Song Recommendation:

Zion T - Yanghwa Bridge (I recommend the version sang in Produce 101 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOC72-AgV7M)

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Yongsun opens to answer. The word that escapes her lips is fast and quiet, but filled with just as much pure energy as the intensity of her eyes.

“Yes.”

It's interesting how with just one word alone, Byulyi's entire world can turn itself upside down.

Yes.

Yes.

She's the host personality. I was right.

It makes a curious numbing feeling spread through her veins, freezing the pinky she has locked securely around Yongsun's own. The older woman doesn't break eye contact with her, and as usual Byulyi can never tell what she's thinking. The silence between them stretches - ten seconds, twenty, thirty-

“Are you lying?” Byulyi asks finally, her voice the barest rasp.

“I have never been more serious in my whole, thrice-blasted life, Moon Byulyi,” Yongsun says, her voice brittle. Her yellow eyes flicker downwards, to their intertwined pinkies, and she squeezes. “I promised. Not to lie.”

“How do I know you're not lying?” Byulyi demands. “You're like the boy who cried wolf. You've lied to me so many times that honestly it's getting hard to trust anything you say.”

“I pinky promised you, Psych. I take my oaths seriously. I-” Yongsun swallows, with difficulty. Her voice is a little shaky. “I don't break pinky promises.”

It's either Yongsun is a great actress, or she's being genuine, and Byulyi is beginning to doubt the former. She can see the unstable look in Yongsun's eyes, as though her ego were crumbling with every word she enunciates, and the overall tension in her body, so uncharacteristically not Yongsun that Byulyi is really, really thinking that Yongsun isn't lying. No, not when she looks like she's about to-

Cry?

Byulyi thinks that she's hallucinating. Yongsun's eyes look glassier, the sheen reflecting the light from the window. But Byulyi knows that look anywhere. It's the look she herself had every time she looked in the mirror, so long ago.

“Gods, Yongsun,” Byulyi says, “Don't cry.”

“I'm not going to cry,” Yongsun says, and she sounds more like she's trying to convince herself than anyone else.

Gods, she's really telling me the truth, isn't she? But…why didn't she say anything before?

“Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you say anything? But - that means that you know that you have DID?” Byulyi blurts.

Yongsun seems to have expected her to ask those questions. She raises a hand for silence, then speaks, quietly. “I'll answer your last question first. I always suspected that I had something wrong with me, ever since-” She swallows again, “The bullying. Yeah. I'd have spaces in time where I can't remember anything that happens. Spaces of lost memory. My first symptom.”

“Amnesia,” Byulyi says, meekly.

“Amnesia,” Yongsun confirms. “I'd done some research on psychotic disorders ever since I suspected something. Dissociative identity disorder rang with all the symptoms I'd been showing. I've never been formally diagnosed, but I know. It has to be.”

“So Solar is, is actually - just a personality?”

“Yeah,” Yongsun looks away. “Yeah.”

It's almost funny how one word can make Byulyi's heart shatter. Everything she knows to be true and tangible and real just isn't, just isn't anymore. This is to be expected - if Yongsun is the host then obviously Solar is just one of her alter personalities. But, Gods, this is hard to take in.

“But how can an alter personality be so dominant over your body for so long? How - how - how did you know about the existence of Solar?”

“I don't know. It's like - sometimes I just don't know what's happening. Or what I'm saying. I honestly don't know exactly when I started to know about Solar.” Yongsun fidgets with her free hand.

“Okay, okay,” Byulyi takes a deep breath. Her head is spinning. “Start from the beginning, please.”

“The beginning?”

“When this all started.” Byulyi gesticulates.

“Okay. Um. I don't know. You know I got bullied, and I think the trauma triggered something. I must have created some sort of other state, some other personality, to deal with it. Another kind of me who didn't have the name Yongsun, which I hated to core, another kind of me who was kinder and sweeter and anything that was the opposite of depressed. So Solar came about. I'd always thought of changing my name to something brighter, and I thought of Solar, because of the sun in my name. But I never did change my name to Solar.  

