I Became a Woman (2)
Father stared at me, breathing hard and ragged.
Those eyes terrified me. He wasn't drunk—not on alcohol—but he was drunk on something. It was the same look he'd worn the day Mom left home.
"Yoon Doyun, you fucking bitch!"
"Nnh… nngh… D-Dad…."
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts—
Dad? Ever since I'd entered high school, I had always called him Father.
It wasn't because he'd ordered me to. I simply hadn't wanted to call him Dad.
How to put it… Our relationship as father and son had never been particularly close, never particularly warm.
Calling him "mister" was out of the question—we shared blood, and if I'd tried it he probably would have beaten me to death.
So the title I'd settled on was Father.
He had been perfectly content under the illusion that his child was showing him respect, and I had been content in my own way.
That was how it was supposed to be—and yet the word that had just left my mouth was Dad.
Whether it had slipped out because my head was stuffed full of nothing but the word hurts, or because my body and mind were so shredded with pain that it simply burst free, I couldn't say.
"You. What the hell are you doing with all the lights off?"
"Nngh… nh… nnnn…."
The thud of his footsteps coming toward me had never sounded more oppressive.
I knew. When Father lost it completely, nothing else existed until his rage burned itself out.
Whether the other person was in pain, frightened, begging—
None of it registered. He simply ran wild until he collapsed from exhaustion.
"Ah—!"
He seized me by the hair.
My body was dragged wherever his hand led, then hurled from the bed onto the floor.
A sharp slap of flesh against surface. Then the scrape of my body skidding across the floorboards.
When I caught on the threshold, he jerked me forward with a vicious yank. My knee slammed into the door; the hollow wooden panel boomed.
Click.
The front door swung open.
"Get out. I don't need the likes of you!"
"Ghk—!"
My body went flying. As a girl, I was so light.
For a moment I felt almost free of gravity—then, like Icarus tumbling after reaching for the sun, I slammed into the ground.
I was just trying to push myself up, shoving the pain aside, when—
BANG—!
The front door slammed shut hard.
From inside came the sound of something being fiddled with.
I tried the door lock and punched in the passcode. Nothing happened. He'd pulled the batteries from inside, apparently.
Ahh—
No… Had he really abandoned me? For real?
Thud. Thud. I pounded on the door.
Like a madwoman—or maybe I really had gone mad—I hammered at it as if I meant to smash it down.
"Dad! Dad! I'm sorry! I—I'm so sorry! I won't do it again! So please…! Please open the door!"
No answer.
He had to be able to hear me from inside, but there wasn't so much as a word in reply.
A delivery driver walking down the far end of the hallway glanced at me and kept going.
At a unit where the driver had left food, a front door opened.
A hand darted out through the gap—then, hearing the racket I'd raised, snatched the food in a hurry and slammed the door shut again.
The late-autumn night air was bitterly cold, and the floor, chilled through, was freezing against my skin.
My lower belly ached, and my body kept growing colder.
I hugged my knees and tried to gather what little warmth I could, but it wasn't enough.
Sniff. Sniff. Hic—
Snot ran down my face. My eyes kept wanting to close.
I'd read somewhere that if you fall asleep when your body temperature is too low, you can die of hypothermia…
I wouldn't wake up in the afterlife or something ridiculous like that, right?
Nnh… I don't want to die. I'm scared.
I forced my eyes open. My eyeballs were so dry they ached; I opened them so wide that tears pricked out.
"Excuse me. Student?"
I lifted my face from where it had been buried against my knees. Two police officers were standing there.
I blinked up at them.
"Why are you out here instead of going inside?"
"Well… this is my house, but…."
I pointed at our door.
That alone was enough for the officers to grasp what kind of situation I was in. They let out a sigh, then pounded on the front door.
"Is anyone home? This is the police. We received a report and responded."
They hadn't even knocked more than a few times.
Footsteps sounded from inside, and the front door opened.
In that short span Father must have cracked open another bottle; a sickly-sweet liquor smell rolled off him.
"What. Why are you here?"
"We received a report about your daughter being outside. Is something going on?"
Father snorted at the officer's words and kept talking.
"Daughter, my ass…. Just stay out of it and go. Parents discipline their kids and somebody calls the cops over that?"
"Come on, sir. She'll freeze to death out here in this weather!"
"…… Let her die or not. Get out. Just because you're cops, you think you can barge into someone's house? Out! Now."
Father shoved the officers back with his body and shut the door. They knocked again, but it never opened.
