I run.
“Madam!”
I hear Jeong-i calling me from behind, but I ignore him and run with all my might.
As I run, the hairpin holding my hair in place loosens little by little, and my long hair begins to spill down. Unlike when I was a man with short hair, long hair is heavy—absurdly heavy—so much that it feels as if someone is yanking on it.
The hairpin, barely clinging to my hair, swings in time with my steps and bangs against various parts of my body. It is unbearably irritating.
Unable to stand it any longer, I yank out the hairpin Hwaya and the maids had so carefully chosen for me and fling it behind me.
“Madam! Why all of a sudden…!”
The ties of my clothes have already come loose, the front of my garment flapping wildly, and my nearly backless shoes keep trying to slip off.
Clutching the skirt of my hanbok-style outfit in both hands and running awkwardly, the distance between me and the person fleeing ahead only grows wider.
“Wait! Stop right there!”
I shout as hard as I can, but of course there is no answer. If anything, the man seems to realize I’m growing exhausted and glances back at me leisurely.
My breath grows ragged.
It feels like this body still isn’t entirely mine. My mind urges me to chase after him, but my legs refuse to keep up.
I thought I had gotten fairly healthy, but apparently my condition is still a mess. Though compared to the healthy body I had before becoming a woman, I’m not sure whether this frail body could ever be called normal.
Even so, I cannot stop.
The thought that I must not lose that person is lodged firmly in my head.
This is the first time.
For the first time since I possessed someone in an unnamed romance fantasy, it felt like I had seen a clue. Because that man was holding something that looked like a smartphone!
Of course, I saw it from a distance, so I couldn’t be certain it was truly a smartphone, but there was no way I could just calmly let the first possibility I’d seen pass me by.
Perhaps to shake me off, the man begins darting into narrow alleys. Already close to my limit, I fall visibly farther behind every time he turns down another alley.
One more time, when he twists into an alley. I can no longer follow and have no choice but to stop, bracing my hand against the wall.
My vision wavers little by little. My lungs burn as if they are on fire.
I can’t lose him like this….
“Madam. Are you pursuing that man?”
Jeong-i, who has followed me with an utterly calm expression, speaks to me. In his arms are the hairpin I threw away, the ornaments that fell off as I ran, and even my left shoe, which I hadn’t realized had slipped off.
“Madam. Are you pursuing that man in the gray durumagi, the one holding something black?”
Jeong-i, carefully placing the things I dropped into my arms, asks in a little more detail, and I nod with difficulty.
“Shall I bring him to you?”
At the sight of Jeong-i asking me again, I remember what he said earlier in front of the taffy seller—that if I didn’t make things clear, he would wait for my cue.
“Yes. Haa… bring him to me…”
“As you command.”
The moment my order falls, Jeong-i shoots off like an arrow and soon returns with the man in his grasp. He is so fast that I am still leaning against the wall, trying to catch my breath.
“Why. Hah… only now?”
“Lady Hwaya ordered me to serve you well, Madam, so I could not leave your side before you gave me a separate command.”
I have just realized that Jeong-i is an inflexible stickler for principles.
It would be nice if he could be a little more flexible about things like this… Why did I put myself through all that?
***
I decide to resent Jeong-i later for simply trailing after me because he had not been given an order. For now, it is thanks to Jeong-i that I was able to catch the man at all.
“Aaagh! You damned bastards! This is mine!”
The man desperately hides the black slab in his arms, refusing to hand it over.
Since the man’s build looks as if it would take two of me as I am now to match him, and since he is thrashing about with all his might, there is no way I can check the object myself.
On my own, I would have had no method whatsoever.
“Take it from him.”
“Oh, so those who have everything are even worse!”
Using Jeong-i, I am able to take it from him very easily.
Only after all that pointless suffering do I finally receive the object from Jeong-i, and the moment I do, a familiar size settles into my hand.
A rectangular shape that fills one hand, very much like the thing I carried around every day in the modern world.
But that is all.
The object I have received has none of the things a smartphone should have—no screen, no buttons, no camera. To begin with, it is not even metal, but a wooden plaque.
A wooden plaque merely painted black.
It is not a smartphone.
I simply saw wrong, jumped to my own conclusions, and caused a commotion for nothing.
Now I just need to return this wooden plaque, whose purpose I do not even know, to that man, apologize for acting violently, tell Jeong-i it was just a misunderstanding, and go back.
