Some much needed explanations

"W-wait… By Dahlia, you mean… the real one?" I asked, utterly confused by the situation.

She shrugged. "Am I the real one? I don't know. I'm either that or a personality based on her given form through the fake's abilities, even she doesn't know for sure."

"How… is it possible? I thought souls were dormant within us?"

Dahlia chuckled. "Don't worry, as amusing as it'd be, the original Seo-Yun won't suddenly start speaking inside your head. It's something specific to her." Her expression became more serious. "Remember what the fake and I said during your first proper meeting with us at the café? That skinwalkers could evolve and gain new abilities based on their desires? Now that you know her better, what do you think she desired the most during all these years?"

It didn't take long for me to put two and two together, remembering these moments when Dahlia showed how lonely she felt, and how clingy she became after we started to date.

"She wanted… someone by her side…" I whispered.

"Exactly!" She exclaimed. "I tend to partially or very rarely fully manifest whenever she's going through negative emotions, such as high anxiety, depression, fear, and so on. Otherwise I'm just… stuck in her head. We can still communicate, she sometimes uses parts of my personality, but I'm usually passive. You can consider it a more skinwalker-specific form of DID, I suppose? But as I said earlier, ever since she met you, I rarely had to show up. You made her feel happier than she ever was since the first and second times she wore a woman."

"W-what happened there, exactly?" I asked, pointing towards the florist shop we just left.

Dahlia tapped her chin with her finger. "I already gave you a hint, it's related to the fake one's past. She'll explain it to you properly once she recovers, and if she won't return before we get back to the hotel, I will do it myself. She told you she would, it's finally time she trusts you completely. I'm tired of her running away like a pathetic coward." She walked closer, tiptoeing so her face was inches away from mine as she gave me a fake innocent smile. "For the time being, though, you're stuck with me~"

This situation was so confusing, but I was too worried about the state of the fake Dahlia, as she put it, to think about it too much. "How... How is she?"

"Unable to function properly, currently, so I'm in charge. It's been a while since I last was in proper control of my own body." She said while looking at her hands. "God I missed it. Wish she'd let me out more often after all this time."

After a moment to process everything, I spoke. "You're… very different from how I imagined you…"

"Well..." She started, looking at the sky. "She described me accurately. I was a huge and immature bitch before she stole my life."

"Was?"

"I would most likely be one again if she were to restore me and make me forget everything. But it'll never happen, she loves my skin and my life far too much to ever let me go. My parents, my brother, Laura and her other college friends, she'll never give up on them. And since we're stuck together, I'm just trying to make sure she doesn't mess up our life the best I can. With how fragile and broken she is, believe me when I say that it's not an easy task, even if your presence helped her heal somewhat. But we'll talk more later, there's something I first need to do in her stead since that dumbass ran away again. Follow me."

We started walking away, with me trying to understand everything that just happened. The original Dahlia was apparently still conscious despite having been skinned and worn by the woman I was in a relationship with. A woman I just realised I had no idea how else to refer to.

"Hmm, tell me, it'd feel weird to call the woman I've been dating 'fake' like you do. Do you know what I should call her?"

She looked back at me. "She doesn't want to use her old name anymore, so Dahl is fine for now, since that's what you and Laura use. As for me, just call me Lia, that's the nickname she gave me."

"Okay. You seem... surprisingly fine with all of that." I commented.

Lia rolled her eyes. "I had almost two years to get used to it, Eddy. And well... I don't think I can truly hate her, even after what she did to me..."

"Really?"

"I pity her, mainly." She said, looking away. "And it's not like I hate everything she did after skinning me... Having someone love my life so much is weirdly flattering. She made me realise that I took a lot of things for granted. And if I believe her memories of the other skinwalkers she met, I could have been skinned by far worse beings. I can consider myself lucky in that regard."

We stayed quiet for a few minutes, until Lia spoke again. "You know, she was truly afraid of revealing my existence to you. She was so afraid of being seen as insane, of you rejecting her because of our... situation."

"I wouldn't... I'm not used to something like this, that's true, but I would never have rejected her."

She smiled teasingly. "I told her she was being stupid and that you were a keeper~"

As she said this, I recalled our earlier conversation. "You said that we spoke the day I became a skinwalker?"

She let out an amused and quiet laugh. "Indeed. I was the one who turned you, actually."

"Huh?”

"She was feeling so ****, she really wanted to turn you herself after taking a liking to your personality. She had a good feeling about you and hoped that the two of you could become friends, but she was still too anxious to act. So she let me do it for her." She said, snickering. "And well, I wanted to have fun while doing so, hence the theatrics that night and the following day. A shame that the phone text cut our first meeting short, though."

Remembering that night, it made more sense how different Dahlia acted afterwards.

"So, you can... use the spines?" I asked quietly.

"I can, but I haven't gotten the chance to use them myself apart from that one time with you. Which is a shame, because it was quite fun when we hopped from skin to skin at the airport and became Ishani." She replied with a giggle. "Can you believe that during all this time she wore me and until she met you, she only used these spines once? In almost two years? I always wanted to try them more, and maybe even try wearing a skin myself too. Even if we share our senses, it's just not the same."

"I see..." I simply replied, before asking something else. "You said she was fragile and broken? What happened exactly?"

"That's for when we return to the hotel. But let's just say it's a good thing you decided not to resist the curse in the end."

I didn't know what else to say after that. I had no idea how the curse worked if you resisted it, but with just what she said, I was relieved to have embraced it. Even more than I already was since I became Yun.

Lia was leading us further away from the city center, and we were currently in what seemed like a well-off neighbourhood, judging from the nice houses and gardens around us.

"Where are we going exactly?"

"You'll see, we'll get there soon. If it's still here, at least. But it should, she checked before we departed."

We kept walking through the neighbourhood until we stopped in front of a specific house. It had a large garden with multitudes of beautiful flowers, and even a glass house where more flowers could be seen.

Lia read the name on the mail box and smiled. "Good, they're still here."

She grabbed an envelope from her bag and put it inside the bouquet of flowers, before approaching the front door and carefully placing the flowers in front of it.

"They're probably gonna be back from the florist shop soon, we need to leave now. I don't want to have to explain why we're here." She said, quickly dragging me away.

"That's her old home?"

"Yeah. She wanted to say a final farewell to her old life. But of course I had to do it for her... Anyway, let's call another cab so we can get out of this town. I don't think her state is gonna improve as long as we're here."

I did just that, and the same cab we took to get there picked us up a dozen minutes later. The driver was happy to see us again, asking how it went. Lia said that it went well, and that she came here so see an old friend.

Finally, after an hour of driving back to London, we returned to our hotel room, where Lia promptly dropped onto the bed, sighing.

"Are you alright?" I asked as I sat next to her.

"I am. I'm just pretty exhausted. I feel all her emotions, you know? You have no idea how much of a chaotic mess she's being right now."

"Is there anything I can do to help? I don't like knowing that she's suffering."

Lia smiled. "Your presence already helps. I think it'll take another hour or two before she's back, though."

"I see."

I really hoped that Dahl would get better soon, I hated the fact that I couldn't do more to help her...