"Haaa…. What do we do?"
"What do we do, nothing…. Kid? What's your name?"
"…… Yoon Doyun."
"Right. Doyun. Just stay at the station for today, okay?"
"Am I… going to jail? Because I did something wrong? Because I'm a bad kid…?"
Tears welled at the corners of my eyes.
They gathered, then spilled down my cheeks.
My shoulders shook. My breath came faster and faster.
Mom, Father… everyone threw me away….
It's because I'm bad. Because I didn't listen? Because I'm useless? Yeah. I'm useless. That's why they abandoned me.
If I'd been good, if I'd listened to Mom—if I had, she definitely would have taken me with her.
Bad. Bad. Bad.
Doyun, you're a bad kid.
Someone like me… the world would have been better off without me.
Then Mom and Father both would have been happy.
Father wouldn't have drunk, and Mom wouldn't have gone around with other men. It's because I wasn't enough. Because of me.
It's my fault. It's my fault. It's my fault. It's my fault.
"Khh—… hah, hahk… hnn! Hk. Hwaah…."
"Doyun? Doyun!"
My vision blurred.
The murmuring around me slowed, then faded until I couldn't hear it at all.
A fierce chemical smell stabbed my nose.
When I opened my eyes, I knew at a glance. A hospital.
Nurses moved around nearby, and in the next bed someone lay groaning in pain.
My hand felt strange.
Something was holding it tight.
I shifted my gaze and found Father gripping my hand in both of his. His head kept nodding as he dozed, but his grip never loosened.
I moved my mouth and made a sound. It came out as a mumble.
I blinked slowly, twice. My foggy vision gradually cleared.
At last both my body and my mind were fully awake.
"Father…?"
"Doyun?!"
The moment my voice reached his ears, his whole body gave a violent start.
The glasses he'd been wearing sat crooked, and a string of drool hung from the corner of his mouth; he looked a mess.
But his eyes were clear. The crazed look from last night had vanished without a trace, leaving only a lucid light.
And his hands—so warm, so soft…. Father's large, thick hands were carefully cradling my now-slender ones.
"I'm sorry. Dad's sorry. I must have been out of my mind…. Throwing you out in that cold. I'm sorry. But you know Dad loves you, right, Doyun? I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
"… Yeah. Father. It's okay…. I love you too."
I reached up and straightened his crooked glasses.
The rims of Father's eyes were red.
"Mmm…."
I put a piece of pork cutlet in my mouth.
I'd cut it to the size I used to eat, but for me now it was far too big.
The outside was crisp; inside, it was juicy and tender.
The meat still held a faint blush of pink—exactly the doneness I liked best, soft and yielding.
Father watched me eat with a look of quiet satisfaction, then pushed some of the food from his own plate over to mine.
"Apparently you're required to report an Anomaly within three months of confirmation. The police told me."
"… The CSAT is in two weeks. Can't I report it after I take the exam?"
"Sure. Let's do that."
Still… I was already struggling to finish my own portion. Did I really have to eat what Father had given me too…? Wasting food was bad, so I supposed I had to finish it all.
After just a few bites my stomach felt full, but I gritted my teeth and kept chewing and swallowing.
It had tasted good at first; forced down like this, it turned greasy.
Father was always like this. When he drank he became a raving tyrant, but sober he was gentle and kind.
I still wasn't sure which one was the real him.
Was the drunken self instinct, and the everyday self reason?
That doctor who turned into a green monster when he got angry was more famous by the monster's name than his own.
Looking at it that way—was instinct Father's true face?
But the idea that a nature dragged out only with the help of alcohol was someone's real self… that seemed like too sad a story.
I drank some cola. The greasiness washed clean away.
Before I knew it, only one piece of cutlet remained. I speared it with my fork, put it in my mouth, chewed a couple of times, and swallowed.
Ugh… my stomach is stuffed.
I wiped the sauce and crumbs from the corner of my mouth, set the napkin on the table, and leaned back against the chair.
"All done?"
"Yeees…."
"Did it taste all right?"
"Yes. It was delicious."
"Good. Then let's go."
"… Okay."
I wished we could rest just a little longer…. My stomach was so full that moving felt difficult.
Even so, I got to my feet.
I meant to fall in behind him the way I always did. In that same moment, Father's hand caught me by the waist and drew me against his side.
"……!"
He'd never done anything like this before…. His behavior left me thoroughly flustered.
Don't tell me. Is he looking at me as a girl…?
I don't know.