided to leave you on That Day, years ago, just weeks before your coming-of-age.
. . .
You can’t claim innocence and say you’re surprised. You allowed the ploy for your death to blossom, through the meager opportunity of having your younger brother’s family walk through the most personal walls of your life once again, after you had sworn not to accept him into your life since That Day. Your weeping heart welcomed him, and your newborn nephew, and his on-and-off lover who you had only ever heard out of many previous women, among reports on his life. The daughter of an opponent who you could not bear to tear away from the fleeting gaze of your youngest brother.
This wasn’t to say you particularly wanted to die, but you didn’t want to experience the pain of being ripped apart by the repeated loss of your brother either. You had expected your brother’s woman and the mother of your dear nephew to incite a plan, disregarding accounts that she denied any further connection to the opponent’s party. You wouldn’t let just any stranger within the confines for the head of an estate. It’s only with the slightest surprise you have for the method used, one of the only poisons you never succeeded in gaining resistance to due to the extreme troubles in acquiring it in repeated doses, your sole weakness which you had only ever divulged to your brother between anyone closest to you.
And honestly, who could live through the ongoing expectation of betrayal from family, a constant paranoia of death or injury at any moment growing up; relying only on the breath of fresh air from a younger brother who explained a new life of hope outside the walls of your childhood home; gradually taking the key to power past every trial, and final replacing what had once been the shadow over everyone’s lives; only to fight and separate for ages, but then reunite after a long while, with the last identity of what you had ever counted as family; to finally expect peace within the calmest waters of the world you had built, but to receive the cold hard truth that all you had ever believed in was a lie? That the stigma of every action you had ever taken in faith of a better world, of a peaceful future, solely for your brother, would be repaid by the very same boy who you had once hung the moon and stars for, and who you would drop dead on command if the position as head was truly his wish.
Wasn’t it fitting? You only truly began to live with his interference in your survival, all life which had halted when he left, and resumed when he returned, so it makes sense he decides when the breath of your existence ends as well, right?
. . .
Without permission, or conscious thought, your face gradually moistens. If you hadn’t already been half-blind from the hardworking effects of the poison, the stray tears work to further blur your younger brother’s face into a blank slate waiting for defining features. It feels like hell, despite the fact you have yet to experience the location which will slowly grow to become home for you soon; your younger brother finally meets you face-to-face, but you’re unable to see his expression which you have yearned to glimpse at least one more time since his reintroduction to your life.
A deep rumble of laughter reverberates in your ears, but the sound is muted in your current condition. You don’t know if it’s you laughing at the irony, or your brother can’t hold back his mocking jeers, or you’re imagining it all because you're at your final wits. At last, as it all begins to slip away, you find yourself thinking one last coherent thought.
Just this once, you think it’s okay to be selfish.
You don’t know why you would think that, of all emotional phrases in the world. You have never once lived for yourself, nor would you die on your own accord either. It’s one of those complicated manners of the heart, which you have always struggled to understand, just as others failed to grasp any sort of real comprehension from you, your actions, or your words.
Dread courses through your veins far too late, and you manage to call out, I don’t want to die, before it all fades to black.
. . .
For a time, it feels as if my being wanders, floating in an empty expanse where I cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or touch anything. No other senses are left besides my consciousness and the thoughts about what used to be. I should have been allowed to rest eternally, as I had hoped in death to finally be allowed my first and only chance to truly breathe, but the universe works in different wonders unbeknownst to many.
It starts small, the silence. A cozy cloud that once seemed luxurious grows stifling. There’s far too much time I’m left with, unattended in the existing void of the world. The nostalgia from reminiscing about what had once been, transitions to desperation crawling up from my throat in fits of mania gone undiagnosed.
For some reason, I had believed, leaving the world as I did, I did not deserve to regret the life I lived. It was a truth clear as the beauty of the glittering galaxy I had once been able to enjoy, from the confines of my wealth. In truth, I also knew there would never be a change in the regard I carried myself with throughout my previous life. I did what I had to do to survive, to reign above those who claimed me as their enemy, who were a threat to not just my own existence, but also that traitorous brother of mine; no matter what mistakes or slights he committed against me or in his own life. When I looked back, I don’t think there was a decision I had made which I would change, if I had the chance to relive it again.
Yet, somehow, I acknowledged the final pitiful, cowardly cry before my death.
I was not afraid of death. To pass was an eventual fate which all living must succumb to after their initial creation within the world. This truth didn’t necessarily mean anyone wanted to particularly die, although there were some, but I held the same mindset as the former kind. I struggled so hard to survive when I was alive specifically because I had hoped for a better tomorrow, even when each day passed by the same as the others, until everything had blended together and I could no longer differentiate between day and night.
