Your Role
The path I would normally have walked side by side with Woo Han-gyeol, I walked today to the sound of Park So-yeon's idle chatter.
Her nonstop stream of talk somehow didn't bother me at all. The walk to school, which would have left me sinking into strange moods if I'd been alone, passed lightly thanks to her.
Park So-yeon carried on just fine by herself about the variety show she'd watched yesterday and the school lunch menu. Occasional short replies from me were enough. The road where I always matched Woo Han-gyeol's stride, I walked today at Park So-yeon's pace.
Looking back, mornings spent walking with someone didn't have to be with Woo Han-gyeol at all. I had simply known only that one possibility for far too long.
When we entered the classroom, Park So-yeon showed no sign of heading to her own class and trailed right after me.
"Aren't you going to your class?"
"I will. But first."
Park So-yeon grinned and hooked one arm over my desk. Then she deliberately raised her voice so the whole room could hear.
"Lee Ji-an, if you've got nothing to do during break, come over to my class. Got it? I'll be waiting."
As she spoke, I caught her gaze flick sideways—precisely toward Woo Han-gyeol in the next seat. The tone was clearly meant to be overheard, though I couldn't quite read the intention behind it.
"......Okay. If I have time."
"Okay. See you later, then. Make sure you come."
Park So-yeon extracted one more promise, waved with a satisfied face, and left the classroom with light steps.
Woo Han-gyeol, who had been staring blankly after her, wore a somewhat bewildered expression. Normally she would have greeted Park So-yeon cheerfully or rushed in to ask what they had been talking about. Today she couldn't manage even that, only moving her lips without sound.
Thinking about it, it was only natural. The me she knew had always been the person glued to her side. Even after knowing each other so long, seeing me get along so freely with Park So-yeon must have felt foreign to her. That someone else had entered my world besides her—perhaps this was the first time she had confirmed it with her own eyes.
The moment I sat down, Woo Han-gyeol turned straight toward me.
"......Ji-an."
"What."
"Why didn't you come pick me up this morning?"
A faint pout colored her voice.
"I was so bored coming to school alone. We always come together, so suddenly going by myself made the road feel way too long. I waited forever and you never showed, so I just left on my own."
There was no malice in the words. She truly still took it for granted that I would come fetch her. That she had given her heart to someone else, and that I had stepped back from her side—she seemed never to have considered how those two things connected.
Imagining her waiting for me that morning made a corner of my heart ache again. But answering that wait was no longer my part to play.
I looked at her for a moment, then spoke calmly.
"......Because I don't think that's my role anymore."
Words I let slip almost under my breath. I didn't particularly hope she would grasp the weight inside them, nor that she would miss it. I simply couldn't keep swallowing them down any longer and let one fragment out.
Her reply, though, was all too innocent.
"What are you talking about. That was always your role."
For an instant a heavy weight settled deep in my chest.
Always your role.
She said it so casually, as if stating an obvious fact. And that single phrase laid bare exactly what kind of existence I had been to her for the past twenty years. To her I had been that from beginning to end—not love, but something as natural as air.
Even though I had already known it, my chest stung briefly. That after dedicating twenty years I was ultimately just a role. That I had never been able to become anything more. The fact brushed quietly across my heart.
But I couldn't resent her. She spoke that way not out of malice—simply because she knew nothing else.
Woo Han-gyeol was a child who had lived her whole life frail and sickly. While her peers made friends and jostled their way through broadening their worlds, she had been confined to a narrow hospital room. What filled her world were the dramas, books, and comics she watched there, along with her parents and me.
The sunlight that came through the narrow hospital window, the comic-book pages she turned while hooked to an IV, the outside world she only ever saw on television—that was nearly the entirety of the world she knew. Having never had the chance to experience proper friendships or social life, it was only natural that her heart remained more childish than her peers'.
To a girl like that, I wasn't simply someone by her side. I was one of the pillars holding up her narrow world. So she couldn't even imagine a life without me—because she had never experienced one.
Thinking that way, pity washed over me before resentment. A pitiful child. One who had experienced the world so narrowly that she didn't even know the person beside her could disappear.
......And perhaps I was the same. Just as I had been her entire world, to me she was the person in whom twenty years were entirely embedded. Someone I could neither hate nor tear away all at once. Half my life—no, perhaps more—had been filled with her. The countless nights spent together, the trivial promises shared, her laughter and tears—all of it was etched so deeply inside me that even if I tried to cut it out, I couldn't.
That was why this stepping back was so slow and painful. It wasn't simply folding one heart away; it was slowly peeling myself from a person deeply embedded in my life.
Even so, I had to let go. For her sake and for mine. I couldn't stay in that role forever. There was no place for me in the future where she smiled with Yu-jin. There shouldn't be. If I kept hovering by her side to the end, I would only become a small shadow cast over her happiness.
"......Yeah. It was."
I managed only that reply, swallowing every word I really wanted to say once again.
She simply tilted her head a little, as if she didn't understand what my short answer meant.
Just then the bell rang to start class. Thanks to that, the awkward conversation cut off without going any further. Woo Han-gyeol still looked as if something remained unfinished, but she didn't ask more. Once the lesson began, a strange silence settled between us.
Pretending to look at the blackboard, I chewed over that earlier remark. That was always your role. The more I turned it over, the bitterer it tasted, yet strangely it wasn't only sad. Perhaps through those words I had taken one more step toward sorting out my heart.
The word "role" certainly hurt. But at the same time it also drew a clear line for me. I could never become her lover, and there would be no such thing in the future either. I had merely been one role that once stayed by her side. Once I accepted that fact, my heart seemed to lighten a little. Regret is heavy only while possibility still remains, after all.
The next period was a moving class. As I gathered my textbook and headed for the science lab, a familiar face was waiting for me in the hallway. It was Park So-yeon.
"Hey, you."
Spotting me, she crossed her arms and came over, mouth set in a full pout.
"Why didn't you come during break? I waited, you know."
"......Ah."
Come to think of it, I had sat blankly lost in thought the whole break and completely forgotten.
"Sorry. I forgot."
"Hmph. Making people wait."
At her grumbling I somehow found myself chuckling. Even though she talked like that, she had waited because she wanted to see me again. Like Kim Seol-ah yesterday, there were a lot of people around me whose mouths and hearts operated separately.
"......What were you doing that you didn't come?"
Park So-yeon asked as she stuck close beside me.
"Nothing much. Just read a book for the first time in a while."
"A book?"
"Yeah. These days I've got some time to read."
Time that hadn't existed before. The hours that used to be packed tight from looking after Woo Han-gyeol were now quite empty. The place where I used to check her condition, prepare her medicine, and figure out the next schedule—now there was nothing. I was filling that empty time with the things I used to like after a long while.
"What book did you read? Was it fun?"
"Hmm. So-so. An author I used to like back in the day, and reading it again after so long felt fresh."
"Oh, unexpected. I didn't know you read stuff like that."
"......What do you take me for."
"No, just. You always looked busy looking after Han-gyeol. I wondered if you even had time to open a book."
Park So-yeon shrugged. It was a remark without malice, yet it struck a strangely precise spot. Truly, I hadn't had the leisure to open a book with any peace of mind all this time.
"Now I've got a bit of time."
I answered shortly.
"Hmm. Good for you, then. We should go to the bookstore together sometime. I look at comics and stuff once in a while too."
When she brought up the bookstore, her voice was somehow a little excited.
"......You read comics?"
"Why. Doesn't suit me?"
"No. Just a bit unexpected."
"We're in the same boat, you know."
At the sight of Park So-yeon pouting her lips, I found myself laughing once more.