Chapter 132

Understanding those words took quite some time. During that time, Professor Seo said nothing, and I was making a futile effort to understand something I couldn’t comprehend.

[…What was it for?]

It felt ridiculous to have to ask such a question. Jae-Ah was at a lively age. Even if it wasn’t typical, it was entirely possible for someone to prepare such things for the purpose of self-pleasure. If only it had just been underwear.

[Do I have to say it to understand?]

[…That’s enough.]

[This is insane.]

As he said, I could tell what Professor Seo was implying without needing him to elaborate. It was a sufficient answer; it indicated that the items found in Jae-Ah’s room were prepared for cross-dressing.

Many thoughts crossed my mind. Jae-Ah’s recent skewed taste in movies, the novels she was writing, and the events she claimed to be attending.

…Was it for cosplay? That seemed highly likely. It wasn’t particularly strange. Many people cross-dress for cosplay. This scenario didn’t seem too far-fetched, and there was no reason to make a fuss about it.

However, the anger of Professor Seo wasn’t directed in a normal direction.

What could this clear abnormality mean?

Several speculations arose.

A cross-dresser who enjoys wearing clothes of another gender, regardless of their gender identity.

A drag queen who shows others their appearance in the clothing of the opposite sex.

A transgender person who cannot accept their own gender and claims to be of the opposite sex.

Or perhaps a gay person.

I had a flurry of thoughts, but I kept them to myself.

[What about Jae-Ah?]

[Part of me wants to say I don’t want to see her again, but it’s not that simple in this world.]

Was that statement sincere? Or was it just something said out of anger? If it were the usual Professor Seo, I would have thought it was sincere. However, since it involved his own child, I couldn’t make any further assumptions. Although people say the bond between parents and children isn’t easily severed, it was something that had been cut off easily for me.

That relationship would forever remain unknown and unknowable.

[You can either keep her with you for a while or kick her out; it’s up to you.]

[…Then I’ll protect her at my place for now.]

[Damn it.]

The call ended there. Professor Seo probably was not in a calm enough state to continue the conversation. In any case, he ultimately said “for now.” “For now” did not mean forever.

Professor Seo was angry. He was filled with hatred, and within that, there was guilt, even a sense of injustice.

But there was no apology. At least he didn’t seem to regret hitting Jae-Ah. Still, was it something he couldn’t easily sever? That bond.

Until the end, Professor Seo did not apologize. No matter what, his child was more important than a student. He simply wouldn’t have criticized me no matter what choice I made.

I stuffed my smartphone into my pocket and directed my thoughts homeward. I didn’t want to keep Jae-Ah waiting for too long.

Not because of the wound, but because of the doubt.

~

When I returned, I tried to act as normally as possible towards Jae-Ah. It didn’t seem particularly effective, but since Jae-Ah was not in a normal state either, there were no issues arising from it.

While handing her what I had brought and helping to treat her wound, many thoughts crossed my mind. There were many questions I wanted to ask. But now wasn’t the time.

I offered my seat on the couch and went to my room to sort my thoughts. I didn’t close the door. My room was at an angle where I could see the living room, but I deliberately looked elsewhere.

Why did Jae-Ah cross-dress? What kind of cross-dressing did she do? I couldn’t judge anything yet, as I didn’t know anything for sure, but I could imagine a bit.

Was it just a costume prepared for a cosplay of a favorite work? Given Professor Seo’s overly furious reaction, that seemed unlikely. Even if Professor Seo was a rigid, old-fashioned man, he was someone who maintained a boundary. For someone like him to react that strongly meant it was more than just a simple cosplay. If it had been an easily recognizable cosplay outfit, he would have gotten angry but wouldn’t have resorted to violence.

So ultimately, it had to be clothing that seemed ordinary enough not to be viewed as cosplay, or perhaps it was an outfit that was hard to recognize as cosplay at first glance, and the former was clearly problematic, while the latter presented significant issues too. The very choice of such cosplay hinted at intent.

Above all, there was the presence of underwear. I couldn’t be sure since I wasn’t knowledgeable about cosplay, but was it typical to pack underwear along with it?

Cross-dresser, drag queen, transgender woman, gay.

Which one was she?

I didn’t think the first two would be that problematic. From my perspective, those actions weren’t exactly pleasant, but as long as she didn’t expose herself to me directly or intend to, there wasn’t any wrongdoing. Simple preferences were hard to reprimand.

But what if she were a transgender woman? What if she were gay?

Regardless, it was a huge problem. Professor Seo, as he said, was narrow-minded, rigid, and homophobic. It wasn’t strange for him to lash out violently at his own child. It was an extreme case, but there were certainly cases where parents sever ties with their children for being LGBTQ+, even to the point of murdering their own offspring. I suppose I should be thankful it hadn’t gone that far.

However…

I thought about the TS novels Jae-Ah had written. The TS stories that are currently on hiatus.

They were quite well-written and entertaining, but fundamentally they were no different from other TS stories I had explored. They minimized the struggle with gender identity and rather focused on the main character receiving love, functioning as a form of vicarious satisfaction. Though it contained its own philosophy, the essence remained unchanged.

