The act of dragging another person's social reputation into the abyss with something that isn't true is called framing.
That is what happened to me. Being framed for murder.
However, I had no right to feel wronged.
Because that false accusation was something I volunteered to take on myself.
The house I entered one day was, as usual, a complete mess.
It was obvious that my damned father had flown into a rage and caused a scene.
This is why Mom left the house, I thought as I called out a name.
"Seo A-yeon!"
Surely nothing happened to my little sister who should have come home first?
When I called her name with worry, a sobbing voice answered.
"Oppa..."
That crazy bastard.
Don't tell me he raised his fist against my sister too? I immediately headed towards the kitchen where the sound was coming from.
"Huh?"
And I was met with an unbelievable sight.
The first things that caught my eye were broken dishes and tangled furniture.
When I lowered my gaze, there were shards of blood-stained broken liquor bottles on the floor, and lying in the middle of it all...
"Oppaaaa..."
There was the corpse of what used to be my damned father.
"De, dead..."
The blood splattered on my sister's face and the liquor bottle in her hand suggested one fact.
"Killed..."
My sister, trying to resist abuse, had accidentally killed him.
My sister said she didn't know a person could die so futilely, having seen me get hit with liquor bottles so often.
Unfortunately, the area she hit was critical.
Seeing my sister trembling in fear with a world-collapsing expression, wearing a blood-spattered school uniform, my mind went blank.
What do I do?
Should I hide it?
Can I even hide a corpse?
If this body is discovered, what happens to A-yeon?
Rumors will definitely spread in the neighborhood. Should we move?
No, she'll go to an orphanage, right?
But what if rumors spread in the orphanage too?
Can she live a normal life there?
That stain will never disappear for the rest of her life.
Fuck, what happens to my sister now?
Should I just...?
Bad thoughts bit the tail of other bad thoughts.
In the end, there was only one conclusion I could reach.
"Say that I killed him."
"Huh?"
"Go wash up first, and change your clothes. I'll disguise it appropriately."
"N-no. This is something I..."
"Seo A-yeon! Listen to me."
I know middle schoolers don't get punished.
Still, I hated the idea of a slash being drawn across an innocent kid's future.
"...I did it."
The day the sentence was decided.
The bright spring weather stimulated my emotions.
Why is the weather so damn nice for no reason?
While others are flower viewing, I'm going to prison for murder.
I muttered pointlessly.
"Did God manipulate my probability just a little?"
Why does nothing work out like this?
My life was ruined just like that.
After being released, I went to find my sister.
The bond between siblings isn't easily broken.
Of course, I went there intending to live with my sister, but...
"A-yeon? She's already gone?"
At the orphanage where my sister lived, I received the answer that she had already been adopted and was gone.
After asking around, I found the neighborhood where she had been adopted.
"A-yeon-ah...!"
I saw my sister's appearance from afar.
I was about to call her name, but I quickly covered my mouth.
Because I saw my sister walking and laughing on the street holding hands with her new parents.
She looked happy.
I had almost never seen her smile until now.
My sister, who had abandoned her ugly old family and found a new one, was smiling like a sunflower.
Leaving me alone while she lives happily looks bad?
If I was going to think like that, I wouldn't have taken the blame.
That was A-yeon's original self, the appearance I had wanted to see.
I felt it intuitively.
The current me should not talk to that child.
Approaching her rashly is also impossible.
Just watching from afar was all I could do.
My sister living her life, and me living mine.
I thought that would be the answer for both of us.
On the day I returned without even being able to speak to her, I thought:
'I need to make money.'
It was a pledge to make a lot, a whole lot of money.
If we had money at home.
Parents wouldn't have fought so much, Mom wouldn't have left, and my sister wouldn't have had to kill Father.
If I had money.
I, having been released, wouldn't have to live separately from my sister, and I wouldn't have had to drop out of high school.
I can assert this.
People who say money doesn't necessarily bring happiness are people who have never been without money.
So I set out to make money.
What I had overlooked was the treatment society gives to the crime I took on for my sister.
"...Sorry, but you're fired."
"You have a criminal record?"
"If I knew this, I wouldn't have hired you!"
There was really no answer.
Even when I tried to find part-time jobs, I was constantly fired because of my criminal record.
I didn't have any other decent talents either.
