After her conversation with Martha, Elena finally had a fairly clear idea of what the original Elena had been like.
She really had been different from other people.
She had learned everything more slowly than other children.
She had started speaking late and had always struggled to remember things.
Although she was now sixteen, her mind had never truly developed at the same pace as her body.
Martha had been careful with her words, but Elena could understand the truth from everything she had said.
What Elena found stranger, however, were the memories she had inherited.
Since waking up, she had seen quite a few fragments from the original Elena’s life.
She could recognize Martha, Thomas, Agnes, and Adrian.
She remembered what had happened at the edge of the village the previous day.
She also remembered delivering lunch to the wheat fields and falling down the rocky slope while trying to avoid the runaway wagon on her way home.
But the memories were incomplete.
It was as though someone had taken sixteen years of the original Elena’s life, pulled out a few dozen random scenes, and thrown them into her mind.
She knew who certain people were, but not everything that had happened between them.
She knew this was the Miller home, yet she did not even know exactly who else lived here.
Some memories had been reduced to little more than blurred colors and distant voices.
It was an uncomfortable feeling.
From now on, she would have to live as Elena Miller.
If she did not even understand the people and things around her, sooner or later someone would notice something was wrong.
Elena had planned to ask Martha more about the family while she was still there, but before she could speak, Agnes’s voice came from downstairs.
“Martha!”
Even through the wooden floorboards, her voice was perfectly clear.
“The chicken broth is still on the stove.
Are you planning to let it boil all day?”
Martha froze.
Only then did she remember that she had left things unfinished in the kitchen because she had been so focused on Elena.
“Coming!”
She quickly called back.
Then she turned toward Elena, still looking reluctant to leave her alone.
“I need to go downstairs for a little while.”
Martha pulled the blanket, which had slipped down to Elena’s waist, back into place.
“Lie down and rest.
Don’t get out of bed by yourself.
Once the broth is ready, I’ll bring it up.”
“All right.”
Elena nodded.
Martha paused.
She had already heard her daughter speak several complete sentences, but after caring for her for sixteen years, even such a simple and clear reply still seemed unfamiliar.
She watched Elena for a moment, and another small smile appeared in her eyes.
“Mama will be back soon.”
Then she picked up the empty cup from the table and left the room.
The door closed quietly behind her.
Before long, Elena heard Martha enter the kitchen downstairs, followed by the faint clatter of an iron pot against the stove.
Elena lay back down.
The small bedroom on the second floor of the stone house soon became quiet again.
Autumn sunlight entered through the little glass window, leaving a pale patch of light across the rough wooden floor.
A hen called somewhere outside.
Whenever the wind passed through the trees in the yard, the leaves rustled softly.
Everything was so different from her old life.
No communication devices.
No cars.
No gunfire.
No missions that could arrive without warning.
And no deafening roar of helicopter blades.
Elena stared at the exposed wooden beams overhead.
For a moment, none of this felt real.
Still, when she thought about it carefully, what kind of person the original Elena had once been was no longer the most important thing.
Whether she had been slow or whether the villagers had considered her foolish, all of that belonged to the past.
From the moment Elena opened her eyes in this bed, whatever came next was hers to live.
The past could not be changed.
But there was still plenty of life ahead of her.
With that thought, the last of the restlessness in Elena’s chest gradually faded.
She closed her eyes, intending only to rest for a while.
She did not know how much time passed before her head suddenly began to feel heavy.
At first, it was only a slight dizziness.
Elena paid little attention to it.
This body had fallen down a rocky slope yesterday, injured its head, and spent the entire night burning with fever.
Of course it was weak.
But instead of fading, the dizziness gradually became worse.
When Elena opened her eyes again, even the wooden beams above her seemed to sway slightly.
Something was wrong.
She frowned and instinctively pressed a hand to her forehead.
The moment her palm touched her skin, she knew.
It was hot.
The fever that had only just gone down was coming back.
“What a troublesome body…”
Elena muttered under her breath.
In her previous life, she had suffered injuries far worse than this during missions.
Yet she could not remember the last time a simple fever had left her feeling too weak even to sit up properly.
Apparently, this body was in worse condition than she had thought.
Before long, the dryness and pain in her throat returned as well.
Elena tried calling for Martha, but her voice had already become much hoarser.
“Mama…”
The sound barely carried beyond the room.
People were moving around downstairs, and the kitchen was filled with the sounds of cookware and burning wood.
No one heard her.
Elena tried again.
Still no answer.
She placed one hand against the bed, intending to sit up.
Before she could move, a sharp pain suddenly pierced deep into her head.
There was no warning.
Elena froze.
