episode_0120

*

brother Brother! brother… brother? brother. Oppa.

My younger brother’s voice remained clear. My younger brother’s voice looking for me.

Some days, he would be full of joy and call me energetically, while other days, he would be in a bad mood and just droop down.

I was a so-called ‘unwanted child’ who was late in finding out and was overdue for an abortion, and by the time I was checked, I had already gone to the obstetrician and gynecologist, so there was nothing I could do about it, so I could only continue living.

But my younger brother was a little different. I raised my second child because I thought I could raise him really well.

Anyway, when my younger brother asks how he can get around so energetically, he says that elementary school was a mandatory curriculum. It was. Of course, it seemed like my younger brother would be able to attend middle school.

Unlike me, I thought I would graduate by going to school in person rather than taking the qualification exam.

So, in fact, my younger brother was an object of envy rather than someone I had to take care of.

Even though it wasn’t enough, I was able to go out and receive love, so I would have been able to make friends differently from me.

“… Oppa.”

I wake up to that voice.

“Oh, huh?”

“… Mom says I’m going to middle school, but why don’t you go?”

My younger brother is now in the 6th grade of elementary school. I felt like I knew everything there was to know now.

But that didn’t mean I could say too much to my younger brother, so I just smiled bitterly.

“I’m stupid anyway so I just play games at home… If you do this, you can make money, money.”

“Oppa didn’t say he wanted to go to school before… ?”

“No, you just want to go. If you really go, someone like me won’t be able to endure it, right?”

“… I want to stay home like my brother… Can’t I just not go to school?”

When I heard those words, I felt like I was going to cry.

I felt like I was going to be annoyed by the fact that I wanted to go but I couldn’t, and my younger brother said he didn’t want to go even though he could. However, I knew that I should not say such things to my younger brother, with whom I had overcome hardships.

“No… When you come home from school, the games your dad ordered you to play will be over, so let’s play the game we want to play then. Huh?”

“I don’t like it… It’s fun to watch the games my dad ordered… ”

“… Heh, it’s because I only have one headset.”

“I will not listen and just watch what my brother is doing.”

“… No way.”

“Why doesn’t it work?”

“… Well, ha, I like going to school if I can.”

“Oppa isn’t going either, so why don’t I go too?”

My teeth are grinding. I was even scared by my younger brother’s ridiculous, unreasonable behavior.

Why? Still, my mother likes my younger brother, but if she hears that my younger brother doesn’t want to go to middle school and that he will stay in his room like me after graduation, who will take responsibility for that?

It’s me.

It was clear that people would think that I had fooled around and this had happened.

It was fortunate. I don’t have mom and dad in the house right now. So I was very fortunate that my younger brother’s words like this were not leaked.

“… Oppa, can’t you please speak kindly to me… ?”

“What are you talking about, stop. You receive love from your mom, so why do you keep doing this to me? ”

It’s rising.

The inferiority complex and selfish desires inevitably turned towards my younger brother.

I felt resentment over the love I did not receive and that it was only being given to my younger brother.

I was jealous. By taking care of my younger brother, I just reassured myself that I did not need to receive any other love because I was his guardian and his third guardian.

“Oppa, aren’t you loved too… ? Playing games, staying at home… Well, it didn’t die like other babies… ”

“What are you talking about? I told you to stop!”

I feel hot and flushed.

I knew very well that I was not chosen.

“You gave birth because you wanted to, and I didn’t!”

For the first time, I got angry at my younger brother, and for the first time, I told him something I didn’t want him to know.

I was young. Since I was in my second year of middle school, I could have been going crazy. I knew very well that I, who had grown up glumly since elementary school and had not made any friends and walked around in a depressed mood, were jealous feelings toward my younger brother, who was leading a lively life.

I’m a disgusting bastard.

I may have realized too late that this shouldn’t be the case.

“… Why brother? Uh, uh, I said I was deleting it because it was useless, so oh, oppa is not useful… ?”

He was the younger brother who had already learned his mother’s speaking style.

For a moment, I saw my mother.

I unconsciously felt eerie at the words, “If it’s useful, leave it behind, and if it’s not useful, delete it.”

