The Unreachable Star
It had ended with the delivery of Jo Yul's report card, yet one question remained.
It was because of Jo Yul's scores.
An average of 77.
An utterly ordinary score.
If you looked only at the average.
But every single subject score on the mock exam fell between 76 and 78.
Without so much as a 0.2-point deviation, every subject was either a 76, a 77, or a 78.
......Am I overreacting......?
Sitting there, I recalled the expression on Jo Yul's face when he received his report card.
Upright and emotionless — not the slightest tremor. Beyond those eyes, all that could be seen was an unshakable trust in himself.
As if—
............
—as if those had been the scores he planned for.
I was still turning over how to bring it up when my sister got home.
No matter how distant the past, no matter how little it had to do with the present, for her it would have been a vast and unforgettable pain. I knew that well — I had watched it from right beside her. That was why I was struggling.
What if I reopen that old wound?
I was uneasy. So I was turning over more schemes than usual, but no answer would come into view.
"Haa. This is driving me insane."
What am I supposed to do?
"What? Something else going on?"
"How I should even bring it up with you is— whoa! You scared me! Don't sneak up like that."
"You looked like you were wrestling with something serious, so I was waiting for the right moment to jump in."
"......"
"So what's the matter?"
She came and sat right beside me without even thinking of taking off her trench coat, and the way the fabric crumpled without mercy got on my nerves.
"At least change out of that. You're going to wrinkle it to death."
"Don't worry about it. I'm not wearing it from tomorrow anyway. More importantly, spit it out. Looking at your face, this is a real problem. What is it? Hmm?"
I had no choice but to open my mouth while putting some distance between us. And of course she closed it right back up.
"There's a kid in my class whose health is bad. She's been cycling in and out of the hospital lately, but she's obsessing over her grades so hard that it's making everything worse. Couldn't she ease up a little?"
"Caring about grades isn't a bad thing, but if it's hurting her health, that's a problem. What's her condition right now?"
"......"
I hesitated over whether to say it or not.
"Why'd you go quiet?"
"......It's, well......"
"I like seeing you take an interest in someone else, you know — you who always try to stay a loner. It's surprising. A little jealousy, too. But hesitation doesn't suit you. If you're this worried and this invested, it doesn't sound like some casual acquaintance."
"......It's the same as...... your condition back in elementary school."
Even as I said it, I couldn't help watching her face.
Watching how her feelings shifted.
"Ah. Is that all? That's why you were fretting?"
"Y-yeah......"
"It's fine. That was a long time ago, wasn't it?"
She smiled softly and ruffled my hair, and the touch of her hand settled something in me.
She was smaller and more delicate than I was, yet she looked more reliable and stronger than anyone. The sister I had known in the past was nowhere to be found.
"You don't need to blame yourself. It's all in the past. And it wasn't because of you, was it? So don't hurt yourself over it. If anyone should be blaming themselves, it's me, right?"
I turned my head away, unable to look at that wistful little smile.
"Don't say that. By that logic, that whole thing is in the past too."
"But you're still carrying that wound, aren't you?"
"......"
I deliberately held my silence.
"You'd want to forget it too. Who wants to keep holding onto a wound? But even if you want to forget, you can't, can you? It dug in too deep — and that's why you've been taking damage in other forms ever since. Am I wrong?"
"......Stop it."
"You think you've forgiven us, but part of you hasn't, have you? That's why you won't let anyone closer than a certain distance."
"N-no......!"
Right. No! I forgave my sister and Mom a long time ago.
So why is she saying things like that?
"Sometimes the way other people see you is the truth. You always think the person who knows you best is yourself — but that's not true."
"......?"
"Got a little off track there. All right. Back to the start. What do you want to do about that friend of yours?"
I was used to the way she forcibly changed the subject, so I didn't need time to adjust.
All that remained was the thought, Even my invincible sister has things she'd rather dodge, and a quiet consideration of how to keep navigating the distance between us from here on.
