What Do You Know About Me?

The longer this went on, the harder it would become to fake the expressions and the look in her eyes.

From the middle of that sentence onward, Elisha stopped hearing Sohee's voice entirely. Before she had even checked the record of Elisha's life, this manager had already seen through the irritability and anxiety written across her face.

If even a total stranger could tell…

Then how long had the people around her known?

Had they all been laughing at me?

Then what was the point of everything I struggled for? All the effort of hiding my burning insides and smiling through it — was that just worthless flailing? Just a fool's game that only I couldn't see through?

Her head spun. That couldn't be true. It wasn't supposed to be like that.

"What would you know? What could you possibly know about me!"

Unable to bear it a second longer, Elisha shot up from her seat.

Anxious? Impatient? So what if I am—!

"You pathetic little nobody!"

Squeezing her eyes shut, Elisha shrieked at the top of her lungs, and the counseling room rang with the sound.

"……"

Silence settled over the room.

Elisha kept her head bowed, eyes still shut. She had been the one who'd shouted, and yet somehow tears threatened to spill.

The shame of being exposed, the mortification, the crushing sense of defeat. It felt as though the life she had lived had become a joke to be laughed at, and she could not for the world have lifted her head.

When she finally forced her trembling eyes open, Sohee sat frozen in place before her, unmoving. But that was only Elisha's perception.

She's supposed to be a villainess… and all she can say is 'pathetic little nobody'?

Sohee stared at Elisha, who was barely standing on shaking legs.

Back in the real world, Sohee had been called beggar, orphan, bug-eater — words far uglier than she could bring herself to repeat. Honestly, 'pathetic little nobody' was practically an endearment by comparison.

She really is the fragile, easily-shaken type underneath all that villainess act.

How was someone like this supposed to steal another person's body and live forever? Not a chance.

Before she realized it, Sohee gave a small shake of her head.

"…What are you thinking about right now?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

When Sohee blinked and asked her to repeat herself, Elisha's face crumpled violently.

"You just thought I was pathetic, didn't you?"

"I don't know what you mean—"

"Don't pretend you don't know!"

You so clearly shook your head like you pitied me, and now you're playing dumb?

"I'm perfectly fine. You've done nothing wrong, Lady Elisha."

"We are only grateful that Lady Elisha has graced us by standing in for her."

"Everyone, Saintess Elisha has her limits too. Please, let's stop this business of sorting the real from the fake."

The face of the true saintess — the one who had hollowed Elisha out from the inside while playing the gentle, tender, merciful saint — flashed unbidden before her eyes. Elisha's expression hardened into ice.

"I've been called pathetic so often that I suppose it doesn't touch me anymore."

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

"But at least have some competence to make up for it. And apparently you don't have that either? You can't even staff this place properly — two employees, and both of them from the Village, without so much as a real name to their credit, if the rumors are true."

"……"

"The hotel up the road has more than five greeters at the entrance alone. And they're all former novel extras — a completely different class from the Village folk working here, wouldn't you say?"

For the first time, Sohee's gaze dropped quietly. Elisha looked down at her with obvious relish, certain she had won.

"I'd say it's only a matter of time before this motel goes under."

When Sohee's expression visibly darkened without a word of protest, Elisha felt a small, cleansing thrill of satisfaction.

Pathetic little thing.

She had done the same herself. Like Sohee now, she would bow her head, make excuses to leave, busy herself with some other action — anything to swallow down the shame while pretending not to hear. And this exchange had gone beyond a contest of nerve into outright insult.

…Maybe I went too far.

As the uneasy silence stretched on, Elisha began to steal nervous glances at Sohee. In truth, this was the first time in her life she had ever spat such venom out loud.

Just as she was starting to fret that she'd misjudged the line, Sohee raised her head. Elisha flinched and looked away — but Sohee, far from glaring, broke into a smile.

"The hotel's lovely, isn't it?"

"……?"

"After all, if we're to match your station, Lady Elisha, that much at least we owe you."

Sohee rose from her seat and tucked the file folder under her arm.

"As you can see, our humble little motel is far too shabby for someone of your standing. You'd be much better off at that upscale hotel."

"…What?"

Insults aimed at herself, she could forgive — within limits. This was a service industry, after all, and she was the one who needed to win guests over and send them through their Hoe-Bing-Hwan. She was entirely on the back foot here.

But when it came to her precious employees, she had no intention of letting it slide. With a bright, sunny smile, Sohee reached out and gently pressed Elisha's berserk button.

