I Don’t Want To Be An Ojakgyo

I shook my leg underneath the desk as I waited for class to end. I unknowingly kept checking the time.

As soon as class ended, I was going to run to my room and take another look at my memories of the past. I had told myself last night that my past life didn't have any meaning now and I didn't need to look at it anymore. I had promised myself that I'd stop, but I had already decided to look again.

I never wanted to go back to the past. But they were too powerful to me to be forgotten.

All of my responsibilities, the ones that I'd thrown aside, were still there. All of my attachments were still there. My sadness, my pain, and my struggles were all there. All of the wants and wishes that I'd never had to the chance to accomplish.

I couldn't just let it go.

"Shushu, Shushu?"

"Ah, uh. Why?"

I was deep in thought, mouth open, when I began focusing on Hestia's voice.

"Why are you so out of it these daaaays?"

To be honest, Hestia had been chattering by my side from earlier but I had ended up losing my concentration from a certain point. I think it was because I had become immersed in my memories of my past.

During our break after classes, Hestia had continued to chat with me, but I hadn't responded.

"I didn't blank out. Swordsmen don't blank out."

I responded guiltily, apologetic.

"Is there something going on these days? You look incredibly depressed, Shushu."

"There's nothing."

"….. Liar."

"I'm more tired than depressed. I haven't been able to sleep well."

Hestia worried as she brushed my messy bangs and tucked a bit of my hair behind my hair, concern evident on her face. I was grateful and apologetic towards Hestia's worry, but all I could do was smile awkwardly.

"….I'll be going for now."

Yesterday, I had fallen asleep while I watched myself and my youngest sibling watching Spongebob. I wanted to hurry up and go back to the dorms, so I headed out first.

I would've liked to go with Hestia, but her next class was different from mine. Hestia grabbed at my clothes, so I patted her hair a few times before lifelessly walking away. My shoulders grew heavier and heavier the more I looked through my memories.

"Shushu…!"

I could hear Hestia calling my name from behind me, but I wasn't in the mood to respond verbally. Hestia seemed to worry about my recent dark mood.

I tried my best to smile as wide as I could towards her, but I didn't know if my smile did the job.

I drew the black magic dimension circle in the air again and slapped it on the back of my hand. I had drawn it so many times by now that I could draw it in my sleep.

[Dimension.]

"405, 294, 248."

I poured in my magic and muttered the activation chant. I laid out the exact location, time, and situation that I wanted to see in that far away dimension. Last time, I had accidentally wrote out the wrong location and had ended up in the African wilderness. I'd basically ended up in a live documentary.

After that, I tried my best to draw out the circle as exact as I could, along with saying the correct activation chant.

Once the magic began to work properly, I was able to see my now familiar past face in my head.

I could see the familiar dot underneath my eyes, my black hair, and my black eyes. It was a familiar version of me. It was Han Ye-an, Han Ye-an. It was a surprising sight to see, no matter how many times I'd seen it.

When I looked at my past self from a third-person's point of view, I looked completely out of it. My hair was always never brushed and a mess, and my eyes were always exhausted from a lack of sleep. I kind of resembled Cory when he was busy with a project.

My past self, Han Ye-an, was always yawning, too. I was always chugging down free mix-coffee that I'd collected packets of at hospitals and restaurants to chase away sleep.

"Han Semi, wake up. You need to go to school."

When I brushed my sleeping younger sibling's hair as I carefully spoke out loud, Semi just rustled underneath her blanket. She pouted her healthy lips and whined that she wanted to sleep just a bit longer. She hugged my leg and whined, "Unni, just five more minuteeeees…." She was adorable. She was adorable even now in my memories.

Regardless of how cute she was, she still had to go to school on time. I folded Semi's blanket and put it away, then turned on the light. Semi only woke up after her blankets were away and the lights were on.

Semi had finally gotten up, but she began to doze off as she was changing her clothes. To be honest, I had woken her up earlier than usual, so I just let her drowse off. She woke up when she smelled food.

My past self seemed to be looking for someone. My head turned from left to right as I sighed when I wasn't able to find whoever I was looking for.

I knew who I was looking for back then. It was definitely Se-yoo.

"Even if you're busy, you should've eaten something."

I lightly tapped the blankets that Se-yoo had folded as I refolded the messily folded blankets. Se-yoo at the time always came home late and left early, when everyone was asleep.

I think I assumed that the reason why Se-yoo did this was because he hated staying in the house. Even if I wanted to talk to him, Se-yoo always seemed to try and avoid me.