The next instant, the pain intensified.
She grabbed her head with both hands and fell back against the pillow.
“Hiss…”
It felt as though something had cracked open inside her mind.
Then countless unfamiliar images flooded in.
This time, they were not the scattered fragments she had seen when she first woke up.
Memories that had once been blurred and incomplete seemed to have found an opening all at once, pouring into her consciousness.
The first thing she saw was the Miller family’s kitchen.
Wood burned inside the stone stove, filling the gray-brown walls with warm orange light.
A younger Martha sat beside the fire in a dark dress and apron, holding a plump little girl in her arms.
She scooped oatmeal from an earthenware bowl with a wooden spoon, blew on it until it cooled, then fed the child one bite at a time.
Not far away, a younger Thomas had just returned from the fields.
There was dirt on his linen shirt, and he had not even taken off his muddy boots.
Yet the first thing he did was reach into his pocket and pull out a small piece of honey candy wrapped in paper.
“Elena.”
The little girl immediately turned at the sound of her name.
Thomas waved the candy.
Her eyes lit up.
“Candy…”
It was only one word, and even that was not very clear.
Thomas smiled anyway.
The memory shifted.
Now Elena saw the yard outside the Miller home.
A slightly older version of herself sat beside a low stone wall, holding a piece of rye bread.
Two younger boys stood around her.
One kept calling her Sister, while the other tried to pull her along to see a group of newly hatched chicks.
Elena had not fully understood what they were saying.
She only knew that her two younger brothers wanted to play with her.
So she followed them with the bread still in her hand, smiling happily.
Brothers.
Even through the pain in her head, Elena caught hold of that detail.
So she had two younger brothers.
But the memories gave her no time to think.
Another scene appeared immediately.
A gravel road ran through the village, lined with low stone houses, wooden fences, and trees swaying gently in the autumn wind.
Several children surrounded the original Elena.
“Fat girl.”
“Elena, you can’t even do this?”
“Stupid Elena.”
Someone deliberately snatched the apple from her hand.
The original Elena stood there for several seconds before finally understanding what had happened.
Then she burst into tears.
She ran all the way home and threw herself into Martha’s arms.
Martha crouched down and wiped away her tears.
“What happened?”
Elena could not explain.
All she could do was cry, point toward the village entrance, and say brokenly,
“Apple…
gone…”
It took Martha a long time to understand what had happened.
That evening, after Thomas returned from the fields, he went directly to the homes of the children involved.
The original Elena did not know what happened afterward.
All she remembered was that the next day, the stolen apple was back in her hands.
The scene changed again.
Winter.
Snow covered the ground outside.
Logs burned inside the stone fireplace while Elena sat near the hearth, wrapped in a thick wool blanket.
Agnes sat in a high-backed wooden chair nearby, repairing an old shirt with a needle and thread.
“It’s been fifteen minutes, and you still haven’t finished one cup of milk.”
She sounded impatient.
The original Elena did not understand why her grandmother was annoyed.
She simply stared down at the cup.
After a while, Agnes finally stood up as if she could no longer bear watching.
She took the cup from Elena’s hands.
“Open your mouth.”
Elena obediently opened it.
Agnes continued complaining about how slowly she did everything, but her hand remained steady as she helped her drink.
When the cup was empty, Agnes even pulled the wool blanket back over Elena’s legs where it had slipped down.
Watching the memory, Elena finally understood.
No wonder Agnes had seemed so contradictory after she woke up.
Her grandmother was nothing like Martha.
She complained that Elena was slow.
She complained that she ate too much.
She complained that she could never learn anything properly.
But whenever Elena actually needed care, Agnes had never simply left her alone.
She had a sharp tongue.
That did not mean she did not love her granddaughter.
More memories continued to surface.
A vegetable garden in spring.
Pastures in summer.
Golden wheat fields in autumn.
Stone houses buried beneath winter snow.
Year after year.
The original Elena slowly grew from a plump little girl into the sixteen-year-old she was now.
She still could not learn complicated things, but she gradually became able to help Martha with simple chores.
Collecting eggs.
Pulling weeds from the vegetable garden.
Putting dried herbs into baskets.
Following behind the family during harvest and picking up fallen heads of wheat.
Sometimes she made mistakes.
Sometimes she forgot what Martha had just asked her to do.
But whenever someone patiently explained it again, she would always try her best.
Elena silently watched the life of another person unfold before her.
At first, she had assumed that the original girl’s condition meant she barely understood anything around her.
Now she realized that was not true.
The original Elena simply understood the world in a much simpler way.
When someone treated her kindly, she remembered it.
Someone could give her a piece of bread, and she would be happy for half the day.
