Unresolved Envy
I often wondered what I would do with my life. The thought first occurred to me around the time our teacher asked us to write down our future aspirations. I simply couldn't picture myself as an adult, so I scribbled nonsense across the blank space with my pencil. There was still plenty of time, after all. Three years of middle school and another three of high school stretched ahead of me. Things would work out somehow. If all else failed, I could always do manual labor. I was stronger than the other kids, so something like that would be easy enough.
I never bothered worrying about the future. Dwelling on it felt far less appealing than enjoying the present. When the teacher saw my questionnaire covered in doodles instead of answers, she scolded me. It annoyed me. What did she expect me to do? Was it wrong not to have any dreams? Even the orphanage teachers had been getting on my nerves lately. So I took it out on that kid.
I hated how small and weak she was, yet she walked forward with such certainty. She never fought back. She just took the hits. Even that irritated me. Then one day, she left the orphanage. A famous person everyone recognized took her by the hand and walked her out. Rumor had it she was a genius, and that important person had come to support her. A wave of irritation crashed over me. I didn't know why. Someone as stupid as me couldn't trace the source of that feeling.
Before she left, she looked at me and shouted for the first time. With that usual smiling face, she finally pushed back. The insults she hurled at me were so vulgar I can't even remember them now, but I understood what they meant. Pity. She had looked at me with pity. I could only stand there frozen, because no one had ever regarded me with that emotion before. I watched her leave in a daze. That small girl had moved forward. She would keep moving forward.
Then what about me?
I had stayed frozen, watching her go.
The fastest way to soothe a crying child is to put something sweet in their mouth. It was one of the tips Song the writer had given the uncle about taking care of kids.
“Feeling better now?”
“……Yeah.”
Song's advice worked like a charm. Seo Yebin, her eyes still red, nodded while sucking on the Melona I had bought her. Since we needed somewhere to sit, we had wandered into a playground in an apartment complex and settled on the swings. She sat normally, but my swing swayed gently. My feet didn't reach the ground.
“So, why exactly did you do that? You looked ready to kill me earlier, and now you're clinging to me and crying.”
“…Shut up. It's embarrassing even for me to think about.”
Her face was as red as her eyes. She muttered without meeting my gaze.
“I'm sorry….”
“For hitting me?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“It hurt, didn't it?”
“It did. But why are you apologizing?”
“…Because I hit you?”
“Then what about all the times you hit me before?”
“I'm sorry for those too.”
“You realize how ridiculous this situation is, right?”
“Yeah.”
The person who had tormented me for so long suddenly shows up after ages, slaps me, and starts accounting for everything? Who could possibly accept an apology like that?
“If the teachers are making you do this, just don't.”
“They're not making me.”
“Then what is it? You hit me every single day, saying you were annoyed or that it pissed you off. What did you say earlier? Asked if I was selling my body to live well? And now my cheek looks like this. But after just one hour, you've completely changed and want to apologize? Do you think I'm an idiot? That I'd believe that?”
“I think the same thing.”
“This conversation is going nowhere.”
It wasn't that she lacked common sense. She simply had no conscience. Still, if this were any other day, she wouldn't have said any of this. She would have thrown punches without a word. Seeing her so docile for the first time, I found myself continuing the conversation without thinking.
“If you have something to say, say it quickly.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Something other than that.”
A headache was coming on.
“You'll probably just keep repeating the same thing, so I'll change what I'm saying. Why did you get so angry the moment you saw me today?”
“I'm sorry.”
“If you say that one more time, I'm calling the police and requesting a restraining order.”
“Sor—, ah, um.”
Whether it would actually work or not, Seo Yebin didn't know anyway. After my threat, she fell silent, lowered her head for a moment as if thinking, then finally spoke.
“……I was really jealous of you.”
“Of me?”
“You were small and cute, so everyone loved you. You were smart and did well in school. On top of that, people were calling you a genius in broadcasting. Of course I was jealous.”
“So you bullied me?”
“…I don't remember the exact reason, but I think that was it.”
“That's the worst.”
“You're right.”
Seo Yebin gave a self-deprecating laugh.
“Do you know what my dream is? I don't even know. I have no idea what I want to do. I'm not good at anything, I'm not smart, and there's nothing I want to do. So I hated watching you do things. Seeing you made me feel so worthless. Then when you left with that man and cursed us out… my head started ringing. I thought, ‘Why am I doing this?’”
It was the day I left the orphanage with the uncle and hurled insults at Seo Yebin and her group for the first time. Since none of them had parents, I skipped the usual parental insults and mocked their personalities and pathetic lives instead before walking away. I never imagined she had taken those words to heart.
“So after you left, I tried to figure things out. What could I do? What should I do? What did I want to do? Did I have any talent? What was I good at? But I couldn't figure it out. If you've never thought about it before, you can't just suddenly come up with an answer. So I decided to try everything.”
“Everything?”
