I feel awkward.
And it’s uncomfortable.
After the commotion in the bedroom, I got up to prove to myself that I was okay.
My vision was a little blurry, but I had rested for a few hours, enough to greet guests.
“Unni, are you still feeling bad?”
The girl with swollen eyes, Ji-yeon, asked. It was Ji-yeon who had desperately tried to stop me from getting up from the bedroom.
Considering her attitude, treating me like a fragile glass doll, and her words, something seemed to have happened.
“Still feeling bad, huh?”
I couldn’t know what Ji-eun’s previous state was like, but it probably wasn’t good.
“No, I’m much better… Really, I am… Much better…”
But what exactly got better? I didn’t know anything.
I said I was okay to reassure Ji-yeon, without knowing how the situation was going.
Then, with her eyes reddened as if she had just cried, she glared at me.
Flinching at her gaze, I had to say I was fine.
If I said I wasn’t okay, I didn’t know what she would do.
“Are you eating well?”
“Yeah, I cook sometimes and order food sometimes… I’m not skipping meals.”
Ji-yeon, who was looking around the kitchen, said that. After glancing at me, she added one more thing.
“I think you’ve lost weight compared to last time. Even if it’s annoying, you have to eat well. I’ll come check on you regularly.”
Was she always like this? An attentive younger sister watching over her unni.
Somehow, it felt more like Ji-yeon was the older sister rather than the younger sibling.
The only relief was that Ji-yeon didn’t think I was strange.
I didn’t know what Ji-eun was usually like, but she probably wasn’t as talkative as I was.
Ji-yeon, seemingly used to my awkwardness, looked around the house.
“…What did you cook here? It’s all stuck to the frying pan.”
“Well, it was soy sauce egg rice, but I tried to make it a bit crispy, and that’s what happened.”
“You should take better care of yourself. You can cook well.”
Not doing the dishes seemed to be a mistake.
Seeing the frying pan in the sink, Ji-yeon shook her head.
Then, she opened the refrigerator and sighed softly.
“There are only eggs and the onions have all gone bad. What on earth are you living on? No wonder you’re losing weight.”
She then turned sharply to look at me, so I deliberately tried to avoid her gaze.
“You’ve lost weight just because you don’t have an appetite and are eating less.”
“You’ve probably just been eating whatever. It’s obvious without even looking.”
Even though she was grumbling, her warm gaze was filled with worry, and I could say nothing.
In fact, I’m not Ji-eun.
Your unni has disappeared, and for some reason, I’ve taken over this body.
The same words rose to my throat, but I couldn’t speak the truth.
It had been so long since I felt this warmth.
“…Do you take your medicine regularly?”
Medicine?
As Ji-yeon carefully said while looking around the house, small bottles were in her hand.
They were filled with anxiolytics, panic medication, antidepressants… a lot of different types.
I hadn’t found these items when I searched the place before.
So that’s where they were hidden.
I was able to understand roughly what problems Ji-eun had by looking at the labels on the bottles.
“It doesn’t seem like you have less medicine since last time.”
“Because the medicine isn’t good for you if you take it often. I haven’t taken it lately. I feel like I’m starting to depend on it.”
Originally, depending on anything is not a good choice.
In fact, during school, I preferred to tough it out when I caught a cold rather than go to the hospital.
Time passed, and I just got better, and it was annoying to go to the hospital.
My immunity improved automatically too.
I didn’t know Ji-eun was taking such medication, but I hadn’t taken any since becoming Ji-eun.
It wasn’t a situation that would worry Ji-yeon.
Still, she looked at me with concern.
“Are you really okay? You don’t look so good.”
“No, it’s just… It was that day. I didn’t sleep well.”
It was a difficult statement to make. The word “that day” felt so uncomfortable coming out of my mouth.
Maybe because we were both women, Ji-yeon seemed to empathize with my pain.
Then, she tried to lay me down on the bed.
I was so weak that despite half-heartedly resisting, I was helplessly pulled.
In the process, her hand brushed against my forehead.
“Unni! You’re burning up!”
“I think it’s because I took a shower with cold water… It should be fine after some time.”
“No, how can you take a cold shower when you feel sick!”