I can pass it off as a mistake made because I was excited over my first outing, meet Hwaya and look around the market, buy some snacks for the children who catch my eye… and go back… go back… back….
Go back? Where am I going back to?
Other than Ryu Sua, where on earth am I supposed to go back to?
“Fuck… fuck! What the hell is this thing that you even ran away!”
My voice bursts out, full of rage along with a string of curses, and I throw the wooden plaque in my hand to the ground.
“What, am I some criminal? They said if I brought it on the last day of the market, they’d trade it for meat, so I was keeping it safe. You lot were staring right at it!”
“What? Can’t you see the state I’m in? You think I was looking because I needed something like that?”
“Even if that wasn’t it, when fine, lofty folk glare at me hard enough to bore holes through me, how am I supposed to just stand there?”
Even after that, my anger does not subside, and I keep panting with fury, continuing to argue with him for a while.
“Then… you could have just gone on your way… Why did you suddenly run…”
But no matter how much anger I vent, nothing changes, and my voice gradually loses its force until it begins to grow damp with tears.
My vision slowly blurs, and the strength leaves me all at once. I sink down where I stand.
Jeong-i seems to approach in surprise, but I simply pull my legs into my arms on the ground and bury my face in my knees.
What is this pathetic mess?
A smartphone in an Eastern romance fantasy? What smartphone? Was I hoping for another possessed person or a transmigrator besides me?
If I knew this would happen, I should have just quietly picked out a book at the lending library. I only wasted my strength and ran off on my own, and when I go back, Hwaya is going to scold me…
.
.
.
Why? What did I do wrong?
I was just going home from work like usual… fuck, I couldn’t even remember that properly. Like an idiot.
I was probably just reading a novel and dozing off on the subway anyway. So why do I have to be trapped here?
What the hell does this damned romance fantasy whose name I don’t even know want me to do after possessing me? Who did this? Why?
Should I flail around trying to interfere with some mastermind I don’t even know?
Or am I supposed to seduce the male lead who was destined to become the mastermind? Is that Sohwi?
Ah~ His true form just so happens to be a frightening giant fox, too. How perfectly fitting. Right?
Does the original Ryu Sua just die as she was and make him turn evil? What, if I flip the dinner table or untie my clothes and spend a nice, lewd night with him, and even have a child, will you send me back?
If that’s what it is, then just tell me so.
It’s not my body anyway, so I’ll fawn over my fox husband with all my might and then go home.
I’ll do anything, so please. Please tell me what I’m supposed to do. Please.
“Why are you confusing me like this… sob…”
Hot, trembling tears pour from my blurring eyes.
Because I hate all of it. I cry.
“Sob… I want to go home…”
I want to end this endless first outing and go back.
***
Everyone working in the manor knows that the lady’s memory is not sound.
But according to the words dropped by the women who serve as maids, she smiles brightly and is still their kind madam, so no one worried greatly.
Because the sight I saw today was still the same madam who loved children.
And yet.
How can the woman now collapsed on the ground, weeping sorrowfully and pouring out her anger, be the same?
She must simply have been enduring it all this time while pretending nothing was wrong. Because she hated making others worry.
The madam I knew was that kind of person.
“Sob… I want to go home…”
“Shall I escort you back to the manor?”
“I said I want to go home.”
At the sight of her answering that she wants to go home when I ask whether she wishes to return to the manor, I cannot say a word. Because I do not know where the home she speaks of is.
I can only remain beside my madam as she weeps silently, saying only that she wants to go home.
Perhaps about a quarter-hour has passed. As if she has finally calmed down, she keeps her head buried and barely opens her mouth in a deeply hoarse voice.
“I’m sorry… I’ll return the wooden plaque. I’m sorry.”
“He has already taken it and left.”
“… Could I compensate him separately later?”
My lady is apologizing to an empty place, though the other party left long ago, and even intends to seek him out separately to compensate him. It is truly infuriating.
“Yes. I will make inquiries.”
“… Thank you.”
Yes. I must make inquiries.
To think he dared spew insolent words at someone like her, and dared leave of his own accord.
How could he possibly be qualified to set foot in the territory of Horyeongsan?
I did not speak falsely. In accordance with my madam’s wishes, I will leave him the rest of his life as compensation.
It is merely that my innocent madam need not increase her worries.
I will handle it at my level. Then, after reporting to the head maid, who will soon come here,
it will be enough for this disloyal servant, who failed to fulfill his role, to receive punishment from my lord.
Still, I cannot even imagine how badly the others will tear into me if they learn of this.