I’m a Villainess, Can I Die?

That day was the day my little sister had returned from the hospital.
I was just a ten-year-old child, still drenched in hope, who had come home early from school. As my mother sat at the dining table drinking water, I carefully pulled out my perfect-score test paper and showed it to her.

My hands trembled, a mixture of fear, hope, shyness, and excitement.
“What’s this…? A test paper? A perfect score?”
She absentmindedly took the paper from me and slowly scanned it. Then, without hesitation, she tore it apart.

A single sharp rip, splitting it in two. Then another, and another—until it was nothing but shreds, unrecognizable. I held my breath as the pieces fell. My mother brushed her hands off, as if she had touched something dirty.
Her eyes glowed with something dark as she looked down at me.
“Your sister just got back from the hospital… and you have the nerve to bring home a perfect score?”

I didn’t understand the connection between my test score and my sister’s hospital visit, but all I could do was apologize.
The small hope I had—the tiny expectation of praise—was torn apart, just like that test paper.
With a rough push, my mother shoved me aside and went into my sister’s room.

I stood frozen, watching her back, pressing my fingertips against my eyes to stop the tears from falling. Then, I crouched down and gathered the scattered pieces of my test. Those little circles of perfect scores… I crushed them in my hands, then stuffed them into the trash.
Even then, I had to force my lips into a smile.
“Come here!”

“Yes!”
At my mother’s call, I ran into the bedroom. Eunji was lying down, fast asleep. My mother was gently patting her tiny stomach as she turned her gaze to me for only a moment before fixing it back on Eunji.
Ah, I knew that warmth in her eyes.

Just a year and a half ago, those eyes had looked at me the same way.
I bit the inside of my cheek.
“I’m going to take a call. Stay here and watch Eunji.”

“Yes.”
My mother took her phone and carefully stepped out of the room. The door remained open, letting her voice seep in.
“I don’t know… I’m so exhausted because of Eunji. We just got back from the hospital, and she might need surgery again. I’m going crazy… What are we supposed to do?”
The conversation stretched on, filled with endless worries about Eunji. Not a single word about me.

As if I didn’t exist. As if I weren’t even her child.
Would she say my name, even just once?
I clenched my lips together and patted Eunji’s tiny body, just like my mother had done.

Eunji stirred slightly. The blanket slipped down, revealing her small, pale neck. She looked even paler than usual—just like my mother had said, maybe she really was sick.
For a child, love and attention are like an addiction.
No matter how much you receive, you always want more.

And for me—who had once tasted that sweetness more than anyone else—it was something I couldn’t give up.
If I were to wrap my hands around this pale little neck… If I did that… would I be loved again?
If she disappeared, would I be able to go back to the past—the past where I was the one being loved?

I was exhausted.
I was only ten years old, and yet the past still burned vividly in my mind, while reality was unbearably cold.
I couldn’t give up hope, but deep down, I knew I might have already let go of that faint light.

I wanted to take it back.
I wanted to turn things around.
I didn’t want to be Cinderella scrubbing the floors in the kitchen.

I wanted to be the princess at the ball.
Slowly, I reached out my hand.
Just as my fingertips brushed against her body—

My mother burst into the room and threw me away.
My body slammed against the wall with a dull thud.
“What… What were you trying to do just now?”

She didn’t even wait for an answer. She grabbed Eunji and rushed out of the house, leaving me behind.
I couldn’t even make a sound. The pain of my back hitting the wall left me curled up on the floor, trembling.
Our eyes met—my mother’s wild, furious gaze and my own tear-filled ones.

And at that moment… I realized something.
There were no more sweets for me.
Everything had crumbled to dust—so fine that I couldn’t tell whether it was sand, sugar, or shards of glass.

Whatever it was, I could never taste it again.
I could never even touch it.
And so, I erased the smile from my lips.

Because no matter how much I smiled until my cheeks ached, my parents would never come back to me.
That day—the day I was beaten to the brink of death.
The day they didn’t take me to the hospital, but locked me away in the cold storage room as punishment.

I was ten years old.
The day I gave up on the hope I didn’t want to let go.
From that day on—through my teenage years, where pain erased my memories, and into adulthood, where love and affection became nothing more than foreign concepts—

It didn’t take long for me to forget what they felt like.
When I was lost in the remnants of the past, drowning in old memories, a voice woke me.
Eunji’s voice.

Slowly, I opened my eyes.
I was back in that same dark space.
“So… you really were trying to kill me, huh?”

The teasing voice made me open my eyes fully.
This translation is the intellectual property of .
Eunji’s ghostly figure rose like a mirage in front of me, her fingers grazing my throat.

Just like I had done that day.
Was I trying to kill her?
I slowly shook my head.

“No.”
I wasn’t trying to kill her.
I couldn’t.

I couldn’t hurt my sister.
Being hit, being strangled—it must hurt.
And pain is bad.

She was my sister.
The adults might not have known, but I did.
Even as a child, I knew.

You don’t hurt those weaker than you.
“I was just… straightening your clothes.”
Eunji’s phantom smiled at my answer and wrapped her arms around me. There was no warmth in the peach-colored cheeks pressed against mine. I held onto that cold yet affectionate illusion and rested my head on her shoulder.