If her brothers played with her, she thought they were the best brothers in the world.
If her father returned from town with a piece of candy for her, she remembered it for a long time.
She did not even understand what some of the villagers meant when they laughed at her.
Whenever someone called her name, she would turn around and smile at them.
Sometimes that only made them laugh harder.
Watching it all, Elena felt something she could not quite describe.
She did not find the original girl ridiculous.
If anything, the girl’s life had been simpler than most people’s.
She was not clever.
But neither did she carry the complicated thoughts that so many others did.
Then a familiar figure appeared in the memories.
Adrian.
At first, Adrian had only been another child.
The adults from both families had once laughingly told Elena that when she grew up, she would marry him.
The original Elena had not understood what marriage really meant.
All she understood was that the adults said Adrian would become part of her family one day.
So she remembered it.
After that, whenever she received something she thought was good, she instinctively wanted to save some for Adrian.
Pretty wildflowers.
Freshly picked apples.
An occasional piece of honey candy.
She might not even have understood whether what she felt could truly be called love.
She had simply believed that this person would one day be family.
But as they grew older, Adrian began studying in Clearwater.
He met more people.
He learned more about the world and gradually understood what he wanted from his own life.
The distance between them naturally grew.
Until yesterday.
The village entrance.
The stone wall.
The blue-green canvas schoolbag.
And the reddest apple in her hand.
“Elena, I’m not going to marry you.”
This time, the memory was much clearer.
The original Elena had stood there, unable to truly understand why Adrian had suddenly told her he would not marry her.
She only knew that it hurt.
Ever since she was little, everyone had told her that the two of them would marry one day.
She had always believed it was something that would never change.
Even then, she had not questioned him the way another girl might have.
Because before long, she remembered that she still had lunch to deliver to her family.
She went to the wheat fields.
After lunch, she stayed to collect fallen wheat.
When the weather turned in the afternoon, Thomas told her to go home first.
She carried the empty wicker basket and followed the stone wall back toward the village.
By the time she reached the old mill, rain had begun to fall.
Then came the frantic sound of hoofbeats behind her.
“Move!”
The original Elena turned around.
A wagon piled high with wheat was racing toward her.
The frightened brown draft horse was completely out of control, while the driver pulled desperately on the reins and shouted again and again for her to move.
Elena froze in fear.
Only after he shouted once more did she finally react and stumble toward the side of the road.
One step.
Two.
On the third, her shoe came down on rain-soaked mud.
It slipped.
Her body lost its balance.
The wicker basket flew from her hands.
Before she could grab the stone wall, she tumbled down the slope beside the road.
Stone.
Bushes.
Mud and rain.
Then came the terrible pain of her forehead striking a rock.
The memory ended there.
At the same moment, another memory—her own—slammed into it.
The storm.
The helicopter.
The underground auction center in Las Vegas.
The protective case containing the ancient painting.
That strange green light.
And the violent impact that followed.
The memories of two different people collided inside her mind.
Elena felt as though her head were being torn apart.
She curled up, clutching it with both hands.
The pain grew worse.
Images from the original Elena’s sixteen years of life continued to pour through her mind.
The Miller family’s stone house.
The fire in the kitchen.
Her father, Thomas.
Her mother, Martha.
Her grandmother, Agnes.
Her two younger brothers.
The village children.
Adrian.
And year after year of quiet country life.
People and places that had once belonged only to another Elena slowly became part of her own memories.
At last, she could no longer endure it.
Everything went black.
…
Elena had no idea how much time passed.
Through the darkness, she gradually became aware of someone calling her name.
“Elena…”
“Elena, wake up.”
“Please don’t scare Mama…”
The voice became clearer.
Elena’s eyelids moved.
After a long while, she finally managed to open her eyes.
The first thing she saw was Martha’s anxious face.
Only then did Elena realize that she had somehow fallen out of bed.
She was lying on her side on the rough wooden floor, with the blanket crumpled nearby.
“Mama…”
Her voice was still hoarse.
The moment Martha saw her awake, some of the tension left her face.
“You scared me to death.”
She immediately reached down to help Elena up.
“I was only downstairs for a little while.
How did you end up on the floor?”
Martha was thin, and lifting Elena by herself was not easy.
She tried twice, and sweat had already appeared on her forehead.
Once the dizziness eased a little, Elena reached for the edge of the bed.
“I can do it.”
“Don’t move.
What if you fall again—”
“I’m fine.”
Elena first pushed herself into a sitting position.
She waited for the dizziness to pass, then used the bed for support and slowly got to her feet before sitting back down on the mattress.
