Wanting to Hide the Traces of the Past
A soft rustle.
Morning had come.
With a body clock set to the crack of dawn, the sun had barely lifted its head above the horizon.
My brother-in-law started getting ready for work at six. He worked from seven in the morning until around five in the afternoon. Most companies started at eight or nine, so his place must have had some kind of flexible benefits.
I'd never worked a proper office job myself, so I couldn't say for sure. Still, there were apparently companies where you came in early and left early.
The sound of him getting up woke me on autopilot, and I rose to start on breakfast.
"Uh…?"
But like a baby who hadn't quite learned to walk, I crumpled straight back down onto the floor.
"Jiwoo! Are you okay?"
"I—I'm fine."
In an instant, darkness swarmed in like a cloud of insects, closing in from every side. Dizziness hit me at the same time, and my sense of balance vanished completely.
"Whoa. You scared me. You're not actually sick, are you? Should we go to the hospital?"
"I'm fine. I just need to sit like this for a second…."
The world spun. It was worse than any night I'd ever gotten blackout drunk. My breathing turned ragged, and a sharp pain bloomed in my chest.
"Maybe we really should get you to a hospi—"
"It's getting better. Honestly, just a moment is all I need."
He must have seen me clutching my chest, because he rested a hand lightly on my shoulder, his voice thick with worry. I couldn't see his face. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears.
Thinking it might be hyperventilation, I pressed a pillow over my face. A few minutes passed. The crackling darkness slowly drained away, and the dizziness went with it.
"Ah—oppa, the time!"
"Whoa. It's already this late?"
The clock made it clear that far too much time had slipped by. Morning hours had a strange way of vanishing in a blink.
With no preparation done at all, he threw on his clothes at once.
I hurried straight to the kitchen to throw together something—anything—he could eat. Breakfast was non-negotiable if you wanted the energy to get through the day.
I pulled out a frying pan and lit the gas stove.
I smeared butter roughly onto a couple of slices of toast, cracked an egg into the heating pan and coaxed it into holding its shape, then toasted the bread right alongside it.
"Take this with you!"
A final swipe of jam, and I had something that looked terrible but could at least pass for a sandwich if you squinted hard enough.
"Thanks! I'll be back!"
I'd even kept a stash of wax paper on hand for exactly this kind of morning. Greasy hands on a gearshift was the last thing someone who babied his car needed—of course I'd prepared for it.
"Haa…."
The little war that broke out every morning was over.
Silence settled over a house that was a touch too big for two people. The only sound left was the faint hum of the refrigerator motor.
"Well then. Time to clean."
I toasted the leftover bread for my own meal, then picked up the cleaning supplies.
Even after three months of cleaning this place in fits and starts, something was still wedged into every forgotten corner.
I called it "something" because I genuinely had no idea what half of it was. Like Columbus who hadn't yet found a new continent, I was still exploring this house.
"Ah. You've got to be kidding me."
Lipsticks and a whole pile of unidentifiable cosmetics came spilling out. At least it wasn't cockroaches, so there was that….
"Ah!"
And they were the exact same shade—barely used, practically brand new. There were two more just like them. It wasn't as if money grew on trees, and yet she'd gone and bought more just because she'd forgotten she already had them.
"Ugh…."
I sorted them roughly and dumped them into a basket. I'd sell them later.
"Eugh."
When it came to women, my sister was the only one I'd ever really known. A graduate of an all-boys middle school and high school, I'd never had any reason to meet women at all. At best I knew my sister, that human scum, and the crazy woman who'd turned this house into a dump.
So I couldn't help wondering—was every woman's vanity table like this? Could anyone even tell these things apart? Cosmetics that looked almost identical to lipstick lay scattered everywhere, and the colors barely differed. I had to question whether any of it was actually necessary.
"Ugh… when am I ever going to finish cleaning this…."
I swept the cosmetics into the basket in one go.
But turn your head one way and there was trash. Turn it the other, and morning sunlight spilled across yet another pile of garbage.
Under the banner of cleaning, I was on a little adventure through what had once been my sister's room.
"Oh. Cheap!"
Grocery shopping before starting dinner had become something of a habit.
I'd decide what to cook that day, jot it down in my phone's notes app, wander the markets, and finally buy from wherever was cheapest without sacrificing quality. That was the goal.
By now I had a mental spreadsheet of the price differences, so I didn't wander aimlessly anymore—I just hit each market for whatever was cheapest there.
Now that was thrift.
"Have a nice day~"
"Khh… unreal."
I'd scored another bargain today. Savings like this had to be adding up. The points kept accumulating too—pretty soon I'd be able to grab a few things without even bringing cash.
For every won my sister had blown through, I had to save that much more. Otherwise my brother-in-law would scrape together enough money to find some other woman and remarry, wouldn't he?
He might not look it, but he was twenty-seven. I'd casually asked once whether he'd ever been with a woman, and he'd said no.
So that meant the relationship… yeah. No. He wasn't the type to go hire a prostitute or call girl just to lose his virginity.
My sister? She didn't even count. He'd had no experience at all.
She used to go on about how she was saving herself for marriage. Trying to mop up a puddle with a dirty rag only made the floor filthier—some things were better thrown out entirely.
He was the kind of guy who got business cards pressed into his hand, numbers slipped to him, and photos taken of him just walking down the street—close enough that he still drove everywhere. The thought that someone like him had never once met a woman flickered briefly through my mind.
Mulling over how to make a decent kimchi stew, I headed toward where the sun was sinking.
"…Ugh. You've got to be kidding. Not now."
Strength drained from my body all at once, and I staggered.
The same thing from this morning had come back for round two. My vision started going black. Starting from the edges of my eyes, something chewed away at my sight bit by bit, like insects gnawing through paper.
