Dad (1)
Had it even been a week since the TS?
I was staring down the single greatest crisis of my new life.
The ringtone that just kept coming felt like it was hammering the same fact into me over and over: this was real.
If I thought about it, I was always going to have to face this someday. If anything, lasting this long had been the real miracle.
What was I supposed to do?
If I picked up now, I would be found out for certain. My voice was nothing like it used to be. No amount of modulation in the world could hide a difference in gender.
"…"
Even the fact that my stream had just imploded had to be shoved to the back of my mind. I sat frozen, staring a hole through the screen, with no idea what to do.
I don't know how long I stayed like that. In the end, the first call died as a missed call.
Ka-tok!
The screen lit up with a notification so cute it had no business belonging to a moment like this. Somehow I was already certain that this particular message was not from my manager.
I swallowed, picked up the phone with hands that would not stop shaking, and opened KakaoTalk.
Just as I'd thought. It was from my step-father.
If I called him back, I would be found out.
But was ignoring him really the answer?
Sooner or later I was going to have to tell him the truth. So was this, in a twisted way, actually my chance?
I couldn't commit to either side. My heart hung there like a scale pulled equally taut, refusing to tip.
That was when another message landed right on the heels of the first.
"Ah…"
He was coming here?
I stood there like an idiot, staring at the chat.
The distance from the main house to the place I was living on my own wasn't that far. By car, it was ten minutes at most. Which meant that if Dad sent this and left right now, the odds of him arriving within ten minutes were painfully high.
In the end, whether I answered the phone or not didn't even matter. If I truly did not want the truth to come out today, I had to get out of the apartment this second.
No. Even that wouldn't save me. I'd still be found out.
This place was littered with things that had no business being in a son's apartment. Clothes, underwear, all the rest of it — women's things filling every corner. My step-father would notice something was wrong the moment he stepped inside.
Should I just text him? Tell him I was too sick to see anyone?
…No. If I handled it that way, he would only worry harder and come running even faster.
No other excuse came to mind. If I ran, I'd still be caught. I didn't even have a decent reason to tell him not to come.
Alright. I would tell him the truth. If it had come to this, I might as well lay it all out cleanly.
Looking on the bright side, at least I wasn't telling Mom first, right? Maybe this would even work in my favor. Maybe Dad would take it well, and then put in a good word with her.
"…Is that even possible?"
I asked myself the question out loud. Honestly, some part of me had already admitted it: hard didn't begin to cover it. It was close to impossible.
The son who'd moved out to live on his own had suddenly become a daughter? And his nationality had changed on top of that?
It was the kind of thing you could only laugh at. It was so absurd you might not even manage the laugh.
Who on earth would sit there and seriously believe a story that ridiculous?
"…Sea-chan."
My little sister had.
Gratitude and guilt washed through me all over again. To believe something that wild… how kind could one person be?
I'm always on your side, Oppa.
That was right. That was what Sea had said. It hadn't been empty comfort. Sea would always, truly, be on my side.
I finally understood what I needed to do. I didn't have to shoulder this entire mess alone and fight my way through it.
I scrolled through the handful of contacts on my phone, found the one person who would come running, and called.
It connected at once.
"Hello?"
"…Sea-chan."
"Oppa? What's going on?"
"…Sea-chaaaan!"
"…What? Are you crying?"
"Dad's… he says he's coming over."
"Your place, right? I'm on my way. Just hang on a little."
Sea hung up after that and nothing else — she was coming, just from that one sentence. She had read my heart before I could even ask, and she was already running.
At this rate I was going to end up depending on her without even noticing… Not that I wasn't already depending on her plenty.
Nothing about the situation itself had changed, and yet just knowing Sea was on her way settled something huge in my chest.
But Dad would probably get here first, wouldn't he? The distance from her school to my place was longer than the distance from the main house, after all…
Wait.
What time was it?
I'd gone live pretty early today for the horror-game challenge run, and the part where I'd freaked out and killed the computer had been near the very beginning of the game. Which meant it was still quite early.
I checked the clock. Just as I'd guessed: only eleven-thirty in the morning.
…Sea.
Weren't you still in class?
The second her brother's call came in, Sea bolted for the bathroom even though class was in session, took the phone, and came straight back to her seat. Then, perfectly calm, she spoke up.
"Teacher."
"What is it this time?"
"I went to the bathroom, but my stomach still hurts really badly."
"Does it? Then go lie down in the nurse's office for a bit and come back."
Sea was a model student in every way that counted — attitude, grades, even the way she got along with her classmates. The thought that she might be lying never even crossed the teacher's mind. She said it with genuine concern.
That, unfortunately, was not the answer Sea wanted. She shook her head.
"I don't think resting in the nurse's office is going to cut it."
"Ah… really? Then what should we…"
"I'm going to go to the hospital. Could you write me a leave pass?"
"A leave pass…?"
"Yes. Leaving early would be even better, but I don't think my homeroom teacher would allow it. I'll be back before lunch is over."
The Korean teacher running the period gave her a helpless little smile. It was true that a mid-class outing, unlike an early dismissal, fell under the subject teacher's own authority.
"Does it really hurt badly enough that you need a hospital?"
"Yes. It hurts so much I feel like I might die."
And Sea did, in fact, look like she was in pain. Her color was off, and the way she kept pressing a hand to her stomach was far too natural to read as an act.
So why did something about it still feel so off?
That sweet girl Sea wasn't the type to lie and wander off wherever she pleased. Least of all in the middle of class.
In the end, the teacher followed reasonable inference, ignored what her gut was trying to tell her, and let Sea go.
"Alright. Go, and bring back a doctor's note. Understood?"
"Yes."
Sea was out of the room at once, tearing down the hallway. Watching her run like that, the teacher could only wonder — had her stomach truly hurt that badly after all? The doubt only sank in deeper.
I hesitated over how to put it, then decided to just tell the truth — or as much of it as I could.
Even if she was my manager, I couldn't exactly dump my entire family situation on her. And even if I told her the truth, she obviously wouldn't believe it.
I used to be a guy, I turned into a girl, and my step-father is suddenly coming over today so I can't stream — who on earth would buy that? If I heard it myself, the first thing I'd do is seriously wonder whether today was April Fools'.
There were still viewers waiting for me to come back. That just made me feel worse.
Following my manager's advice, I typed a short explanation into the chat of the stream that had already ended, and told them I didn't think I'd be able to continue.
The ten or so people still hanging around read the notice, worried over me instead, and filtered out.
So… I'd managed to clean that much up, at least.
I let out a heavy breath and turned off my phone.
Which left only one problem.
Earn Your Step-father's Acceptance
And right on cue, a quest had appeared.
Could I actually do this? I still didn't know. Maybe it would go far more smoothly than I'd been dreading. The way Sea had recognized me, and taken me in.
I could only hope.
Ding-dong—
At last the doorbell rang through the apartment. I'd let myself hope, just for a second, that Sea had gotten here first. One look at the intercom killed that little twist ending before it could happen.
My step-father's eyes found mine through the screen.
After a moment of waiting, he seemed to decide I wasn't home, and reached to punch in the door code.
I walked to the front door on heavy feet. And before he could let himself in, I opened it myself.
The door swung slowly inward.
At last, we were face to face.