Winter is Cold
Every year around this time, I find myself pondering the results of the identity measurement between Seol Yujin and Seol Yuna. It's about that one moment from my childhood when I got scolded by my teacher—the only time it ever happened.
The teacher handed out sheets of paper to the class. "Write freely about your experiences on this topic," she said. The topic was winter, and without a second's hesitation, I scribbled something down and turned it in. What I wrote was this: "Winter is cold." And I got scolded.
Why? She'd told us to write freely about our experiences, so wasn't that exactly right? Was there some hidden meaning in "experience" or "freedom" that I didn't know? For this super-genius perfect boy Seol Yujin to get in trouble—infuriating! Embarrassing as it is, that's genuinely how I thought back then. I hadn't been properly socialized or learned self-objectivity yet, so chalk it up to childish stubbornness and move on.
But now I know exactly what was wrong with that essay. It was the improper definition of "cold"! If, to define that single word "cold," I'd written about the characteristics of our country's subtropical climate, the tilt of Earth's axis, the descent caused by rising density in the Siberian High, comparative evaluations with other seasons, and so on—then I surely wouldn't have gotten in trouble. