"Hello, Wendy. I'm the doctor. I'd like to hear your story."

"Doctor, Wendy is a good girl. I don't know why I'm here."

"It's not because Wendy is a bad girl. You're here because your heart is hurting, and you're getting treatment."

"But I'm not sick... I always brush my teeth properly. I don't touch dirty things with my hands like John does, and I don't pick carrots out of my food like Michael."

"Then why... did Wendy run away from home?"

Su Yeon flinched.

Yu Myeong had pinpointed exactly what she had been thinking.

Even though she had never told him that part of the setting.

As if he had read her mind, he naturally guided her toward it.

Wendy leaving for Neverland.

Not simply following Peter Pan.

Running away from home.

That had been her interpretation.

Ah.

This person sees through everything.

Trust.

Her voice dropped another level.

"My mom hates me."

"Your mom? What made you think that?"

"She wouldn't let me go outside."

The meaning behind those words hit Yu Myeong instantly, and his back stiffened.

A past interview from CINE24 surfaced in his memory.

["My mother was very strict. Instant food, soda, cartoons—anything children might enjoy was completely forbidden. I couldn't even imagine going out to play with friends after school."]

["...You were raised very carefully."]

He had known she grew up in a highly restrictive environment.

The fact that she hadn't tasted cola until she was twenty two was enough proof of that.

But perhaps she hadn't merely been "carefully raised."

"John and Michael were allowed to go outside and play. But after I got my skirt dirty once, I wasn't allowed outside anymore. 'A girl shouldn't be so careless.' 'You're the older sister, you have to set an example.' I nodded. Mom only smiled when I listened."

Mom only smiled when I listened.

"Why? Wendy was a good girl. John and Michael only made messes, but I helped fold the bedsheets because I worried Mom might be tired. I filled Nana's food bowl. I gave her baths. I did everything Mom told me to do, but..."

She struggled desperately to be loved.

And still wasn't loved.

"It must have been my fault. Mom couldn't possibly not love me! So I decided I'd become the nicest child in the world. A child Mom would have no choice but to praise someday."

To a child, a mother is the world.

To believe your mother hates you is to believe the entire world has turned its back on you.

How could a child ever accept that?

So she tries harder.

And harder.

In a distorted way.

Eyes as black as a lightless abyss.

The self esteem of someone who begged for love and was still rejected eventually sinks to the very bottom.

And yet she cannot give up.

"Mom's condition kept getting worse. At first she said she wouldn't let me go out because she was worried about me. If I came home even thirty minutes late, she'd create a scene. School trips? Field trips? What were those? I spent most of my days locked in my room. My only friends were television and books."

As the story deepened, Wendy's mask slowly slipped away.

What emerged instead was Su Yeon's own past.

"You think you're pretty? You're nothing. You have no value at all. Don't smile. It's ugly."

A mother jealous of her own daughter.

Obsessively controlling her.

Constantly tearing her down.

It should never happen.

And yet somewhere in the world, tragedies like this do.

One fragment of such a tragedy revealed itself.

A cruel fairy tale.

"The verbal abuse became worse and worse. Whenever it happened, I'd lock my bedroom door and imagine things. This was a fairy tale. A movie. France. New York. Ah... it wasn't until much later that I realized my mother wasn't sane."

Not sane.

Which meant—

"My mother was admitted to a psychiatric hospital when I was nineteen. They said she had suffered from a long term delusional disorder, and later developed schizophrenia as well."

Yu Myeong bit his lip.

The story was horrifying enough to make even the listener tremble.

Yet the detached calmness of her voice only made it sadder.

 In the end, it had become Su Yeon's own truth game.

When she created this Wendy, she had probably already decided she would tell him everything.

Determined not to stagger beneath the weight of that trust, Yu Myeong steeled himself.

Now was not the time to pity her.

Not the time to comfort her.

He needed to gather every clue he could and find a way to help her.

"Didn't your father know?"

"I don't know. Maybe he did. But he never intervened. He divorced her around the time her projections and compulsions became severe. I can at least understand Mom. She was sick. But my father left me in that environment and escaped alone. I understand him even less. I don't consider him a parent."

Even while talking about something so painful, she remained calm.

That calmness was both the shield that had protected her through the tragedy...

and the very thing preventing her from fully immersing herself now.

{That actress's immersion is her weakness right now, but once she overcomes it, it'll become her greatest strength.}

After her story ended, Miho whispered in his ear.

Really?

{She spent a long time alone. Every time things became unbearable, she escaped into movies and books. She became countless protagonists and wandered imaginary worlds. Just imagine how powerful that imagination and immersion must be.}

Yu Myeong recalled the performances that had made him a fan.

That overwhelming ability to pull audiences into another world.

Was its source actually escapism?

Once again, a line from her interview surfaced in his mind.

["I spent a lot of my free time imagining things. Then I became an actress, and those imaginations became reality. I loved that so much that I threw myself into it completely."]

Ah.

So that was it.

Come to think of it, in his previous life she hadn't become widely known until the latter half of her twenties.

Which meant that the version of her who never met him had wandered for nearly ten years without giving up on acting.

Because this was all she had.

Because acting had been the only way forward in a life trapped at a dead end.

...

It was a determination very much like his own.