That ultimately meant that the story did not represent Jae-Ah’s gender identity.

The essence of the TS genre is not becoming a woman.

It is becoming a being worthy of love. Of course, all stories for vicarious satisfaction exhibit such tendencies, but what sets TS apart from those is its passivity.

Actively accomplishing something to gain recognition and love is a bit different. The protagonists of TS stories are sometimes active and capable of being recognized, but that is not the essence of the love they receive.

They are beautiful, lovable, and sometimes pitiful beings. They are beings born to be loved from the start. They had to be that way.

It’s a childish expression, but there is a saying, “Please see only me.” I want to prove that I can be loved just for being myself, for my very existence. That was the longing. All of this was a rejection of the fact that everything was indeed oneself.

Yet, since I am a being that cannot be loved, I must become a being that can be loved. I had to leap. But whether I would soar or crash, no one knew yet.

So they shed and metamorphosized. They discarded themselves and became a new being, a being worthy of existence just by existing. They fly beautifully through the sky, they are pitiful when crawling on the ground, and they are lovable just standing still.

Whether they wished for that or not.

In the end, it’s a kind of suicide.

What TS desires is not to become a woman.

It’s evolution.

Love, suicide, evolution, that is the essence of the TS genre.

A person cannot choose their birth. They have no say in what kind of person they will be born as, what abilities they will have; they have no decision-making power over anything. There isn’t even the option of ‘being born.’

So, even if everything about themselves is indeed them, there can be those who want to reject it. Even if all of that is their true self, it was something they did not desire.

Therefore, assuming that Jae-Ah likes and writes TS stories means she is a transgender woman isn’t a particularly convincing assumption. There may be an unconscious desire to become a being different from her current one, but it’s those who have none that are truly strange.

In other words, writing or enjoying TS does not mean desiring to become a woman.

Then, is Jae-Ah gay?

I thought about the films Jae-Ah had watched recently and the stories she was writing.

Two queer films dealing with completely different extremes, and a somewhat unconventional queer story that circles back around to normalcy.

But if Jae-Ah is gay, why is she writing TS stories?

Regardless, Jae-Ah’s stories contained general perceptions. While there are types of gay individuals who wish to become women and want to love freely, most likely want to exist as they are and to love. In that sense, if Jae-Ah is gay, it wouldn’t be typical for her to write TS stories.

A TS story where a male transforms into a female, after all, cannot be separated from the existence of sexual desire.

It’s not an obscene or strange tale. It’s simple logic. If there is a gender, there will be sexual desire. It is a perfectly correct proposition. What I felt from Jae-Ah’s stories was not sexual desire directed towards men. It distinctly pointed to the womb.

It was not of a gay mindset.

Honestly, no matter how much I pondered, I couldn’t figure anything out. If she’s a transgender woman and also gay…? Is that even possible? I wasn’t knowledgeable enough about LGBTQ+ classifications to know if such a combination was feasible, so I couldn’t say for sure.

In the end, was there any choice but to hear it directly from her?

Stealing a glance at Jae-Ah, she was lying on the sofa with her back turned to me.

When one cannot see ahead, they look at the wall—to understand that it’s not nonexistent but merely blocked. Was Jae-Ah also looking at her own future?

~

For now, I decided to stay with Jae-Ah. The problem was that besides the clothes she was wearing, her smartphone, and her wallet, she had brought nothing else. Still, with both a wallet and smartphone, she would be able to replenish soon. She wasn’t a kid without money.

Having stayed over at my place a few times before, cohabiting with her felt a bit suffocating. Fortunately, Jae-Ah wasn’t the type to cause trouble and obediently followed my lead.

The day after Jae-Ah came over, nothing special happened. I ordered some chicken that I usually don’t eat alone because there’s too much, and fed her a chicken leg.

“Do you think you can talk now?”

“…Give me a moment.”

Was she asking me to wait again? Would she not be able to talk today? Thankfully, that brief pause lasted only for a moment—it was just not a proper response.

“It’s just… nothing major.”

“How is it nothing major with your face looking like that?”

“It’s just… I prepared some cosplay clothes for an event or something, and I got caught. Dad hates that kind of stuff.”

…It didn’t seem like a lie. But it also didn’t feel like she shared ‘everything.’

That said, I didn’t want to push her further in this current situation. Even if I asked, how should I phrase it?

Are you gay?

Do you want to become a woman?

Either question was a minefield. In the case of the former, I could probably come to an understanding. But if it were the latter, it would clearly not lead to a good outcome for either Jae-Ah or me.

If Jae-Ah genuinely desired to become a woman, I would become the worst presence in her life. Because I’d be the one to receive a wish that can never be fulfilled, a wish she didn’t want. For her, it would be the ultimate deception.

And for me, it would be worse. If that were the case—if it truly were—Jae-Ah would become the most horrific presence in my life.

I absolutely did not want to witness the figure of someone longing for a curse I never wished for. Just knowing about such an existence would feel like deception and betrayal to me. And Jae-Ah would surely understand that.

Of course, Jae-Ah hadn’t explicitly revealed that to me, nor did she wish to, so I wouldn’t say that it was wrong. But if that were the truth, honestly,

It was disgusting.