Sick to Death of Studying
“I’m sick of studying every single day! It makes me want to die!”
I shouted. As usual, Mom raised her voice right along with mine.
Fighting with my mom was one of those things I couldn’t stop even when I wanted to.
“Ha, if you’re that embarrassed by me, go find yourself another smart daughter! Ah! That’s it! I should just disappear.
Then Mom would be so much more comfortable, right? Who asked you to worry about a kid like me and give yourself a headache? Who begged to be born? Did I ever ask for all that tutoring?”
Click.
I irritably hung up the phone.
It was because Mom had launched into her usual tirade—the one I never wanted to hear.
The neighbor’s daughter this, the daughter of someone from the same company that!
I was utterly sick of hearing about everyone else’s daughters and sons.
In Mom’s eyes, I always seemed like an unsatisfactory existence. The most unreliable human being in the world.
If that weren’t the case, she couldn’t possibly distrust me this much.
Today was the same.
Normally my day wouldn’t end until eleven at night—hagwon followed by group tutoring—but today the teacher had canceled for personal reasons.
For the first time in a while, I could head home before sunset. I called from the bus to say I’d be early, and Mom immediately flew into a rage.
In my opinion, the person turning me into the worst kid possible was Mom herself.
If it’s that embarrassing, just die already. Why keep living?
The reason studying felt so hollow and meaningless was probably because I had nothing I truly wanted to do. Or, to borrow Mom’s favorite phrase, because I was a kid who didn’t know anything.
Anyway, I was tired of it all.
When I first entered high school I’d been a fairly good student, but one day I lost my direction and my grades began slipping.
When the homeroom teacher asked why I was studying, everything felt so stupid that I answered in the most delinquent way imaginable.
“Because everyone else is doing it. Wouldn’t it be weird if I was the only one who didn’t? What do I want to do? Not study.”
That honest answer became the root of every problem. Too much honesty really was a disadvantage.
Of course the story reached Mom’s ears, and from that very day the academies and private tutoring piled up in layers.
I’d clearly grumbled that I didn’t want to study, so why had it only gotten worse? Did they think leaving me alone would make me do even less?
I really was a rotten kid.
In a fit of rebellion I deliberately bombed every midterm, averaging twenty-three points. From then on Mom treated me like a problem child.
I thought I’d lived an ordinary life until now, yet that was the reward I received.
Not even a single act of rebellion was forgiven.
I had always kept decent grades and made normal friends.
I never hung out with the truly bad kids. I was moderately obedient and moderately rebellious.
Yet the person who had driven me into a corner was Mom, and she placed every ounce of blame on me.
Why wouldn’t she acknowledge how hard I’d tried until now?
Instead of recognizing that I had reached my limit, she treated it as another problem.
My rebellious spirit had recently hit its peak, and Mom’s distrust of me had reached its extreme.
Our relationship had hit rock bottom.
Mom definitely hates me.
If I was that unsatisfactory, she should just leave me alone. Just as I couldn’t choose my parents, Mom probably never wanted a stubborn, disobedient daughter like me.
I was furious.
Why did she keep trying to shape me however she wanted? She said she was tired of my stubbornness, so why did she continue to interfere?
I ignored the incessantly ringing phone. Soon even the vibration itself became unbearable, so I popped out the battery and tossed it carelessly into my bag.
“Hmph. Maybe I should just run away from home.”
As I glared out the window, simmering with anger, sudden fatigue crashed over me.
I was exhausted from studying until midnight every single day, and this was a rare, brief moment of rest.
My eyelids drooped.
There was nothing to do on this bus anyway. I should have been killing time on my phone, but even that felt impossible right now.
Still, I had zero desire to memorize English vocabulary, so I closed my eyes and rested my head against the cool window.
I hugged my bag and searched for a comfortable sleeping position.
It would still be a while before we reached home, so a short nap seemed harmless. I slowly drifted off.
Maybe, deep down, I was trying to run away from reality.
Even after fighting with Mom like that, the unpleasant truth that home was the only place I could go weighed heavily on me.
How long had I been asleep?
Screeeeech—!
BOOM!
“Ack!”
The violent impact jolted me awake.
I’d slammed my head hard into the seat in front of me, and the shock left the back of my neck stiff and sore.
Frowning at the sudden chaos, I looked around. Outside the window was pitch black.
The faint orange glow suggested we were inside a tunnel.
“Everyone, please exit the bus! Hurry! Quickly!”
I still couldn’t grasp what was happening.
The familiar sound of the express bus doors opening somehow felt ominous, so I staggered to my feet.
All the passengers were milling about in confusion. At the driver’s urgent shouts, they began filing out one by one.
Had there been an accident? I grabbed my bag and followed.
The moment the crowd pushed me off the bus, an acrid smell stabbed my nose and I had to hold my breath.
Thick smoke and dust filled the tunnel, making it nearly impossible to breathe.
There was a strange odor, too.
Sickeningly sweet yet bitter, a disgusting oily stench.
And other unknown smells.
I wrinkled my nose. This was definitely not normal.
Smoke choked the entire tunnel. Every car had stopped where it was. The people who had gotten off with me were all covering their noses and looking around frantically.
“What the hell? What happened?”
“Looks like an accident up ahead.”
The tunnel we always drove through took several minutes by car, and no outside light reached inside.
The only illumination came from the stopped cars’ headlights and the tunnel’s signature orange lamps, but even those were blurred by the smoke.
My eyesight was usually good, yet I couldn’t see even a meter ahead.
Was it the smoke?
My eyes and throat began to sting fiercely. I stretched my sleeve over my mouth, but it did no good.
Then I saw people bursting through the smoke, running desperately.
One of them tripped over his own feet and fell in an ugly heap. Strangely, I didn’t feel like laughing.
The man’s face was twisted with pure terror, as if he had seen a monster. His hands shook violently as he crawled across the ground from where he’d fallen—like someone who had just escaped from hell.
From the darkness came another explosion.
Boom!
“Huff—huff—f-fire!”
Someone shoved my shoulder and sprinted past. People stopped whispering entirely.
Silence fell. Then the quick-witted ones began fleeing in earnest.
While I stood there blankly, still processing the words, everyone suddenly broke into a run.
I instinctively understood that we were in danger.
As the crowd vanished one by one into the smoke, I was soon left alone. Just moments ago I had been dozing on the bus—what the hell was happening?
Bang!
Another explosion rang out.
I was forced to accept that this was real. Beyond the thick smoke, I saw crimson flames surging wildly.
It was too close. Too unfamiliar. Too terrifying.
An unknown dread raced through my body, chilling my spine and raising goosebumps across my skin.
The fierce blaze crept closer, inch by inch. It devoured the abandoned cars and moved on to swallow the people still standing there stupidly.
People like me.
I tried to run and immediately fell.
As I scrambled up, oil soaked my palms.
I realized then that the tunnel floor was drenched in fuel. Come to think of it, I vaguely remembered someone shouting that an oil tanker was up ahead.
Run. That was what they’d screamed.
The continuous roar left my ears ringing.
A mechanical whine echoed inside my skull. Sand and grit dug into my palms.
My fingernails had snapped.
Slippery oil stained both sleeves. With legs that had lost all strength, I barely managed to stand.
Only then did I register the scorching heat surrounding me.
I glanced back at the flames and started running.
I wasn’t confident in my speed, but the fire seemed slow enough that I could escape. I had to. I needed to.
But I didn’t get far before I spotted someone lying on the ground.
It was the first dead body I had ever seen in my life. Nothing here felt real.
I had only dozed off for a moment.
“Cough—hack…”
The fear of witnessing death for the first time was nothing compared to the terror of realizing I might end up the same way.
I couldn’t think of anything else.
I ran with everything I had from all the things that terrified me.
Yet before long, my own body began to feel strangely wrong.