Chapter 3
The moment our gazes crossed, everything froze.
My insides turned to ice.
My body wouldn’t move, as if something heavy were crushing it in place.
He staggered toward me, muttering under his breath.
Behind him, a dark crimson haze was rising—an ominous aura that felt like a grotesque mass of condensed heat.
It was such an unfamiliar sensation that I wondered if I had imagined it. Just as I blinked again to make sure—
“…You were supposedly on the brink of death for three days, yet you look perfectly fine?”
A strong stench of alcohol mixed with the metallic smell of blood wafted from him.
“Who… are you?”
I asked quietly, though in truth, I already knew the answer.
His face, height, and presence bore an uncanny resemblance to Yeom Horyeong.
The eldest son—Yeom Hopyeong.
Jeok Heerin’s fiancé.
Strangely enough, just meeting his gaze made an urgent drumming echo in my ears.
No—this wasn’t sound.
It was my heartbeat.
A deep, seething rage still lingered within Jeok Heerin’s heart, pounding violently.
I deliberately suppressed the emotion and observed the situation.
Yeom Hopyeong curled his lips into a crooked grin.
Unlike the gentle-looking Yeom Horyeong, his features were sharp and cutting.
The twisted line of his mouth was especially unsettling.
“So, you lost your memory?”
He looked at me with the expression of someone already broken.
“You didn’t make that up to try and run away from me, did you?”
“….”
The words wouldn’t come easily. Perhaps finding that irritating, Yeom Hopyeong raised an eyebrow.
“How about I check for myself?”
He strode toward me and reached out.
My body stiffened, frozen by a deeply rooted fear.
I’ll die.
I wanted to run, but he was faster.
His hand closed around my throat.
Even the sensation of his skin against mine was revolting.
His grotesque face filled my vision.
“Kh—!”
A strangled sound escaped as my airway tightened.
The killing intent pouring out of Yeom Hopyeong made it hard to breathe.
“Answer me. Why did the Mad Dog save you? Since when were you connected to that bastard?!”
…Mad Dog?
Was he referring to the man who had saved me from the lake?
Yeom Hopyeong’s face twisted grotesquely as he stared into my eyes.
I instantly understood what emotion lay behind that expression.
Crippling inferiority.
His madness-filled gaze wasn’t aimed at me—it was aimed at someone else within me.
“I thought you were scheming with my little brother, but you were secretly in contact with that Mad Dog instead?”
The veins in Yeom Hopyeong’s eyes bulged.
I didn’t know why, but it was clear that the “Mad Dog” was a presence that stirred intense inferiority in him.
“It doesn’t matter. You can’t run anyway. You were mine from the beginning.”
The grip around my neck tightened. My breath began to fail.
If I were the original Heerin, I wouldn’t have been able to resist at all.
But I was different.
“…L-let go!”
I locked eyes with him and forced out the remaining air in my lungs, shouting.
It was meant to startle him—to create an opening.
And then—
Everything stopped.
Yeom Hopyeong’s foul breath.
The killing intent transmitted through his hand.
Even the cold flow of air around us.
All color drained from the world, leaving everything coated in lifeless gray.
And in that frozen stillness, I realized—
Only I could move.
I didn’t know why.
I didn’t know whether this power belonged to me, or if it was a hidden secret of this body.
But I knew one thing with absolute certainty:
This moment was fleeting—and I could not afford to miss it.
Without hesitation, I kicked Yeom Hopyeong’s shin with all my strength.
At that exact instant, the colorless world shattered.
Gray split apart as colors flooded back into existence. Sound returned to the world.
And—
Thud!
Yeom Hopyeong was thrown backward, smashing his head against the threshold.
Caught completely off guard, he didn’t even manage to defend himself.
But at the very moment I should have fled, my strength suddenly drained away—as if something had been forcibly ripped out of me.
“Huff… huff…”
A dull ache spread around my heart, and my breathing grew ragged.
My legs gave out, and I collapsed to the floor, struggling to catch my breath.
My throat hurt, and my ankle throbbed from the kick, but worse than that was the overwhelming fatigue and breathlessness that kept me from standing.
Only after a long while was I able to move again.
Yeom Hopyeong…
Thankfully, he still hadn’t gotten up. He lay unconscious, having struck the threshold squarely.
There wasn’t a pool of blood around his head, and he was still breathing—so he likely wouldn’t die.
