By Zephyria 
‘……Are you really out of your mind?’
‘Are you so desperate to die? Huh? You crazy bastard. Hey.’
‘Hey! You fucking—are you in your right mind?’
Memories were always fleeting, like flowing water, perhaps disappearing without a trace, but Eun-ha really had almost no memory of that time. There were two reasons for this: first, every day repeated in a similar pattern without any special events, and second, he was never really in his right mind during that repetition.
He drank alcohol every day. Either sleeping or drinking. It was one of the two, and within that simple choice, the functions of the house gradually lost their boundaries. The reason was that he couldn’t bear to lie on the bed where he used to sleep and wake up with Kim Ji-woon every day. He just couldn’t do that.
One day he woke up on the floor of the utility room attached to the kitchen, and on other days he woke up on the shoe rack and bathroom floor. Then he would fall asleep somewhere again without knowing how he had fallen asleep. He slept in the morning and woke up at night. He would sleep for two days straight, or cry for two days without sleeping.
He mostly just drank alcohol, and when he forced himself to go to school once a week, he managed to eat something resembling food. At home, when his stomach felt shrunken and bitter to the point of death, he would force himself to get up and eat. On some days, he would suddenly binge eat like a madman. And then he would drink again…….
He thought he might die like this. It wasn’t that he wanted to die, but it was just a premonition. After repeating a trashy pattern, his body was breaking down, and he could clearly feel his organs sending out strange signals from all over.
A sense of crisis, as if something inside his body was seriously breaking down and causing a big problem, was constantly sounding an alarm. He was often suddenly scared and worried, but the will to take care of it rarely took root. Eun-ha didn’t want to do anything. So he lived without doing anything. Blankly experiencing the feeling of time passing. In that house where he lived with Kim Ji-woon. In that house where all the traces still remained.
All of that was nothing, but on some days, he couldn’t stand it and cut his body. Because he hated himself for doing nothing. Because he wanted to escape from that terrible self, even for a moment. He hesitated between his thighs and forearms somewhere and then cut. When a physically tingling sensation arose, everything else that made him up would fade away, and he seemed to like that a little. And when he saw the hideously split and bleeding skin, nothing was good again.
Feeling terrible again, he collapsed and lay down roughly, then fell asleep crying blankly. Those were the days. Then one day, Gu Hae-bin barged into the house. Forcibly picking the lock.
Twenty-five. Either a college student or a young professional. A time when everyone was busy in their respective positions. Everyone must be doing well. Everyone must be living well. In that vague trust, days passed with only occasional promises to see each other sometime when everyone was free, to meet when everyone’s schedules aligned. Updates conveyed only through contact. A relationship no different from any other time. The only comfort was that everyone knew nothing, but even that turned to dust from that day on.
In fact, at the time, he couldn’t even bring himself to care about the ruined face, the shame, or anything else. Because he was never in his right mind, as always.
‘……Lee Eun-ha.’
He was awake with alcohol on his breath, and the place he was lying was in the middle of the living room. Thanks to that, the face he encountered was very clear, and Eun-ha still couldn’t forget that sight. He remembered everything in detail, as if looking at a photograph. A blank expression, frozen pale as if he had seen a ghost. A face that gradually became frightened, creasing his eyes as if in doubt. A gait that still approached hesitantly, still doubting.
He thought it must have been a very bizarre sight. It was just bad timing that it was the day he had hurt himself.
‘You crazy bastard. Are you really fucking crazy? Huh? Look at me. Hey. Hey! Lee Eun-ha, get a grip, you…….’
He was the only one who knew about the relationship with Kim Ji-woon. So he knew to some extent that they had fought all summer, but he didn’t tell him that they had broken up. In the first place, he couldn’t believe it, so he lived like a wreck for another two months after he left the house. He couldn’t understand why Kim Ji-woon had cheated, and why Kim Ji-woon was the one who said let’s break up first.
He felt like he had been robbed of everything. He felt like he had been robbed of 5 years. He was frustrated, couldn’t understand, and felt like shit.
‘Why are you doing this. Why are you doing this, you…….’
Gu Hae-bin, who was cursing and urging him to get up, later grabbed Eun-ha’s shoulders and shook his hands. And when Eun-ha closed his eyes because he didn’t want to hear it, he shook his shoulders like crazy. As if he would die if he lost consciousness there.
He thought, don’t overreact, and let go because it’s making me dizzy, but the words didn’t come out. Gu Hae-bin had a very weakened face as he looked at the hideously split and festering forearms. Like someone who had witnessed a scene that was so disgusting, repulsive, and painful just to look at.
Eun-ha thought even that was a ridiculous reaction. He felt like Gu Hae-bin was just exaggerating and making a fuss unnecessarily. What’s the big deal.
It didn’t hurt at all. That kind of thing didn’t hurt.
But it wasn’t like there wasn’t a single corner that didn’t hurt.
Immediately after the belated discovery, Eun-ha was led by Gu Hae-bin and spent several weeks in the hospital. While recovering from his broken health, his worst life came to an end, but even after being discharged from the hospital, he stayed cooped up at home except for going to school once a week. He let the last semester of his long and eventful college life flow by in a mess.
There were things he was preparing for, there were many things he had to do, and more than that, there were many things he wanted to do, but he had to give up everything. He couldn’t even remember what they were in the first place. It was a deep sense of powerlessness and futility.
What is love anyway……. What is one person anyway. He’s just another person. I lived well for 20 years without that person. What is it that makes you ruin your life like this.
The blue army occasionally poured out such reproaches from one corner of his head, but that did not lead to any hopeful determination or change of heart. Eun-ha still had no motivation. What is just a romantic feeling, what is it anyway.
But it is also true that Kim Ji-woon was once his everything. It was 5 years that just one person felt like the whole world. I don’t know if it’s because I liked him first and clung to him so much that we ended up dating, or because I was constantly suffering alone and only hoping for something during the relationship.
Maybe it’s all of them. It was a relationship where an invisible emotional superiority was always draped like a curtain. A relationship where I had to ‘try’ to a certain extent.
So maybe, all expectations for the act of ‘trying’ have disappeared.
And Gu Hae-bin became extremely concerned from that point on. He paid more attention to his interactions with Mom, nagged more, and suddenly came over out of the blue to hang out.
Gu Hae-bin also played the role of a filter between Eun-ha, who wanted to distance himself from his friends, and his friends, who didn’t stop paying attention to Eun-ha.
The reason why he wanted to distance himself was simple. Because he didn’t want them to know. All the things that had happened. The inside that was all broken and collapsed.
They were relationships that were formed when he was living a plausible and decent life. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together, Eun-ha’s friends were objectively good people. They were full of self-confidence and ambition for their dreams, and they were born with the bloodline that could support them materially and mentally, so they would become even more wonderful people in the future. And they will still be friends.
He hated that. Because he was the only one who didn’t move forward and stayed put. It wasn’t that he couldn’t move forward, but that he wasn’t moving forward, so he had no regrets about the present, but that didn’t mean it was something to be proud of to display. Because he has an objective awareness. That he is in a very pathetic state.