You Can Just Do It
You can just do it.
Something too painful for a child to accept. Something too heavy for a person to bear… a mineral hardness no words could ever explain.
"Don't stand out."
That was the first thing I ever truly understood after I came of age.
My mother had been frail. She died giving birth to me.
That was all I knew. More precisely, that was all I was ever allowed to know. Whenever I asked about her, the man called my father never answered a single thing. The number of conversations we ever shared, including that one, I could count on one hand.
I had two older brothers above me… but they were no different. Mocking me as a loser, sneering that I was a cast-off child—that was simply everyday life.
"You little murderer."
I still remember, vivid as ever, the day I heard those words. The shock drove me under my blankets, and I cried the entire day.
With my constant illnesses, I was nothing more to those people than a burdensome nuisance.
…And school was no different.
My two brothers, a year ahead of me, were elites in every sense of the word. Their test scores weren't measured against the class or even the grade—they competed at the level of national mock exams. Geniuses.
Perhaps that was why. At best you could call them authoritarian; at worst, they were utterly self-absorbed… the type who placed everyone else beneath them and looked down from above.
…So when I followed them into the same school, being bullied was probably inevitable.
"If she's those guys' little sister, of course she's like that."
"What an annoying brat."
The whispering behind my back was routine.
"Don't get cocky! Acting all high and mighty just because you're an elite!"
I was shoved around more than a few times, too. People who could never say a word to my brothers, forced to swallow their resentment whole. To them, a weak little sister who received not a scrap of attention at home made the perfect toy for mending their wounded pride.
Honestly, I thought about dying—dozens of times, hundreds of times.
And if you asked why I stayed alive anyway… at the very least, it wasn't because I was afraid. Compared to the terror of having to live an entire lifetime like this, a moment of pain would have been over in a blink.
But… they said my mother died giving birth to me. I didn't know her face, her name, or her voice. And yet… wasn't she the only person who had ever done anything for me?
If I died without my life ever meaning anything… it felt as though her death would become meaningless too. And that, I refused to accept.
More than anything, there was this baseless wish that someday—even living like this—something good might happen. There was a time when I couldn't let go of the hope that even someone like me could still be family, still be a friend.
If I tried hard enough. If I stayed a good child. Maybe they would say, You did well… and give me just a little recognition. I wanted to believe that. Because if I didn't think that way, the weight of reality felt like it would buckle my legs out from under me without warning.
I fell ill often, spent days bedridden, and still I studied hard enough to comb through every textbook. I cleaned that vast house meticulously, every corner. I came home carrying report cards that weren't perfect hundreds, but still solidly upper-rank.
But then…
"Don't waste your time on useless things."
Watching the homemade meal I'd poured my heart into get thrown away right in front of me like garbage. Being coldly shoved aside and told not to do things no one had asked for…
"At least she's good at studying. The kid who keels over all the time."
"Look at her, she doesn't even get mad. What a creepy girl."
"She's laughing at us on the inside, I bet. Those types are never what they seem."
The moment I realized that nothing changed at school either—that this was simply reality—I understood.
Ah.
This isn't going to work.
All I could do was lament, steeped in despairing resignation. It felt as though a gaping hole had torn open inside my heart. Something dark and suffocating welled up from my chest until it pressed against my throat.
I don't remember much of what came after. Time without meaning simply raced past, so fast the hour hand of a clock might as well have been the minute hand.
In the end, not long ago, I finally said it.
If this is how it's going to be, then just let me leave and live on my own.
Even then, a tiny scrap of expectation still remained. We were family, weren't we? I was his child, wasn't I? I had just said I wanted to leave home. Whether he got angry, or sad, or even looked pleased that an irritating presence was finally disappearing—anything. Some lingering attachment still hoped he might show me even a shred of a human reaction.
"Do as you like."
But it seemed the one called God had no intention of granting even that small wish, right to the very end. The way he answered so calmly, without so much as lifting his eyes from the book he was reading, was more than enough to shatter whatever I might have called hope.
No wish. No expectation. No emotion at all—a face utterly blank.
Only then could I finally understand.
For me… for the person called Yun Seol-hwa… the word family had never existed from the start. To the man in front of me, I had simply never been a daughter.
I had denied that fact over and over. I had wanted to deny it. But somewhere along the way, I found myself accepting it.