I wished and dreamt and saw a better world where I wasn’t forced to become the vile monster I was in reality, up to my heart’s final pump. But the past could not be changed, and I was not as cruel and emotionless a businesswoman the underworld knew me as; every tally in the books marked a life fallen, and day by day I wore down. It was the history of a new era created by a child who only ever wanted a taste of happiness.
Yes, though I lived a life I believed I had lived to its bitter end, after being granted a chance to think it through, there was one regret which prohibited me from completely abandoning the entire existence of my soul. A creation which was born from neither duty nor survival. A weakness which had never been allowed to bear fruit while I was still alive, living as the head of a no-nonsense business which would eat anyone alive from the inside-out for even a single embarrassing detail in one’s private life. It derived from a secret hobby of mine which I had taken to my literal grave, a sanctuary which none of my closest confidants knew; and some I had trusted with my life, once upon a time.
Despite the immense prestige which I drowned in, I mourned my inability to truly support those who had lifted me up during either side’s difficult times; with their creations, formed through their hard efforts, struggles, talents, and skills. When there was nothing left for me in the world where my brother, who was my only highlight, turned his back to me and left; the singing, rapping, dancing, and compositions from the many male groups rising along the journey I had once trailed on, lent me enough strength to rise for another dawn.
Well, and I may have been an initial victim to the personas built behind their refreshing faces. But I learned my lesson after my first group! After that, it wasn’t too difficult to guess how dirty the entertainment industry could have formed some idols; and after the initial tumble of the industry, few fans were lucky to have not placed their entire faith on individuals far from their reach. A house built of disposable cards is, after all, meant to fall, especially when the main contenders can’t complete simple, proper maintenance of those they claim to be pawns in their big money scheme.
Those idiots ruined the fun for everyone, yet most perpetrators were left alone due to the safety of their anonymity behind the scenes, while the true victims suffocated beneath the light of the people’s open scrutiny because there was no other public figure to blame. I had the jurisdiction to interfere, but due to my position, I could only step back and watch the destruction of those I had grown to love without being able to raise a single finger. Simply because my identity would cause them more harm than the pain they were currently fairing with; because even if there was a measly chance those I accidentally glanced at meant something to me, my enemies would snuff everything related to them out in one shot, no questions asked.
And maybe it wasn’t within my role to change the script of a person’s life, so who was I to have a soul in control, under the palm of my hand? In any case, wouldn’t it have been better not to try anything from the very start, just as I had decided to do, at that time? Ultimately, I did nothing, and another past became a part of my unfortunate yesterday. Yet, as time passed, I was left to wonder as always, about the destinies of those who disappeared from the limelight.
If only I had been able to gift them even a cent of my fortune while I was alive… Had I extended to them a sole hand in support, would I have been able to change the nightmare of events that occurred in consequent order, from the very first scandal? Would the fates of those who had once been my support have changed at all?
Past the finale of my first life, this remained the biggest reason for my grief.
. . .
From one phase to the next, I catch my breath, and my life resumes once more. No, rather, my current condition is strange. I should be dead, I had died, and I knew enough time had passed and the Me of Before no longer had a chance to be revived. I knew this fact, so how was it possible for me…?
It’s warm. I’m comfortable, but not overly so. My muscles, the actual limbs I now have some motor control over, feel heavy and sore. I feel like I could sleep for a little while longer, lingering in my dreams for as long as I acknowledged I had done; strangely, an emotion far from where I’d once been, rises within me. Everything is a new, abrupt contrast to the vacancy my soul had existed in for the longest time.
It’s a feeling akin to being reborn, as if a burden with me for ages had been set ablaze and incinerated. No, more like it was wiped clean from a tainted slate. Perhaps this relief would disappear once I woke up, and it’d strike me with the full force of all the worries I once held, but I held a strong belief I could face it now; there was no longer any need to tremble in my slumber. Stupidly, I fumble with my surroundings before realizing the weight behind my tightly-shut and stubborn sight.
I try to open my eyes but I find it an unfamiliar act. I struggle with it for long enough, the flinch of my eyelashes triggers a sharp jab to my cheek. Then, my eyelids instinctively flip open to find the source of a potential threat to my new person.
An oversized object is stabbing my cheek, a bit tan and rough, yet somehow soft. Tracing the object to its origins, I find a big face staring at me from afar. I jolt with a start as the gaze of a giant meets my own, and shivers threaten to trail up my spine, but with my stiff facial expression, I knit my eyebrows in an assertive stance of competition. I meet the eyes of an unbelievably handsome, black-haired, black-eyed man; in a manner only possible through the decades of the unmoving, prideful person I had once been.