To anyone else, it would look like he’d simply drunkenly fallen over.
That was no accident.
I had calculated exactly where he would hit when I kicked his shin.
Should I just kill him now?
It’s best to eliminate obstacles quickly.
But this was the interior of the Yeomhwa Clan estate.
If suspicion toward me grew, my movements would be restricted. Stopping here was the wiser choice.
In any case, Yeom Hopyeong wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon.
He really was drunk, after all—he might even wake up later believing everything had been a dream.
Leaving him behind, I returned to my quarters.
I sat on the edge of the bed, calming my violently racing heart.
What was that?
What happened when he grabbed my throat—time had clearly stopped.
Could it be…?
I opened and closed my unfamiliar palm.
Was that a special ability possessed by Jeok Heerin?
I was certain that among the countless bits of information I’d encountered in my past life, there had been nothing like this.
Suddenly, I found myself wondering what kind of person Jeok Heerin had been.
Would her belongings offer any clues?
Her room held nothing but an old bronze mirror and faded clothes—no traces of her at all.
So I expanded my search to the small study attached to the bedroom.
In the corner, on a desk, lay stacks of practice paper filled with calligraphy.
She wrote a lot.
Being confined, this must have been the only thing she could do.
As I flipped through them, I found a writing journal hidden deep inside a drawer.
Fragments of Jeok Heerin’s life were recorded there.
Birthdays spent alone, year after year.
Unanswered words written in the form of conversations.
And sentences that ended abruptly.
As time passed, the entries grew fewer. Thoughts were recorded less and less.
What began as neat, upright handwriting gradually deteriorated, until the final entries looked as though they’d been scrawled by trembling hands.
The last sentence she wrote conveyed her state of mind clearly.
Once the wedding ceremony begins, I will disappear completely.
Thinking back to her reaction when she faced Yeom Hopyeong earlier, it was easy to imagine how much she had loathed him.
He must have always treated Heerin with violence—just as he had today.
Could it be that he was the one who killed her…?
The moment that thought crossed my mind, her final memories surged forth.
A cloudy sky.
A vast lake.
And Heerin, barefoot and covered in wounds, standing at the edge of a cliff.
Yeom Hopyeong stood before her, his face twisted.
“You were mine from the start. A wife obeys everything her husband says, doesn’t she?”
His murderous gaze alone seemed enough to flay her alive.
“Go back to your quarters quietly. If you keep your mouth shut, I’ll treat you well enough.”
At those words, Heerin’s heart—thrashing like a fish dragged from water—fell eerily silent.
Strangely, standing before Yeom Hopyeong, she felt no fear at all.
“Shut that filthy mouth.”
She twisted her lips into a mocking smile.
“Let’s never see each other again.”
The moment her lips closed, her body descended toward the lake.
White foam rose up to greet her, swallowing her whole.
A venomous smile lingered on her lips.
Jeok Heerin believed that death was better than marrying Yeom Hopyeong.
So she threw herself into the lake without hesitation.
That was where the memory ended.
But she wouldn’t have known—
That as her body sank beneath the water, something changed.
And that I—Cheongrin—would take residence within her.
I don’t know how such a thing was possible.
But one thing was certain:
She wished for death, and I wished to live.
And so I remained here.
Heerin.
I called her name silently in my heart.
There was no response.
The original owner of this body seemed to have vanished completely.
Jeok Heerin.
She had never been allowed to bloom in this prison-like place.
After losing her freedom to the Demonic Cult, she lived like a bird trapped in a cage—and ultimately sought freedom in death.
Your death gave me life.
Even knowing she was gone, there were words I wanted to say.
From now on, I’ll live as you.
I wouldn’t waste the life I had been given by this miracle.
And having inherited this life, there was something I had to do.
Revenge.
Not only those who killed Baek-Ah—
I won’t forgive those who drove you to your death either.
Those who ordered Baek-Ah’s death would be torn apart.
Those who captured Heerin and forced her toward death would be cast into the abyss.
As I made that vow—
A presence I thought would never return began to stir faintly near my solar plexus.
A cold, ominous energy.
I hurriedly sat in a lotus position and examined the energy within my body.
The inner energy I thought had been completely severed twitched faintly.
It was thin as a thread—
But it was undeniably there.
My inner power was never completely gone.