If even my own family couldn't love me, then where on earth was I supposed to find salvation?
Had my mother ever loved me in the first place? Just as my brothers said… hadn't she resented the child who stole her life?
I remembered reading in a book that humans are creatures of connection. That we become human by forming relationships—good or bad—and giving something meaning as we live.
Then what was I?
Someone who lived with no relationships at all, suffering only in loneliness—what exactly was I? Why was someone no one wanted even alive?
Unable to answer the question I'd thrown at myself, I fled the house as if escaping and ended up here.
The reason was simple. It was an outlying district, so rent was cheap—and more than anything, it was far from home. I wanted to get as far away as possible. I just wanted to run. That was all.
I'd brought only the barest minimum of my already meager belongings, and I hadn't managed to extract much money either, so this was the best I could do.
Still… maybe here?
A place where I knew no one, where my family's influence couldn't reach… maybe I could start over. That truly last scrap of expectation still lingered. I wanted to believe I could change—that I could laugh and chatter with others like a normal person.
But in the end, I failed here too.
I smiled at everyone who approached me. I answered diligently. I did my best to embody the image of a good child anyone would like. If I just tried a little harder, if I kept going like this… I would be able to grasp that landscape of ordinary life I had only ever dreamed of.
…I must have pushed myself too far.
My illness flared up. Collapsing in the hallway was the beginning of the end. From that moment, the people around me started keeping their distance, and by the time I came to my senses, I was alone again. Same as always. As if it were only natural.
The malice was gone—but what took its place was thorough avoidance and indifference. It felt as though my body had sunk into a deep, dark swamp called despair.
I realized it. No matter what I did, I would be alone. Alone. That no one needed someone like me. That even if I died, no one would care… How could I not give up?
If I've tried this hard, if I've held on this long… wouldn't Mother understand?
That thought crossed my mind, and when I came back to myself, it was the night it rained.
What a stupid story.
That was my first impression, at least. I couldn't find any other way to put it into words.
But if you asked me which part was stupid… I'd be a little stuck. There were simply too many stupid parts to single out just one. It was almost enough to make me suspect the whole thing was some cruel story invented just to mess with me.
Should I be angry? Should I be sad? I no longer knew what reaction to show, or even what expression to wear.
Empathy? Pity? Don't make me laugh.
This girl and I were fundamentally different. A life like that—if it were me, I'd have thrown in the towel ages ago. Hell, even now I was still running from facing reality. Just a loser who called reality worthless and wasted time for no reason at all.
But this girl was different. She had been fighting. Right to the very end, against the life I'd already given up on facing—against reality itself—Yun Seol-hwa had been fighting harder than anyone.
That kind of strength, that kind of heart… who had ever recognized it?
Those eyes I'd seen that day. That back I'd seen in the classroom.
I turned my head, and Seol-hwa's face came fully into view. An expression that held nothing but loneliness, as if tears might spill at any second… it looked unbearably pitiful to me.
The pain held inside it, the sorrow… had anyone noticed? Had anyone understood?
"I… just wanted to be ordinary."
It was Seol-hwa who broke the silence I'd been unable to fill with any words of my own.
"Was that asking for too much? I only wanted to go to school with friends like everyone else, kill time at some fast-food place on the street while talking about nothing important… that was all I wanted.
I really did try to be strong. Even if my body was weak… I wanted my heart to be strong.
This place was where I ended up after running away from home, but I still hoped it would be different here—that I'd be okay, that I could start over… I wanted that so badly.
But in the end, I'm still here. Without having achieved anything… I'm still here. I was always going to be alone anyway, and all I did was thrash around for nothing.
A child who killed her own mother getting to be happy? That's ridiculous… I was just a girl who was never going to make it. I—I…!"
A puddle of tears was already gathering on the floor. As she went on, her words shifted from speech into a plea, and from a plea into something close to a wail.
Don't they say that if you hold it in long enough, it bursts? She must have been holding it in this whole time. She had lived without ever letting out the scream her heart was making. And when a heart is silently scraped down and worn away like that, the words that finally come out are one of two things.
I've gotten used to it.
Or, That's just how it is.
Like a balloon stretched too full of air finally popping… I knew all too well how pathetic the ending looks when a heart you never managed to fix in time finally breaks.