Those few simple movements were enough to leave her slightly out of breath.
This body…
She really was going to have to do something about it.
Martha had no attention to spare for that.
She touched Elena’s forehead, then carefully checked her for any new injuries.
Only after making sure the wound on her head had not opened again did she finally relax.
“Your fever came back, didn’t it?”
Elena nodded.
“I think so.”
“You’re not as hot now.”
Martha kept one hand against her forehead, still talking anxiously.
“When your father gets back, I’ll have him speak to the doctor again.
You hit your head badly yesterday, and this fever keeps coming and going.
We can’t be careless.”
Elena did not interrupt.
She simply sat there, sorting through the memories that had suddenly returned.
This time, things were different from when she first woke up.
There were still many details she could not remember clearly, but she finally had a general picture of the original Elena’s sixteen years of life.
She knew she had two younger brothers.
She knew how Thomas and Martha had cared for their daughter all these years.
She knew that although Agnes often complained about how slowly her granddaughter did everything, she had never truly disliked her.
And Adrian…
Elena finally understood that what the original girl had considered “love” had been far simpler than romantic feelings between adults.
She had been told since childhood that Adrian would become her husband.
So she had accepted him as someone who would one day be family.
That was all.
Strangely, the realization made Elena feel lighter.
She could understand why Adrian did not want the engagement.
It had been arranged by their families.
He had never chosen it for himself.
And now the two of them were already walking completely different paths.
He studied in Clearwater and had plans for his future.
The original Elena had struggled with even the most basic things on her own.
Most people would hesitate to let a childhood promise made by their parents decide the rest of their lives.
There was no need to rush into deciding what to do about the engagement.
Elena would not cling to Adrian.
Nor would she treat him as an enemy simply because of what he had said yesterday.
Whatever the original Elena had felt for him belonged to her.
The Elena sitting here now did not share those feelings.
Compared with the engagement, she had far more important things to deal with.
This family.
Her current body.
And…
That ancient painting.
Elena’s expression became slightly more serious as she remembered the green light that had entered her body.
She had a strong feeling that it was connected to why she had ended up here.
But she had no clues.
There was no point thinking about it endlessly when she had nothing to work with.
“Elena?”
Martha’s voice pulled her back to the present.
Elena looked up.
“Yes?”
Martha paused.
She studied her daughter for a long moment.
Perhaps it was only her imagination, but the way Elena had been sitting there quietly thinking seemed completely different from before.
Her daughter had rarely remained still for so long.
And she had certainly never worn the expression of someone carefully working through a problem in her mind.
“Do you still feel sick anywhere?”
“No.”
Elena shook her head.
After a moment, she added,
“I’m just a little hungry.”
Martha stared at her.
Then much of the worry on her face disappeared.
“Hungry is good.”
She smiled.
“The chicken broth is ready.
I was coming upstairs to get you so you could eat.”
She looked at Elena again.
But after a few seconds, the smile on Martha’s face slowly turned into uncertainty.
Elena noticed.
“What’s wrong?”
Martha froze again.
Her daughter had not only understood her expression but had asked what was wrong without being prompted.
Even after everything that had happened earlier, it still felt unreal.
“Elena.”
“Yes?”
“Do you…”
Martha hesitated.
“Do you feel like you’re different from before?”
Elena fell silent.
This question had been inevitable.
With the way she was behaving now, there was no chance the people closest to her would fail to notice the change.
A girl who had once had the mind of a much younger child could suddenly speak clearly, ask questions, think for herself, and even handle simple things without help.
There was no believable way for that to go unnoticed.
Rather than pretending to be slow, Elena needed an explanation that no one could easily prove or disprove.
She lowered her eyes as if trying to remember.
After a while, she spoke quietly.
“I don’t know.”
Martha waited.
Elena slowly looked up.
“I just feel like everything before was covered in fog.”
“Sometimes I couldn’t understand what people were saying.
And things that happened…
I couldn’t remember them clearly.”
Martha’s eyes gradually reddened.
Elena continued.
“It was like I was having one very long dream.”
She paused.
The memories she had just seen returned to her.
The little girl smiling foolishly with a piece of rye bread in her hands.
The child who had run home crying after being bullied.
The daughter who could be happy for days because her father brought her a single piece of candy.
The sixteen-year-old girl who had saved the reddest apple for Adrian.
She had existed.
Those sixteen years had never truly been a dream.
But for the Elena sitting here now, this was the only explanation she could give Martha.
She looked at her mother.
Her voice was soft but clear.
“But now it’s different.”
Martha stared at her.
Elena spoke quietly.
“The dream is over.”
After a brief pause, she added,
“And I’m awake now.”