Anyway, my past self had a lot of hurt feelings towards Se-yoo–for a variety of reasons. The expression on my face wasn't very happy as I stared at Se-yoo's spot. I would've looked blank when someone else would've seen me, but I knew my feelings because that was me back then. I was hurt.

I could smell something burning as I blankly stared at Se-yoo's spot, so I haphazardly tied my hair up and headed to where Yehwan was standing.

"I told you not to eat the black parts."

I stroked Yehwan's hair as he tried to eat a black something, which I assumed was burnt toast. I scraped off the burnt parts with a knife.

"Nuna, you need to go to school too. I'm all grown up now so I can make my own meals! I'll get Semi to school after she eats, so go ahead first!"

Yehwan said excitedly.

Yehwan always failed at cooking, but I don't think I ever told him to quit making breakfast. First, I was touched by his efforts to make meals for his family, and he had an incredible amount of satisfaction and pride about helping out. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Moreover, he seemed to enjoy it.

At first, I wanted to stop him because it was dangerous for a little kid to hold a knife and be near fire, but he had wanted to cook for me and Se-yoo and Semi. I couldn't stop him.

Instead of making him stop, we had focused on teaching him how to not get hurt as he cooked. After we told him how to use the fire and the knife, he was good at everything except burning things. He wasn't too great at controlling that just yet. We couldn't feed the youngest burnt food, so I cooked Semi's meals.

After I helped Yehwan cook breakfast and Semi's meal, Semi crawled out towards the dining table. Semi, who had kind of taken off her eye boogers, rested her head on Yehwan's curly black hair and dozed off again. Then, after discovering me, she crawled towards me and grabbed a spoon.

When I was preparing my school bag next to my younger siblings who were eating, someone suddenly walked out of the bathroom and was walking quickly towards the entrance.

The person who was trying to leave was none other than Se-yoo. Even though he wasn't sick with a cold or anything, half of his face was covered with a face mask.

My past self, Ye-an, rushed to grab at Se-yoo.

"Han Se-yoo, you! Hold on."

I stood up from my seat. When I tried to block Se-yoo from leaving, his eyebrows furrowed.

When I approached Se-yoo, he looked down and raised his voice.

"I told you to stop caring about me!"

"Not that. I just wanted to tell you to take out the food waste on your way out."

"….."

When I handed Se-yoo a bag full of food waste for his overreacting self to take out, he just let out a scoff. Se-yoo, who had covered his face as much as he could with his mask, tried to leave even more quickly with the bag in hand. Se-yoo hated how I cared for him and our younger siblings at the time.

In the video, I stared at Se-yoo with worry in my eyes. After hesitating, I opened my mouth and called out the name of my cold younger sibling.

"Han Se-yoo."

"….."

When I called his name, Se-yoo stopped. He had opened the door and was about to leave, but turned his head to stare at me.

I seemed to be hesitating, unsure of what to say out loud. I knew what I had been thinking back then. I had been wondering if I should nag him, saying something like, "Come home early," "Are you going around fighting people," or something of the like.

There was a stretch of silence as I considered what I should say before I spoke out loud.

"I trust you, so I'm not going to dig into your life."

Se-yoo's face was covered by his face mask and his bangs, so I couldn't see what kind of expression he had on.

But seeing that he was still facing me, it seemed like he was still listening.

"So keep going around in fights like that. If you lose my trust, I'm going to obsess over you like a leech."

And with that, I threw a medicinal balm at Se-yoo. I dug through my bag and threw a few pain-relieving patches at him too.

Se-yoo couldn't catch all of them being thrown his way, so he just let them hit him. I had thrown them with my worry-filled anger, so they had a bit of power behind the throws.

Se-yoo glanced down at the medicine that I had thrown at him before he shoved them in his pocket. He just glanced at me and left without a word. He would've muttered something like "Ugh! I hate school!" or something jokingly as he left before all this.

When I stared at the spot where Se-yoo had been, I couldn't help but glance at a dusty old box in the corner of our home. It was a box full of Arduino* parts that Se-yoo hadn't touched in years.

Se-yoo always seemed interested in engineering because of me. Refrigerator and television repairs were incredibly expensive, so I had been looking for ways to fix it when Se-yoo said that he would help and study it too. I missed the times when we were younger and trying to figure out how to repair the remote control. When Se-yoo seemed interested in that aspect and had chosen his focus and studied hard, I had studied just as hard to connect with Se-yoo, who seemed to be distancing himself from the family. I read magazines and books and listened to free lectures. We shared information and studied together.