…God is a cold bastard.
No—sly is the better word. Out of nowhere, he plants this baseless delusion that you can do anything. That if you just try hard enough, there's nothing in the world you can't achieve, that this world is a "good place" where the word impossible doesn't exist. He tells you you're the protagonist of that world, peddling his cheap false advertising.
And then, once some idiot has taken the bait, he shows up out of nowhere and says something like this:
"Oh, you really did try hard! But that's enough. This is as far as you go."
A creature who wears a face so hateful you'd want to kill him, spouting nothing but irresponsible garbage. Even when there's still so much left unfinished. Acting like none of it is any of his business… that kind of loathsome bastard.
"You can just do it."
I was sick to death of endings that pathetic.
"…What?"
As if she thought she'd misheard, Seol-hwa—her voice thick and muffled from crying—asked it back, looking like she couldn't make sense of what I'd said.
"I said you can just do it. It's simple."
I said it again, with conviction this time, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
If even someone like me was okay—if I could be of any help…
I could already hear it: Stop comforting yourself. What can a failure who's lived a meaningless life possibly do for anyone? I thought the same thing. But at the very least, this girl—this girl alone—couldn't end up like me. That was what I felt. I didn't want to see that kind of look on anyone's face ever again.
"Someone like me… how am I supposed to…"
As if she'd run out of tears to shed, Seol-hwa answered weakly, the rims of her eyes still red and damp.
"…What about me? Am I not enough?"
"…What?"
Seol-hwa tilted her head with a look that said she had no idea what I was talking about.
Well, dropping a line like that out of nowhere would make anyone think I was missing more than one screw. But I was long used to looks like that, so I let it slide like a breeze and kept going.
"You're strong."
Different from me, who'd given up ages ago. This girl was a protagonist. That thought—no, that certainty—settled in me. There was a strength in the girl in front of me that made me believe it.
Seol-hwa looked at me like she couldn't believe what she was hearing, but I didn't care. I pressed on.
"The proof is that you've lived this far, and you're still alive. If it were me, I'd have chucked a goddamn life like that a long time ago."
If everything she'd told me was true, it wouldn't have been strange for her to have become a runaway teen—or a delinquent worse than me—ages ago. This girl hadn't ended up "stuck here." She had made it this far. Without ever giving up, right to the end. Facing loneliness and pain and sorrow all alone, keeping her heart strong just like she'd said.
That kind of strength looked more than impressive enough to me.
I didn't really know what this feeling was. But if even a hand like mine could be of any help… I wanted to help. I wanted to hold it out to her.
"Having a first friend like me is, well, I get that it'd suck, but…"
"That's not true!!"
I hadn't expected that kind of volume out of the quiet girl I'd taken her for, and my body locked up for a second—but the next thing she said froze me even harder.
"…The Yu-seong I've seen has been plenty kind, and a good person. Please don't say things like that."
…Why was that?
I had the strange sense that I'd heard something like this before.
"…I told you roughly back then too, but I was just doing whatever I felt like. There's no reason for anyone to call me kind or anything."
But when I tried to recall the details, a peculiar headache crept in, and I answered while frowning just enough that the pain wouldn't show.
I'd only stepped in because leaving things alone left a bad taste in my mouth—but apparently even that had meant something to Seol-hwa. It was just beginner bonus points, nothing more. That was all.
"Kind or whatever aside—what do you want to do?"
…She must have noticed me trying to brush past the compliment, because Seol-hwa looked a little sulky. But at the question that followed, she slipped back into her usual hesitant self.
"…Is someone like me… really okay?"
"Didn't you just tell me not to say things like that?"
"Th-that's because you're a good person, Yu-seong…"
"Then the same goes for you. I'm no slouch when it comes to being a mess myself, you know. How many times do I have to say it? Friends or whatever—you just do it, right?"
At that, Seol-hwa said, "…You're right," and for the first time, she smiled with real strength in it.
I took her hand and pulled her along as the warning bell rang, signaling the end of a lunch period that had somehow felt endlessly long.
"Come on. If we're even a little late, Yurim's going to tear us apart."
"…Okay!"
…It'd be nice if she could smile like that more often.
I kept that thought to myself and headed for the classroom, carrying a strangely nostalgic feeling with me.