No Dark Secrets In This Book

Episode 60

When the medical professor who was looking at me with a troubled gaze left for a moment, Ryuseong asked.

“Is it a situation where you can’t trust the butler?”

Uh, now that Ryuseong says that, the situation seems really serious, but there’s nothing serious. I simply couldn’t trust the butler anymore. Because of the pharmacist behind that talisman I found out about through the butler.

No, it’s fishy. Why did he secretly feed me a tonic saying it was an antidote?

‘If he does that, can’t he also secretly put in poison?’

In this case, the medical professor Ryuseong said was trustworthy seemed more reliable. The original timeline’s protagonist acknowledged him?

‘Ah, then I have to trust him.’

That was the only conclusion, but when I told him indifferently, Ryuseong made a strange face. He seemed somehow sad.

‘…Why?’

What, what’s the problem?

‘Am I too stupid to understand today too?’

…I’m actually a bit stupid. I’m someone who proves with my body that not everyone who entered a top university is smart, a destroyer who came to collapse the myth of academic elitism. But you know what. That doesn’t mean I’m very stupid.

Even when I lived as Jeong Eui-an, I felt it. It’s not that I lack awareness, but I must have felt at some point that I’m strangely out of sync with people.

I enjoy laughing and chatting with people, so there’s no way I can’t notice the heterogeneity that seeps into the texture of the conversation or the vague silence of the moment. So what’s clear is that I’m not very stupid.

The problem is that I don’t know what to answer to avoid facing these situations because I’m not not stupid either.

If I said the wrong thing or reacted incorrectly, everyone would smile ambiguously or make a sad expression. They seemed to think I would be miserable.

‘But I’m not.’

I’m fucking happy. I’m saying I’m happy. There’s no reason not to be happy, and every day is fun. It’s enjoyable and funny. Can’t you see that I’m pursuing pleasure to the best of my ability? Can’t you just think that I occasionally misstep because I lack awareness? Do you have to pity me as if I’m some pitiful thing?

‘I have fucking pride.’

I don’t act like a miserable human being caught in tragedy. I’m fine. I’m alright. I’m not sick or bad. This much is average. Even if not, so what. Don’t look down on me. Don’t underestimate me…

Still, for a person. The heart that was unexpectedly on edge gets extinguished by the hand tapping my chest, and I think that’s inevitable…

The fingers brushing through my hair and the hand slowly stroking in time with the sound of breathing. There’s nothing that’s not awkward, so it’s absurd to get angry.

I stared for a long time at the blue eyes calmly looking down at me. Even when I wanted to gouge out the compassion carved into the pupils with my nails and sever the optic nerve, I thought I might get a little sad if your eyes that sparkle like phantom lights don’t remain vivid. Such thoughts made me fall into an uncomfortable sleep even while getting an IV drip with barely open eyes. And then I had another fucking dream. Haha.

‘Fuck…’

When I inhaled, I thought I was falling into a lump of clouds. Unlike the thought that it would softly catch me like a cotton blanket, I fell like jelly shattering. You know that illusion of endlessly falling when you misstep on a stair step? That sensation made my spine shudder and my joints rattle, and in an instant, it scattered and invited me to a new space.

It was easy to realize it was a dream. Unlike the first dream, this dream unfolded in a field I was familiar with.

For example, the mansion where I lived as Jeong Eui-an in my past life?

“Hyung! Here. Come here!”

…The laughter of children can be heard. It’s the scent of spring with comforting sunlight. As I quietly stood and watched them, a smile unconsciously rose.

Brightly and healthily. Fully, as if it had never been like that.

That’s right. I knew what a happy family was.

‘As the first sentence of the book Anna Karenina went.’

「Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.」

Tolstoy is a genius. An insight worthy of a great writer. That’s right. Happy families are alike. They all fulfill at least three conditions.

‘First, money.’