"By the way — does that hotel of yours take run-of-the-mill supporting characters too? Like, say, a fake saintess?"

At the front desk not far away, Moon Jar swallowed a deep, weary sigh. The frantic screams from inside the counseling room and the sound of furniture being smashed to pieces carried all too clearly through the walls.

So Sohee. Not an inch of ground will I ever concede to you.

She always gave her absolute all in preparing every Hoe-Bing-Hwan. No guest was ever treated carelessly; every story was heard out with a patient ear.

Though only from those who respected the line.

Strength for the strong, gentleness for the weak.

That was the lesson roughly three months of watching Sohee had taught him.

The chair and table lay overturned. Claw marks on the back of Elisha's neck had broken open and oozed blood, her hair hung in a wild tangle, and the lace of her beautiful dress had torn in a dozen places.

And in the middle of the wreckage, only Sohee sat unharmed in her chair — calmly watching Elisha huddled on the floor, weeping.

Sohee had let the mad fit run its course without interference. Her empty eyes betrayed no emotion at all, but deep in her chest, old resentment and fury still lay buried, corroding away.

Elisha wept on, her face as hollow as burnt-out ash.

Sohee clicked her tongue inwardly. Through the faintly torn sleeve, scars of every shade — dark and pale — showed scattered across the skin. Far, far too many.

And it wouldn't stop at her arms. Every inch of flesh hidden beneath that dress was surely carved up the same way. Sohee let out a low sigh.

So this is how long she's been rotting away inside.

Wearing the flawless mask of a saintess while anxiety devoured her from within. The terror of becoming useless. Elisha Brown had clawed her way through it all, desperate not to be abandoned by the people she loved.

But a villainess's story always ends the same way — in betrayal and death. It had to, so that the saintess, the true heroine, could shine all the brighter.

What's so precious about being loved, anyway? Why chain yourself to something as formless as that?

Helpless frustration drew another sigh out of Sohee.

Was it really right to beg for affection from people who despised you?

Even if she somehow succeeded, love tilted from the very start never balanced evenly. One side would spend a lifetime craving more — and yet she simply could not let it go?

This isn't something I can understand. There's no reasoning with it.

Sohee hardened her gaze.

"Get up."

Elisha lifted her tear-soaked eyes and looked at her. Those dark pupils held nothing at all — only tears she hadn't meant to shed sliding silently down her cheeks.

"I can't give you what you want. So please, leave now."

Every soul that came to the motel for their Hoe-Bing-Hwan was precious to Sohee, and filling the Bottle Gourd with water was her only road home. But she could not help with Elisha's possession — not when it meant trampling her own standards for what a Hoe-Bing-Hwan should be.

"I…"

A voice completely worn out finally scraped its way out of Elisha. With her emotions spent, she couldn't bear to lift her head now that she'd come back to herself. The humiliation of having her lowest depths laid bare made even her apologies tremble.

"I-I'm not… usually like this…"

At those words, Sohee smiled bitterly.

"Ah, I see. So you're not normally like this — you just decided to completely lose it now that you're dead?"

Elisha felt the ground give way beneath her, her mind going white.

Sohee was right. In life, despised by an entire nation and beheaded, she had never once been allowed a proper outburst — not even at the very end.

The thing she couldn't bear most had been the contempt in Cedric's eyes. Her heart had been genuine, but branded a power-hungry fraud, none of her protests had counted for anything.

Maybe, just as Sohee said, her reins had simply snapped. All those years of smiling demurely while her insides threatened to burst — and one sentence from Sohee had been enough to send her flying apart, unmoored from her own control.

"You — you called me a fake saintess, and I was so angry, I—"

"Yes, I understand. But I have to say, the things you brought up didn't sound very gentle to me."

Sohee's voice was soft, but her eyes had frozen over, cold and clear.

Elisha bit down on her lip. Only minutes had passed since she'd sneered at Sohee's staff, comparing them to the hotel down the road. She scrambled to fill the silence.

"What would you know? Do you have any idea how much I suffered? Do you know how that word — fake saintess — has strangled me my whole life? It's nothing like your comfortable little life here!"

"……"

"I don't care how much they wrote about me on that scraps of paper. You've never lived it, so you don't get to talk!"

Sohee said nothing for a long moment. Then, without a trace of hesitation, she opened the file and crumpled the papers in her fist.

The pages holding the whole of Elisha's condensed life were being mercilessly crushed.