176 – Sneaky
Gina accepted my hand.
Even so, his half-doubtful gaze has not changed, but compared to before, it is safe to say that he has become much more docile.
“So what are you planning to do? If you don’t think of a way and just help, you will fall behind.”
Um. Should I say I’ve become docile?
Tick-tick-tick seems to have gotten worse.
“First of all, I need to know exactly how my mother is. I can roughly predict it.”
Perhaps it is a mental illness caused by the shock of losing his son.
Among them, it is most likely related to dissociative disorder related to memory.
The problem is that I am not a professional doctor, so it is difficult to suggest an accurate treatment.
The surest way would be to receive counseling from a specialist and concurrently take medication, but now, in the 21st century, such a system was not well established.
Historically, it is relatively recent that mental disorders have been systematically studied and treatments developed.
In other words, in 19th-century London, mentally ill patients were treated as just insane lunatics.
So I have no choice but to try the next best thing.
If you can’t get her professional treatment, you have to be by her side to help her get through and overcome her wounds on her own.
Of course, it won’t be as easy as it sounds. Mental illness is not a light problem that can be cured simply according to the patient’s mind.
But she believes that it is not a congenital problem, that her grief over the loss of her son has become a trauma and her heart is close to being broken, so if she overcomes her pain, she will be able to return to normal .
Therefore, the ultimate goal is to help mother face reality.
I explained my goal in a way that Gina could understand as much as possible.
“What if you did it for no reason and are more shocked at the current state?”
“That’s why your role is important. Didn’t you hear what I said earlier? Jin isn’t the only thing that’s important to my mother.”
She said that she was able to overcome the grief of losing her husband thanks to her children.
Not only sons but also daughters are equally precious. In a way, he had been ignoring it even though he knew that fact that was so obvious. No, maybe I really didn’t know.
Obviously, the grief of losing a son may be too great to bear.
Nevertheless, since she still has her daughter whom she loves, she will surely be able to overcome this time as well.
Even the daughter changed her gender just for her mother and erased herself. Isn’t she kind and kind enough to live her life playing her brother for nearly 10 years?
“If you are struggling in the process of acceptance, you should be there to help. Because you are the only thing left for my mother.”
She hesitated with shaky eyes before slowly nodding her head.
“…Okay.”
“Okay. Then, I’ll talk slowly at first. If you look very anxious, I’ll stop right away so you can calm me down. It’s not about revealing everything at once, but step by step.”
It’s not good to leave her mother alone for too long, so she’ll have to go back soon.
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Just as I was about to make a simple plan and leave the room, Gina stopped me by grabbing my collar.
“Why?”
“That… Thank you.”
The guy who blushes and avoids her gaze.
Now that I look at it, I wonder why I ever thought of her as her man.
She’s that. She appeared as a man in the original story, so I thought it was natural. Come to think of it, she only identified herself as a man with her own mouth and wore her school uniform for her boys, and it seemed that she had never declared that she was a man in an official setting.
She couldn’t imagine that she was a cross-dressing woman. In her original work, when did she hide such a huge reversal so tightly?
‘Wait a minute. Then the main character…?’
I had that thought momentarily, but I shook my head within a second.
Leaving aside everything else, even when it comes to just looks, layering is definitely a man’s choice.
Unlike Granger, she has short hair, cool impression like a man, and even her physique, so she can’t be a woman.
If the odds are broken and even the main character is a cross-dressing woman…
I would rather just hide my identity and live as a man for the rest of my life. With that look, she’s not really a woman.
Leaving behind such trivial thoughts, I answered him.
“What? It’s about this much between friends.”
She frowns at her mischievous joke.
Maybe it was because she remembered her own sarcasm, laughing at me right before and saying that she had mistaken me for a friend of hers.
I left the room after giving him a light pat on the shoulder to mean that I didn’t care at all.
[Whoops. Whoop whoop…]
‘What is it? They just appear out of nowhere and laugh sullenly.’
[Very satisfied! I am so proud of you.]
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but that’s very fortunate.’
Is she happy that I’m helping her mother?
As expected, the goddess seems to be a good deity, even though she has a bit of an eccentric side.