It’s a chaebol family. Is there a need for more words? An entrepreneur who has accumulated prosperous wealth and honor has been passing down the business for generations and expanding it. The mansion was luxurious and extravagant enough to rival any palace, but at the same time it was high-class and elegant. It was an aggregation of aesthetics that had been consistently applied with excellent insight in the design and management process.

My mother, who was the head designer of a luxury brand in her younger days, did not allow even a single discrepancy in directing the employees, but at the same time she was benevolent. Even if someone cried and begged for a sudden vacation because their parents’ illness broke out and they had to go down to the countryside that day, she would first hold their dirty hand and say this. Calm down. Of course I’ll give you a vacation, but where is the hospital, Chun Department Head? Then she would send her helicopter to transport the group’s doctor and employee together. It was news that no one could help but wet their eyes. At the news of recovered health, she sighed in relief while stroking her chest, and when they said they would return to work right away, she strictly told them.

‘The place you need to be right now is not my house, but by Chun Department Head’s side.’

My mother repeatedly said that if you have money, you should take care of your people to the point of having pride. I’m sometimes sorry to the world for not being kind enough to care for places my hands can’t reach, but treating the people I hired next to me roughly is only for nouveau riche bastards who don’t deserve to have money. My mother, who married into our group that controlled Korea, was from an old noble family in England, so she firmly instilled the concept of noblesse oblige in her children even more.

Therefore, the second condition is this.

‘Proper values.’

It’s unsightly to have a lot of money but not realize it and claim to be poor. But it’s cool to admit you have a lot of money and take responsibility for your people accordingly. My mother showed that, and my father introduced another image of an adult to his children.

My father was a remarkably capable entrepreneur. He introduced his children to how far they could develop and progress. He showed them the foundation he had built and told them the directions to go further in the future.

If my mother taught them about generosity, my father could be said to have nurtured their ambition.

Parents who show the power their children will gradually gain as they grow up, and therefore also tell them the reasons they should be generous.

So the third condition is…

‘Love.’

…It has to be.

Without love, there’s no way you can pour out the values and concepts you think are right, precious, and valuable.

They always whispered love in sweet language and their eyes were meltingly soft. As if it’s a waste to even take a bite of something soft and tender, they poured out love like putting it whole in their mouth and gently rolling it around to eat. The children were no different, fighting and bickering but in the end presenting something called consideration. If someone fell and skinned their knee, crying along with them was their life. The kind and gentle temperature belonged to those who cared for each other. This must have been the epitome of a happy family. The peace of the family was always warm.

I repeatedly wished for it to last forever. I didn’t care if I wasn’t there.

No, rather, I shouldn’t have been there.

The scene of golden sparkling sunlight was so beautiful that impurities shouldn’t have been mixed in there. Just seeing them could fill me with joy as if I had honey in my mouth. So the answer was set.

If it’s a family where peace comes only when I’m not there.

I should disappear.

“…Gasp!”

I opened my eyes with a suppressed scream.

More precisely, my eyelids lifted. My vision was still white, and as I flailed my shoulders as if having a seizure, I finally slowly regained my sight when I realized my arms and legs were moving.

The ceiling in front of me wasn’t the infirmary. It looked like the dormitory room. An IV was connected to my forearm, and when I turned my head to look, the outside was filled with twilight.

It was dawn. The darkest sky just before daybreak was greeting me.

The air was chilly and no one was by my side. It was just like my life, giving me stability. Come to think of it, isn’t Cassice Demillang’s life like that too? The body I possessed was also living a life with no one by its side like me.

Just by that realization, I felt somewhat stable, but it had to be at that moment.

At that instant.

“Are you awake?”

Ryuseong woke up as if it was nothing.

He wasn’t even on his own bed, but had four chairs lined up next to my bed, and was rubbing his eyes with a head that looked like a bird’s nest as if he had just woken up from a nap with a blanket…

It seems like I’m going to fucking waver.