Blessing in disguise.
Even if it looks like a curse, it’s actually a blessing.
Seventeen times of curses.
Seventeen times of blessings.
Is this a blessing, or an absurd curse?
“No one knows.”
“ㅡJust disappear in front of me!!”
“…….Huh?”
The sunset dyed the sky red, filling the classroom.
At that emotional moment, rekindling forgotten memories, I was hearing an unexpected confession.
However, that confession was quite different from what one would usually call a confession.
It was an ugly and dirty confession.
“Always winning, grinning… What? ‘If there’s something you don’t know tomorrow, I’ll teach you?’”
“….Yeri..?”
“If you have everything like studying and sports, just go up to those high places! Don’t care about someone like me!!”
She scatters something she holds in her hand. Paralak, papers filled with letters and numbers dance in the air.
With a light sound, the test papers fell one by one in front of me like cherry blossom petals.
There wasn’t really a specific reason to mention.
Another day, just like always, ended with a pleasant interaction with a classmate. Today was no different from any other day.
It was always like that, which is why it’s called everyday life.
So if there was any scenario that existed between us, everything I had done up until now would correspond to that.
Yeah.
The fact that this was happening didn’t stem from just a singular mistake but rather from the dark emotions I had been harboring gradually surfacing.
In fact, that aspect left me in bewilderment.
Neighbor, childhood friend, best friend.
There were many terms that could describe our relationship.
From the moment we were born to this very classroom in middle school, we had spent the most time together aside from our families.
Perhaps we had spent even more time than with family.
Maybe, just maybe, we shared a deeper bond than with them.
So, I had always bragged that our relationship was stickier than the multitude of terms that defined us.
Honestly, I thought I could give my life for her.
But was that just my one-sided relationship?
Jealousy and envy.
I was shocked that I encountered such dark emotions towards a friend I could call my closest in this life, and I couldn’t utter a word.
I just blankly stared at her face.
The sound entering my ears was difficult to comprehend.
Me?
Would it have been better if I didn’t exist?
As I couldn’t even open my mouth to say anything, she pushed me even harder.
It was a tirade about grades and scholarships.
It was a grievance about our human relationships.
It was a challenge against my very existence.
With every word being thrown at me, my head tilted further down.
Eventually, her relentless mouth spat out the one phrase I dreaded hearing more than anything.
Sharp and pointed,
Piercing my heart—
“You’ve never even tried, have you?”
“……!!”
“ㅡI tried so hard, yet you trampled and ruined everything.”
I knelt down.
In that position, I just kept my head bowed until the sun hanging on the horizon completely hid from view.
I only lowered my head.
“………”
Sitting on the cold floor of the now empty classroom, I was like a nail stuck in that place.
Alone,
Continuously—
Understanding the world and making the right judgments.
Even a deity considers that the foremost among all virtues.
Now, such a long and exhausting time, hard to even count, had offered me something deemed worthy to be called ‘wisdom.’
It involved lyrics, morals, and etiquette, and lastly, concerning academics and mental cultivation.
Some call it the result of talent and hard work, but to me, it was nothing more than a stroke of luck.
Though it was undoubtedly something that would be greatly helpful in life, despite its grand descriptions, it couldn’t quell the confusion currently filling my heart.
“Why….? It should be gone, the position… the meaning…”
My head wasn’t working.
My lips were mumbling strange words that couldn’t form coherent sentences without clear consciousness.
In my half-closed eyes, that shocking scene from earlier kept replaying like a video stuck on loop.
No matter how wildly I turned my head to shake the thoughts off, the image vivid in my head wouldn’t disappear.
It blamed me.
It cursed me.
Every time Yeri’s lips parted in my head, my body jerked as if someone were stabbing me with a knife.
And with that last outburst, I had no choice but to raise my own hands to choke myself.
The end of that illusion concluded with the friend I relied on and believed in denying every path I had walked down.
I want to deny it.
I don’t want to accept it.
But I couldn’t utter any excuses for it.
Even if it seemed entirely absurd, those were all truths.
Even if she said it without thought, like a moment of rebellion, they were all undeniable mistakes of mine.
Surely, if I hadn’t been there, someone else would have filled that place.
Not someone like me, but someone truly with effort and a beautiful obsession with life would have stood there.
So.
“…Ah…Aah…”
ㅡTherefore, I had to punish myself.
People always live as if chased by something.