“Damn it. Don’t be so damn disgusting… Stop imposing disgusting standards! I, I… It’s just that it was born because it was discovered late… ! This, poetry, feet… ”

“… … Sorry.”

My younger brother apologized at the end.

I didn’t accept that apology.

I was so angry that I couldn’t say it was okay.

*

□□Elementary school, 6th grade student jumped from the 4th floor. He got caught in a tree and survived…

What should I have thought when I saw that phrase?

Although I couldn’t see it directly, I could already keenly feel the coldness of the words, even in the coldness of this narrow, unfilled room.

I’ll tell you it’s okay.

“Haha… haha… ”

Only dry laughter comes out.

It’s so absurd that it doesn’t even make sense.

My younger brother, who was taken to the hospital, had already been in critical condition for a long time.

“이 개새끼야. Are you smiling now?”

“Oops,” he said, and got hit in the face. My vision seemed to blink from the momentary shock.

No matter how much I said I had grown up, in the end, if I got hit by a real adult, I felt like I was still a kid.

“What kind of nonsense did that bastard oppa say? What the fuck am I going to do if I go to hell because of you?”

As I hit my nose, I felt my nose tingling and the taste of the nosebleed flowing through my philtrum reached my lips.

“Sorry, sorry… ”

“Sorry? If you’re sorry, you’ll be beaten even more, you idiot.”

I was beaten until my body was bruised.

I think my younger brother must have been in just as much pain.

But I learned from my mother’s voice at the end that I was in less pain.

“What did you do? What did I do to make this come out of my baby’s arms?”

My father came in while he was beating me, and what my mother gave me was a will-like letter scribbled in a notebook.

The moment I saw the words, ‘Oppa, I’m sorry,’ I felt like my heart was being torn apart.

“Useless bastard.”

I was shaking.

After hearing that from my mother, I couldn’t make any facial expression.

The world may be watching if they see that you put your younger brother in the hospital even though you don’t have the money to pay for it, but it probably shows that you care about that child that much.

“… hey. What did you really do?”

That’s what my dad said.

I just spoke while shaking.

“I’ll make money even if I stay up all night at the bar… Help me… ”

“What money? Are you making money from the games I made you play?”

“Yes, yes, rice, hospital, I will do it even if it means cutting back on sleep until it rains… ”

“Be sure to keep those words?”

“Yes, yes!”

“Still, it’s your fault for having to pay hospital bills, so take a beating.”

puck.

It was fortunate. Still, I’m glad you said you were earning money for the hospital bills. Otherwise, I would have gone before my younger brother.

From now on, this was my room. A room for myself. That black tape was to cover up my appearance so that people outside might see it. All I had to do was feel comfortable here.

He smirked and raised the corners of his mouth.

All you have to do is start playing the game and have fun.

All you have to do is earn money by working hard. In the meantime, I also study for the qualification exam in my spare time so that my mom and dad don’t get in trouble. Then your usefulness will be recognized.

are you okay. are you okay… .

It will be fine.

Drop, drop. Tears fall.

Actually, it’s not okay at all.

I sat alone in the quiet room in front of the monitor and curled up in tears.

“… Sorry sorry… Do it.”

I was crazy.

He was a crazy person who made his 6th grade elementary school brother attempt suicide.

My guilt doubled as it felt like I had tried to kill him.

My younger brother sobbed as he held the last note he had written.

How many years have passed since then? I never left my room except to go to the bathroom.

I knew what I was playing this game for, but I couldn’t remember why I had to work so hard.

Now I can’t even remember why I felt it was narrow before.

A folder on the monitor background caught my eye.

I thought it was a folder I didn’t remember, so I looked into it and saw that there were tons of images captured from articles. A sixth-grade child who attempted suicide a few years ago eventually died.

But I didn’t understand what it had to do with me and why it was kept in such a place.

The capacity would have been insufficient anyway. To clean it up, I put it in the trash can.

Then I hit empty along with other useless files.

Because it is right to delete useless things.

*

Only inorganic stories existed there.

Why did Veronica have little memory of where she was?

The answer to that was right here, right now, and only one person was listening with their mouths covered, without even knowing it.