Chapter 20
But... I could've sworn we'd had a conversation before...
Looking back now, it was more like a Socratic dialogue made up entirely of talking to myself.
Right. Calling it a conversation was almost embarrassing; I'd been conscious of the girl in the mirror and myself as separate beings, going through the process of trying to understand each other.
In the end, it was a meaningless act.
No, maybe I couldn't say it was meaningless.
It was true we hadn't understood each other, but in a way, we could also say we'd understood each other perfectly.
Because dividing ourselves into separate existences and drawing boundaries between us was meaningless to begin with.
The girl had said they weren't a girl.
With that lovely, mysterious face, they'd said it so confidently, then insisted they weren't in love with Hyunwoo.
"I mean, same here, though."
Once again, that strange feeling from before slammed into my head.
A numbness imprinted itself in my mind, as if I'd been hit in the back of the head with a hammer.
In a daze, I fixed my gaze on the mirror opposite, as if being swallowed by it, and surrendered my consciousness to the other side.
My other self. Identical to me, yet somehow askew—a shadow I couldn't communicate with.
That was why I had no reason to hide my ugly inner self from this girl.
No, it might even help.
They looked human and gave me the feeling that they would listen to any concern or anything I had to say. But since they weren't a person, I didn't have to consider their feelings.
My inner self, through and through.
As clear as a spring reflecting my inner self, that reflection drew me to reach out absentmindedly toward the other girl beyond the mirror.
'I want to know. Is this the right thing?'
It was strange.
Though it was still daytime, they were in a corner away from the window, where not even a sliver of light should reach.
Even so, my vision was as clear as it had been that night in the hospital.
It felt as if I were being forced to raise my head and face my own ugliness and fragility, as though time and place meant nothing.
At last, when my left hand touched the mirror's surface, the girl's hand met mine, and I felt warmth travel through my body.
'Is this a dream?'
At some point, even the thin pane of glass separating the girl and me disappeared, and we were facing each other.
A bizarre phenomenon that common sense couldn't possibly explain.
My senses were far too vivid for it to be a dream, and the clock kept ticking.
Everything around me was shouting that this was reality.
Every part of the surroundings was Hyunwoo's room, just as I knew it.
And yet the dissonance made this place feel as if it didn't belong to this world.
Strange. Uncanny.
Just like the girl before me, who was still looking straight at me.
And so, the being who had been 'me' once again split into 'us,' and we faced each other.
Perhaps it was a defense mechanism meant to find an answer for us while our incomplete emotions left our hearts unsettled.
"Hello."
After staring at the girl for a long time and getting no answer, I finally decided to break the silence and speak first.
At my casual greeting, the girl's eyes widened slightly, showing a clear reaction.
Unlike before, when they'd said nothing, they answered me and continued the same conversation as last time.
'...Hello.'
But the girl's expression seemed troubled somehow.
For a moment, I wondered if I was making the same expression, but there was no way to tell.
The only thing I could tell right now was that the girl didn't seem to be in a good mood.
And if this was really me reflected in the mirror, then their worries were the same as mine.
Instead of trying to comfort them or ask what was wrong, I decided to tell them what was on my mind.
I was in no position to comfort them or ask after them, either. I simply let my anxiety and self-loathing show without hiding them.
"I'm scared. Back then, I was sure I'd found a new reason to live. I vaguely believed I could go on without suffering anymore."
As I looked at the girl and opened up about my worries, I felt a pang in one corner of my heart.
A hollow feeling came over me, as if I were a sinner confessing my sins.
The girl would probably look at me as if I were utterly ridiculous.
Maybe they'd demand to know why and berate me.
But instead, the girl gazed at me with gentle, wistful eyes and said something I hadn't expected.
'Back then...? What exactly do you mean by back then?'
I didn't know.
All the excuses I'd prepared, however briefly, vanished in an instant, and I fell utterly silent, like a mute.
What did I mean by when?
There was no way I could answer.
Even I couldn't say when I'd let my guard down.
If I had to put it simply, it was when I came to Hyunwoo's house and he showed me the joy of being alive, chasing away all my anxieties.
But when I thought about whether I'd wanted to die all along before that, it didn't seem so.
Even when I'd desperately defended Hyunwoo at the police station, if you got down to it, it was to protect the person who would take responsibility for me. That meant I'd had hope of living even then.
Then what about before that? And before that?
Hadn't I wanted to live at some point much earlier than that?
I slowly traced back through my memories.
Even during that night at the hospital, I'd been enjoying what little freedom I had.
The cold night breeze brushed past me, and I felt happiness seep in so deeply it almost hurt.
And on the day I'd decided to kill myself, I asked for help right before I was supposed to die.
I realized that, in the end, all of it had been a struggle to survive, clinging to hope.
"No. Even before that..."
Only then did I realize how absurd the things I'd said were.
If I'd truly wanted to die, I wouldn't have struggled alone and tried to stay alive.
Looking back at what I'd done, I'd been desperately trying to survive.
In the end, I'd never once truly been ready to die.
In other words, even as I realized I was a burden who only caused trouble for those around me, I'd never made any effort to fix the cause.
'Do you still think there's any meaning left in this world?'
The girl's words began to strike at my contradictions with unfailing precision.
They wielded a sharp blade only 'I' could wield.
It had been my own selfish desire from the start.
If I hadn't existed, the people around me might have been happier and lived better lives.
As long as I kept living and breathing in this world, I was bound to lose something else eventually—and even now, I was nothing but a burden that breathed.
Objectively, this tiny life had no value.
A perfectly defective creation, with no function whatsoever beyond being cute.
Even my existence could only depend on others for the rest of my life, parasitically leeching off Hyunwoo.
"Then what am I supposed to do...? Are you saying I should die like this?"
'I never said that. But if your thoughts have gone that far, haven't you already made up your mind?'
Once again, the girl's hair began to sparkle as it reflected the light.
That was strange.
That hair color was hardly suited to reflecting light.
Realizing that what I'd seen back then hadn't been caused by moonlight, I stared into the girl's mercilessly hardened eyes.
Just looking at them made my body feel as if it had turned to stone.
The look in their eyes was striking—fierce, as if they meant to kill me on the spot.
"...No. No!"
I denied it, shaking my head vigorously. That couldn't be.
I'd already made up my mind?
If anything, hadn't I been struggling because I wanted to live?
What I meant was, I'd deliberately taken the situation to its absolute extreme, trying to mock the horrific thought that had crossed my mind and the girl's response to it.
But the more I denied it, the girl's utter stillness was enough to drain the strength from me, until my denials felt meaningless.
As if the answer had already been decided, and no matter how much I denied it, nothing would change.
In the end, exhausted, I gave up denying it.
Then I tried to gather my thoughts again to understand what the girl had meant.
In the end, there was no need to think about it.
The thought came to me with such clarity, as if someone had suddenly sent it into my head after organizing it neatly.
It didn't mean that I'd wanted to die.
What the girl had meant was...
'You realized you're someone who should die, didn't you?'
The execution of justice.
I already understood perfectly that the world would be better off with me gone.
...I was so sick of it that I wanted to make a reckless escape from it all.
Only then did I begin to remember.
The reason I'd tried to hang myself and die.
'In the end, I'll keep hurting others in the future, and when it all comes to an end, I'll be unable to keep myself together and die.'
That's why I'd given up on a life of nothing but pain long ago.
Hyunwoo couldn't support me forever, after all.