Remorse for the Past
For a whole month since my father passed away and my mother was sent to prison, my world barely moved beyond the convenience store.
In fact, even that small outing felt like a giant leap compared to the hours I'd spent outside the door right after I woke up in this body.
Back when my father was still alive, I couldn't leave the house at all.
The gender issue? I could handle it. I went to the district office, complained about the gender mismatch, got new photos taken, and got a new ID. That was all there was to it.
I wonder if that time was the most beautiful I'd ever looked as a woman.
I still went out in front of people, albeit clumsily, wearing clothes my mother lent me.
After that, I stayed home like a prisoner. My parents thought I was too ashamed of the people around me, so I took a leave of absence and locked myself in.
When my father raised his hand, my mother obeyed without a word.
At first I was grateful to my mother for accepting me as a woman.
But that gratitude faded with every day my father tormented me.
If only I'd been thrown out back then, things might have turned out differently.
Then both of them would just be good parents who loved their son.
I wouldn't have had twenty years of my entire life stolen from me.
If my eye and foot had stayed intact, I might have adapted to this land as a lone person, building a completely different future.
I'd have to think about that again.
It made me think of the neighbor girl once more.
She was the beautiful figure I'd never be able to become.
Thinking about it like that made everything pointless.
Just like there were no what-ifs in history, regretting things I couldn't have chosen was meaningless.
Still, after a month of hiding in the house, my life had shrunk to nothing more than visiting the convenience store to buy food.
I hadn't really trained hard even as a man.
But I'd wandered around campus and played with friends during PE, so my basic physical strength had been there.
After that, the only thing I called exercise was breathing.
My stamina must have been terrible.
With this kind of physical condition, after moving around this much today, I ended up slumped on the chair.
I'd rather not have Celestia alone in the living room, and it felt bad that she was cleaning while I just sat there, so I wanted to help a little.
But moving was already hard. Could I really help with the cleaning?
I tried to refuse her help and told her to rest, but I couldn't win the argument and went into the room.
Once I did, though, the outside world felt uneasy.
There wasn't much to steal, after all.
But if Celestia secretly took something, I'd feel terrible disappointing the girl who had helped me.
That was the fear.
You know that saying, don't be envious of the living?
Normally you don't think about it much, but when no one's watching, you start feeling envious of something.
Even places like the mart have CCTV data showing that stores with security cameras have lower theft rates.
But our house didn't have any CCTV.
...Still, if you think about it, you can't say for sure there was nothing.
What if I watched Celestia exposing herself on the camera while she broadcast? I could consider it that way.
Since her viewers were watching her, she wouldn't do anything shameful.
If I went to watch her broadcast separately and looked at her through the doorway, though, I'd be doubting her innocence and doing something sneaky.
...Still, I wanted to believe in Celestia's innocence and was doing this.
I prayed she wouldn't do anything strange in the living room.
I lowered the volume on my computer and looked for Celestia's broadcast.
League of Champions streamer Celestia.
Her Twiki page came out before her broadcast link, as if she already had some popularity.
I opened Celestia's broadcast link in a new tab and waited for the ad to finish.
While I waited, I skimmed through her document.
It was only natural to wonder what kind of person she was usually.
It didn't have much variety.
Her gaming records went back three years, but she started streaming this year.
She was a skilled ranged dealer who climbed between Master and Grandmaster every season.
Because of League of Champions's nature, there were a lot of streamers with bad personalities.
What made her stand out was that she was an unusually kind ranged dealer.
Thanks to that, people looking for a gentle broadcast came to her.
Well, I was one of the beneficiaries. That's why I was getting this much help.
There was also the unusual detail that she claimed to be a man despite having a feminine voice.
She claimed to be a man to avoid harassment, or that she only wanted recognition through gaming, and all kinds of notes were attached.
People just knew Celestia was a woman.
They were just pretending not to know.
After all, her voice alone made it hard to miss.
I skimmed through the content without much feeling and started watching Celestia clean.
According to her, she said she was doing the cleaning to fulfill her sponsor mission and earn money.