The fact that I was the one being embraced felt strange.
The Eunji I knew had never been able to hold me. A frail child who had spent her life in a hospital bed could be held by someone, but she had never had the strength to embrace someone else.
Eunji, whose face I couldn’t see, ran her fingers through my hair, gently brushing it back. The feeling of her hand smoothing over my head made me blink.

It reminded me of that day when I was seven—when I had first been embraced by my new parents, when I had secretly shed tears at the warmth of their touch.
Of course, now, no tears came.
"Unni, I was the one who brought you to Selina’s world."

“…What?”
Even after saying something so unbelievable, Eunji didn’t show me her face. She simply kept stroking the back of my head.
I thought about pulling away, but she was unexpectedly strong. In the end, I gave up and let myself stay in her arms, listening to her words.

Eunji’s voice was eerily calm.
"There are a lot of things in this world that can’t be explained. Fate and life are the same. A person is sometimes given multiple lives, looping through time in ways they don’t understand. But if someone doesn’t get to live out the full length of their given time, then, very rarely, that remaining time transfers to another life they are meant to have.
"And in this case, you killed yourself, so the time you left behind flowed into Selina’s body."

"So… you’re saying Selina is just another one of my lives?"
"As expected, my sister is smart."
"Then what do you mean by saying you called me here?"

Eunji’s hand suddenly stopped.
She didn’t speak for a while.
When I tried to pull away this time, she let go without resistance.

She was smiling.
Tears had gathered at the corners of her eyes, slipping down her cheeks, but her expression was so bright that the tears barely seemed noticeable.
"They say that when you die, you see your life play out like a panorama. Just like what you saw earlier. I went through the same thing. Ah, except for one difference—I saw everything, from the very moment I was born. Every memory I didn’t even know I had."

Eunji took a deep breath before continuing.
"Unni, when I was alive, it was so hard. The endless injections, the medications… The treatments were too painful. I was too exhausted. But at the same time, I was so scared of dying that I couldn’t sleep. I was so jealous of the kids playing outside.
"I was stuck in that six-person hospital room, watching them all leave, one by one, while I had no idea how long I’d be trapped there.

"That was all I could think about."
Her soft-spoken words filled the air.
"I could only see my own suffering.

"I was so miserable that other people’s misfortunes didn’t even seem like misfortunes to me.
"So, I started ranking them.
"I was an A-grade tragedy.

"That person was B-grade.
"That person was C-grade.
"Oh, that person was one of the lucky ones.

"Isn’t that ridiculous?"
"No."
I shook my head.

Though, in truth, it was ridiculous.
But…
I had done the same thing.

Back when I was still clinging to my emotions, before I had given up completely, I had spent my teenage years resenting Eunji. I had been jealous.
I had even thought to myself—what if I were the one who was sick instead?
How could I possibly judge her for something I had done too?

"You know, Unni, you kept growing taller as the years passed, but I stayed small and fragile. I used to get jealous and lash out at you because of it. I was so stupid. I’m sorry."
"I don’t even remember."
And I truly didn’t.

I couldn’t recall what she had said to me back then.
All I remembered was her thin frame hunched over the mirror, sobbing by herself.
"I was always hungry, but I never had an appetite. I wanted to eat something delicious, but I was stuck with forced vegetarian meals.

"I used to complain about it to you, too.
"I’m sorry."
"It’s fine."

Eunji let out a bitter laugh and lowered her gaze.
I followed her eyes down to where her fingers twitched nervously.
"I didn’t know…" she murmured.

"I didn’t know you were living like that.
"I knew Mom and Dad scolded you a lot, and that you weren’t close to them… but I didn’t know it was that bad.
"I didn’t know that while I was dying in that hospital room, you were dying in the outside world."

"I know you didn’t."
Of course, she wouldn’t have known.
Eunji had spent her life in the hospital, where our parents couldn’t treat me as cruelly as they did at home.

She was a long-term patient, after all. If rumors spread about her family problems, it would have made things difficult.
Sure, their cold indifference and hidden resentment must have leaked through, but to Eunji, that was probably the worst of it.
She had been a sick child who wanted all of our parents’ attention.

I understood that.
And that was why, no matter how much I resented her for stealing my life, I could never truly hate her.
"I always envied how healthy you were, Unni.

"I resented you. I was so jealous.
"But at the same time, I depended on you…
"And I liked you.

"You were amazing.
"You could do anything.
"And then… I died, and I finally understood.

"I finally realized that everything I resented you for… was all because of me.
"I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Unni.
"I’m really, really sorry."

Tears streamed down Eunji’s face.
The moment they left her chin, they evaporated into mist, disappearing before I could even reach out to wipe them away.
Why are you the one crying?

Why are you the one apologizing?
The truth is…
It wasn’t even your fault.

"So after I died… I made a wish.
"I wished for you to have one more chance.
"A chance to be happy.

"A chance to live your own life.
"Hah. None of my prayers were ever answered when I was alive, but this one?
"This one came true right away."

"…So that’s why I came to this world."
"That’s right.
"This life… is my gift to you.

"I never got to give you anything while I was alive.
"But at least I could give you this."
Eunji forced herself to stop crying and tried to smile.

She wanted it to look playful.
But it only looked painful.
As I gently peeled the strands of hair sticking to her tear-streaked face, a thought crossed my mind.

Something didn’t add up.
"But, Eunji…"
I hesitated.

"If we’re the same soul…
"Then how are we able to meet?"