When she came out to the living room, she saw her mother struggling with her forehead resting as she was still seated.
“Mother? Are you okay?”
When I asked her worriedly, she tried to make her smile.
“It’s just a mild headache. Sometimes it’s like this.”
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Jina, who sat down after me, frowned as if it was uncomfortable to even see her mother like that.
How should I start talking? If you bring it out too straightforwardly, you run the risk of panicking and getting worse.
She needed to be aware of her daughter’s existence naturally, even though she was not aware of it as carefully as she could.
The best way for her is to question herself while feeling a sense of distance from the answer she gave.
Let’s continue our daily conversation. Then, when the opportunity arises, I will try little by little.
“So, isn’t Jin lonely while Jin is at the academy?”
“Of course not. Still, if she is absorbed in reading a book or tending a flower bed, time will pass quickly, so it’s okay.”
“But she is lonely when she is alone. Did she ever think of remarrying?”
My mother’s eyes were slightly startled at the somewhat irritating subject, and she glared at Jina next to her and warned her quietly with her ventriloquism.
“Hey. It’s crazy?”
“Calm down. Because this is all a plan.”
“···If you say something strange, you really fall behind.”
Fortunately, my mother wasn’t in a bad mood. Rather, she had a bewitching smile and she asked me playfully.
“Oops. Are you interested in me?”
“hahahaha… Kuck!”
Laughing awkwardly, she gasped at the attack on her side. She glared at me with bloody eyes that seemed like she would kill a person at any moment.
“I’m sorry. Now I have no desire to meet with anyone again. As I said before, I have children…”
Come. I watched her reaction closely, keeping an eye on the conversation, which went exactly as I had hoped.
Mother stops talking and frowns halfway through, perhaps feeling a sense of incongruity in her words.
However, it wasn’t long before this was not enough, and she returned to her original form as if nothing had happened.
After that, after persistent induction, I tried to elicit several more responses, but the results were similar.
The sense of incongruity grew and the time spent in a daze grew longer, but it was hard to see even that as a meaningful change.
Thus, time had already passed. The day is getting darker.
Anyway, it seemed unreasonable in many ways to solve it right away.
“I guess I should go soon.”
“I came here after a long time, why don’t you go and have dinner?”
“This is my first visit, and I thought it would be too much of a nuisance to go after a meal. Please prepare it next time you come.”
“Yes. Don’t be afraid to come and play anytime. Jin, my friend is leaving, so why don’t you come out to meet me?”
Gina gets up grunting at her mother’s nagging.
“I was going to do it even if my mom didn’t tell me.”
“Yes. Why is a child who was not like that when she was young so cold when she grows up?”
“…Who is responsible for that?”
I felt bitter as I listened to the small muttering to myself from the side.
Perhaps the fact that this guy grew up so ruthlessly was because of this complex family background.
Of course, it could be that it was originally like that, regardless of that.
Anyway, I left the front door and walked alone with him on the evening street after sunset.
“…If you spread rumors to other kids, they will be followed.”
“Tell someone about this. Even if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
She was the best genius and delinquent of her grade, and it turned out that she was a transvestite.
I wonder if no one will believe it even if it is posted on a bulletin board.
After that, she quietly walked down the street without saying anything.
A complex atmosphere that is hard to explain was surrounding us.
I could never have imagined that this would happen just a few hours ago. Maybe that’s the same for her next to her.
“You want to follow me to my house? You should go back now and rest. You must be very tired.”
“Ha. It’s disgusting, so can you stop pretending to be kind? Minus is on the subject.”
“·······.”
I don’t know why I get cursed at.
I still thought we were getting closer, but was it just my misunderstanding?
“Hey.”
“Huh?”
“···You can call me by name when there are two of us. Just like that.”
“Hmm. I’ll think about it if you call me by name instead of skipping it.”
When I say it with a smile, he immediately turns around and leaves with a rotten expression on his tongue.
I shouted behind her back.
“Go inside carefully! Pass.”
Then she stopped abruptly, and then she sprinted away.
“Skinning is on the subject…!”
Leaving only incomprehensible words.