But after I had started working part-time jobs, I had no time to focus on Arduino or programming or school studies. I had to let everything go.

Wandering. I liked wandering. There was always wandering after a crisis, and after that meant growth. It wasn't ideal that Se-yoo's wandering had to happen right when he had to prepare for university, but he'd wake up properly when he was rejected from all of his choice colleges.

"That's his responsibility."

That was what I muttered to myself, but I still looked incredibly bitter. And the expression on my face as I watched probably wasn't bright, either.

After I sent the children off to school, I ate breakfast from the leftovers and headed out.

I was planning on going to college with a full scholarship, so I wasn't slacking from my studies because of my part-time jobs.

Instead, I worked until late at night once school ended. I had taken midnight jobs before, but my siblings were so worried about my health that I had stopped a few jobs. Instead of going out to work in the morning, I focused on my school studies.

I couldn't help but immerse myself in my feelings back then as I watched myself skipping lunch and sleeping. I didn't have a single friend in school, so I always sat in the corner by myself. During lunch and even during breaks.

Whenever I had time, I took out my notebook and calculated how much I earned from my part-time jobs, how much we had spent, and how to pay back our loans.

I was busy working after school, I worked at the convenience store, and I worked on advertising online during my convenience store job.

I was always studying whenever I could. It wasn't like I was completely giving up on my life. I was focusing on earning money right now, but if I ever had something that I really wanted to study, then I would need to dive back in. I was making sure that could happen by setting up my basics.

I had English words taped up on my bathroom mirror and I had information that I needed to know taped up on my wall next to my bed and on the ceiling.

I studied and moved and worked without a moment's rest. Even now, I could feel the weariness in my bones. Just because these hectic, achingly busy days were a part of my daily life didn't make it okay.

Today's exhaustion melted into tomorrow, and the exhaustion only piled up higher and higher in my bones until I was barely crawling by. That was how I felt.

But this was better than the alternative.

I tried to forget that my parents had passed by focusing on the weight of the responsibility on my shoulders.

I never complained about it. Nobody would listen anyway.

I was always trying my hardest, but I didn't know how well I was doing. Nothing was getting better.

I wanted to scream, but I kept quiet.

Really quiet.

Really.

……..

I shook my leg underneath the desk as I waited for class to end. I unknowingly kept checking the time.

As soon as class ended, I was going to run to my room and take another look at my memories of the past. I had told myself last night that my past life didn't have any meaning now and I didn't need to look at it anymore. I had promised myself that I'd stop, but I had already decided to look again.

I never wanted to go back to the past. But they were too powerful to me to be forgotten.

All of my responsibilities, the ones that I'd thrown aside, were still there. All of my attachments were still there. My sadness, my pain, and my struggles were all there. All of the wants and wishes that I'd never had to the chance to accomplish.

I couldn't just let it go.

"Shushu, Shushu?""Ah, uh. Why?"

I was deep in thought, mouth open, when I began focusing on Hestia's voice.

"Why are you so out of it these daaaays?"

To be honest, Hestia had been chattering by my side from earlier but I had ended up losing my concentration from a certain point. I think it was because I had become immersed in my memories of my past.

During our break after classes, Hestia had continued to chat with me, but I hadn't responded.

"I didn't blank out. Swordsmen don't blank out."

I responded guiltily, apologetic.

"Is there something going on these days? You look incredibly depressed, Shushu."

"There's nothing."

"….. Liar."

Hestia worried as she brushed my messy bangs and tucked a bit of my hair behind my hair, concern evident on her face. I was grateful and apologetic towards Hestia's worry, but all I could do was smile awkwardly.

"….I'll be going for now."

Yesterday, I had fallen asleep while I watched myself and my youngest sibling watching Spongebob. I wanted to hurry up and go back to the dorms, so I headed out first.

I would've liked to go with Hestia, but her next class was different from mine. Hestia grabbed at my clothes, so I patted her hair a few times before lifelessly walking away. My shoulders grew heavier and heavier the more I looked through my memories.

"Shushu…!"

I could hear Hestia calling my name from behind me, but I wasn't in the mood to respond verbally. Hestia seemed to worry about my recent dark mood.

I tried my best to smile as wide as I could towards her, but I didn't know if my smile did the job.

I drew the black magic dimension circle in the air again and slapped it on the back of my hand. I had drawn it so many times by now that I could draw it in my sleep.

