Chapter 21
Clinging to the mirror, whose shine has long since faded, I slowly begin to regain my sense of reality.
The girl who had been cloaked in a beautiful silver sheen just moments ago is nowhere to be seen. Beyond the mirror, where no light reflects, only a vague shape remains.
When even those eyes glaring at me as if they wanted to kill me disappear, I feel my facial muscles move and realize the expression in the mirror was my own.
An immutable fact I'd tried so hard to forget all this time.
Deep within me, I keep repeating it so I won't forget. The world must have brought this mirror here to reflect that duty of mine.
How cruel. What on earth did I do to the world to deserve this humiliation?
'Other than skipping church when I was eight, at most...'
On the day of service back then, my parents led me into an unfamiliar building, and I couldn't adjust to an environment that was far more boring than I'd expected.
Of course, since I was a little kid, the people at church and even the pastor did their best to indulge me and keep me interested...
Unfortunately, for the mischievous and energetic eight-year-old boy I was, that place was just another stretch of the hell that was school,
An unfamiliar older boy led me downstairs, where I discovered that game consoles had been set up inside the church building just like an arcade.
For a little kid who'd only ever played house, played with dolls, built robots, or stacked blocks, a medium created purely for fun was far too sweet,
In the end, all I remembered was my parents tearfully pulling me away from the game console, embracing me, and forcing me home without my understanding why.
'I suppose that was wrong, in its own way...'
But I didn't think it was the sort of blasphemy that deserved this much suffering.
I curse this filthy world.
Was that really so wrong?
After that, I was fairly obedient and grew up happily in an ordinary family without wanting for anything.
I did rebel sometimes, but I knew how to reflect on it, and though I couldn't call myself good, I never got into the kind of delinquency that would make me a bad person.
If there is such a thing as God, then it must be a petty, narrow-minded being that holds a grudge.
After losing my parents, this thought—steeped in resentment—has remained with me to this day.
As if that weren't enough, this filthy world took my body and identity, then robbed me of my bonds with those around me.
Even just that had made me feel to my bones that the world hated me...
"You're threatening me, aren't you...? Now."
At last, I escaped that hellish house and came here.
To this house where I'd settled in, stubbornly ignoring my own selfishness and how much of a burden I was.
There's a mirror...
The full-length mirror I used at that house, the same height as me.
This mirror must be a warning from the world.
It must be there to admonish me to look at myself and realize what I ought to do now.
'Of course, maybe I'm reading too much into it...'
But to me, it looked like a threat ordering me to take my own life before I laid a hand on Hyunwoo.
I have to keep reminding myself that I am a being who must die, bringing the fact back to mind so I won't forget.
I have to die.
Because my mere existence causes harm.
And because I'm sure I'll cause some kind of harm in the future, too.
This body is going to die anyway. It won't take long.
After tormenting Hyunwoo to my heart's content and breaking his spirit, if he still holds out to the end, he'll try to kill me.
"I wanted to live."
I didn't want to die.
Because it felt as though my entire life up to now was being denied...
Because if I didn't struggle here, I'd become the greatest piece of trash ever, the one who caused my parents to die through my own fault.
I endured to the very end, ignoring the will of a world that hated me.
I kept telling myself that I wasn't a burden, desperately denying it, even as my heart admitted the truth—and so I never accepted anyone else's help.
Looking back now, it was a godsend that my relatives handled the insurance payout and inheritance for me.
If I hadn't had that huge sum, I would've died long before I even became an adult.
'No... can I really call that a good thing?'
In the end, as life went on, all I felt was emptiness. Nothing remained for me, and only when my last remaining connection left for the military without a word did I realize there was no place for me.
Even at the small company I'd worked desperately to get hired at, I was always pushed around.
Even if I saved money, little remained after paying for a home far too large for my income.
I considered moving, but I didn't want to leave that house, another reminder of my struggle.
I barely held on, telling myself I was still allowed to be alive.
At the very moment I resolved that I could support myself, live alone, and live only for myself until I died, without any ties to anyone...
I became a girl.
The very day after I'd started planting the seed of hope in that barren soil all over again.
