Episode 7
02. He Had Become a Completely Different Man
It had been a week since Leandros disappeared.
As soon as Yeorae returned home that day, she rummaged through the closet. The extravagant outfit and cape he had worn when he first appeared were gone without a trace.
The same was true of the photos on her phone. As if such data had never existed in the first place.
Yeorae wanted to believe that she had simply dreamed for a week—that the person named Leandros had never existed to begin with.
But the bruise on her cheek remained for days afterward. As did her swollen lips, from that long kiss…
Staring blankly ahead, Yeorae eventually packed her bag and stood up. The eyes of her friends, who had been chatting in the lecture hall, turned toward her.
“Want to grab dinner together? You’re free tonight, right?”
“I’m heading to the library near home to work on assignments. The subway during rush hour is too much.”
“Oh.”
“Text me,” Yeorae raised her hand in response to the farewell following her.
Ever since Leandros disappeared, it felt like half her body had gone numb. Her reflection in the subway window, jolting with the train, looked like someone who had gone through a terrible accident—completely out of it.
Yeorae trudged to the library near her house and put on her headphones. Then, cutting herself off from the world, she began searching for books related to her assignment.
And then, as she wandered between the bookshelves, a particular book caught her eye.
‘That…’
It was truly strange.
The book was far above her eye level and didn’t have a particularly eye-catching cover. But it looked like a shining key to the truth, and before she knew it, her hand was reaching for it as if drawn by some spell.
A romance novel? These usually have summaries on the back cover.
But the back cover, with its image of a blue ocean, was so empty it felt hollow.
Unable to resist her curiosity, Yeorae opened the book.
But just a few seconds later, she shut it again.
‘…What did I just see?’
Her heart froze. The lyrics of a song buzzed in her ears, and it felt like her consciousness was separating from her body.
The hand holding the book trembled faintly.
She couldn’t believe it—the five letters of that name printed on the white paper.
Leandros
No, no. It had to be a hallucination her longing for him had conjured up.
Shaking the image of him from her mind, Yeorae quickly opened the book again. But it wasn’t a fantasy.
Leandros Julian Terrion Etsina
That ridiculously long full name of his was printed clearly in black ink, as if to shatter her doubts to pieces.
What? A movie? A European period drama?
Thinking of how she had once misunderstood everything, a dry laugh escaped her lips.
‘It came from right here…’
She stood in the shadows of the bookshelf for a long time, then finally stumbled out.
Her legs felt as though insects were crawling all over them.
From the moment she pulled out that book, the destination had been decided. Yeorae went straight to the desk and slammed the thick volume with the blue cover down.
“I’d like to borrow this book.”
Leandros,
Now I need to know your real identity.
***
The Song of the Sea and Skylark
A romance fantasy novel spanning about 1,000 pages. Every name and place Leandros had ever mentioned appeared within its pages.
The Empire of Levatein, the Duchy of Etsina, Emperor Veros. Like pieces of a perfectly assembled puzzle.
As she had guessed, Leandros was the male protagonist.
But the story wasn’t told from his point of view. As with most romance novels, the lead was the female protagonist.
He was destined to be with the daughter of a merchant guild leader named Lilianthus Eden.
“……”
Yurae closed the book at the scene of Leandros and Lilian’s first meeting.
A hollow laugh escaped her lips.
To think she’d fallen for a man made of ink and paper… Yeorae felt so pathetic she thought she might go insane.
And at the same time, her heart ached as though it would break at the thought that, after returning to his original world, he would one day fall in love with another woman.
No—‘another woman’? If anything, it was Yeorae herself who was the ‘other woman’—not the novel’s heroine, Lilian.
Leandros was a character created for Lilian. Being with her was his purpose and his value.
Damn it, why did it have to be a romance novel? Couldn’t it have been a different genre?
Cursing the unknown author, Yeorae opened the book again. Then suddenly, she noticed a detail she hadn’t before.
Leandros was thirty years old.
