SSL 18

Late at night, Doyoon turned off the light and lay down in his spot. The sound of the TV intermittently seeped in through the crack of the door. His father was still watching TV in the living room. Amidst that sound, Doyoon blinked his eyes and reflected. How are you going to live in the future?

I don’t know. Doyoon mumbled in his head as if answering belatedly. What Park Kanghyuk’s group said every day was right. He was grotesque, stupid, dumb, gloomy, a loser, and even a psycho. Just looking at him was unpleasant. He only caused harm to others. That was the correct answer.

He should have known sooner. Any normal human being would have noticed a long time ago, but it was a correct answer that Doyoon himself was too stupid to know. He only realized it after making his mother leave. Only after hurting his mother that much, only after taking away their biological mother from his siblings. He only found out after he had done irreversible things.

Wherever he went, he was nothing but a nuisance to others. But most of all, he was being the biggest nuisance to his family members. A monster who was not even their biological child and was born abnormal from the start was wedged into this house, sleeping here, and depleting this family’s money to eat. All while everyone was tolerating him every minute and every second.

<Just die now.>

He had thought about that several times too. But it was not easy. Because his family wanted to fulfill their ‘duty.’

About a year ago, Doyoon had been caught being interested in suicide by his hyung because of his search history on the living room computer. At that time, his hyung had dragged Doyoon to his room and made him kneel in the corner. Then, with a strange expression he had never seen before, he just looked down at him for a long time before finally breaking the silence and speaking. He said that if he committed suicide, the whole family would become bad people.

<It would be like smearing mud on the faces of the people who have worked hard to raise you until now. That’s a betrayal. Enduring and living is also your responsibility as a son, as a brother. Got it.>

After that incident, and through a few other experiences that followed, Doyoon came to vaguely understand why his mother had told him not to get beaten up and hurt back in elementary school. Because then, other people would whisper. That she was a bad mother for letting her child get beaten up.

If he committed suicide, his parents could really become bad parents. That could not happen. He had thought about ways to disguise it as an accident, but no particularly good ideas came to mind. Of course, this might also be because Doyoon himself was not smart enough.

So, he had no choice but to live. On the premise of a continued life, Doyoon was thinking of another method as a second-best option. A major he had seen in a video during career exploration time. He heard that there was something called a bioengineering department in college.

They said it was a good department for people who were good at math and science. If he chose that major and worked hard, maybe he could become a better person in the future. But to do that, he had to raise his grades much higher.

These days, Park Kanghyuk hit him less than before. He also took fewer things. The environment would change when he went to high school, so he would be able to focus on his studies. With the single word, ‘hope,’ held gently in his mind, Doyoon closed his eyes on the bed.

However, he woke up with a start at dawn.

“……”

Feeling like a strange scream was about to escape, Doyoon quickly clamped his hand over his mouth. It seemed he had had a nightmare whose contents he could not remember well. A dream of falling endlessly somewhere. No, he heard something like a scoffing sound. It’s all useless. The future? What future. It’s impossible to get better. It’s over.

A grotesque monster. A disgusting lump of flesh. You will live your life constantly being a nuisance to those around you, and because of that, you will be scorned and beaten, and eventually you will die. But even in death, you will be nothing but a nuisance until the very end. Someone else will have to clean up your corpse. It’s dirty. It’s grotesque. It’s filthy.

Alive, or dead……. Doyoon blinked away tears, then got up and approached the bookshelf. He took out the black, plain notebook he had hidden, held it to his chest, and mumbled.

“It’s okay.”

Two years ago, one night in his first year of middle school.

At that time too, Doyoon had held the corpse of a cat in his arms in the same position.

After finishing the dinner dishes and sitting down to study, Doyoon had gone outside to buy a school supply at his younger sibling’s request. And as he was about to cross the main road, he saw it in the twilight. A fur ball, horribly mangled into a bloody pulp.

It happened to be lying at the very edge of the crosswalk. In a state of being flattened and dried up, except for its head and paws. People naturally went around it, avoiding it. Their faces crumpled slightly around their eyes and mouths as if in distaste.

Even though the signal changed, Doyoon stood blankly without crossing the street. The body was crushed once more by the wheel of a car. The pedestrian signal turned on again. A group in school uniforms passed by, throwing a mix of exclamations and curses. A young child, holding his mother’s hand, screamed as he passed by, and the mother quickly covered the child’s eyes and hurried away from the spot.

The signal changed again. A car conspicuously avoided the corpse. Perhaps because it had precariously crossed the lane to do so, other cars honked their horns. It’s being a nuisance. Looking at the bloodstain that had become even flatter in the meantime, Doyoon thought blankly. But…….

But……. A voice echoed in his head like an excuse. It was in pain. It was in so much pain.

To end up looking like that, it must have been in so much pain. It was in enough pain to die, and so it died, but even its corpse is just a nuisance to others. It’s dirty. It’s grotesque. You have to avoid something like that. I don’t want to touch it, not even with a car wheel, let alone my hand. It continuously receives such gazes and hears such words. The pedestrian signal turned on. Doyoon hurriedly walked over and cradled the broken body in his arms.

