SWNOVELXO Chapter 9: The Day That Shouldn't Exist
Chapter 9: The Day That Shouldn't Exist
Ji-hye stood still, her bare feet brushing the dew-laced ground beneath her. A thick fog clung to the landscape like breath against cold glass. The sky above her was bruised purple, neither dawn nor dusk, as if time itself had stalled. Around her stretched the old palace courtyard—the one she had seen in Seorin's sketches and Eun-woo's fragmented dreams—but now it pulsed with a strange, almost sentient life. Ivy crept up marble columns. Lanterns flickered with blue flames.
She blinked. Her body was no longer hers.
When she looked down, she saw herself in a traditional hanbok—one of Seorin's. Crimson and cream. Her reflection shimmered in a nearby water basin. The face that stared back wasn't Ji-hye's. It was Seorin's. The princess. The girl who died.
A sudden pang thundered in Ji-hye's chest. She stumbled back.
"Where…?" she whispered. "What is this?"
A voice floated behind her—soft, childlike, and achingly familiar.
"You weren't supposed to see this," it said.
She turned. A child stood there, no older than ten, with snow-white robes and eyes too knowing for their age. The child's voice echoed like a hundred layered whispers.
"Who are you?" Ji-hye asked.
"You're not ready to remember," the child replied, and their form blurred like static on an old television screen.
Suddenly, Ji-hye was inside the palace.
It was raining.
The echo of her footsteps on polished stone sounded distant, like she was walking through someone else's memory. Servants hurried past her, none of them seeing her. She turned a corner and found herself outside the throne room.
There—Eun-woo.
Not the version she knew.
This Eun-woo was younger. Pale. Frantic. His hands were drenched in blood.
He stared down at Seorin—her—bleeding out on the floor.
"No!" he cried out. "I didn't mean to! I—I had no choice!"
His blade clattered from his grip. Tears streamed down his face.
Ji-hye felt her knees buckle as the weight of this moment pulled her into its center. She crawled toward the scene, screaming at him.
"You didn't have to do this! You didn't!"
But he couldn't hear her.
Because this had already happened.
She reached out—her hand passed through him like smoke.
Suddenly, Eun-woo's face turned. Not toward Seorin. Not toward the memory. But toward her.
"I see you," he said.
Ji-hye jolted.
His eyes met hers. As if through the layers of time, he recognized her. Not Seorin. Her.
The vision cracked like glass, shattering with a high-pitched ring. Ji-hye clutched her ears, falling into blackness.
---
She woke up gasping.
She wasn't in the courtyard anymore. Not in the palace. Not even in the memory.
She was in her own room again. Alone.
Her heart pounded against her ribs like a prisoner trying to break free.
But something was wrong.
She could still feel the hanbok clinging to her skin. The scent of rain still hung in the air.
And her palms?
They were wet.
With blood.
She sat up. Trembling.
"No. No, no, no."
The bathroom mirror confirmed it. Her reflection flickered between her face and Seorin's. Her eyes—one moment hers, the next dark and distant like the princess from centuries ago.
She ran to her desk, fumbling for the journal Eun-woo had given her. When she opened it, the words rearranged themselves on the page.
> "If you are reading this, then I failed to protect you. Again."
> "You weren't supposed to die. I was."
> "But history keeps correcting itself. And this time, it chose you."
Ji-hye dropped the book.
A gust of wind burst through the closed window, sending pages flying.
The lights in the room blinked once. Twice. Then darkness.
A faint knock echoed from her door.
She froze.
Then another knock.
And another. Rhythmically. Four slow knocks.
She reached for the doorknob with trembling fingers.
It creaked open.
Nobody was there.
But a voice drifted in.
"Ji-hye…"
Her breath caught.
"Ji-hye… come back. You're not supposed to be here… yet."
She turned to look behind her.
And saw the child in white again. Inside her room.
Only now, the child's face wasn't human. It shimmered with hundreds of overlapping expressions—Seorin, Eun-woo, the Empress, her own mother, her own reflection.
"We're all trapped in the same story," the child whispered.
The walls of her room bent inward like a funhouse.
Ji-hye screamed.
Darkness closed in.
---
She woke up again.
But this time, she wasn't sure if she had ever really woken up at all.
Was she Ji-hye dreaming she was Seorin?
Or Seorin, trapped in Ji-hye's memories?
The clock on her nightstand blinked "00:00."
And in the silence, her phone lit up on its own.
New message from: Unknown
> "THE DAY YOU DIED IS TOMORROW."
The text disappeared before her eyes.
Then another followed.
> "Meet me at the garden. Midnight. Or this cycle begins again."
Ji-hye's hands trembled as she set the phone down.
She could no longer pretend this was a dream. Or a curse. It was a loop. A punishment. A secret that fed on silence.
She began flipping through the journal. The pages had changed. Diagrams she hadn't drawn appeared: a map of the palace grounds, symbols that looked like ancient seals, and at the center, a drawing of a blade—the one that killed Seorin.
In the margins, her own handwriting—though she didn't remember writing it:
> "I must break the loop. Even if I die doing it."
> "He remembers. That's why he's afraid."
She clutched the book to her chest, sobbing silently. Her body no longer felt entirely her own. Her skin carried echoes. Her voice trembled with someone else's grief.
Was she Ji-hye?
Was she Seorin reborn?
Or was she something caught in between?
She turned toward the window.
Outside, the moon hung low and blood red.
It would be midnight soon.
The garden waited.
And this time, she would go alone.