[Dimension.]"405, 294, 248."

I poured in my magic and muttered the activation chant. I laid out the exact location, time, and situation that I wanted to see in that far away dimension. Last time, I had accidentally wrote out the wrong location and had ended up in the African wilderness. I'd basically ended up in a live documentary.

After that, I tried my best to draw out the circle as exact as I could, along with saying the correct activation chant.

Once the magic began to work properly, I was able to see my now familiar past face in my head.

I could see the familiar dot underneath my eyes, my black hair, and my black eyes. It was a familiar version of me. It was Han Ye-an, Han Ye-an. It was a surprising sight to see, no matter how many times I'd seen it.

When I looked at my past self from a third-person's point of view, I looked completely out of it. My hair was always never brushed and a mess, and my eyes were always exhausted from a lack of sleep. I kind of resembled Cory when he was busy with a project.

My past self, Han Ye-an, was always yawning, too. I was always chugging down free mix-coffee that I'd collected packets of at hospitals and restaurants to chase away sleep.

"Han Semi, wake up. You need to go to school."

When I brushed my sleeping younger sibling's hair as I carefully spoke out loud, Semi just rustled underneath her blanket. She pouted her healthy lips and whined that she wanted to sleep just a bit longer. She hugged my leg and whined, "Unni, just five more minuteeeees…." She was adorable. She was adorable even now in my memories.

Regardless of how cute she was, she still had to go to school on time. I folded Semi's blanket and put it away, then turned on the light. Semi only woke up after her blankets were away and the lights were on.

Semi had finally gotten up, but she began to doze off as she was changing her clothes. To be honest, I had woken her up earlier than usual, so I just let her drowse off. She woke up when she smelled food.

My past self seemed to be looking for someone. My head turned from left to right as I sighed when I wasn't able to find whoever I was looking for.

I knew who I was looking for back then. It was definitely Se-yoo.

"Even if you're busy, you should've eaten something."

I lightly tapped the blankets that Se-yoo had folded as I refolded the messily folded blankets. Se-yoo at the time always came home late and left early, when everyone was asleep.

I think I assumed that the reason why Se-yoo did this was because he hated staying in the house. Even if I wanted to talk to him, Se-yoo always seemed to try and avoid me.

Anyway, my past self had a lot of hurt feelings towards Se-yoo–for a variety of reasons. The expression on my face wasn't very happy as I stared at Se-yoo's spot. I would've looked blank when someone else would've seen me, but I knew my feelings because that was me back then. I was hurt.

I could smell something burning as I blankly stared at Se-yoo's spot, so I haphazardly tied my hair up and headed to where Yehwan was standing.

"I told you not to eat the black parts."

I stroked Yehwan's hair as he tried to eat a black something, which I assumed was burnt toast. I scraped off the burnt parts with a knife.

"Nuna, you need to go to school too. I'm all grown up now so I can make my own meals! I'll get Semi to school after she eats, so go ahead first!"

Yehwan said excitedly.

Yehwan always failed at cooking, but I don't think I ever told him to quit making breakfast. First, I was touched by his efforts to make meals for his family, and he had an incredible amount of satisfaction and pride about helping out. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Moreover, he seemed to enjoy it.

At first, I wanted to stop him because it was dangerous for a little kid to hold a knife and be near fire, but he had wanted to cook for me and Se-yoo and Semi. I couldn't stop him.

Instead of making him stop, we had focused on teaching him how to not get hurt as he cooked. After we told him how to use the fire and the knife, he was good at everything except burning things. He wasn't too great at controlling that just yet. We couldn't feed the youngest burnt food, so I cooked Semi's meals.

After I helped Yehwan cook breakfast and Semi's meal, Semi crawled out towards the dining table. Semi, who had kind of taken off her eye boogers, rested her head on Yehwan's curly black hair and dozed off again. Then, after discovering me, she crawled towards me and grabbed a spoon.

When I was preparing my school bag next to my younger siblings who were eating, someone suddenly walked out of the bathroom and was walking quickly towards the entrance.

The person who was trying to leave was none other than Se-yoo. Even though he wasn't sick with a cold or anything, half of his face was covered with a face mask.

My past self, Ye-an, rushed to grab at Se-yoo.

"Han Se-yoo, you! Hold on."

I stood up from my seat. When I tried to block Se-yoo from leaving, his eyebrows furrowed.

When I approached Se-yoo, he looked down and raised his voice.

"I told you to stop caring about me!"

"Not that. I just wanted to tell you to take out the food waste on your way out."