—Thud.
Dizziness crashed over me. I lost my balance completely and crumpled to the ground.
"Ahh…."
I couldn't see a thing. Even straining my eyes did nothing—my facial muscles had locked up as if something had gone wrong with them, and the crackling darkness kept swelling. The only proof I had actually fallen was the stinging in my knees.
"Urgh…."
The dizziness grew worse until I thought I might throw up. So this was what people meant when they said the world was spinning. I was definitely sitting or collapsed on the ground—and yet my head kept turning on its own, the throbbing and the vertigo refusing to let up.
"Augh…!!"
Then a gut-twisting sensation seized my entire body. What was this, some kind of all-in-one misery gift set?
I didn't even know if my eyes were open or shut. With a trembling hand I forced them closed, pressing down hard. At the very least, I begged whatever was out there to just let me pass out.
My whole body felt like it was being torn apart. I wanted to scream. My bones felt as if they were shattering, or thrashing around of their own accord. It was like being crushed in a hydraulic press, my body compressed under impossible pressure. Every pain I had ever felt in my life seemed to hit me all at once.
I prayed to God, to anyone, that this goddamn agony would just end.
"Urgh…."
I lifted a hand to that still-pitch-black field of vision and forced my eyes shut tight.
"……?"
A faint smell of disinfectant hung in the air—the kind that made you feel like just walking into the nurse's office would scrub you clean. At the soft beeping nearby, I turned my head and found a monitor that seemed to be tracking my heart rate, along with a plastic IV bag whose tube ran down into my arm.
I'd never been hospitalized in my life, but drama knowledge was enough to tell me this was a hospital. A private room, too. Those weren't cheap.
Still—it was a hospital. Apparently I'd survived.
The pain that had felt like it would kill me was already gone, but the moment I tried to move, my body ached as if my bones were settling back into place.
And something about my chest felt a little heav—
"…Uh. Uh?"
The view when I looked down was entirely new as well.
At first I wondered if my belly fat had somehow shifted upward—but there were two of them. They looked rather… appealing, honestly. Not quite melons. Cantaloupes, maybe.
"…Ah. Aaa… aaa… hahaha."
I felt like an idiot. What the hell was this. Those were straight-up women's breasts.
Was all that body-twisting agony just gynecomastia? Some kind of acute case that made them suddenly balloon out, and I'd screamed in a woman's voice from the pain, and my voice had gone hoarse and changed because of it, and….
"Ah. Ah… ah……."
When I absently reached lower, there was nothing there. Even the precious thing I'd only ever half-used was gone. Come on—I could have at least gotten to use it once. Snatching it away like this was just rude.
—Rattle.
"Eh."
While I was still groping at the empty space, the hospital room door slid open and someone walked in.
A person in a white coat, and beside them a woman in nurse's scrubs. Even I knew a doctor and a nurse when I saw them.
"You're awake. Please don't worry—you're in a hospital. Patient Lee Jiwoo… is that correct?"
"Yes… that's right, but."
The doctor adjusted his glasses and double-checked the papers in his hand.
"I'm sure you have a great many questions. The condition you've developed is extremely rare."
"Rare…?"
I had no idea. What kind of disease turns you into a woman?
I'd never even heard of such a thing. It hadn't shown up in any of those "Top 5 Rarest Diseases" videos the algorithm kept recommending on Nertube, either.
"Could you start by explaining what's going on right now?"
My throat itched faintly. Parched as a drought, it came out rough and cracked.
"It's commonly called TS Syndrome. Though 'commonly' is a stretch—there aren't even five known cases in all of South Korea. We are looking for a treatment. But for the time being, it's safer to assume there isn't one."
So I was supposed to live as a woman forever now.
In a very small, trembling voice, I spoke to the doctor.
"Surgery…?"
"You would need ongoing hormone therapy, and even with a mastectomy or gender-reassignment surgery, you should assume you could never fully return to how you looked before."
I'd learned about transgender people one day, scrolling past videos I was bored of. People who wanted to become the opposite gender, who used hormone therapy and various surgeries to reshape their bodies to match.
Men who wanted to be seen as women, and the reverse. And even after all of that, modern medicine still couldn't fully change someone's sex. A woman still couldn't carry a child. A man still couldn't get an erection, still couldn't ejaculate. No surgery could alter the skeleton.
Pacific-wide shoulders couldn't be hidden. Height above the average woman, a broader upper body, a narrow pelvis—all of it remained a problem.
"Ah…."
In that sense, I had become a perfectly complete woman.
It made me feel filthy. What the hell was this.
Something sat lodged in my chest, a constant pressure I couldn't clear. It was irritating. Nothing resolved. An emotion I couldn't name kept rising, and not knowing what it even was only made me more annoyed.
I moved without thinking. I slipped on the hospital slippers and tried to stand. They were far too big—or rather, my feet had simply gotten smaller.
"Ah! You shouldn't be moving right n—!"
"Huh? …Ah?"
I'd meant to get up, but no strength reached my legs.
"Whoa… that startled me."
Fortunately, my legs had been useless to begin with, so I hadn't managed a single step. The nurse caught on instantly, grabbed me, and settled me back onto the bed before anything worse could happen.
"You can't move right now."
"Yes, ma'am…."
Through a gap in the patient gown, I caught a glimpse of legs like toothpicks. Trying to stand on those had been pretty stupid of me.
"…For now, let's run a full physical tomorrow. We'll need to check everything else as well."
"Yes…."
Suddenly I wanted a real meal. That dangling bag was feeding me nutrients, sure—but I wanted actual food.
With every light off, I lay back down and stared out at the dark window. I tried to sleep. Sleep wouldn't come.
…My chest was uncomfortable.