WTRM 10

Chapter 10

As time passed, she would no longer be able to control her expressions or the look in her eyes.

From the moment she heard that, Elisha could no longer hear what Sohee was saying.

Even before checking the record of her life, this manager had already seen through the anxiety and nervousness written plainly across her face.

‘If even someone seeing me for the first time could tell…’

Then when had the people around her started noticing?

Had everyone been making a fool of me?

Then what had all my efforts been for? What about all the times I had endured, smiling while my insides burned? Were all those efforts nothing but useless struggles? Had I simply been making a fool of myself without even realizing it?

She felt dizzy.

That couldn’t be true.

It couldn’t be.

“What do you know? How much could you possibly know about me?!”

Elisha suddenly shot to her feet as though she could no longer bear it.

Anxiety? Nervousness? What was she even talking about? This…!

“You ugly nobody!”

Elisha squeezed her eyes shut and screamed.

Her voice reverberated throughout the consultation room.

“……”

Silence descended over the room.

Elisha kept her eyes closed and lowered her head.

She was the one who had shouted, yet for some reason, she felt as though tears were about to spill.

The humiliation of feeling as though everything had been exposed, the shame, and the despair.

It felt as though the life she had lived had become nothing more than a laughingstock, and she could not bring herself to raise her head.

When she finally opened her trembling eyes, Sohee was standing completely frozen in front of her.

But that was merely Elisha’s misunderstanding.

‘She calls herself a villainess… and all she can come up with is “ugly nobody”?’

Sohee looked at Elisha, who was barely managing to remain standing despite trembling all over.

In the real world, Sohee had heard all kinds of things, including “damn beggar,” “orphan,” “parasite,” and words even worse to repeat aloud.

Compared to those, calling someone ugly was honestly something you could say even to someone you loved.

‘As expected, compared to her villainess character, she’s mentally fragile and easily swayed.’

How could someone like this steal another person’s body and live forever?

Absolutely impossible.

Without realizing it, Sohee lightly shook her head.

“…What are you thinking about right now?”

“Huh?”

When Sohee asked in confusion, Elisha’s face crumpled.

“You were just thinking I was pathetic, weren’t you?”

“What are you talking about…?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know!”

She had clearly shaken her head as if Elisha were pathetic, so how dare she pretend otherwise?

“I’m completely fine. Elisha, you haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I’m simply grateful that you took my place.”

“Everyone, Saint Elisha also possesses holy power. Please don’t ask whether she’s real or fake anymore.”

The face of the real saint, who had turned Elisha’s stomach by pretending to be kind, gentle, and merciful, suddenly overlapped with Sohee’s face in her mind.

Elisha’s expression turned cold.

“I suppose being called ugly doesn’t bother you anymore since you’ve probably heard it so often.”

Elisha no longer bothered to hide the contempt on her face as she looked at Sohee.

“Then you should at least be competent. But apparently, even that isn’t the case. You couldn’t even hire proper employees, so you have only two of them, and on top of that, they’re villagers who don’t even have proper names, aren’t they? Everyone here is talking about it.”

“……”

“The hotel right over there has more than five people just working at the entrance to greet guests. And they’re characters from the novel, aren’t they? They’re obviously on a completely different level from these villagers.”

For the first time, Sohee quietly lowered her eyes.

Elisha looked down at her with satisfaction, as though she had gained the upper hand.

“I think it’s only a matter of time before this motel goes under.”

When Sohee’s expression visibly darkened without saying a word, Elisha felt a little relieved.

‘She’s nothing special.’

She had been the same way.

Just like Sohee was doing now, she used to lower her head, avoid the situation, or pretend not to notice while swallowing her humiliation.

Because this had gone beyond a battle of wills.

It was outright insulting.

‘…Was that a little too much?’

As the uneasy silence dragged on, Elisha cautiously glanced at Sohee.

In truth, this was the first time in her life she had actually said such vicious things out loud.

She was beginning to worry that she had gone too far when Sohee finally raised her head.

Elisha flinched and looked away, but Sohee smiled instead.

“Hotels are nice, aren’t they?”

“…What?”

“To match someone of Elisha’s status, I suppose we should provide something at that level.”

Sohee stood up and tucked the folder under her arm.

“As you can see, our facilities are rather inadequate. It would be better for you to stay at a luxurious hotel than this shabby motel.”

“…What?”

Sohee could tolerate Elisha attacking her personally.

This was a service job, after all, and Sohee was completely in the position of the weaker party because she needed to attract customers and help them reincarnate, regress, or possess another body.

But she had no intention of tolerating anyone attacking her precious employees.

With a bright smile, she gently pressed Elisha’s biggest trigger.

