TN: Thank Nepper for the chapter.

This man is a fool.

The moment Helena heard Felix’s voice, that was the first thing she couldn’t help but think.

At the very beginning, when Helena realized that the one inside Felix’s body was someone else, she felt betrayal—betrayal toward him for deceiving her for a long time while pretending to be Felix.

It turned into anger, flaring up passionately and consuming Helena.

Of course, Helena herself knew.

He might have tried to deceive her, but it wasn’t with any bad intentions. In fact, he hadn’t touched any women since possessing Felix’s body. Even though he could have easily done so if he had wanted to.

Even apart from that, Helena, who had been close to him, could tell that this person called Lee Shin-woo wasn’t a bad person.

He was surprisingly similar to Felix.

She also knew that it wasn’t his fault that he had possessed his body.

But knowing and understanding were clearly different matters.

Overnight, she had lost the person she had loved all along. It wasn’t something that Helena, who had been living an ordinary life, could easily accept.

That’s why she avoided him. Helena thought that if she met him, something inside her would crumble. She felt that something she had carefully built up until now would shatter to pieces.

But he. He was even more similar to Felix than Helena had thought.

“I won’t move a single step!!”

“…”

“I’ll wait here like this!!”

Hearing his voice from in front of the door, disregarding others’ gazes, Helena, who was inside the room, let out a small sigh.

“…Did he really change?”

At this point, she’d believe it if they said the two were the same person. Helena suddenly thought like that. Maybe she wasn’t weak to Felix but to people with similar personalities.

“I really don’t like this.”

Even as she said that, her body was moving toward the door. With a face reddened from embarrassment, Helena opened the door and found the familiar red hair kneeling with his head bowed in front of the door.

“…Come in.”

Her anger wasn’t gone.

At the same time, she didn’t want to forgive him either.

But.

But…

‘It might be okay to at least listen to what he says.’

That much might be alright.

***

‘Huff…’

I let out a deep breath in my heart.

It was a reckless decision. Going to the girls’ dormitory clearly violated school rules, and Helena might not come out.

If that happened, I would naturally be unable to meet Helena, be kicked out of the dormitory, and just receive meaningless disciplinary action.

But I thought I had to show it.

Until now, I have only sent letters requesting to talk, but from now on, I have had to show my sincere desire to apologize.

Fortunately, Helena opened the door before the dormitory supervisor or the disciplinary committee arrived.

As I entered Helena’s room, I took another deep breath.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

My heart was beating violently.

Of course, it wasn’t the excitement of entering a girl’s room or any such emotion. I was clearly just nervous.

From now on, I had to pour out my sincerity, my everything.

“So? What did you want to say?”

Helena still looked at me with cold eyes and spoke coldly. I had expected it, but actually seeing her expression and hearing her tone made my chest ache for some reason.

“First of all, I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to deceive you until now, but I still deceived you. I’m really sorry.”

I speak calmly in a composed tone.

Because I didn’t have the confidence to look into Helena’s eyes at that moment, I continued speaking quietly with my gaze fixed on the floor.

Helena just looked at me silently without saying anything. It seemed she was willing to listen to what I had to say for now.

“At first, I was shocked too. I was a person from a completely different world, and I suddenly possessed Felix’s body without knowing the reason.”

“…”

“There wasn’t any grand mission or anything. After all, no extremely dangerous things are happening in this world, right?”

I could feel the end of my voice trembling. I tried hard to steady my voice, but it wasn’t something I could control at will.

“To be honest, I was a bit scared. In this world, I wasn’t Felix, and I wasn’t Lee Shin-woo either. My existence was like an impurity that had intruded into this world.”

“…”

“I was an impurity in your and Felix’s relationship too. Something that should never have interfered had.”

“…”

“In a corner of my mind, I thought maybe someday I would return to my original world, and Felix would regain his body. So, I couldn’t say anything.”

I tried not to show it or think about it, but I was afraid. What exactly was my existence in this world? I still haven’t found the answer to that question.

Some might call me Felix. Others might say I’m not Felix. But in their words, there was no Lee Shin-woo. Who am I, and what should I do?

“So even though I knew you liked Felix, even though I knew you were showing favor to him and not me, I couldn’t easily push away those feelings.”

The only one.

In this world, the only one who had positively affirmed my existence was Helena. She had done it thinking I was Felix, but even that made me happy.

“So I couldn’t tell you. Because I knew how you would react when you discovered the truth.”

Helena would think that I had stolen Felix. In fact, that wasn’t wrong. Even if it wasn’t my will, the original Felix had disappeared, and the existence of Lee Shin-woo had inhabited his body.

“Am I Felix, or am I Lee Shin-woo? Or am I both… I still haven’t found the answer. And, I only recently realized it myself.”

My fingertips start to tremble slightly. To hide my trembling hands, I grasp them with my other hand, take a deep breath, and continue speaking.

“My memories are gradually disappearing. Felix’s memories are returning more and more, and Lee Shin-woo’s memories are disappearing.”

My name. My age. My background. All my memories.

Slowly, quietly, without anyone knowing, they were being forgotten. What simply remained was just the fragmentary memory that I wasn’t Felix.

But if I keep living like this, will I forget even that memory someday?

Before I knew it, I naturally called Felix’s brother and father my brother and father. While thinking I wasn’t Felix, I was smiling as I recalled memories with them.

I could easily notice Helena’s small habits and remembered and smiled at the trivial memories she mentioned about her.

The fear kept growing.

“It felt like someone was trying to completely erase my existence. So… so I couldn’t say anything even more.”

“…”

“…Truly, sincerely, I’m sorry.”

To exaggerate a bit, it felt like the world was trying to erase me as an impurity.

It felt like it was trying to remove the impurities and put things back where they originally were. It felt like it was trying to completely erase the impurity, ‘Lee Shin-woo,’ and put me back as ‘Felix’ who should have been there originally.

“I stole Felix from you, deceived you, and now I’m making a meaningless apology.”

But I was Lee Shin-woo.

I shouldn’t deny who I was. It would have been easier if I said I wasn’t Lee Shin-woo and was Felix, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that.

If I had even forgotten Lee Shin-woo, then in the end, his existence would have been erased from the world.

“But I thought I had to do it. I did something I shouldn’t have done to you and Felix’s family. About that part, I have nothing to say even a hundred times. I’m sorry.”

Some might say this.

Why should I apologize for something I didn’t do, for something that didn’t happen by my will? Even if it wasn’t something I did and didn’t happen by my will, I was still the person who had taken his place.

So I bowed my head deeply to Helena and offered a sincere apology.

Silence fell in Helena’s room after my short but long confession ended. I couldn’t bring myself to raise my head and just remained frozen in the apologizing posture.

I couldn’t see Helena’s face or expression.

“…Then what happened to Felix?”

“I… don’t really know about that either.”

I answered Helena’s question in a trembling voice after a long silence.

What had happened to the original Felix? That was also an unsolved mystery to me.

“Ha… really…”

With Helena’s deep sigh, I couldn’t help but flinch.

Imagining her sharp words that would follow, I could only swallow dry saliva.

“If it’s like this, who am I supposed to hate?”

But Helena’s words I heard were the opposite of what I had thought.