The Way to Leave - 5
The girl stared blankly at the food placed before her.
Mixed-grain rice, warm soybean soup, well-grilled mackerel, and a few side dishes of namul. They were labeled as home-cooked meals, yet in the house where she lived alone, she rarely ate those dishes.
Watching them, her unnie smiled faintly and lifted her chopsticks, urging her to eat quickly. The girl, in a hurry, also picked up her chopsticks. But they didn't move.
Even though her body had completely changed, she still couldn't get the hang of using chopsticks. She couldn't even scoop up the rice grains properly, and even if she tried to maneuver the chopsticks to pick up the food, she couldn't bring it to her mouth.
So, the girl fumbled, gripping the chopsticks with both hands, only to set them down again and again. Her unnie, seeing this, recalled a celebrity from TV—a popular female actress who became a male actor, crashed and burned, then studied acting again to climb to the top.
The person had said that the hardest part of adapting to a male body was everyday life things. Not running or such, but walking, turning her head, holding utensils, washing her hair, and so on. For other exercises, you consciously feel the differences every time, but for the rest, it's not like that, so you follow the actions from a few years ago, making it even harder.
Maybe the girl was feeling that too? Thinking this, her unnie carefully peeled the flesh from the mackerel and placed it on the girl's rice.
“Not used to it yet?”
A cautious question. Since it was quite personal, her unnie thought the girl might not answer, and sure enough, the girl only barely nodded.
“Want me to add the side dishes? Like before.”
When their fights got long, she would make meals for her. Adding to that, looking at the girl, who was blushing to her ears while looking at the chopsticks, she slowly nodded.
Was it shame? Anger? Maybe she regretted her mistake, as she watched the girl pick up the spoon. Because she misjudged the size of her mouth, too much rice was scooped up.
Even with her mouth wide open, the rice wouldn't fit properly, so the girl blushed again and moved the spoon once more. This time, because she had scooped too much once, she was chewing noisily in the opposite way.
The girl, who had only placed rice at the tip of the spoon and was eating, drank the soybean soup silently, then trembled slightly at the growing belly. The belly had shrunk to almost a quarter of what it was when she was male.
She had been a glutton back then too, but still couldn't finish even one portion... To others, it was nothing. Just something to shrug off.
But the girl started to tremble as if a switch had been flipped in her own body. Unlike eating triangle kimbap or burgers at a convenience store, the sensation that made her clearly feel she had become a woman made her pant and clench her fists tightly.
With her eyes fluttering and the overwhelming sense of powerlessness soaking in, she began to feel it. She had to go somewhere else now, up high, to that observatory, eat and leave... That thought shot up like an attack.
And the more those thoughts came, the more the powerlessness invaded the girl's body, pulling her down as if her knees were being sucked into the floor below.
“Heh, hugh, heuik.”
Her breathing quickened, and her face turned pale as if she might vomit at any moment. Seeing the trembling lips, her unnie panicked, stood up, stroked the girl's shoulder, and asked if she was okay.
The girl, muffling her mouth at the sound of her unnie's voice near her ear, staggered to her feet. Then she started running slowly to the bathroom, and her unnie, in shock at the sight, watched as the girl entered the bathroom.
“Week! Weeeek!”
Despite reaching her limit, the food she had forced down came out maintaining its shape. “Kek! Kehek!” The rice grains, the mackerel, the namul side dishes. All of it, trying to follow what she did when she was male, kept coming out.
Tears streamed down. The powerlessness gripped her ankles again.
“Rin-ah, are you okay?”
And trembling from that sensation, her unnie called out from outside. The girl, opening her mouth in response to that voice, spat out the phlegm roughly. She flushed the toilet, rinsed her mouth with water from the sink.
Then, staggering like someone chasing a mirage to go somewhere high, she sat down and started eating the rice. As if trying to empty one portion no matter what.
Her unnie, seeing that determined look, unconsciously swallowed dry saliva and fell into deep thoughts. What on earth had happened? What had that once bright, lively child gone through to become like this?
What had happened during those unseen six years? The appearance she couldn't touch or comfort. Seeing that, her unnie couldn't say more and quietly placed side dishes on the girl's rice.
When she had forced herself to finish the rice, she brought warm tea and said some meaningless jokes. “You’ve gotten older, huh. Living so busily and then taking a break, you can't get up at all. Can I take a little rest?”
“...Ah, ugh.”
To give the girl time to not throw up the food she had forced down. So, her unnie said meaningless jokes or commented on passersby's clothes, like “What about that outfit?” to pass time. One hour, two hours, three hours...
As the plastic bottle grew, her unnie looked at the girl, who seemed to be moving without strain, and stood up. “Shall we go? To the observatory.”
With a smile in her eyes, she took the girl's hand. The girl, startled by the casual skinship, didn't pull away but held the suitcase and walked where her unnie was going. Her unnie held the girl's hand more firmly.
Since the girl couldn't hold or let go, her unnie held her hand with strength, as if deciding how to handle it. “By the way, climbing the mountain will be tough, but are you okay?”
Seeing the suitcase, her unnie said it might take a bit longer, and the girl, looking at the distant observatory, slowly nodded. Honestly, she thought it didn't matter either way.
Going there wouldn't change anything, nor not going. It was just... a feeling of confirmation. Confirmation, yes, going to confirm that nothing had changed.
She could no longer change. I have become something after leaving the cocoon, and I will still remain a monster, that's all I was going to confirm. So the girl nodded.
Whether it took hours or her legs felt like they would break, it didn't matter. Thinking that, with a firm expression, she nodded, and her unnie swallowed a sigh at the girl's resolute look.
Actually, it was nothing special. Going to an observatory that even elementary school kids could visit wasn't a big deal. It might be a bit special, but it was just an everyday thing.
What kind of thing had to happen to make such an ordinary thing special? Every time her unnie saw the girl's firm expression, she wanted to ask what had happened. They had only met a few years ago, and with current free time, she was just reaching out...
No, perhaps because of that relationship, she wanted to ask more? If she got deeper here, she couldn't easily reach out? Thinking this, her unnie stared quietly at the girl's face, and despite sweating, she quietly reached out to the girl who was following her against her will.
“Want me to hold the suitcase instead?”
It wasn't a demand. It wasn't, but seeing the sun setting slowly to the west, her unnie said if they were too late, they wouldn't be able to come down, and suggested to the girl. Just to hold the suitcase instead.
Then the girl reflexively hugged the suitcase, then looked at the sky her unnie was looking at and started to falter. “Ah, ugh.”
The observatory looked much closer than when she came alone, people were climbing briskly, and there was a sign indicating the operating hours. A somewhat precarious time slot.
At that time, the girl was at a loss, starting to teary-eyed, and her unnie said she wouldn't let go of the other hand, so let's go up together. If she watched from the side, she wouldn't open the suitcase or anything.
Saying that, she pulled the girl's hand, and the girl, shifting her eyes at the continued suggestion, looked at the sign and swallowed dry saliva. Her fingers didn't separate well, but starting from her pinky, she slowly peeled them off one by one.
And when all her fingers were separated, her unnie lifted the side handle of the suitcase so the girl could see and moved her feet.