Right. That wasn't the problem right now.
"I want Yoon Narae to..............."
I told my sister everything that had happened, everything I had felt, everything I was thinking — but surprisingly, no hint came out of it.
No. To be precise, it looked like she was deliberately not giving me one.
I couldn't fully grasp her intention in withholding the hint, the solution — but I could guess.
She had calculated that through this, I would go on to form more relationships with other people. Once you have relationships with others, big and small incidents are bound to happen, and if I came running to her for help every time a problem cropped up, I would never learn the answers to human relationships for myself. So she was putting on that unfunny little act of not knowing. The most effective way to learn is to collide with things yourself and work them out one by one. That had to be her mindset.
Of all the unexpected snags, it had to be my own sister. This time, I would have no choice but to solve it with nothing but my own strength and Jo-hwa's.
Back in my room, after a long stretch of turning it all over, the image from the first day of hospital visits surfaced — Yoon Narae and her grandfather.
Two completely different faces.
Yoon Narae's had been stiff, faintly reluctant. Her grandfather's had been the gentle face of a man worried for his granddaughter.
Why had Yoon Narae been so wary of him?
To pull an answer out of that question, I needed to know Yoon Narae's family situation.
Looking into it myself was one option, but it would drag on, and overall it was inefficient. I didn't want to, either. It was one of those territories you shouldn't dig into lightly, and no matter how many times I steeled myself and hardened my resolve, the reluctance wouldn't go away. That almost physiological revulsion was frustrating on one hand and, on the other, a kind of relief. Still, it was information I absolutely needed to unravel this problem, so the impatience was unavoidable.
What do I do? Do I just grit my teeth and do it myself? No. I can't. There's the gut-level rejection, and the burden of it — but more than anything, Yoon Narae's condition is bad. One wrong move and I could set off a bomb. I don't have the confidence! Damn it......!
I was biting my lip and pacing circles around the room when a person suddenly came to mind.
Right! How did I forget that? If it's Jo-hwa, she'll have Yoon Narae's family situation completely figured out!
So I called her right away.
I could still feel people's eyes on us.
Probably because of Jo-hwa.
I had been under the impression she had no plans, so the fact that she had shown up dressed this prettily was puzzling.
The calm, pure coordination — the opposite of the Jo-hwa I knew — still hadn't settled into familiarity even after thirty minutes. Like putting a dress on an enraged bull? How was I supposed to put this into words?
"Wh-why are you staring like that? Do I look weird......?"
Her sense for clothes was good, and the original material wasn't bad either, so there was nothing weird about it. To anyone who didn't know the real Jo-hwa, she would look perfectly put together and beautiful.
I felt the dissonance because I knew her true nature too well.
Should I just be honest?
"Not weird, exactly—"
"Really? Hehehe."
"—there's this dissonance between you and the vibe of the clothes, so I still can't get used to it. You don't dress like this every day, do you?"
"What did you just say?!"
Whoa, whoa. Calm down. You're the one who asked. You ask, I give a personal opinion, and then you get mad — how is anyone supposed to open their mouth after that?
"Looking at how everyone around us is only staring at you, doesn't that mean you're pretty?"
"What. Are you making fun of me?"
"What do I gain from making fun of you? I was just stating a fact."
"Then just say you like it...... that it looks good on me!"
"Fine. It looks good on you. It suits you."
I couldn't keep burning time on meaningless chatter, so I spat out something I didn't mean.
Even you — an enraged bull fully armored in pretense — have a normal side, huh. Look at you going "heeheehee" just because I threw a little praise your way. Well. Who wouldn't be happy to hear a compliment? Except for one person, that is.
For that one person's sake, it was time to cut the noise and get to the point.
"From here on, if you can't answer a question I ask, or you just don't want to, you don't have to. That's for you to decide. Got it?"
"Okay."
Jo-hwa knew we were moving into the real subject now, and the air around her turned quietly serious.
"Yoon Narae's............ family situation. How much do you know about it?"