FOOL Ch 0

Prologue

I’m dreaming.

The me inside the dream is swimming through waters of unknown depth.

Behind my ears are gills that allow me to breathe underwater.

Upon waking, I feel suffocated.

In today’s world, you can get whatever you want without ever needing to step outside. I dislike the outside. But every once in a while, memories of my family and a past version of myself who once liked the outside world drag my feet beyond the front gate.

He looked tired.

I heard the sound of a cough.

I turned away.

I walked past that tiresome-looking being, opened the front gate, and went inside.

The existence of others is not a heaviness, but a lightness. In spite of that, I didn’t grant myself weight while regarding them as light. All beings, including myself, are light, and the life bestowed upon them is heavy. As the weight of their lives lies beyond my boundaries, I could easily overlook the lightness of each individual.

There was no sense of ignoring, despising, or even considering oneself special. My breath is wet. It’s the same air, but the densities of the inhale and exhale are different. It’s not that I don’t want to fit in, it’s that I can’t fit in.

The sickly me cannot fit in.

That’s all.

I liked the rain that persisted over several days. I knew it wouldn’t happen, but I wanted the world to stay like this, submerged in the tears of the sky. Who could have imagined the gloomy scent of heavy, wet moss? Summer was the season—the only season—that allowed me a way to breathe properly. I waited for the rain in order to breathe.

The world wasn’t the only thing that was wet. The man I had seen the day before lay there, unconscious, the next morning. When I grabbed his shoulder and shook it, he looked at me and parted his lips before closing his eyes again.

He was heavy.

Starting with the weight of the being I lifted and carried all the way to my car, my life changed—I changed.

It was bothersome at first. So I ignored you.

You were heavy and, therefore, annoying. Your existence was too much for me to handle, and I feared you, but one day, I grew to cherish you deeply.

You didn’t try to measure the depth of my depression. You didn’t even try to pull me out of that depression. I was allowed to stay there, and all you tried to do was dry me, who was like wet moss, with your sunshine.

So that I could just get wet again. So that I could cry.

You made me cry, and you made me breathe.

Why is life like this? It would have been easier to bear if only things always went the way I think they would. The suddenness of it all is still the hardest for me to endure.

You smiled like a fool.

And even though it was ridiculous enough to make me want to sneer, that smile became the meaning of my life.

Woonu-ya.