Only then did Yu Myeong understand why he had been unable to keep himself from reaching out to her.

{The problem is... her emotions have hardened into armor to avoid getting hurt, and because the person closest to her constantly devalued her, her self esteem is catastrophically low...}

Yeah. Even knowing her story, it still feels hopeless. Her defenses seem incredibly strong.

{There is a method we can try.}

Yu Myeong immediately asked,

What is it?!

{Psychodrama.}

The thing psychiatrists use?

Once again, Yu Myeong was amazed by Miho.

The greatest expert imaginable when it came to anything related to acting.

{Yep. I'm better than most specialists. And I've even modified it into the perfect version for helping this girl overcome her trauma.}

How?

{That's because...}

Su Yeon watched his silence with growing anxiety.

She hadn't told him all this to receive sympathy.

She believed that if it was Yu Myeong, even if he couldn't provide a solution, he would listen without prejudice and help her search for one.

But if the weight of her story made him turn away—

The fear seized her suddenly.

Then Yu Myeong said something she never expected.

"I think I've come up with a method we can try."

 "It may be difficult. And painful."

A way to solve a problem she had struggled with for four years without finding an answer?

"I'll do it. I don't care if it's hard."

"It'll force you to revisit a lot of memories. And despite how difficult the process is, it won't magically heal all your emotional wounds."

"..."

"But I think it's a process that Seol Su Yeon the actress absolutely needs."

Her eyes grew damp as she looked at him.

For the first time, the heart she had opened so carefully was not rejected.

The person she had given her trust to listened more seriously than anyone else.

And responded with sincerity.

She trusted him.

"Oppa, I know I've been unbelievably lucky."

"..."

"Every day I can feel people looking at me and thinking, 'What qualifies her to be standing among them?' But... I believed this was the place where I was most likely to find an answer to my problems, so I decided I'd cling to it no matter what. I'm more shameless than I look, aren't I?"

Embarrassed by words that weren't shameless at all, she smiled.

"I told myself I'd endure as long as I could. And even if I was eventually driven away from here..."

She wasn't speaking casually.

He knew that in his previous life she had struggled for ten years exactly like that.

And ultimately overcome it.

"...I decided I'd keep walking this path alone."

Then she laughed softly.

"But now the greatest actor of all says he's found a way to solve my problem."

Tears still glistened in her eyes as she smiled brightly.

"If you let go of my hand, I'll just wander through the darkness with no end in sight anyway."

The smile never disappeared.

"So what right do I have to be picky? Do you have any idea how precious an opportunity this is for me?"

Ah.

As expected, she really was like him.

Just as he had once been saved by Miho's proposal.

Yu Myeong sincerely wanted to help her overcome it.

"And if you're comfortable with it, I'd like Ryu Shin to participate too. If only the two of us do it, there could be safety concerns. And since it'll be my first time trying this method, I'd like someone who can help from an acting perspective."

"That's fine. I'll do whatever it takes."

And so, beginning the next day, that method began.

 Psychodrama

A therapeutic method created by Romanian psychiatrist J. L. Moreno.

By assigning roles and situations to the patient and encouraging them to express suppressed emotions and conflicts through performance, it seeks to treat psychological problems.

The following day, after hearing Su Yeon's past directly from her, Ryu Shin carefully concealed his shock and gently patted her shoulder in encouragement.

Then he heard Yu Myeong's proposal and looked surprised.

"I never would have thought of that. Do you have experience with this kind of thing?"

"...Yes."

It was the only answer Yu Myeong could give.

He trusted Miho completely. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

But since neither Ryu Shin nor Su Yeon could see Miho, they had no choice but to trust his judgment.

Simply saying it occurred to me wasn't enough.

He needed to inspire stronger confidence.

Ryu Shin looked curious, but after seeing the seriousness in Yu Myeong's expression, he asked no further questions.

{Just follow my instructions.}

Okay. Thanks.

Today, Miho would take the lead.

Using Yu Myeong's voice as a medium, she would guide Su Yeon through the process.

Yu Myeong sat across from Su Yeon on the wooden floor, about a meter away.

Slightly behind him, seated off to the side, was Ryu Shin.

Su Yeon's half closed eyelids trembled faintly.

{When was the last time you saw your mother?}

"When was the last time you saw your mother?"

"A month ago. I went to visit her at the hospital."

Yu Myeong repeated Miho's whispers word for word.

"What was she like then?"

"They said she'd become more stable, so I went to see her. But she relapsed the moment she saw me. She started screaming that she was prettier than me. Then she cried, saying I'd stolen her husband. My attending physician said that seeing me seemed to worsen her symptoms and suggested I avoid visiting whenever possible."

"What exactly was your mother's condition?"

"At first it was a severe delusional jealousy focused on a specific person. Similar to pathological jealousy toward a spouse, except the target was me, her daughter. And by the time she was institutionalized... she had also developed schizophrenia..."

Yu Myeong forced himself not to react emotionally to her words as he reviewed Miho's instructions.

"When was your mother admitted to the hospital?"

"When I was nineteen. My final year of high school."

"Good. Let's go back to that time."

They would begin with the year she was nineteen.

The last year she had lived with her mother.

"What happened?"

"My mother swung a knife at me."

Flinch—

At those words, both listeners instinctively tensed, their shoulders rising.