“How strange,” He tilts his head in an undoubtedly human movement, and the predicament I’ve found myself in quickly dawns upon me. “I swore your other men mentioned the child would be asleep no matter how many visits they made these past few months.”
Contrary to his soft, deep voice, or the sharply precise pronunciation of his native-Korean accent, as if he were a human AI, the man’s movements are clumsy as he pokes my cheek again. As if reassuring himself he is not hallucinating, or making an error in a multitude of calculations. His touch shoves me out of my head, where I had been replaying the contents of my final regret, and the highly probable cause for my sudden shift in reality.
“Darling?” The curious tilt of a woman’s high-pitched chime resounds from afar, and the gap in noise following her words is a long pause. Naturally, she’s waiting for the man to speak.
“Perhaps they were exaggerating, as they always do.” With a last poke to my cheek, the man’s cold, perfectly chiseled face erupts in a bloom as his lips subtly quirk upwards. The glance we hold breaks contact as his brightened eyes roam my face with a subtle look of fascination that hadn’t priorly been there. As if he is only now truly looking at me as a person, with a similar realization to the reactions having occurred after I made my irritation obvious, over a comment on how I resembled a doll, in the past.
“Rean?!”
In the background, chaos ensues as I hear glass shatter, and more objects fall as heels click-and-clack in a hurry towards our direction. A thump and a moan of pain sharply echoes through the large height of the room’s ceiling, and the older man’s presence quickly flashes out of my sight, following the woman’s voice, as she stubbornly resumes her path.
“Careful, honey. The baby’s still too young to be going anywhere. There’s no need to rush.” The man frets, attempting to ease the woman from the reckless and inconsiderate regard for her own health and wellbeing, all while she makes her path to me.
“Darling, I mean no ill intent, but you simply cannot understand.” A sharp wail of surprise escapes me as a hand suddenly grips the edge of the surface below my cove of blankets. The stunning face of a young woman quite literally shines due to her pale skin tone, her doe eyes glittering with unshed tears as she takes me in with a similar state of shock. Her presence barely peeks out from the top, as she falls to her knees with a weak heart.
“Not when you’ve already witnessed my beauty’s loveable eyes opening on their own accord for the very first time…”
All of a sudden, my body, enrolled in a tight hold of a blanket, is lifted. The woman cradles me so gently in her hold, which I now understand stems from my person being her creation, and a trigger of a scene from the last moments before my death, of my previous life, blends in my eyes as I look up at her. For a second, it’s all I can register with my current brain capacity; not even the clear yet muffled steps, which had been running with their might to us since the glass’ demise, obvious from behind the door, is important any longer.
Then, the same door bursts open as a handful of men, nearly countless, burst inside in succession. Breathless, some take into account the room, and others immediately zone into the woman’s figure, while fewer are already crossing the distance of the wide room to reach the initial three of us. I take one look at their pleasing, symmetrical genetics, all in different tastes, from the style of their dressing to their hairstyles and their bearings, and lastly the age hiding behind their handsome features.
I turn back to the soundless, weeping tears falling down the woman’s glass-skin, as she looks at me deep in the eyes with an unnerving lack of interruption. And I promptly throw my head back and let out the highest-pitched screech I don’t think I’d ever had the displeasure of being the owner of.
. . .
For the majority of my life, I lived like a puppet. As if the whole world had encompassed my entire being, the very specifics which made my soul, all to shove me into a game for it to play with me. Now was no different, and I played its game, just as I always would; what other point was there in life?
I’d quickly realized it wasn’t a coincidence I had been granted consciousness as soon as I recalled the resolution I made for those idols. It was an obvious sign when the first thing I had woken up to was a handsome face, beautiful faces, actually; a plentiful of men for a harem belonging to the woman I now recognized as my new mother. I’d clued in to how my new identity had an exact replica of my previous upbringing; sans the genders of my Head guardian and their harem, which had been swapped, the harsh treatment I’d been raised with now replaced with pompous, almost pampered spoiling of my surrounding clothes and environment, and most prominently the lack of vicious spawns roaming the home.
It’d yet to be seen whether there were any secret children, legitimate or born out of wedlock, hidden in another home outside of my current living quarters.
It was a strangely warped parallel of familiarity, I almost imagined if this was how my past life could have changed if my father had not been so lustful. Without any meddlers, life as a baby was calm, almost lonely— quiet. But then, I’d been used to a sickening tension in the air, and the difference now wasn’t a considerable length.
Throughout all my tricks made with a stubborn grip for survival, all I honestly desired was a peaceful life. I regretted my obsession with control, against those around me, all in an effort to manipulate a situation to my hand. There had been many acts done with ill intent, with no opening to retreat, nor to reverse the effects upon my eventual regrets.
