By Zephyria INTRO – To Return
I look at Earth from space.
A colossal celestial body that appears like a blue sun. It took time to recognize it as Earth.
It’s not a peaceful blue star like a small marble. The overwhelming size and speed evoke a sense of dread. It feels as if it could break from its orbit at any moment and charge at me at 110,000 km/h.
There is no breath of wind around, no vibration of sound. It’s like a muted TV screen; only the scene I am watching exists.
Is this a dream?
No, if it were a dream, I would be able to see myself. Like watching a movie.
To check for
In an instant, a different place unfolds.
This time, my vision is filled with people. Men and women dressed in flamboyant attire, raising glasses and laughing in an open space under the night sky. Everyone seems joyful, like people without a single worry. Like people in a music video or an advertisement, they are perfectly happy right now.
I know that no one lives without any worries. Even before I realized I had ruined my own life, it was the same.
The happiest I ever seemed was always me on TV.
Pretending not to be tired, pretending to be innocent, pretending that only the fans’ love was everything, pretending to live diligently in a bright and healthy world where common sense prevails…
Sometimes, I even deluded myself into thinking that I was truly, completely happy while smiling in front of the camera. So much so that I wished it were possible to be filming something continuously for 24 hours. I didn’t want to return to life behind the camera; I preferred my life on screen in front of the camera.
The people I see here now also appear artificially happy, like a staged scene.
Towering skyscrapers are packed densely around me, their lights blazing. This is clearly a large city. Yet, just like in space, no sound can be heard.
No one recognizes me. It’s only natural. I still have neither a body nor a voice.
“Look there, there! Where they put up the barricade in front of the railing!”
Only one person’s voice suddenly rings out clearly. It’s a young student, dressed in shorts and a cross-body bag, looking like a tourist. With an excited face, the person with the cross-body bag turns to their companion, pointing somewhere with their fingertip. But the companion, wearing a ball cap and following behind, looks rather unenthusiastic.
“The spot where that K-pop star jumped off?”
“People are lining up to take pictures there! Let’s go take one too!”
“What’s so great about a place where someone jumped and died? The line is too long, too.”
Despite their grumpy expression, the person in the ball cap follows where the cross-body bag leads. To me, only the conversation between those two can still be heard.
I suddenly look around again.
The luxurious decorations and lights on the rooftop of the skyscraper, the towering buildings shining imposingly from all directions.
Without a body, I finally realized where I was.
The two people, now at the very end of the line, look down at the city over the barricade. The one in the ball cap frowns, shuddering.
“How desperate must someone be to think of jumping from here? Ugh, it’s awful!”
Yes. This is Bangkok, Thailand.
It was the rooftop bar on the 32nd floor, from which I, the ‘desperate’ one, had jumped.
As I clearly recognized this, my non-existent limbs began to tremble.
Simultaneously, all the noises began to flood in at once. The friction of cars driving on the road, horns honking, loud DJ music, people’s laughter and chatter… This is not just the noise of the city. It is the cries of someone, pleas for forgiveness, curses of jealousy and envy, exclamations of joy and admiration, whispers of love intoxicated by sweetness… These are all the sounds of the world.
I, who had been in complete silence, was suddenly thrown into a raging cacophony. I cover my non-existent ears and try to scream a shriek with my non-existent voice. My voicelessness, which cannot reach anyone.
Eventually, all the sounds recede.
This time, everything I see ripples and waves. As if submerged in water. The sounds I hear are also distorted, like listening to sounds from outside the water while submerged.
Where is this place?
Human figures flicker in an indoor space enclosed by walls. As I focus my consciousness, the flow of the waves calms, and my vision becomes clearer.
It was an unfamiliar room where four people sat facing each other across a coffee table.
Mumble, mumble, mumble.
The voices of the people begin to break apart and become audible.
“Don’t you ever think you want to cut off an arm or a leg? …That you had no choice but to jump… Don’t you think about wanting to push them away again and again?”
The words spoken by the man sitting facing this way reach me partially, passing through the waves. The man leans his upper body towards the person sitting opposite him and continues speaking.
“If something like that happened to someone I love, I… I wouldn’t be able to forgive them with just… confiscation… just legal punishment…”
I slowly try to move forward, as if swimming in water. It’s not easy. It’s like being submerged in a very deep sea with strong pressure. The man’s words also repeat, cutting in and out like a radio with a misaligned frequency.
Finally, I approach the sofa where the four people are gathered.
The first face I recognize is the man sitting directly in front. A face that anyone with even a little interest in the South Korean economy or high society would know. The second son of the late Chairman Lee Woo-yeol of Hanseo Group.
And next to him sat an unexpected person. One of the few people I could open my heart to and trust during my life. Actor Jung Ji-in. Ji-in hyung…
I don’t know why hyung is here with that man, but seeing his familiar face makes my soul ache.
‘I’ll come see you. Even if I can’t stay long, I can take a day or two off.’