When I handed Se-yoo a bag full of food waste for his overreacting self to take out, he just let out a scoff. Se-yoo, who had covered his face as much as he could with his mask, tried to leave even more quickly with the bag in hand. Se-yoo hated how I cared for him and our younger siblings at the time.

In the video, I stared at Se-yoo with worry in my eyes. After hesitating, I opened my mouth and called out the name of my cold younger sibling.

"Han Se-yoo.""….."

When I called his name, Se-yoo stopped. He had opened the door and was about to leave, but turned his head to stare at me.

I seemed to be hesitating, unsure of what to say out loud. I knew what I had been thinking back then. I had been wondering if I should nag him, saying something like, "Come home early," "Are you going around fighting people," or something of the like.

There was a stretch of silence as I considered what I should say before I spoke out loud.

"I trust you, so I'm not going to dig into your life."

Se-yoo's face was covered by his face mask and his bangs, so I couldn't see what kind of expression he had on.

But seeing that he was still facing me, it seemed like he was still listening.

"So keep going around in fights like that. If you lose my trust, I'm going to obsess over you like a leech."

And with that, I threw a medicinal balm at Se-yoo. I dug through my bag and threw a few pain-relieving patches at him too.

Se-yoo couldn't catch all of them being thrown his way, so he just let them hit him. I had thrown them with my worry-filled anger, so they had a bit of power behind the throws.

Se-yoo glanced down at the medicine that I had thrown at him before he shoved them in his pocket. He just glanced at me and left without a word. He would've muttered something like "Ugh! I hate school!" or something jokingly as he left before all this.

When I stared at the spot where Se-yoo had been, I couldn't help but glance at a dusty old box in the corner of our home. It was a box full of Arduino* parts that Se-yoo hadn't touched in years.

Se-yoo always seemed interested in engineering because of me. Refrigerator and television repairs were incredibly expensive, so I had been looking for ways to fix it when Se-yoo said that he would help and study it too. I missed the times when we were younger and trying to figure out how to repair the remote control. When Se-yoo seemed interested in that aspect and had chosen his focus and studied hard, I had studied just as hard to connect with Se-yoo, who seemed to be distancing himself from the family. I read magazines and books and listened to free lectures. We shared information and studied together.

But after I had started working part-time jobs, I had no time to focus on Arduino or programming or school studies. I had to let everything go.

Wandering. I liked wandering. There was always wandering after a crisis, and after that meant growth. It wasn't ideal that Se-yoo's wandering had to happen right when he had to prepare for university, but he'd wake up properly when he was rejected from all of his choice colleges.

"That's his responsibility."

That was what I muttered to myself, but I still looked incredibly bitter. And the expression on my face as I watched probably wasn't bright, either.

After I sent the children off to school, I ate breakfast from the leftovers and headed out.

I was planning on going to college with a full scholarship, so I wasn't slacking from my studies because of my part-time jobs.

Instead, I worked until late at night once school ended. I had taken midnight jobs before, but my siblings were so worried about my health that I had stopped a few jobs. Instead of going out to work in the morning, I focused on my school studies.

I couldn't help but immerse myself in my feelings back then as I watched myself skipping lunch and sleeping. I didn't have a single friend in school, so I always sat in the corner by myself. During lunch and even during breaks.

Whenever I had time, I took out my notebook and calculated how much I earned from my part-time jobs, how much we had spent, and how to pay back our loans.

I was busy working after school, I worked at the convenience store, and I worked on advertising online during my convenience store job.

I was always studying whenever I could. It wasn't like I was completely giving up on my life. I was focusing on earning money right now, but if I ever had something that I really wanted to study, then I would need to dive back in. I was making sure that could happen by setting up my basics.

I had English words taped up on my bathroom mirror and I had information that I needed to know taped up on my wall next to my bed and on the ceiling.

I studied and moved and worked without a moment's rest. Even now, I could feel the weariness in my bones. Just because these hectic, achingly busy days were a part of my daily life didn't make it okay.

Today's exhaustion melted into tomorrow, and the exhaustion only piled up higher and higher in my bones until I was barely crawling by. That was how I felt.

But this was better than the alternative.

I tried to forget that my parents had passed by focusing on the weight of the responsibility on my shoulders.

I never complained about it. Nobody would listen anyway.

I was always trying my hardest, but I didn't know how well I was doing. Nothing was getting better.

I wanted to scream, but I kept quiet.

Really quiet.

Really.

……..

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