Even I Don't Know Myself That Well (9)
I lay on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. For some reason, it looked especially hazy today.
—Do you know yourself well?
That question refused to leave my head.
“Yeah, right.”
I let out a long, heavy sigh, and all the energy drained from my body. Sleep was creeping in, but I really didn’t want to fall asleep.
“Stop sleeping so damn much, Kim Jihye.”
This was a timid little act of rebellion. Against my own body—maybe even against the world itself. But if the world could be changed with mere words, it would’ve already been destroyed long ago.
Even so, the familiar softness of the blanket wrapped around me brought an instinctive sense of comfort.
“…Oppa. What are you doing?”
“Ah, Jiah.”
When I asked why she’d come, Jiah said she’d heard a sound from my room and got worried, so she opened the door.
“It’s nothing.”
“For someone who says it’s nothing, your face looks pretty dark today.”
“You can read every little expression on my face?”
“Of course. We’ve been living together for years. No matter how much you’ve changed, your old habits are still the same.”
“Really? I had a habit like that?”
“Yeah. When you’re worried or troubled, your face goes blank, but the corners of your mouth turn down just a little.”
I wanted to get up right then and check in the bathroom mirror, but my body felt too heavy, so I gave up on the idea.
“Did something happen at the academy? Are the kids bothering you or something?”
“Do I look like I have time to be bothered by kids picking on me? Besides, I’ve never been bullied in the first place.”
“Then it must be something else.”
“It’s really not a big deal.”
“But from where I’m standing, it looks pretty serious. Am I wrong, oppa?”
Her personality—relentlessly digging until the other person finally opens up—was exactly like our mother’s.
“You really are like Mom.”
“…What’s that supposed to mean all of a sudden?”
“When I was little, Mom used to corner me exactly like this. You really are her daughter.”
“Bringing up Mom out of nowhere? That’s cheating.”
Jiah grabbed my cheeks and stretched them out.
“Oppa’s cheeks are always so squishy and bouncy. They feel like a baby’s skin.”
“How old is this body again… thirteen, was it?”
“Whoa… that young?”
“Honestly, I don’t really know either. I just guessed based on skin texture and height. It’s not exactly reliable, so you don’t have to believe it.”
“So I really sent a kid this young to the academy… Oppa, I suddenly feel so guilty.”
“Good thing you feel guilty now. I threw such a huge tantrum about not wanting to go. If you didn’t feel bad about it, you wouldn’t be human.”
“So… do you regret going to the academy now?”
This question took me a moment to answer.
“…I don’t know.”
“Hmm? I see.”
“What did you just read from my face this time?”
Kim Jiah flashed that mysterious, sly little smile. She might be my little sister, but she was seriously annoying. Just because she was older now, she thought she could act like she knew everything and go toe-to-toe with her eight-years-older brother. Hah, unbelievable.
“It’s a~ secret.”
“Tch. When did you turn into such a sneaky snake?”
“Even your sulky face is cute now, oppa.”
“Ah! Come on!”
“Your angry face is cute too, oppa. Hahaha!”
Seriously…
“I’m going to sleep now, so get out of my room!”
“Okay~. As you command, Kim Jihoon—no, Kim Jihye, dear big brother.”
She just had to get one last dig in before leaving. As the door clicked shut, I pulled the blanket over myself. It felt a little stuffy covering all the way up to my chest, so I stuck my legs out from under it.
Summer was coming soon. I’d probably need to switch to a lighter blanket. The summer one in the linen closet… could I even reach it? No matter how I thought about it, it seemed impossible. I’d definitely need Jiah’s help.
If I asked her to get it for me, instead of saying something kind like ‘Okay, I’ll get it for you,’ she’d probably flash that teasing smile like earlier. The thought made me angry…
“…No, it doesn’t.”
It didn’t. That girl. She must have noticed I was feeling down, so she went out of her way to tease me like she usually doesn’t, just to cheer me up.
“I really don’t know when she got so sharp. Seriously.”
I closed my eyes. When I did, what I saw was Jiah as a little girl. She was very different back then—fragile and incredibly shy.
“You’ve changed a lot too. Not as much as me, but still.”
After losing her only guardian, she must have had no choice but to change herself completely. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to survive in this harsh world. Especially in the chaos when the magical beasts were flooding through.
“They say people don’t change easily… but I guess over time, changing is just the natural order of things.”
When you meet old high school friends after a long time, at first it feels like nothing’s changed, but then suddenly the conversation doesn’t quite click anymore. Because we’re no longer high schoolers. Because we’re no longer the carefree kids we were back then. Everyone changes little by little as the years go by. And then one day you look back and realize how far you’ve drifted from who you used to be.
