Chapter 2: Mokbulsikjeong

Eight years have passed since I closed my eyes forever and was reborn.

Eight years since the world began to look like a minimap.

It seems this world is inhabited by some rather dangerous monsters.

[“Recently, a new variant that has begun to wreak havoc has the peculiar characteristic of being invisible to the naked eye—”]

“Cheong, stop sitting in front of the TV and come eat.”

“Okay, I’m coming.”

Tap. I grabbed the cane leaning against the side of the sofa with a now-familiar motion.

Honestly, at home, there’s no real need to move around with a cane, but my parents say I should get as used to it as possible, so there’s no helping it.

It’s a bit of a hassle, but since it’s the advice of my parents who always work so hard for me, I couldn’t shake my head and refuse while holding the cane out in front.

It’s just a little inconvenience for me.

Using this bizarre perspective that barely registers depth, I calculated the remaining distance to the kitchen and slowly moved my feet.

Step, step.

“…Our Cheong, all grown up.”

“I worked hard, Mom!”

“…Yeah.”

About three days’ worth of effort, I’d say!

No, seriously, the disconnect between what my eyes see and the sense of direction my body feels was definitely tough to overcome.

Even though my eyes told me to turn left at the corner, my body couldn’t immediately follow my brain’s orders, so I’d often turn the wrong way and curse my own stupidity.

It’s like in a game of Red Light, Green Light, when you clearly hear what to do but accidentally raise the wrong flag.

Well, thanks to that, I got to hear plenty of my parents’ tearful sighs as they watched me from behind.

…My heart ached in real-time, too.

Mostly from the pain of triangles rolling around in my conscience as punishment for lying.

Now? The triangles have turned into circles, so it doesn’t hurt at all.

Humans are creatures of adaptation.

A few years was long enough to get used to even this kind of disconnect.

Enough that, during mealtimes when the same dishes are always placed in the same spots, I could pick up the side dishes I wanted with chopsticks myself—

Clatter.

“…Oh.”

Oops, I dropped it.

…This is like, you know, even monkeys fall from trees sometimes. That kind of thing.

No matter how used I am to this weird vision, it’s still hard to notice things like a Lego on the floor or a high threshold with a perspective that lacks depth.

Naturally, picking up side dishes requires a high level of skill, so it’s something I’ve been practicing lately.

“…If you want side dishes, you can just tell me, Cheong. I can feed you.”

“No… it’s okay, Mom. I don’t need to eat it.”

“…You wanted the braised beans, didn’t you? Here, open wide~”

Was it because I dropped food on the table? My mother’s voice, as she sat in front of me, seemed to drop a little.

Mom, do you love braised beans that much?

Or maybe she’s despairing at the grim reality of having to clean the table.

I tried to make an excuse that I wasn’t actually reaching for the side dish, but I couldn’t withstand my mother’s attack, already in full-on protective mode.

“Open wide~”

“…Ah.”

Once Mom’s in this mode, there’s no stopping her. Thinking that, I obediently opened my mouth.

And so, I looked at my mother feeding me directly, from the perspective of a cockroach stuck on the ceiling.

Honestly, does she even realize that every one of these embarrassing moments is what drives me to stubbornly try to do everything on my own?

Well, she probably doesn’t, which is why she’s so eager to give me her all, liver and gallbladder included.

If she knew everything about me, she’d probably be dunking my head in a bathtub by now, demanding her cute daughter back.

Water must know the answers, after all.

“…I’m full.”

Pat, pat—

I lightly tapped my stomach, wondering if I was gaining weight, and climbed back onto the sofa where I’d been before.

They say lying down right after eating makes you a cow, but personally, being reborn as a cow doesn’t sound half bad.

Unless I lay the TV flat on the floor like a table, I’ll never be able to see the screen, but the reason I keep sitting on the sofa in front of the TV is to listen to the news.

For someone like me, who can’t go out, use the internet, or easily touch a phone, the news is my book, my window, the only way to hear about the world’s events.

At first, I thought, how different could this world be from the last one? I tried to brush it off.

But as I kept hearing strange, intriguing words over and over, I couldn’t just ignore them anymore.

[“…Next news. The ‘Awakener Human Rights Committee’ has raised concerns about the forced conscription-like practices targeting Awakeners—”]

Words like “Awakener” and “variant” kept coming up in the serious tone of what I assumed was the news anchor’s smooth voice.

The first time I heard these words, I was shocked.

I thought my parents had tuned into a gaming channel or something similar.

But when I realized these terms were coming from the news, from the most credible news channel in this world, I spent entire days lying on the sofa with the news on, trying to figure out what these two terms meant.

And what I learned was enough to blow away all the worries I’d been mulling over for years.

In simple terms, an Awakener is someone who, like in a typical game setting, can use supernatural abilities beyond human limits.

And a variant? No one knows their origin or nature, but they’re monstrous beings that suddenly appeared one day and started attacking people.

All I have is the knowledge I’ve gleaned from the news, so my explanation might sound like something scraped off the internet, but it’s enough.

No, it’s more than enough.

“…Guess I’ll take a nap.”

I’m probably an Awakener, have been since I was born. That would explain this abnormality in my eyes, or the fact that I have memories of a past life.

Anyway, when I reach high school age, everyone has to take a mandatory test to determine if they’re an Awakener, so all my problems will sort themselves out in time.

In other words, all my worries are over.

I’ll just live casually like this, and around the time I’m in middle school, before the test, I’ll say my eyes started working.

Since my eyes, which supposedly saw nothing, now see like a flat map, I can’t keep acting the same as before. So until then, I’ll hide the fact that I can read books or walk through crowds without a cane.

When the time comes, I’ll act a little surprised and say my eyes started working. Problem solved.

Add a bit of acting, and it’s the perfect crime.

Done, done.

Problem solved.

“~♬”

Lying down, I stretched with a pleasant yawn.

Crack—my stiff joints loosened with a satisfying sound.

It felt like digging out earwax that had been stuck for ages, or yanking out a bothersome nose hair—refreshing.

…Huh, what?

Uh… you’re saying if I’d just admitted the abnormality in my eyes from the start, it wouldn’t have been a big deal? That I didn’t need to go through all this hassle and could’ve been more comfortable?

…

…Shut up, you guys.

I hate perceptive people like you the most in this world.

“Seriously.”

I’m the one who went through all this trouble.

All that thinking, and I ended up worse off.

It’s like changing your answer on a test after agonizing over it, only to find out the original answer was correct—that kind of pain.

If I’m reborn again, I really want to be a mushroom, free from these kinds of worries.

A cow’s fine, a mushroom’s fine, so why did I have to be reborn as a human?

“…Hmph.”

I curled up on the sofa and drifted off to sleep.

*