Mistake
My heart sank when I discovered a message that appeared to be an attempt at typing the word “mistake.” What made it even more suspicious was that it had been sent to that bastard Baek Sahyun at nearly 3 AM.
Nam Heejae always used proper, upright speech when sending messages. But seeing the letters all jumbled like this, it must have clearly been an unusual situation.
And what about the content? Didn’t it look like anyone could see he was trying to complete the sentence “I was wrong”? Feeling puzzled, I checked the date Nam Heejae had sent the message.
August 18th. Disturbingly, it was from last summer.
Baek Sahyun
Come out to the pool
I’ll be there soon.
Baek Sahyun
Don’t rush
Okay.
As I carefully deduced the context before and after the conversation, I became certain this must be about that day Baek Sahyun had mentioned two days ago. I could guess from how he was specifically ordering him to come out to the pool. Baek Sahyun had undoubtedly given the original Nam Heejae the water torture treatment as well.
I imagined Baek Sahyun pushing Nam Heejae’s head into the pool and stuck out my tongue with an “ugh.”
“That despicable bastard.”
And poor Nam Heejae.
The fact that this kind of dynamic played out was proof that their relationship wasn’t equal even normally. Baek Sahyun must have treated Nam Heejae like a puppet and controlled his life as he pleased.
“Then what’s the point of the original setting that they’re friends?”
I naturally found myself muttering to myself. The more I thought about it, the stranger the situation became.
If their relationship was this hierarchical, it should have been prominent in the original work, yet there wasn’t a single related scene that appeared in *Excessively Brilliant*. Naturally, there were no mentions of it either.
“What the hell is going on here.”
Ah, my temples suddenly throbbed. I was at the point of wondering whether settings unintended by the creator could exist on their own. As I wasted brain cells trying to answer the question, a sense of exhaustion came over me.
Of course, I had heard from Haesu before about how characters’ backstories enhance the depth and plausibility of events.
“You shouldn’t show all the backstory. A novel is just a novel, not someone’s autobiography. But I want to know. When I think about content I’m missing in the book I’m reading, nothing irritates me more than that.”
So Haesu said she would search for and read every interview the author left when reading a book. She wanted to understand the characters without missing a single detail.
But I didn’t have such reading material, so I decided to carefully retrace only the contents of *Excessively Brilliant*. Right. Now that I think about it, I think I saw a description somewhere about how the original Nam Heejae particularly felt an inferiority complex toward Baek Sahyun.
Damn it. All I could remember was that it appeared in a passage right before he performed his villain role.
As I kept pushing myself to remember if I wanted to survive, sentences and paragraphs I’d encountered in the latter half slowly filled my head. Those few points that showed the dynamic of Baek Sahyun and Nam Heejae’s relationship.
– Nam Heejae had lived his entire life in Baek Sahyun’s shadow.
– To become genuine instead of fake, he desperately chased after Baek Sahyun. He wanted to stand on equal ground with that dominant alpha, in any form whatsoever.
– He even made desperate efforts to become an alpha by receiving illegal drug injections to gain equal qualifications. But it was effort that would never be rewarded.
– Because Baek Sahyun played with him, viewing him only as a human chess piece, just at that level.
– Nam Heejae’s life was Baek Sahyun’s chessboard, and his actions and choices were no different from how Baek Sahyun played chess. In other words, Nam Heejae belonged to the chess pieces that moved as Baek Sahyun led.
– A chess piece that would be tossed aside carelessly when the game got boring. And that would receive some reward when he occasionally became generous, that kind of chess piece.
It might not match perfectly, but I think it was roughly this atmosphere. I returned to the main point and tried to judge Baek Sahyun and Nam Heejae’s relationship based on this information.
“Baek Sahyun who likes playing doll games with people, and Nam Heejae who was dragged around watching Baek Sahyun’s every mood.”
Is this it, simply put?
“Haesu was right.”
I nervously rubbed my face with dry hands.
According to Haesu, there were two methods to interfere with a possessor’s adaptation. “Making the most normal guy awaken to become not normal” and “hiding the past story with the least normal guy.”