That’s just how the world is. It’s a natural principle. Nothing lasts forever.
“Then… this change in me must be natural too… right?”
But unfortunately, the answer to this self-posed question wasn’t a positive one.
I couldn’t accept my current changes. I simply couldn’t.
Turning into a young girl—I’ve come to terms with that as something unavoidable. Becoming a magical girl—I can understand that too. And even the tragedy of losing all my mana, as Salbyeol put it, is nothing more than a regret to me. I don’t feel anything stronger than that.
But this constitution that forces me to sleep so much… I just can’t accept it.
If it were simply a matter of lacking sleep, maybe I could have moved past it.
“But it’s not just that…”
My personality had changed too. My values, my interests, the things I liked, my tastes. Even the way my body felt. Everything had been altered as if someone had rewired me from the inside out.
I wanted to think deeply about it, but my brain always felt foggy. I used to enjoy being around people, but now even talking to strangers feels completely pointless.
The burning drive I once had—to throw everything into growth and improvement—had vanished without even leaving ashes behind. My positive, forward-looking values had been devoured by laziness and shattered into pieces. The sports I used to love now disgust me. All my senses feel dull, like I’m experiencing everything in a dream, making it hard to grasp reality properly.
The only desire left in me now is to lie in bed and sleep forever. Everything else feels like a hassle. It’s bothersome. I don’t want to do any of it.
No matter how much I think about it, I…
“Don’t want to accept this version of myself.”
Because.
I was scared.
When did I first clearly realize this feeling? Probably from the first time I sparred with the class president.
She sometimes brings up that day—how I rolled across the ground to dodge her attack. But I have no memory of it at all. The moment I drew up my mana during that spar, it was like the film in my head snapped. After that day, I had no choice but to feel fear.
It’s like… yeah, it would probably make sense if I said it feels like having dementia.
Before I could even grasp a clear cause-and-effect, I was hit with another shock. It was the first day of the practical combat exam.
That day was the same—I had no idea how I even got to the academy. I have a vague feeling I took a taxi, but it’s not clear. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the infirmary, listening to the teacher and Jiah talking.
I didn’t want to worry Jiah, so I pretended to naturally join the conversation, but in truth, I was completely shaken at the time.
The fact that I had been asleep for three whole weeks… I’ve grown so used to it now that I can’t even laugh about it anymore.
My sleeping hours keep increasing. And then there are the actions I take that I myself can’t remember.
It feels like I’m slowly disappearing from the world.
Will I still be fully myself next time?
That’s why right now, I don’t know who I am.
I’ve become too different from the person I used to know. It feels like I’ve turned into someone else entirely.
“Who… am I, really?”
There’s no one who can answer a question like that.
Today, once again, I ask myself a pointless question and fall asleep.
“…Oppa.”
The room that used to be the master bedroom had now completely become Jiah’s space. Inside the spacious, large room, Kim Jiah stared into empty air and muttered to herself. Her hair wasn’t the usual black—it was a glossy, flowing white.
This was not the human Kim Jiah, but the magical girl Blossom.
Yes. Right now, Kim Jiah existed inside this room as a magical girl.
“No matter how I think about it, it seems really serious.”
The eavesdropping spell she had secretly installed earlier. Through it, she had overheard her brother’s monologue, and now she let out a long, heavy sigh.
“…But even the association’s top medical experts don’t know how to fix it. What could I possibly do?”
Maybe this was how guardians of patients with rare diseases felt.
Outside the window, the sky was unusually clear and dazzling.
“The time is… 5 p.m. He fell asleep an hour earlier than usual.”
The beginning of summer was approaching.
Kim Jiah recorded today’s sleep start time on her phone. It was something she did every single time her brother Jihye fell asleep. She logged the time he went to sleep and the time he woke up, then calculated the total sleep duration.
“Is he just tired today? Or is this a sign that his condition is getting worse?”
She didn’t know the answer.
All she could do right now—when she didn’t even know how to solve the symptoms Jihye was suffering from—was this small, minimal effort. Because this was the only thing she could do.
She hated herself for being so good at fighting magical beasts yet completely useless when it came to healing people.
“I’m sorry… oppa.”
Kim Jiah released her transformation and quietly opened the door to Jihye’s room. She gazed for a moment at her brother, who was sleeping soundly with soft, even breaths, then dispelled the eavesdropping spell she had cast.
After that, she ate dinner alone in the kitchen. The cold rice tasted terribly bland.