Chapter 1: Ghost Possession
To envy and hate someone is said to be diminishing oneself while looking at others.
Therefore, it is said that a person who diminishes themself with envy and jealousy loses their ‘self’ and can never become the ‘someone’ they envy and are jealous of.
And in the end, they become something that is neither here nor there, and eventually collapse.
‘Do you think a sculptor can carve without looking at the object he is creating?’
That is how God scoffs at them, they say.
It is said to be a problem that arises because one keeps carving without seeing how much of their own body is being carved away.
It is a problem that arises because no pain is felt, as it is one’s soul being carved, not a physical wound being inflicted.
Therefore, it is said that a person must look in the mirror to carve themself.
They say that no matter how ugly and grotesque the reflection is, one must accept it as their own and carve themself while looking in the mirror.
Only then can one know where and how much to carve.
Only then will one not collapse.
.
.
.
Blink.
The intermittent sound of typing that had been audible deep in the night ceased, and as the flow of writing stopped, the blinking keyboard cursor marked the input position.
The darkened room was filled only with the sound of the computer fan, working hard all night, and my sighs.
I briefly laid my head down in front of the monitor, its brightness turned down to a minimum to emit a gentle glow, then slowly lifted my head.
“Ugh….”
I stared blankly at the blinking cursor on the monitor, then took off my glasses, sighed, and rubbed my dry face.
I stretched my neck this way and that, letting out a groaning sound.
I reached out to my side and grabbed a can of the caffeine drink labeled Monster.
I still have a mountain of work to do, I can’t sleep yet…….
I need caffeine, caffeine, but contrary to my wish, the Monster can didn’t feel heavy, and instead of a sloshing sound, I only heard the jingle of the can’s pull tab inside.
“I already drank it all….”
I got up from my chair, opened the refrigerator door, and desperately searched for a can labeled Monster.
But inside the fridge, there was only a container of kimchi with nothing but leftover broth and a jar of spaghetti sauce, covered in mold from who knows when.
Wondering if it might be in the crisper drawer, I slid it open with a clatter, but inside there were only sprouted potatoes and a shriveled carrot.
The freezer, no way it would be in there.
I sighed and closed the refrigerator door.
The crisper drawer, which I forgot to close, slammed against the refrigerator door, making a loud noise, but I didn’t much care.
Do I need to be mindful of others in a house I live in alone?
Scratching my head vigorously, I looked around the kitchen and sighed at the sight of an empty Monster box tucked in a corner.
“Guess I have to order again….”
For now, maybe I should just drink some coffee to get by.
I let out a long yawn, took out a cup, tore open a coffee mix packet, and poured it in.
I got hot water from the dispenser.
Seeing that I had poured a decent amount of water, I stirred the coffee carelessly with a chopstick.
But strangely, the coffee wouldn’t dissolve.
I frowned, seeing the whitish sugar floating on top.
“Why isn’t this dissolving….”
Stirring the coffee blankly, I brought the chopstick I was stirring with to my lips.
It was cold.
Only then did I realize I had poured in cold water, not hot, and I put the cup in the microwave and ran it.
The cold water with added coffee powder became hot coffee in 40 seconds.
Slurp—.
It wasn’t that hot, so I drank the coffee without a second thought and returned to my seat, staring blankly at the blinking keyboard cursor on the monitor.
‘Why do I have to be doing this.’
‘Wouldn’t life have been easier if I were born as the son of a rich, handsome family, or as a cute and pretty girl.’
‘What’s so wrong with me that I’m stuck here scribbling away all night.’
‘It’s not like it sells well either.’
‘Who do I think I am, so full of some self-righteous elitism, churning out writing that lectures someone, without even knowing my place.’
As a wave of questions rushed in, I put down the coffee I had been pouring into my mouth.
This feeling of regret for my life, worse than the clarity that comes after self-pleasuring, tends to linger in my mind for a long time once it hits, so I sighed and got up from my seat.
I should sleep.
I must be having useless thoughts because I’ve worked overtime for two days straight, or so I thought.
I have to sleep before the depression sets in.
I knew exactly what state this was.
That’s why I shoved my body into bed before that f*cking fashionable depression, which I couldn’t endure while sober, could set in.
But today, for some reason, the fashionable depression reared its head faster than usual, and the moment my face hit the pillow, an immense lethargy and gloom washed over me, and I let out a groan.
My stomach burns from the coffee, I want to die.
I’m stuck with my work, I want to die.
I’m alone, I want to die.
