Guide to the Fallen World - Chapter 35
#35. Guide Scramble
After I received my diagnosis, my parents dedicated themselves to my treatment. As a result, our home grew smaller and smaller. From a 32-pyeong apartment in a reasonably well-known brand to a poorly constructed 22-pyeong apartment by a local builder, from a two-room house on the second floor to a basement studio.
The fall was instantaneous. The more we moved, the smaller our home became and the more appliances disappeared. Going to the hospital became increasingly difficult, but we couldn’t even consider living near a subway station. It was all my fault.
Leaving me in my sorrow, Mom said it was nothing. She laughed, asking if I thought she was just any mother.
My mother was truly a lively person.
But that liveliness couldn’t cure me. I kept falling, and eventually, I fell badly and injured my neck.
That day, I learned that even a feather is heavy when placed upon tragedy.
I completely lost sensation in my arms and legs, which I had been struggling to move, and I couldn’t feel anything below my neck anymore.
My despairing father began to have affairs. The smile of my mother, who had never given in to anything, slowly disappeared.
Once I was completely unable to move, the only thing left for me was the internet. It was just to the level of holding a stylus in my mouth and diligently moving my lips, but it was better than doing nothing.
I was lonely and wanted to escape from reality.
So, every day I wandered through online communities and met people. I searched for people in similar situations, peeked into their lives, and wondered if there might be some way out.
Anything would do. I longed for improvement.
That’s how I naturally came to the decision to start YouTube. I was desperate for people’s attention. And people love stories about young women whose lives have fallen apart. The online communities had taught me that.
Fortunately, I was a young woman and somewhat pretty.
And I needed money and hope more desperately than ever.
Just for a little while, I wished Mom would smile like she used to. I dreamed that there might be some possibility for someone like me. So, I decided to make my situation and circumstances into a product and sell it.
If I could sell myself, I would. I desperately hoped that I would be a product that sold well, so that I could gain the sympathy of the world.
And so, I had a fleeting hope.
The video editing, which was my first time, was difficult and tiring, but I still enjoyed it.
I dropped the stylus I held in my mouth hundreds of times and had to pick it up again with my mouth, making chewing motions, and my eyes became bloodshot and dry, but I was happy that I was trying something.
I was grateful that there was something I could do even in this situation.
With a nervous heart, I uploaded my clumsy video to YouTube and waited for a response.
And then, the first comment appeared.
【I want to change your diaper. While I’m at it, let me take a peek between your legs too.】
Seventeen is an age still unfamiliar with malice.
I, too, was unfamiliar with malice.
The reason human rights are emphasized in the news is precisely because human rights are not well protected.
How did I know? You automatically learn when you become disabled. Even if you’re not disabled, anyone who falls to the bottom of society or becomes relatively weak will know.
Everyone knows it but pretends not to.
The heart that had desperately wanted attention, even if it was just a voyeuristic gaze, was crushed very easily.
Human rights are, in the end, a struggle for rights. When the rights of different people clash, those with power usually get to fully enjoy their rights.
And the world is made up of those powerful people.
No one wants to be the loser. Everyone wants to be on the better side of humanity, and they hope that side belongs to them.
However, there is no alternative anywhere that will protect everyone’s rights. Since such a thing doesn’t exist in reality, it must be sought in heaven.
I didn’t know that obvious fact for a long time, even after reaching that state. To be precise, I ignored it. I had human rights too, and foolishly, I believed without a doubt that they would be protected.
Without knowing even a bit of society’s true face, I was confident I could handle anything.
The thing is, what society wanted was my obsolescence, but I didn’t know that. Unknowingly, I acted recklessly.
So, such a comment isn’t that strange. Isn’t it human nature that if I’m not successful, I want to raise my own value by laughing at and belittling others similar to me?
I was simply naive and arrogant, like any seventeen-year-old.
That was all.
I had decided to turn myself into a product, yet I didn’t truly understand what that meant. I didn’t realize how stark and brutal the process of being consumed and distributed as a commodity would be. I was ignorant.
If you want to curse a man, you can call him sissy. If you want to curse a woman, you can call her a whore. There, another class division occurs. Even disability had its grades.
I was a woman and disabled. Therefore, the position given to me was somewhere among the weakest in society.
No, actually, I wasn’t even a member of society.
How could I be a member of society when society wouldn’t accept me?
Within the vast pyramid that is the world, I wasn’t even at the bottom tier. I was something outside of it altogether. And so, the place I occupied was just the roadside.
And someone will come and piss on that roadside. Because they can. Because it’s allowed.
That’s the role of the roadside, to accept anything..
Like foul sewage seeping through cracks, poverty and tragedy constantly flow downwards.
Knowing that, I could vaguely understand why my father had affairs. He was probably just too tired. He must have needed comfort.
Morality, ethics, norms. Devotion and love between family members.
Faced with despair on the stage of reality, many things become phantoms.
I was so ridiculous for having naively thought the world would pity me.
So, I laughed out loud and deleted the video I had painstakingly created. I also closed my YouTube account. I didn’t think I would ever have the courage to try anything again.
How much time passed like that?
As it turned out, there were so many other pitiful people in the world besides me. I had to fight against those people. I had to engage in a bottom-level competition using my disability and misfortune as weapons.
But did that have any meaning?
After that day, I no longer held the stylus in my mouth every day.
Everything gradually became meaningless.
I was more like a troublesome plant that couldn’t be thrown away than a human being. In the sense that I couldn’t move, I wasn’t much different from one.
A plant lives in a pot. I lived in a bed. That was the only difference.
One day, as I was simply passing time, barely breathing through each day, my mom suddenly burst into tears and handed me something.
It was a cryonics project.
“Ah…”
I thought that this might be my last usefulness.
Still, death was frightening. So, I went back to the online communities. I devoured blogs and cafes. Hoping that someone would convince me, give me the courage to accept death or to continue living.
It was by chance that I found my uncle’s post.
【Having a disabled person in the family is seriously f*cked up. The whole family gets brainwashed and won’t give up. My sister has 50 million won in debt and looks like she’ll go bankrupt and become a beggar soon. My brother-in-law already cheated on her. Judging by the looks of things, they’ll probably get divorced soon, and I’m scared my sister will ask me for money after the divorce. F*ck… She’s already borrowed 30 million won bit by bit and doesn’t seem to have any intention or ability to repay it. What should I do? Shouldn’t they legalize euthanasia? At this rate, I’ll be the one getting divorced, f*ck.】
There was my answer.
I wasn’t sad or angry. Rather, I felt sorry. The uncle I knew was a good person. For such a person to have to vent his true feelings like that meant he must have been having a very hard time.
I learned about the inseparability of good and evil by reading my uncle’s post.
No human being can be completely good or completely evil. They waver and wander in between.
So, I decided to participate in the project. I knew that if I kept living miserably, only greater tragedy awaited me.
My life was already a quagmire, and dignity was a value not permitted to me. So, I pretended to truly believe the hopeful lie that I might be able to wake up again and fell asleep.
But it wasn’t all despair and resignation.
Even if I was bedridden and broken, I was still me. And I wanted to remain myself, even like that. I made the best choice for myself. The vicious cycle of my tragedy becoming my family’s tragedy had to stop.
Whether it was an experiment or cryonics, I didn’t care what they did with me. I was just glad that, by slipping through the cracks of an ineffective medical system, I could finally be discarded.
And yet, ironically, that very choice reshaped my life.
The Earth is ruined, and I live trapped, going through arks and bases, but now I can do anything except go outside.
The first day I woke up in the ark was truly the worst, but still, I was happy that I could feed myself, take care of my hygiene, and manage my bodily functions with my own hands.
The best choice I made for myself had been the right one. Miraculously, I had chosen the closest thing to the correct answer.
Of course, the adaptation process wasn’t entirely smooth. Once I could move, curiosity arose, and so I wanted to go outside the ark even more.
Besides that, I was curious about many things. How the neighborhood I grew up in had changed, where the columbarium where my parents were laid to rest was… Even though I clearly saw via satellite that no trace remained, I still wanted to go.
I foolishly wanted to set foot on the wasteland in the video.
So, I often argued with Jay. I spent time being stubborn, unreasonable, and losing against Jay.
That’s how the days passed, one by one, leading me to where I am now.
‘Yeowon.’
It seems I’ve started something called romance for the first time in my life. There’s someone who makes me smile just by thinking about them.
The daily roller coaster of emotional changes is bewildering, but I always look forward to the affectionate gazes directed at me. I wonder when he will confess his feelings to me.
Am I allowed to be this happy?
If I can continue living like this, I really feel like I can do anything. Thinking that, I hugged the noticeably grown Tiri.
Looking back, it seems that very thought became the root of the problem.
“Hello.”
It was a third party’s voice, not Jay’s, not Dohyuk’s, and not the android’s. It was definitely unfamiliar, but the low voice, which felt like I had heard it somewhere before, sent shivers down my spine for a moment.
The esper I had seen sometime before stood before my eyes.
A hand that subtly approached was close enough to tuck my hair behind my ear.
“Jeong Yeowon.”
Hello, Jeong Yeowon. The esper from Yeouido said that. At the same time, something invisible wrapped around my body.
After that disturbance of my senses, I found myself not in the base, but in a remote, underground location.
A long, dark tunnel with a low ceiling, its atmosphere reminded me of a coal mine.
There, a group of Espers stared at me, their eyes glowing faintly.
“…Ah.”
It was the kidnapping that Jay had always warned me about.
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