A high-pitched sound of oh my came from beside his shoulder, and gazes gathered, but Doyoon did not pay them any mind. He crouched down, held it tightly to his chest, and went to the park. He headed for a spot under a tree in the corner of the lawn, placed it down beside him, and started digging the ground with his bare hands and a stone.

He wanted to bury it as deeply as possible. So that it would no longer be a nuisance to anyone, and so that no one could curse or despise it anymore. After moving enough to work up a sweat and making a roughly hollowed-out spot, Doyoon suddenly looked at the corpse.

His heart twinged. Pain. A feeling like blood seeping out from an unknown wound was circulating throughout his entire body. The next moment, with his mind almost blank, Doyoon automatically moved his body and lifted the corpse very carefully with both hands. Mumbling the words out loud. It’s okay.

<It’s okay.>

The hand that used to stroke his head, the lips that used to touch his cheek.

<Our Doyoon is not a weird kid. He’s just a little special.>

<Who said that? They’re bad kids. No. Our Doyoon is a smart and pretty kid.>

<Of course. Mom loves Doyoon.>

It’s okay. Doyoon whispered inwardly, holding his lips to the corpse’s cheek for a moment. You’re not dirty at all. You’re not grotesque. I’m not saying this as a fake. It’s not an imitation. I mean it. It’s real. You are okay……. At that moment, a light flashed right behind the back of his head.

When he turned around, a large boy was standing there holding a cell phone. The light from before seemed to have been the flash. A cell phone camera flash.

His face was not clearly visible because it was dark. After mumbling some curse words and laughing to himself, the boy quickly turned and disappeared, and Doyoon turned back and properly buried the corpse. After that, he came home, washed his hands well, roughly washed his clothes in the bathroom, put the groceries in the refrigerator, and then fell asleep.

From the next day on, his school life slowly began to change.

It became incomparably harder and more uncomfortable than before. It turned out that the one who had taken the picture was a boy in the same class named Park Kanghyuk, and Kanghyuk and a few of his friends were particularly violent. They hit Doyoon, took away things he needed for studying, and made him do many incomprehensibly strange things. It was difficult and painful to do as he was told.

Still, Doyoon did not regret it. Of course, he was careful after that. Even if he found a corpse, he could not bring himself to bury it, and was reduced to only remembering it and secretly drawing it at home, but he did not regret what had already passed. Cradling the cat’s corpse and kissing it that night.

Even thinking about it himself, it was strangely impossible to regret it at all.

“They’re all pretty old pictures, though.”

Jaehyun glanced up at Doyoon’s eyes, then pointed back at the photo and spoke.

“This one is exactly about a hundred years old. It says it’s a 1905 photo. Anyway, it was a common custom back then. To dress up a deceased family member nicely like this and take a picture of them as if they were alive.”

Because death was so common at that time, Jaehyun added. It was common for everyone, young and old, male and female, and because it was common, it was not considered a taboo. It was simply treated like clothes you put on and take off every day.

“They didn’t hide pictures taken like this either. They would put them in frames, hang them on the walls of their houses, and show them to all their guests. Still, you can tell these people are corpses, right? Their eyes and such……. If you look closely at their hands, they’re slightly decomposed too.”

“……”

“And, this one. The one in this book is a modern work. He’s an artist who’s still active, and he drew the corpse of a dormouse using the etching technique. He found the corpse by chance in front of his house, left it there, and drew it for seven days.”

The sound of a heavy book being dragged across the floor, the friction of a page with pristine white edges being turned. Then, this time, Jaehyun pulled out a few sheets of A4 paper that had been tucked into the book and showed them.

“And this one, he’s still a new artist, but these are sketches he posted on his website. They’re dead crows or pigeons. I printed them out in the living room. Ah, this one. The one in this art book is a little different……. It’s not a drawing, but an installation art piece using taxidermied animals. You can see it. Something like a salamander, and a bird and a mouse, and so on.”

What is he doing?

Doyoon sat there, his thoughts almost at a standstill. Jaehyun kept opening books and showing him pictures or drawings. As if……. Doyoon found himself making a connection without meaning to. It was similar to when he had shown him the music albums a few days ago.

<I like that piece too.>

After replying with a smile, Jaehyun had pulled Doyoon into his room and, showing him the various albums in the storage cabinet, had explained something earnestly. Today too, Jaehyun had brought Doyoon to his room. And he was simply showing him various books and rambling on with explanations. When Doyoon gave no response, Jaehyun also paused for a breath before speaking again.

“What I mean is, Kang Doyoon.”

With the corners of his mouth raised in a slightly asymmetrical way and his eyes narrowed, Jaehyun continued.

“It’s not like you’re particularly weird. If you search for it, there are plenty of drawings like this, and people who draw this kind of thing. There are people who know they exist and people who don’t. I’m on the side that knows.”

“……”

“I told you so.”

Doyoon only felt Jaehyun’s voice become deeper and louder. As if it were fully inflated with air. If someone with a bit more perceptiveness had heard it, they might have read into it a sense of pride that was not easily distinguishable from arrogance.

“I told you that if people hated you, it wasn’t your fault, but that the guys around you might have been stupid. Because there are a lot of guys in the world who are full of prejudice even though their heads are not fully developed. But I told you I’m different, didn’t I.”