For some reason, she looked heartbroken while cleaning the living room mess like it was her own responsibility.
Watching her made me feel a little ashamed.
I had been the one who wanted to suspect her.
At the same time, seeing her chat happily with the viewers while cleaning made me envious.
Unlike the League of Champions community, there was no crossing the line in the chat.
The viewers were having fun chatting with Celestia.
Of course there was the teasing, but even if I couldn't see it in text, I knew whether affection or malice was behind it.
I didn't know, and it was something I couldn't do anyway.
It wasn't just bad luck with my eyes either.
Celestia's face was so cheerful that anyone would smile at it.
In the first place, Celestia could stream well without even showing her face.
Just her gaming skill and personality had drawn a surprising number of viewers.
If I were the old me, maybe I could have had normal communication, so there might have been a chance.
After months of being almost imprisoned and a month of free living alone, I realized I couldn't give a reason for others to watch my stream.
Was I good at gaming?
Well, as Master tier users, I was in the top 0.6 percent by percentage.
In actual population, that was still only around ten thousand people.
There were plenty of people better than me, and a lot of people who made interesting broadcasts regardless of rank.
There was no reason to watch my stream when there were so many better options.
...Man, I wonder if I started having envious thoughts just because I saw all the donations to Celestia.
It looked like the saying "don't be envious of the living" was something I should have said to myself instead of Celestia.
Celestia wasn't even sitting comfortably earning money, and I had thought of pointless things because of it.
I hadn't even asked anyone to watch my stream.
But like she had read my mind, Celestia suddenly brought up my story.
"Hey everyone. Noel-nim, honestly I'm worried about leaving you alone. Is there no way? Honestly, I don't know when the pick will break... ."
Viewers suggested turning on the internet broadcast as a way.
I had just thought they were trying to make money, so I had given up on my stream because I knew I couldn't do well.
They must have been thinking of using the internet broadcast to check my survival.
In an instant, I missed the passing conversation and stared blankly at the broadcast screen.
When the viewers teased Celestia, they probably just needed a clown.
But handclaps were needed for sound to be made.
I wasn't planning on reacting to that teasing, but would they really come watch?
Their suggestion might just be empty talk.
They needed to see me alive to feel at ease, so they were just telling me to turn on the broadcast and play games.
After all, if it was boring, they wouldn't watch anyway.
I knew I was boring too. I didn't think I'd watch my own stream.
Why were you giving me orders to broadcast?
...But that frustration disappeared quickly in the following chat.
The word "bastard" being spammed.
I felt sorry for Celestia, but it was better than saying "you're good at games."
Well, the words "bastard" or "top-sin-byeong-ja" were insults to the top laner, after all.
I didn't know how other laners would feel hearing their own self-insults, but hearing "bastard" felt good to me.
It was the job of a killer who danced with a knife.
I wasn't focused on hitting the enemy, but on cutting off the enemy blocking me and crushing them.
It felt even better because it was the opposite image of what I had experienced.
Surprisingly, getting recognition in the game like that gave me some comfort.
In my distracted state, I only realized later that Celestia was coming to my room.
"Noel-nim! No, what the viewers are saying right now! They say I'm worse than Noel-nim. What do you think?"
Startled, I instinctively closed the internet window and spun the chair around.
I knew in my head that Celestia was a kind person, so she wouldn't open the door until I invited her in.
But for twenty years, the sound of knocking at our house had only meant "come in."
Of course, that had been gone since I became a woman.
Still, I, who had been secretly watching Celestia, was shocked alone and hurriedly went to the door pretending not to do anything.
It seemed I had been too eager, and I fell on the floor.
"Ow!"
"Noel-nim?!"
Of course, with a clatter of bones, I fell on the floor.
Celestia, having heard the sound, opened the door without permission.
She immediately squatted in front of me and made a fuss.
"Noel-nim, are you okay? Did you break any bones? Oh no, I'm so sorry for startling you like this..."
"...I'm fine. It's not that bad. And, um, since Celestia-nim's rating is higher, that means Celestia-nim is better than me, right."
"It is not the time to talk about that!"
What was she saying? How important ranking was.