Even with the emergence of new transportation means hundreds of times faster than human running, and the time it takes for heartfelt postcards to be sent reduced thousands of times, it’s still the same.
Chasing something formless, chased by something.
Money, wealth, and fame. If you were to ask the reason why they live so diligently, each person’s answer might differ, but upon close inspection, it all boils down to one thing.
Time.
Or, what we call life and death.
Because a limited life exists, perhaps people strive to achieve something in that time.
Some seek family to accept them, some their own happiness, some chase a warm ending, running with their life like a candle slowly burning down.
Even now at this midnight, someone might be studying hard, dreaming of tomorrow.
Yes, just like Yeri.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
But what did I do in front of them?
I sat there where someone should have been and enjoyed what someone else should have enjoyed, forcibly taking the belongings of someone who lived striving as I did.
With nothing to boast, just living a redundant life, I sat there enjoying what was rightfully another’s.
Yes, she was right.
The ugly one was none other than me.
“Really, I’m sorry….”
ㅡkwa-deu-deuk.
The pink scarf pulled down by my weight made a tightening sound as it firmly secured itself to the exposed rebar of the ceiling.
The hole created when someone kicked a soccer ball in the classroom was left unattended for a week.
Despite the ugly sight of the structure being visible, I would occasionally cast my gaze at the hole, quietly expressing discomfort in my heart, but right now, I couldn’t be more grateful.
It seemed to exist merely for a worthless being like me.
“I’m truly…..sorry, Yeri.”
Slowly, I placed my head inside the little loop.
With trembling hands and the chair I stood on shaking as if foreseeing what was about to come.
The tightly bound knot and the thick, long scarf were more than enough to hold the weight of a middle schooler, who still got teased for being small.
All preparations were complete.
I was indeed an uncontrollable waste of a person, an arrogant sinner, and a deceiver who boasted shamelessly about what I had wrongfully obtained.
I shouldn’t have been born.
This overlapping life I had thought was a blessing was indeed a curse.
So, please.
If there’s something called the next life, let it be a place where I don’t exist.
And may this meaningless death, this pain, become a small atonement for those I had taken from.
Let everything return to its rightful place.
“………. “
As I prayed like that,
I slowly closed my eyes.
Before my eyes shut, I thought of the small, shabby letter placed on the desk—
Thud.
I kicked the chair with my foot.
“Ugh…..Seriously….!!”
In a room and bed decorated in pink.
There lay a middle schooler in mismatched blue pajamas, thrashing around, kicking off the blanket.
With eyes that seemed to be thinking of someone, small tears welled up.
“What should I do…!! Ugh… Ah….!! Waaahhh!!!”
Bang, bang, bang.
I don’t know what kicking the blanket would accomplish, but it seemed the more she kicked, the stronger the intensity became, indicating it was doing nothing for her.
Still, perhaps overwhelmed by guilt for hurling insults out of envy for a friend’s abilities, she couldn’t hold it in any other way.
What she despised the most could very well be her own jealousy rather than her friend’s success.
“…..Tomorrow, I should apologize.”
Her precious friend, who could be considered her other self.
Always kind and gentle, she would lightly scold her when she acted spoiled but still helped her, taking her hand to go eat cake when she said she was sorry.
That friend, whom she cherished dearly.
Thus, feeling slightly angry at the thought of her friend drifting away and conversely overwhelmed by the reality of being a chain on her, her anger had turned toward her friend.
“Uu… Tomorrow, I’ll go to school a little early and…”
While contemplating how to approach her tomorrow, Choi Yeri slowly closed her cute eyes.
On a snowy Christmas, she clutched her blue fluttering pajamas that she had exchanged for her pink scarf.
“….I’ll say… I’m sorry…..”
Surely, if she’s a friend.
If she sincerely apologized, she would accept it.
And just like always, they would hold hands with smiling faces and go out to have fun.
Thinking that,
“I must……”
She closed her eyes.
And the sun rose.
The mist thickened.
Tomorrow came—
“…..Eh..?”
“………..”
Dronk, dronk.
Hanging there.
18.
At a young age, she fell from the window.
19.
Fell into the lake, and did not resurface.
20.
On the battlefield. After victory, she cut her own throat.
21.
22.
23.
…
..
776.
777.
“This was, a blessing.”
I realized the truth of the world.
The value of my life.
The mission I must undertake in the future.
All of it.