“They say cold showers are good for your health…”
“You saw something weird again, didn’t you? I told you not to just follow everything blindly.”
I can’t do this.
Murmuring like that, Ji-yeon covered me with the blanket up to my neck.
It’s going to be too hot if you cover me up like that.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel my body relaxing as the warm blanket enveloped me.
“Get some sleep. I’ll make some porridge.”
“I’m fine…”
“You probably didn’t eat anything. You can’t just survive on something like soy sauce egg rice when you’re not feeling well.”
What was wrong with soy sauce egg rice? I knew well that it was nutritionally insufficient.
It’s just that Ji-eun’s body was, let’s say, fuel-efficient.
A little bit of food would fill me up.
After all, I couldn’t eat much anyway. My body seemed to reject anything over a certain amount.
Since my stomach didn’t take well to food,
I chose the easy option of soy sauce egg rice.
Of course, I sensed that I shouldn’t say this to Ji-yeon with my limited awareness.
If I say it, I’ll probably just get hit on the back.
In the kitchen, I could hear a little humming and some clattering sounds.
It was the first sense of strange calmness I felt in a long time.
After becoming Ji-eun, it was the first time I felt this sense of relief.
Maybe due to my heavy eyelids being combined with this psychological comfort,
I fell into a deep sleep for the first time.
*
“Are you awake?”
“Yeah…”
How long did I sleep? It was definitely morning when Ji-yeon visited, but the sun was already setting.
Still, my eyes were definitely wide open, and my condition had improved significantly.
“You must be hungry; let’s heat up some porridge.”
I dragged my heavy body and stumbled to heat the porridge.
After serving the porridge into a bowl and preparing for the meal, my groggy mind cleared up a bit.
Since the ingredients at home were lacking, the simple vegetable porridge was rather bland but looked quite appetizing.
As I took spoonfuls of the vegetable porridge, I shifted my gaze to Ji-yeon.
I wondered what she was doing now.
Ji-yeon was sitting in front of the computer.
The computer where I had just been playing games and broadcasting a while ago.
Ji-yeon was looking around with the power on.
Then, feeling my gaze, she quietly asked me.
“Unni, are you broadcasting?”
Gulp.
I was taken aback for a moment and swallowed the hot porridge without even cooling it down.
The hot grains burned my tongue and throat, but I couldn’t show any reaction.
It’s hot…
In response to my gaze that seemed to ask how she knew, Ji-yeon pulled out a microphone and a small camera.
Those were kept neatly in the desk drawer, so I guess they were detected.
“I noticed the monitor had two screens suddenly and was puzzled. I thought maybe it was inconvenient because you were working on design.”
Why did it feel like I was being interrogated even though she spoke so calmly?
“I didn’t know you played games, unni… It would have been nice if you had told me.”
“But you don’t play games…”
“Still, if you had told me, I would have at least seen what it was.”
“I was going to tell you-”
“I wanted to play games together with you.”
With a tone that seemed to hold a bit of disappointment, I felt like a sinner.
What was this pressure?
I had no idea I had a sister like you.
“What about the broadcasting? How did you get into that?”
“That’s a bit of a story…”
I couldn’t just firmly cut off Ji-yeon’s persistent questioning.
Ji-eun probably did the same. Ji-yeon was always the one taking the lead.
However, I couldn’t accurately tell her the reason for starting to broadcast.
I was branded a cheater, started broadcasting to clarify it, and found it fun, so I wanted to keep going.
Then she would just ask more questions like, “What’s with the cheating?” and “Why did you have to start broadcasting to clear things up?” and “What’s so fun about broadcasting?”
What is this? Is this the trend of a question mark killer?
Just imagining it made me dizzy.
I just said I met a streamer while casually playing games and got interested in broadcasting.
Then, she asked what game I was playing.
“It’s a game called Eo War…”
“I know Eo War too. My friends play that.”
Hearing that boys and girls both played it, I realized again the status of Eo War.
So it was this popular.
But that wasn’t the important thing to me.
I had to change the topic somehow.
This discussion was only detrimental to me.
However, Ji-yeon seemed to read my mind and said with a smile.
“Show me when you’re broadcasting, unni.”
With her smiling face, I couldn’t refuse that request.
Somehow, she didn’t leave any gaps.
