The Secret Sonata || Ryeji

Final Chapter: Life Goes On

3 Months After The Catastrophe (Past)

A cat-eyed girl hunched her shoulders, fed up with her surroundings, she roped her arms around her legs, eyes glued to the marble-tiled floor below her bed. Her hair a tuft of untamed, dark brown strands, cascading over her shoulders and covering her flushed face simultaneously. Before her settled a doctor, leaning forward on the chair as he appraised her through his spectacles, a flipchart present on his lap. Side by side, he was flanked by two nurses of opposite genders; they were cleaning the mess that the mentally impaired girl had made.

"Miss Ye—" The doctor began.

"I'm not Yeji. I'm not Yeji. I'm not Yeji," murmured the brunette as she rocked herself back and forth, the bed creaking along each rock. "I'm Lucy!" A solemn tear trailed down her perfectly-sculpted nose, slipping by a tiny mole as it did so. Next, she sprang up from the bed and frantically paced around the room, giggling all to herself. Then, she stopped dead in her tracks and began to rummage her hair in a frenzy manner, mumbling gibberish. Like a shot, she snapped her head toward the doctor's direction with a look of skepticism etched unto her face, followed next by a glare, and she abruptly dashed out of her room.

"Miss Yeji!" Exclaimed the doctor and two nurses as they chased after her.

Yeji bumped into everyone and shoved them to the side while she ran, only stopping when she got pulled into a firm embrace, a familiar scent of boyish cologne permeated her nostrils. She tittered jubilantly upon recognizing whose arms she was huddled in.

"Ryujin unnie?" She flashed a gummy smile.

"I'm not an unnie," the pink-haired girl whined, faking a cry as she scrunched her nose.

"Aww, don't cry," the brunette cooed, cupping the pink-haired individual's cheeks, "If you wanna be younger than me, then I'll treat you like one." Yeji cocked her head to the side whilst Ryujin pouted, still nestled in the latter's bosom yet taller than her. "Besides, you do look younger than me because you're shorter! Ha-ha! How can a twenty year old be shorter than a five year old? Ha-ha!" The deranged girl began giggling nonstop and swaying their bodies together, simultaneously as ITZY's keyboardist watched her in a mixture of pity and adoration. Just then, the doctor and two nurses caught up with them, panting as they approached the duo.

"Miss Yej- I mean Lucy," the doctor stumbled over his words, quickly correcting himself as he remembered that Yeji always threw a tantrum whenever people called her by her real name and not by her beloved death sister's name.

After Yeji'd woken up from her coma, she'd been suffering from trauma and other medical complications that had a negative impact on her mental health. Furthermore, she wouldn't accept the fact that she wasn't Lucy, no matter the endless confrontations she'd received from her family and friends, resulting for others to give up and address her the way she wanted to be. Occasionally, she'd spend the whole day, mumbling just one sentence, reiterating over and over again until she exhausted herself: "Lucy, don't go." On top of that, she couldn't remember anything that happened after Lucy's death nor did she remember her own self, and she thought she was still five years old. Doctors hypothesized that her mental illness attributed to her grief for the loss of her sister and her reluctance to accept the latter's demise, even after fifteen years had past since it happened.

To make matters worse, she'd often be seen talking to empty air, as though having an interesting conversation with an invisible person, and at times, she'd run away, shrieking with fright like she was being chased by monsters even though no one could actually see what she was running away from. Whereas doctors assumed that Yeji was having hallucinations due to her mental disorder, Winter apprised that the brunette'd developed a third eye that enabled her to see otherworldly beings as a consequence of being revived from death. Conclusions aside, Yeji was absolutely a nutcase to the general hospital she first woke up at, so she'd been transferred to a mental hospital, of which the previous doctors reckoned to be more capable of handling her. But she was still one of the patients who was difficult to be dealt with, even at the mental hospital, per se.