“At first it wasn't so bad. I didn't even know about this whole...this whole DID thing. My life just continued, getting bullied, going to school, stuff. Then I started having blank spaces in my memory, as though I were supposed to remember something but whenever I reach into the space, I was just grasping at air. There was nothing. And people started treating me better. My - my mom-” Yongsun stops, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.

“Hey,” Byulyi says, surprising concern lacing her voice. She can see the hidden distress in Yongsun's tense posture. “You don't have to tell me now if you don't want to.”

“Shut up, Psych. Let me talk. I need to get this off my chest.”

“Uh, that works too.”

“Yeah, my mom, was always giving me those pitiful, disgusted looks whenever she saw me. I was depressed and stuff, so I'd always be in my room, refusing to come out for anything. I lost a lot of weight. The boys used to tease me about being chubby, so I thought the loss was in order. Of course, I wasn't at all healthier or happier. Then one day my mom just comes in and I was preparing to yell at her, but then she hugged me and said she was happy about me feeling better. I was confused. But she was smiling and hugging me and I - I just didn't know. I didn't do anything different.

“It was then I started to do some research. I suspected something was really, really wrong. It took me weeks, searching through websites and books and anything I could get my hands on. Then I discovered this debatable disorder called multiple personality disorder, now known as DID. According to everywhere, it was believed by skeptics to be a sort of myth disorder, but it seemed so much like what I had. My occasional amnesia, depression, the triggers, everything. It all fit perfectly.”

“I can't believe you kind of self diagnosed yourself when you were like, what, sixteen? That's some skill.”

“Did I ever mention that I was a colossal nerd?” Yongsun's mouth quirks up in one of her trademark lopsided smirks, chin dimples showing prominently.

“You should've taken psychology.”

“Nah, it's not my thing. But anyway, back to the storytelling. We're not even near half done yet,” Yongsun wags a finger. “Stop distracting me.”

“Sorry.”

“As you should be. But yes. I realised that I had DID, or something similar. I realised my alter’s name was Solar, the name I’d thought up in the past, because my mom started calling me that all the time. I honestly didn't really mind it. At least Solar gave me a good name. So I let it be. I think the disorder began to get worse when I was admitted to Uni. You know. It's really hard. I'd never been one to handle stress well, and I probably never will be. Solar came more frequently. I knew because I began to forget more things that happened, I began to have bigger and darker spaces in my memory.

“Then one day I realised that my alter personality was dating someone. And not a girl. A guy. I've been in the closet since forever, and I think only you know about me being - you know-”

“Gay,” Byulyi interrupts. A small, tired smile finds its way onto her face. “Yeah, I know.”

“Yeah. Then work starts, and I think I just…I don't know. I just snapped. It was too much stress for me to deal with. Working, being an adult, living alone. The disorder got even worse. Solar, my better, more perfect half, basically, for lack of better gamer terms, owned me. I retreated, unable to handle being the host personality and having to deal with life and all the that comes with it. Solar managed. But I think, as an alter version of me, she is also unable to handle the stress.

“She gets engaged in the time of my supposed retreat, to that Kang Jaehyuk individual. It was more reason for me to just stay dissociated all the time, forgetting and not to having to deal with real life. The stress must have gotten to her eventually, because then she started coming here. The human brain is weirdly selective in its choice of things to observe, because that was when I first saw you.”

Yongsun smiles, and Byulyi isn't sure if she's supposed to feel as warm and romantic as her heart is telling her to feel or as freaked out as her brain is urging her to feel. Whatever the case, her heart started beating so fast she isn't sure if she's going to go into cardiac arrest or not.

“I took the first session trying vainly to observe you from Solar's eyes. I wasn't ready to come out and face the world again, because the world still a ton. But then you said you were gay, and I decided that it was fine for me to try. So during the second session I did. And that was when you first saw me.”

“You decided to try to face this horrible planet because I said I am gay?” Byulyi raises both eyebrows a fraction. “I mean, I wholeheartedly agree that life kind of , but to stay in a dissociative state for so long and to only come out because of me? Should I feel honoured?”

“Very honoured. I mean, it's not just because you said you were gay.” Yo