Thirty…
Compared to the twenty-year-old version she had known, it was a distant age.
In that time, he had gone to war again. While he was away, his father passed away, and his twin brother nearly ruined the family.
Leandros returned from the battlefield with deep trauma and insomnia. After enduring all that hardship and barely surviving, his family was already half in shambles.
Lilian was a young woman of twenty-four—the same age as Yurae.
Bright, cheerful, and mischievous. Someone like the warm sunlight of summer, who could heal Leandros’s wounds.
Leandros and Lilian started with a terrible first impression of each other, but gradually uncovered new sides and fell in love.
At their wedding in the final chapter, Yeorae felt like a guest forced to sit on a bed of nails.
She wanted to cry. No, she was already crying before she could even think to.
She opened her phone and searched for the author’s name. But it was their debut novel, and nothing about their identity was known.
Yeorae tried to put the book away, her heart aching—but in the end, she opened to the first page once more.
The reason was simple.
Leandros.
Just to see your name one more time.
***
Lilian, Leandros.
Lilian, Leandros.
Those two names spun in Yeorae’s head for days like a hamster wheel. Just when she thought she’d forgotten them, they came back. Again and again.
As she walked home from the library after studying for exams, Yeorae kept checking behind her while walking through a narrow alley.
‘…What is it?’
Strangely, she felt like someone was following her.
No way. The sky was so bright.
A foreboding chill crept up her spine, but it was too late to take another route.
A shiver ran down her back. Yeorae took off her headphones and quickened her pace.
Then, just before she descended a flight of stairs, she realized who had been following her—and let out a breath of relief.
“Unnie? What are you doing here?”
Yeonju emerged stealthily from behind a nearby building.
She didn’t smell of alcohol. But her eyes were unfocused in a strange way.
“U-Unni…?”
The moment their eyes met, an even deeper unease surged within Yeorae.
Yeonju glared fiercely at her sister, then suddenly began trembling all over. And like spitting up blood, she screamed.
“You told Mom everything, didn’t you? That I came by that time!”
“What? What nonsense are you suddenly spouting?!”
“Why else would Mom be ranting about throwing me into a psych ward!”
“Are you stupid? You went to the center for alcohol addiction treatment, and then drank again after getting out! That’s why!”
Yeorae shouted back, unable to contain her anger.
Yeonju, her face half-vacant, began crying and slowly approached her sister, step by step.
“You… think I’m pathetic, right? You just want me dead, don’t you?”
“What?”
Her instincts screamed danger. Yeorae stepped back, gripping her headphones like a weapon.
“What are you doing? Don’t come near me. I’ll scream!”
“Those eyes. That look that acts like it knows everything, looking down on me—do you know how much that makes me snap? Doesn’t anyone say these damn eyes drive people mad?”
Yeonju now resembled a bomb moments from exploding.
She’d been like this in ninth grade too. One wrong move and she could turn into a monster again. Yeorae wrapped her arms around herself, breathing hard in fear.
“D-Don’t. I told you not to come near me.”
“Yeah, Yeorae. Do you think I wanted to end up like this? You… You don’t know anything. You don’t know anything at all!”
Yeonju lunged forward, grabbed her sister’s shoulders, and violently shook her back and forth.
Ugh… The coffee she’d drunk earlier threatened to come up.
Yeorae’s vision spun. Staggering like a boat on rough waves, she tried to brace her legs—
But strangely, it felt like her body was floating up into the sky.
“…Unnie?”
What’s happening? Yeorae blinked in a daze as she tumbled down the stairs.
Oh god. She had never seen that look of shock on her sister’s face before—not even the day she’d first hit her, making her bleed while wearing a school uniform at sixteen.
Her backpack pressed into her back, the hard cover of the book inside making itself known.
Her head was spinning, but it didn’t hurt.
It was just… an overwhelming drowsiness she couldn’t fight.
• ❁ • ❁ • ❁ •By Esraa• ❁ • ❁ • ❁ •
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