With this new life, I didn’t want to act in the same manner as before. I didn’t want to live as I once had, trudging through life for the sake of others. It would be a complete waste of the chance of the new life I had been granted with. I had already experienced hell on earth, all for a lifestyle I had once believed would fill in the hollow ache in my chest.
Of course, I knew I owed a hefty price to the idols who had saved me in my previous life. Whether they belonged within this new life of mine, or it was a different point in time, I had to manage a way to repay the favor somehow. It seemed like a silly thought now, when I was only a baby, and there were limits to my mobility and awareness. However, I would grow up someday, and thinking of my future now would help me conclude the goal behind my every action taken for my near future.
Inevitably, there would be no future for me if I budged on the small consistencies in my previous life. To ensure the elimination of potential threats to me, I tried to prevent the creation of a sibling born from my mother, who was the obvious lead in charge of the household. While there was a chance I may already have older siblings, or any of my mother’s various men could possibly contest against my rightful heredity after they went rogue and had an affair— however unlikely— in the future, I did what I could while I was able to.
Whenever possible, I made sure to drill a clear and long-lasting message to all those within my new household. If there was ever more than one handsome man around my mother, and I happened to be in sight or hearing distance, I’d bawl. High-pitched, tone-deafening cries only capable of a child barely a few months old.
It felt like conditioning, with however long I maintained this act, almost religiously. Even as eyebags grew on weary faces, slight wrinkles appeared on flawless skin, and grey hairs sprouted on perfectly maintained scalps. I knew I was driving the household mad, and it could end up turning against me, but no matter how well I was treated, I’d retained a deep-rooted teaching from my past life.
The warmth I was feeling, nearly causing me to float on cloud nine before I strictly grounded myself, could never truly be mine to keep. I learned the hard way that all good treatment, the seemingly unconditional love I was spoiled with now, was not a given. There was a clause, it just wasn’t apparent yet; and perhaps it wouldn’t appear for years to come.
Maybe the stress, the constant thoughts on my dilemma, overloaded my underdeveloped brain. It was embarrassing, but for a long length of time, I could only muster up the strength to cry. It was the only choice I could make throughout the few months following my awakening.
Was it caused by the regression of my age, and physical body? I found myself acting in ways unbefitting the older age I knew I should have been, yet had somehow forgotten. Watching the exhausted tears fall down my new mother’s cheeks as she once more kneeled in front of the baby crib I had been placed in, I felt dread and regret swelling up in my throat.
“I just don’t know what to do, my lovely Rean,” My mother whispered, weakly knocking her head against the comforts of my elevated mattress, essentially a baby crib with all but the dangers of hard railings. “The doctors said there’s nothing wrong with your body or mind. They even mentioned the improvement from your previous state, when you would do nothing but sleep no matter the pain, but now no one has any answers.”
Pearl teardrops continued to roll down with every breath from my mother’s chest, and she stared at me with heavy emotions hidden in the confines of her eyes. I only stared back as I shuddered from the intensity of my sobs while she spoke softly, clear underneath all my screams. “My dear Rean, I hope you don’t misunderstand Mom. Mom’s happy you’re making a fuss after seeing your body still for so long. Everyone is more than overjoyed with your existence. You’ve become our sole beacon in life when I could only ever struggle to give the others temporary solace, and we’re all fighting strong to find a reason for your distress.”
My mother’s frail finger trailed down to my bed to softly swipe at the tears unwaveringly gathering around my eyes. For just a moment, I pause, a scream stuck in my throat as a gentle flutter fills the crumbling constraints of my heart. I can’t help but hold my mother’s gaze, before the noise from me resumes as if there hadn’t been an interruption.
“Still, Mom can’t help but feel guilty as the reason for bringing you pain. If it hadn’t been for my arduous insistence with bearing a child in this ill body of mine, even after everyone around me had warned me of the consequences I would suffer, maybe our Rean’s sweet soul wouldn’t have to endure so many wrongs.”
As if noticing my efforts, my mother pitifully strains a smile with her sickly countenance. “Mom’s sorry, Rean-ah. I hope you’ll be able to forgive Mom no matter what happens in the future. We’ll all be doing our best to make sure you never have to experience any distress after you make it through this trial, so Mom hopes you can hold on until we find a solution.”
My mother’s expression rekindles an urge within me. I want to stop crying, even if this body’s tantrum will soon pass and return like day and night. I want to regain the control, the intellect, strength, and power I knew I was capable of holding. There were many things I would slowly relearn, and much more I would experience first-hand, though I was not in control of my own body now.
For now, I could only drown out the sound of life around me with my snobbish cries.
. . .