“But do they even accept a fake saint who’s nothing more than a supporting character?”

At the front desk not far away, Moon Jar silently swallowed a deep sigh.

She could hear the screams of someone throwing a fit inside the consultation room, along with the sound of things being smashed to pieces.

‘Sohee. She absolutely refuses to back down.’

She had always done her very best to prepare for reincarnation, regression, and possession.

She never treated anyone carelessly and listened carefully to every person’s story.

Of course, that was only for people who respected the line she had drawn.

Tit for tat.

That was what Moon Jar had come to realize after watching Sohee for about three months.

The chairs and tables had been knocked over.

There were scratches around Elisha’s neck, with blood seeping from where her nails had scraped the skin, and her hair was tangled into a complete mess.

The lace of her beautiful dress had torn in several places.

In that room, only Sohee remained perfectly fine, sitting calmly in her chair.

She watched Elisha, who had collapsed onto the floor and was sobbing.

Sohee simply let her have her fit of rage.

There was no emotion in Elisha’s vacant eyes, but deep within her chest, a profound resentment and anger had taken root.

Elisha shed tears one after another with an empty expression, as hollow as burned-out ashes.

Sohee clicked her tongue inwardly.

Through the slightly torn sleeve, numerous scars could be seen scattered across Elisha’s arm.

Far too many.

It probably wasn’t just her arms.

Her entire body hidden beneath the dress was probably covered in scars just like these.

Sohee let out a low sigh.

‘So this is how she’s been keeping all of that bottled up.’

She had worn the perfect saint’s mask while anxiety slowly consumed and corroded everything inside her.

The fear that she would become someone useless.

Elisha Brown had desperately endured because she did not want to be abandoned by the people she loved.

But, as always with the life of a villainess, it ended in betrayal and death.

It had to.

That way, the saint—the protagonist—could shine even brighter.

‘What’s so important about being loved, anyway? Why cling so desperately to some invisible emotion like that?’

Sohee sighed in frustration.

Was it really right to crave affection from someone who didn’t love you?

Even if she succeeded, affection that was tilted toward one side from the very beginning would inevitably carry a different weight.

One person would probably spend their entire life yearning for more.

Could she really not let go of something like that?

‘This isn’t something that can be understood through reason. There’s no way she’ll be persuaded.’

Sohee’s gaze hardened.

“Get up.”

Elisha raised her tear-filled eyes and looked at Sohee.

Her black eyes contained nothing.

Only unbidden tears continued to stream down her face.

“I can’t give you what you want. So please leave now.”

Every soul that came seeking reincarnation, regression, or possession was precious to Sohee, and filling the gourd with water was the only way she could return to her own world.

But she couldn’t ignore her own standards for reincarnation, regression, and possession just to help Elisha possess someone else’s body.

“I…”

A hoarse voice barely escaped Elisha’s lips.

Once her emotions had settled and she came back to her senses, she couldn’t bring herself to raise her head.

The shame of having her deepest, ugliest side exposed made even the excuse she managed to utter tremble.

“I-I… I’m not normally like this.”

Sohee gave a bitter smile at those words.

“I see. So you’re not normally like this, but now that you’re dead, you’ve decided to let yourself go?”

Elisha suddenly realized just how badly things had gone, and her mind went blank.

Sohee was right.

Before her death, Elisha had been despised by the entire nation and eventually beheaded, yet even until the very end, she had never properly fought back.

The thing she had found most unbearable was the look of contempt in Cedric’s eyes—the man she loved.

Her feelings for him had been genuine, but she had been branded a fake who had sought power, and none of her protests had mattered.

Perhaps Sohee was right.

Perhaps the restraints had simply come off.

She had spent her entire life smiling obediently even though she felt as though her insides were about to explode.

Yet all it had taken was a single remark from Sohee to make her lose control completely.

“You… You called me a fake saint, so I got so angry that…”

“Yes, I understand. That can happen. But I’m not sure the things you said to me were very kind.”

Sohee’s voice was gentle, but her eyes were frozen cold.

Elisha bit her lip.

It had only been a few minutes ago that she had compared the motel to the hotel and hurled insults at Sohee’s employees.

She hurriedly poured out her words.

“Do you know… Do you know how painfully I’ve lived?! Do you know how much those words—‘fake saint’—have tormented me?! It’s on a completely different level from living comfortably here like you do!”

“……”

“I don’t know how much about me is written on that piece of paper, but you don’t know anything unless you’ve experienced it yourself. You can’t just say things like that so carelessly!”

Sohee said nothing for a moment.

Then, without hesitation, she opened the folder and roughly crumpled the paper inside.

The sheet of paper containing the condensed record of Elisha’s life was mercilessly crushed in her hand.