"Don't worry. I'm not going to say I don't want to die now..."
I was crushed by the will of a world bent on making me fall to my death just as soon as I'd managed to create an environment where I could hope again.
This was checkmate, plain and simple.
Even if I could accept the events up to now as within the bounds of common sense, how could I possibly win against something that had even surpassed science and turned me into a tiny girl in an instant?
The hard-earned muscles I'd built through manual labor, part-time jobs, and on-site work for the company had turned into soft, tender flesh like pudding.
Even my intuition and perception, among the few things I could pride myself on, had dulled, leaving me with a useless, inefficient body and nothing to boast about.
The iron-hard resilience I'd forged through every kind of humiliation had crumbled, and now the slightest fright made me burst into tears.
Just like now, as they rolled down drop by drop.
I wanted to ask in return.
If it was going to break me so thoroughly and drive me to suicide, why not just kill me in a traffic accident instead?
If it hated me because it saw me as a burden on its world, why not erase me without a trace, without anyone knowing?
After already going so far as to pull off the insane stunt of turning me into a woman, what reason could there be for it not to do that?
"There's meaning in dying by my own hand, isn't there?"
This damnable being probably wanted me to take my own life, lose even the faintest light of hope, and grow cold in despair.
Was it like the nauseating idea of not wanting to dirty its own hands?
Like a child who can't bear to kill a character they created in a game, so they create an environment where the character has no choice but to die.
I remembered hearing that God was the purest being of all.
And if that was true, perhaps that was precisely why it could harbor malice toward me so vile that it was beyond human understanding.
"......"
For a moment, I shifted my gaze to the phone far away, plugged into its charger. Its screen was still on, even though its battery had passed 100% ages ago.
It wasn't my phone.
My phone was probably still lying in the middle of that hellish house, drenched in blood.
The only one who had appeared even in that extreme situation and saved me.
A righteous person, and the most precious person in the world to me now.
Hyunwoo's phone, belonging to the person who held both the title of friend and the title of lifesaver.
Does Hyunwoo not even take his phone with him when he goes out?
'That doesn't matter right now.'
What I was debating now was whether to leave this fact for Hyunwoo to find or simply disappear quietly.
Though I couldn't unlock the pattern...
I looked away and stared at the notebook. If I was going to leave a trace, that would be the simplest and surest way.
I opened the notebook and gripped the pen tightly for a moment, feeling my hand tremble and cramp.
"......No."
In the end, the thought that it would be better not to tell him won out, and I set the pen down.
I thought it would be better to let Hyunwoo naturally accept that I'd left, rather than worry him for nothing and burden him with guilt over my death.
Haa.
I let out a deep sigh.
'Still, I was happy when I got a text from Hyunwoo.'
The one who came back to me, isolated and dying with not a single bond left, and helped me defy fate once more.
Hyunwoo, who reached out... and saved me so easily, as if telling me to soar as high as I'd fallen, renewing my resolve.
Maybe that's why I believed the phantom I shouldn't have been able to see.
The delusion that Hyunwoo was someone who could move freely according to his own will, without being interfered with by the world's will, and even rewrite my fate.
The moment Hyunwoo called me cute should have sent a shiver of revulsion through me, but instead, I felt as if the value of my existence had been acknowledged, and I was happier than anything.
"I won't be able to see you anymore."
I tapped the entryway's keypad and barely managed to open the door, then turned back one last time to take in every corner of Hyunwoo's home.
A comfortable paradise that had accepted me, if only for a little while.
Even after I'm gone from this world, I will never forget this warmth.
I didn't need to put on shoes.
There weren't any in my size, and the hospital slippers I'd worn when I came to this house had already been returned.
I simply moved forward, taking only this body with me.
To bring an end to this chilling life, meaningless and nothing but a burden to everyone.
'I can't give Hyunwoo's clothes back...'
That was my last thought as I looked down at the white T-shirt I was wearing.
Creeeeak.
At last, the front door shut, and the door lock engaged automatically, as if to tell me there was no turning back.
'Let's go. This time, I'm really going to die.'