It seems it was better when I was in juvenile detention.
Back then, I just had to do as I was told.
Then, exhausted, I tried alcohol for the first time.
Memories of getting beaten day in and day out by my drunken father.
Because of that trauma, I swore I would never drink.
But because it was so hard, I couldn't help my hand slipping towards it.
This is all the power of internet media.
Because they blast alcohol ads so much, my hand reaches for it.
I didn't want to cause trouble for others, so I drank quietly alone at home.
"Ugh, bitter."
Since that old man drank it so deliciously, I thought I could do the same.
I seriously almost threw up after drinking it.
It's too bitter.
How do people eat this while grinning?
Yet my hand naturally heads for the glass.
The feeling of getting tipsy rises, the feeling of all worries in my head being erased.
"Dirty life! Sob..."
It seems I'm not someone with good drinking habits.
I only drank a few glasses alone against the wall, but tears are coming out and self-talk keeps pouring out.
This wasn't being controlled by my will.
It seems I resemble my father in this crap.
"Fuck this, I'm never drinking again~."
Maybe this is the first and last drink of my life?
Around the time I had emptied the whole bottle.
Suddenly, I heard a knock on the front door.
"Uh, who is it."
I moved my staggering steps and opened the door.
There, a woman with a flushed face, drunk just like me, was glaring at me.
"Fuck, it's so fucking loud."
It was the woman next door.
"Don't you know the walls are thin?"
She's a woman I've seen a few times.
On the day I first moved in, the first meeting was her opening her door briefly to glare at me because it was noisy.
After that, it was just passing by and exchanging greetings a few times.
For her to come and get angry like this, I must have been quite loud.
"If you're going to drink alone, drink quietly."
But I had my grievances about this too.
She does it too, so why can't I?
As the woman next door said, the walls of this villa are extremely thin, so even dropping an object can be clearly heard in other rooms.
That's how bad the noise between floors or next-door neighbors is.
It's not just once or twice that I've heard this woman's drunken antics.
- I am trash~ Cancer of society~.
- This fucking world~.
- Until the East Sea waters and Mt. Baekdu dry and wear away, God protects us, but why not meee~.
Whenever I try to sleep, she sings songs with rewritten lyrics in a uniquely slurred pronunciation.
Do you know how stressful that was?
Even when I knocked on her door a few times to talk, there was never an answer during the day.
I thought she was out working, but that wasn't it either.
Because I never heard the sound of the front door opening in the morning.
She definitely seems to stay inside all day, which was very strange.
But going to a woman living alone's house at night was a bit much, so I just held it in.
"Let's drink a bit quietly, yeah?"
Just in time. To come find me first like this.
I finally brought up the words I had been holding back.
"...Hic, you drink and sing all day too, can't I do that?"
But it seems I couldn't hold it in too well.
"You fucking bitch!"
"Wh, what? What did you say? Did you curse?"
Unintentionally, curses popped out.
"She cursed first!"
Since that woman also swore abruptly, it wasn't just my fault.
"Naeronambul? Hypocrisy? I, huh? Can drink for a day too. Life is so haaard!"
Tears flowed down from my crimson face.
I was drinking because sorrowful things welled up, but being treated unfairly on top of that, it seems I wasn't in my right mind.
"It's haaard..."
The woman flustered as I suddenly cried.
"It's so haaard..."
"Eh... Are you crying?"
"Life is fucking unfair, I just drank for one day sob. Let me drink a bit too! Huh? Unfair, it's unfair...!"
My alcohol tolerance seemed to be the absolute worst.
When I started wailing completely, the woman began to panic.
"Wait, your voice is a bit..."
Continued loud wailing.
The crying sound got louder and louder.
At the same time, other front doors began to open one by one.
"Ah, it's noisy, are you fighting outside?"
"Hey, let's be quiet at night!"
"What is this noise!"
The woman's house was at the end of the hallway, and mine was right next to it.
My other neighbor's unit had no tenant, so I only had to worry about noise from one place.
But fighting in the hallway seemed to cause significant disturbance to other houses too.
"I'm sorrryyy sob..."
I apologized while crying and went into my house.
I don't know, I should just sleep first, thinking that, the moment I tried to close the door.
"Uh..."
For some reason, the woman next door was inside my house.