“I didn't want to join a runaway group and sell my body or deal drugs. So I started by helping out at the orphanage. But it was hard. Managing the kids was one thing, but even simple chores like organizing stuff were difficult because I couldn't lift things adults could lift easily. Paperwork was completely incomprehensible. Then I saw you come back.”
“That must have been when you were really annoyed.”
“Yeah. At first, I just wanted to vent my irritation. But then you said that… No, the person I didn't want to find out about the things I was hiding ended up finding out. In that moment of anger, my hand just flew out. I'm sorry.”
“No, I mean… Haah, whatever.”
Seo Yebin spoke so earnestly that she bowed her head, as if this apology wasn't just words. I couldn't easily accept that sight.
“That doesn't mean I'm asking for your forgiveness.”
“I know.”
“So why did you stop me? Was it just to say sorry and cry while blocking my way?”
“The crying… I've been having trouble controlling my emotions lately for some reason….”
Ah, she was going through puberty. I'd forgotten that girls hit it earlier than boys. That part made sense.
“That's part of it, but… there was something I really wanted to tell you.”
“Something you wanted to tell me? It's not another ‘I'm sorry,’ right?”
“Thank you.”
“…….”
“Thanks for helping me come to my senses. I just wanted to say that.”
After saying that, Seo Yebin stood up from the swing. She tossed the ice cream stick she'd been holding into the trash can.
“The ice cream was good.”
She was about to leave the playground when I called out to her.
“Wait a second.”
This time, I was the one stopping her. I still felt unsettled. Even though I hadn't forgiven her, my adult self who pitied her was clashing with everything else. So I decided to point her in one direction. Seo Yebin looked slightly surprised, as if she hadn't expected to be called back.
“Even if you haven't studied, you still have notebooks and pens, right?”
“Ah, uh… Yeah, I do…?”
“Write something with them.”
“Huh?”
“You said you'd try everything, didn't you? So write whatever you want in a notebook. A diary, fantasies, anything.”
As I spoke, I wondered what I was even doing.
“You never know. Maybe someone will read it and want to publish it as a book.”
***
“…What do you think?”
“What do you mean, what do I think? She had a change of heart, right? That's a good thing. She even apologized.”
“That's true, but it still feels weird.”
Late at night, after the uncle returned, we ate chicken as a late-night snack while talking about what had happened. He drank his beer and told me not to worry about it since good things were good, but I couldn't just let it go.
I woke up the day after Christmas when I was twelve… so I don't know anything before that.
The stories I'd heard from the director. The stories I'd heard from Seo Yebin. Those were all things that had happened to the original Seo Sua before I opened my eyes. The time I was bullied by her lasted less than a month. That was why I didn't feel any resentment toward her. But the twelve-year-old Seo Sua was different. I couldn't accept forgiveness on her behalf. That was why something kept lingering uncomfortably in my heart. And I couldn't talk about any of this with anyone.
“If you keep worrying about things like that from such a young age, you'll have a hard time when you're old. When you're young, you should think simply, like a kid.”
“Even though you're an adult, you think pretty simply yourself…”
“That's because my mindset is young. Khaha!”
Said the forty-something bachelor.
“At least it's over now. Even if it ended on an awkward note, don't dwell on it. Just start something exciting enough to make you forget about that feeling. That's how life works.”
“Is that so…”
“That's right.”
I wasn't sure. But that was how people were. Living without fully understanding things. That was life. Accepting that, I reached for the chicken to satisfy my own hunger. But something that should have been there was missing.
“…Uncle, did you eat the legs?”
“Yep.”
“How many?”
“One.”
“Then what are these two long bones?”
“The drumsticks.”
“If the bones are this long, wasn't this an eagle instead of a chicken?”
“Whoa, were we eating fried eagle?”
He widened his eyes in genuine surprise.
“…….”
When I glared at him coldly, he quickly wiped the expression off his face and went back to eating his chicken. I kicked his knee under the table and put a wing in my mouth.
“By the way, how's your work going?”
“The internet broadcast editing? Yeah, it's going alright. Weren't you watching?”
“I'm not the type to sit around watching that all day. If you're doing fine on your own, why would I need to check?”
Thanks to Choi Bom's hard work, the YouTube channel looked much better. Using the profile, banner, and illustrations of Oh Serin in various poses for editing had gotten great reactions. Putting something eye-catching in rather than leaving things empty naturally helped viewers immerse themselves in the videos. Right now, I was working on standing images to use during streams.
“Well, if you need anything, just say so. I'll help with whatever I can.”
“Got it.”
I didn't really have any reason to ask for his help, but the offer alone made me happy. Just then, a notification went off on the tablet sitting beside me. It was the tablet the uncle had given me since I didn't have a phone. I could only use it when there was Wi-Fi, but since I only used it at home anyway, it wasn't much of an inconvenience. I picked up the tablet and checked the notification. It was a Discord chat alert from Oh Serin. But the content…
“…I think I'm going to need your help after all, Uncle.”
“Huh?”
I set the tablet down. The Discord chat on the screen read: