The Path to Leaving - 2
The girl clutched her suitcase and fell asleep. The next morning, she woke up with a heavy, stiff body. She blinked a few times out of habit before slowly sitting up.
Her joints still creaked.
But unlike the time she had gotten up from the floor, the girl looked around her room with a sense of relief. She didn't know why, but this room felt like she might never return to it again.
As she slowly surveyed the room, a smile suddenly burst from her lips.
“Puah.”
The room was empty except for the desk, the old computer, and the transparent plastic box.
Books and clothes were scattered on the floor, and the blanket was just one thick one without a futon pad, no matter the season.
How had this room become like this?
Her parents must have wanted their daughter to live healthily and happily.
They must have. After living with all their strength, why had the house become such a desolate room without even a common mattress?
Lost in thought, the girl unconsciously started tidying the room.
After all, this time she was leaving and wouldn't be returning, but she still felt something was off if she left it like this.
So, the girl stacked the books neatly in a sunless spot, folded the clothes from her boyhood days and put them into the plastic box.
And finally, after folding the blanket into neat angles, she opened her notebook while catching her breath.
The destination she had chosen was still written in short phrases.
[High Place]
It was content that said as long as the conditions written in front were met, it didn't matter if it was the apartment's rooftop or above a bridge; she didn't care.
That's why it was a destination where she could go anywhere or, conversely, couldn't go anywhere.
But the girl didn't mind.
She had already decided she had to leave, and once she left, whether she could arrive or not wasn't that important.
The girl tied the laces of her old sneakers tightly and left the house with her suitcase.
The destination was Namsan Tower.
A place that, if she walked hard, she could reach someday, a place she could reach by walking blindly even if she didn't know the way.
Towards that place, the girl started walking from early morning.
One hour, two hours, three hours...
When her stomach growled, she bought a small triangular kimbap from a convenience store and chewed it noisily.
When she needed to use the bathroom urgently, she went into a nearby store and asked for the restroom in a voice that was almost crawling.
And she kept moving her feet without resting until the spring sun set.
But even when dusk was creeping up, the girl couldn't reach the entrance of the tower, and while panting, she stared blankly at the tower standing tall, ignoring the near-far sense.
She felt the inanimate tower mocking her.
No, the one mocking her was the Dusk that had started biting at her ankles.
“In the end, you're a failure.”
She felt those words whispering.
It was a hallucination that didn't actually exist, and it was unlikely to be heard in a pub street she had coincidentally arrived at.
But every time she heard the hallucination, the girl shuddered and her fingertips trembled, and to break that fear, she fiddled with her fingers.
“Failure, in the end, you couldn't even properly enjoy the trip to leave.”
“...”
“Not male or female, not a saint or a villain, not a child or an adult. But what now? You've become something that isn't even a monster.”
It was a delusion.
She knew.
All the people here were talking among themselves, and none of them were interested in the girl.
Despite losing everything else, the girl who had kept her shabby head that had been praised by her father or mother, she thought this way, desperately ignoring the voice ringing in her ears, and moved her feet again.
But before she could take even a few steps, the girl fell.
She didn't notice a step of about 3cm high and her ankle bent almost 90 degrees, and falling over, she used her arms as a cushion to barely prevent her head from hitting the ground.
“Uh, ugh...”
The pain that rose up so much she couldn't even moan properly.
As people's gazes slowly turned to the girl, the Dusk that had been mocking her made a bigger laugh and said loudly, “Look at this.”
Look at this pathetic sight of someone who can't even walk properly and falls down.
Is it right to think that you can finish your own story?
“Hah, ugh!”
Despite the tears welling up in her eyes from the Dusk's mockery, the girl forced herself to stand up.
If she stopped here, she couldn't deny those words, so dragging her legs, she somehow moved forward.
She walked desperately towards the tower.
People who saw the girl fall tried to reach out instinctively.
The sight of a frail girl whose ankle was already swelling up so much that it looked like it would burst, trying to go somewhere, couldn't be seen as normal.
So, with sympathy or whatever, they extended their hands with warm feelings.
And the girl, to escape from that hand, bent her waist 90 degrees to apologize and then walked forward as if running away.
Clunk, zuzuuk-, clack-.
Clunk, zuzuuk-, clack-.
While making such irregular sounds, forward, forward.
And in this sight, a woman who was drinking with her friends blinked and looked at the precarious girl.
It was strange.
She definitely wasn't someone she knew.
Among the people she knew, there was no one like that.
But strangely, in a corner of her mind, she couldn't erase the thought that the girl was someone she knew, and the woman stared at the girl intently for a long time.
“Is something wrong?”
“Well...”
Her friends also gave the same gaze to the woman's appearance and threw in a word about the girl trying to advance.
“Ah.”
And when those words followed, she saw the girl fiddling with her neck and reflexively stood up.
The sight of her tightly gripping her neck as if her voice didn't please her and rubbing the front with her fingers.
Seeing that, she seemed to roughly know who the girl was.
The boy who ran out crying when parents fought.
She thought he was doing well because contact was cut off when he entered middle school, and when they met occasionally, he smiled brightly and said he was fine, so she thought he was doing well.
That boy.
The reason his gender changed... probably because of the TS Disease that was flowing on the TV in the pub right now.
She apologized to her friends with that thought and went out to approach the girl.
She knew it was familiar, but just in case it wasn't.
So, she cautiously approached and called the girl's name.
“Rin?”
“......!?”
The girl who was suffering from the Dusk's hallucination jerked her head up and then, although it had changed a bit, she started bumping her teeth at the woman whose face she knew well.
It wasn't that they had bad relations.
As someone who lived in the same neighborhood, she had received a lot of comfort when she was young, and she was someone she had aimed for at one time.
So, she was someone she couldn't see.
What would she say seeing this appearance now?
She had done her best in every way since she was young, but even so, what would she say seeing herself, who had become a monster near human level?
Imagining that was scarier than hearing the Dusk's hallucination.
Unlike the Dusk's hallucination that flowed from inside her and was appropriately heard and ignored, the words spoken by that noona were someone else's words.
It was words revealing how others saw her from the outside.
So, the girl, when the noona called her name and slowly approached, let go of the suitcase and staggered back.
“Rin?”
And in the awkward sight of backing away, the noona was sure that the girl in front of her eyes was the boy she knew.
Even though she had become a girl because of the TS Disease, the sight of lifting her toes on her heels every time she backed up, and the sight of raising her hands to her neck and chest and trying to spit out breath that wouldn't rest well, was all the sight of the boy she knew.
So, the noona approached the girl, and the girl, twisting around and approaching the noona who was coming towards her as herself that was neither here nor there, staggered and fell on her butt.
Swollen ankle and trembling body.
What should she do.
How could she avoid it?
No, how, how, how...
In the girl's mind, which was becoming paler and paler with every step the noona took.
The girl who was cut off like a broken record from the word “how” without advancing further, when the noona slowly approached and their eyes met, she opened her mouth blankly-.
“Ah.”
She wet herself and started convulsing.
Like the young child who was only 10 years old when she first witnessed her parents fighting, she ran away from the noona.