The former would refer to Chae Eunwoo’s abnormal behavior, and the latter would refer to the secret history between Baek Sahyun and Nam Heejae. I witnessed the former clearly with my own eyes, but I only dimly realized the latter just now.
If I’d had this information from the start, I wouldn’t have played friends—I would have just crawled around flat on the ground.
“I thought these guys were really childhood friends…”
You know, the kind of relationship you’d commonly think of when you hear the word “friend.”
But for it to not be like that at all, what an absurd development. What good was it to know the information that the two went on trips to a pension every summer? I couldn’t even guess what happened when they got there.
This is why they say possessors become confused when past stories are hidden.
“It’s late, but at least I’m glad I found out.”
If I’d kept not knowing, I think I would have wandered around unable to get my bearings.
Was it thanks to my head clearing up after Baek Sahyun disappeared from sight? But even more, I felt that all of this was a judgment made possible because of Haesu’s teachings.
“Our Haesu was an expert in this area.”
Especially regarding possession, wasn’t she at a mastered level? I never knew that the stories I’d listened to carefully just because I liked conversing with Haesu would become flesh and blood.
To receive Haesu’s help even after dying, well. I’m such a pathetic older brother, aren’t I? The fact that I died without properly being a cool adult to that Haesu honestly didn’t feel quite real.
I really am dead, right? There really is no way to return to Haesu’s side, right…
“…I’m suddenly sleepy. What the hell is this body made of, Nam Heejae?”
Perhaps because I’d exceeded today’s brain capacity, my body rapidly became drowsy and I wanted to lie down on the bed right away and close my eyes. I stretched out in a spread-eagle on the moderately soft mattress and muttered.
“Possession isn’t easy either… It would have been better to just die and meet God.”
Also, I wanted to go find Haesu, who said she wanted to try possessing someone so she could live life comfortably, and tell her. That possession thing, oppa tried it once… but it really doesn’t seem like something a person should do.
While suffering from drowsiness, I etched into my heart the plans I would accomplish step by step.
First. Let’s get rid of Baek Sahyun no matter what. I’ll make it so the existence called Baek Sahyun can no longer interfere in Nam Heejae’s life.
Second. If the opportunity to escape his pressure becomes elusive, let’s either drop out of university or go study abroad.
Wouldn’t it work to distance myself from Baek Sahyun by any means necessary? Since Nam Heejae was also a wealthy family’s son, these would be goals I could easily achieve if I set my mind to it.
And lastly, third. Finding my own life.
“…Ah. My head hurts.”
If I manage to build a wall between us, how should I live the rest of my life? I don’t mean I don’t want to step away from Baek Sahyun’s vicinity—I literally mean I don’t know.
This place wasn’t the Republic of Korea I knew, nor was it a place where I could meet my younger sister Haesu. So what happens to me…? Not Nam Heejae, but Jang Woohyun. What happens to Jang Woohyun?
“No. None of that matters.”
Our Haesu needs to eat her meals properly.
My eyelids, heavy as if sandbags had been placed on them, slowly closed before I could finish thinking.
❖ ❖ ❖
Bzzt, bzzzzt—!
“…Haah.”
What woke me from my death-like sleep was the vibration sound coming from my phone. I fumbled through the drawer next to the bed to reject the call, but the vibration sound rang out persistently without giving up.
Bzzzzt, bzzzzt!
“Who is it…”
I woke up and cleared my locked-up throat with a cough. Thinking it might be Baek Sahyun, I forced my eyes open to check, and a name I’d never seen before in my life, and never seen in the novel either, was displayed roughly.
「Hyungman」
…Hyungman? Since the surname wasn’t attached, there must be some degree of familiarity.
Ah. Now that I think about it, there was one number that didn’t reply yesterday, and that must have been this person called “Hyungman.”
It was the brief question “How are you doing, Hyungman-ah?” but it had been ruthlessly ignored. But why is he calling now? I rubbed and wiped my bleary eyes and carefully picked up the phone.
As soon as I pressed the accept button, a thunderous shout burst through the device.
[Nam Heejae, you immature bastard! Where the hell have you been selling your brain!]