I hate this and I hate that.
Why do I have to live like this, I want to die.
There are plenty of people who have it harder than me, yet these negative thoughts only surface because of some pathetic, fashionable depression.
I mocked myself and pulled the blanket over my head.
I am not depressed.
I am okay.
I comforted myself like that and closed my eyes.
“….”
About two hours later, feeling suffocated, I threw off the blanket I had pulled over my head and stared blankly at the ceiling.
The wave of depression had long since disappeared.
Just as waves rush in quickly, they are bound to recede just as fast.
But the wave had washed away my sleep along with it, leaving only a sense of displeasure, and feeling that it was hopeless to try to sleep just lying there, I immediately got out of bed and went to the front door.
Maybe a short walk will make me sleepy, or maybe I’ll get an idea.
“It’s cold….”
What I had on my body was a shocking but warm outfit that I couldn’t show to others—a white short-sleeved t-shirt, a long padded jacket, and fuzzy gray pajama pants—but it was cold.
What?
It’s cold even dressed like this?
They say Korean winters are colder than Russian winters, but it’s not the right date to be called the dead of winter yet.
Remembering the calendar I saw on my way out of the house said October, I put on my hood and crossed my arms.
….
Of course, this doesn’t make it any less cold.
It’s just a desperate struggle to preserve my body heat a little longer.
Usually, this helps a bit, but the biting cold seemed to mock my struggle, lashing out even more fiercely, stealing my body heat.
Having lived in this neighborhood for five years, I’ve walked these streets so many times I’m sick of them, so I can navigate them with my eyes closed.
If I keep my eyes open like this, they’ll freeze solid like a pollack’s eye and I’ll be blind for life, so I should close my eyes.
Sniff—, I snuffled and gently closed my eyes.
[Ufufu….]
I heard a woman’s laughter from somewhere.
Is it someone out for a night stroll like me?
Anyway, it’s just laughter, but I instinctively felt that this person’s voice was incredibly nice.
How curious, could a simple laugh feel so beautiful?
The sad instinct of a man who wants to see the face of a beautiful woman when he hears her voice made me open my eyes, and I stopped walking in the face-freezing cold and opened my eyes.
“Huh…?”
But there was no one around me.
Absolutely no one.
It wasn’t even possible to say they were hiding somewhere nearby, as there was no place to hide around here.
Most of the nearby houses are old buildings without first-floor parking lots, so one couldn’t hide behind a parking garage pillar.
To the right, there’s a high concrete wall covered in ivy, which would be difficult to climb.
Most importantly.
The laughter I just heard was as clear as if it came from right beside me.
It wasn’t the kind of sound that came from behind a pillar, or from atop that high concrete wall, or from inside a building.
No, forget all that.
Had there been any footsteps?
The moment that thought struck me, a horrifying chill, different from the cold of the weather, crept up my spine.
If the wind was so loud that I couldn’t hear well, that would still be within the realm of understanding.
But, there were no footsteps.
It wasn’t that I didn’t hear them; they were entirely absent.
A person would surely make the sound of footsteps, or breathing, or at least the rustling of clothes, but none of that existed at all.
But what if,
What if it wasn’t a person?
I immediately fled the spot, running for my life.
As if proving the fact that when a person is too scared or shocked, even their voice won’t come out, I cursed my own throat, which only let out a wheezing sound when I opened my mouth to scream.
I pumped my legs like a madman until my vision blurred white, and in that brief moment, as if I had surpassed human limits, I covered a distance that normally takes 10 minutes to walk in just one minute and made it back into my house.
“Gasp…! Gack….”
As if in backlash, the moment I closed the front door and stopped running, I felt a pain as if my heart was being squeezed.
My lungs ached as if they would burst at any moment, and my side hurt as if I’d been stabbed with a knife.
No, it was meaningless to say where or how it hurt; there wasn’t a single place that didn’t ache.
At some point, I was on my knees, my hands on the floor.
And for a very brief moment, my vision flickered.
.
.
.
I blink slowly.
By the time I noticed my breathing had returned to normal, my vision was infinitely close to the floor.
The pain throughout my body had long since disappeared—, or rather, it would be more correct to say that ‘all sensation in my body had disappeared’.
At some point, even the headache was gone.
I was aware that I was here, but all sensation in my body had completely vanished, so it didn’t feel real.
A laugh I felt I’d heard somewhere before swirled around my ears.
“Haaa….”
With one last, heated sigh, I closed my eyes.