Hyung had promised to come to Bangkok to see me. But I didn’t wait for him to keep that promise.
‘Seo-kyung-ah, let’s endure. Time will pass, situations will change, and then even things that seem impossible now might open up. We have to endure to seize opportunities. Let’s endure. Okay?’
Even his kind words couldn’t firmly anchor my ankles, which were leaping towards the void, to the ground.
I wanted to see hyung’s face, which looked noticeably gaunt, more clearly.
At that moment, a new voice that appeared stopped me.
“I can’t say it’s not a tempting offer.”
I know whose voice it is.
If I had eyes now, I would have frozen with my eyelids wide open, unable to blink. Or perhaps, I would have squeezed them shut.
“However, the victim is not me.”
A soft, low tone, wrapped in a calm and resolute voice, followed. Husky, and a little tired…
This time, it’s not just my soul aching. Like my vanished body, I feel a pain that seems like it could tear my soul to shreds.
Pain? Did I have the right to feel pain? I didn’t even have the right to look at his face.
“That kid’s social reputation is already ruined. X-gun… Yes, even if it’s true that kid really did that, things wouldn’t have gotten this bad if it hadn’t been revealed that way. Then, the most righteous thing I can do now… at least, would be to reveal what Lee Seo-kyung did to the world in the same way. They say he committed prostitution and sexual favors… It doesn’t make sense that there’s a provider but no receiver, does it?”
Yet, my greedy self dares to look at him. His face wavers through the waves flowing between him and me.
A face with firm features, but a perpetually soft expression. Or was it a face that only softened when looking at me?
He inhales the filter of the cigarette in his hand. A cigarette… He’s smoking again. He said he quit with great difficulty. Because of me? Because I… left like that?
“Personal revenge isn’t for his sake or anything. It’s just my outlet.”
I know what he is talking about.
While listening to their conversation, I remembered the reason again. The reason I jumped ‘desperately’ from the 32nd-floor rooftop bar.
The X-gun scandal.
He says he will reveal the guilt of the ‘high-ranking official’ involved in that scandal to the world, for my sake.
How could he say such a thing? I, who made such a selfish choice. I thought he would hate me, despise me, and want to burn away all memories related to me with ‘desperation.’
I want to reach him. I want to see his face more clearly. I want to ask for forgiveness, and I want to feel that special way he looks at me one more time.
Why did I not disappear?
If this is the afterlife, or somewhere in between this world and the next, even here, ‘existing’ was painful. Even here, I had to take responsibility for my choices and their consequences.
I was bearing the responsibility for my choice to escape by disappearing. Watching the pain of the people I cherished, with all my memories intact, having forgotten nothing.
As I push away the waves and try to approach him, everything disappears from my sight once more. His face blurs and scatters.
This time, it is darkness.
No sound is heard, nothing is seen. Only the flow around me and the sensation of waves enveloping me can be felt. I am in deep, heavy water where light does not reach.
Then, am I a god?
A spiritual being without form, looking down at Earth from space, transcending time and space. Did I become a god after death?
Slowly looking around in the same darkness everywhere, I suddenly realize I am not breathing. As soon as I notice this, the pain of suffocation washes over me. I have no body, so I cannot breathe and have no need to breathe. Yet, I feel suffocated and struggle without a body.
No matter how much I dive and dive, the surface is impossibly far away.
No matter how much I scream and scream, my voice reaches no one.
I couldn’t have become a god. A soul that took its own life as a cowardly means of escape, abandoning the person who said they loved me, could not be reborn as a god.
“This is news about actress Yoon Hye-an, formerly of the idol group ‘TiTan’.”
Like gradually given hints, a voice is heard again from somewhere. I desperately paddle what feel like limbs, or rather, what I perceive as limbs, to find the direction of the sound. I strain my ears to the unstable voice, mixed with interference and noise.
“Ms. Yoon Hye-an jumped from Dongho Bridge in April and was found on Bam Island, wasn’t she? Her unconscious state for several months drew much sympathy. This afternoon, Ms. Yoon Hye-an miraculously regained consciousness.”
Above me, far away, I begin to see light rippling the surface… If I could just reach there, I feel like I could breathe… Can a non-existent body get tired? I slowly begin to sink.
I never thought I would have to feel the helplessness of just watching the receding light, hope, again. It was more terrifying than suffocation.
“We return to this incident once more.”
The sound, whose origin is unknown, continues to chatter, indifferent to my desperate pain.
When I stop struggling, I slowly sink into deeper darkness. The light recedes.
“Yes, it’s shocking. At 2:44 PM local time today in Bangkok, Lee Seo-kyung, former executive director of Nox Hotel & Resort, was murdered.”
In the moment my vision blurs, some force snatches me. A force that wraps around me tightly and pulls me up in an instant.
Like a fish whose mouth is pierced by a merciless hook and is dragged up helplessly, I ascend towards the light.
The moment I burst through the surface…
I was finally breathing.
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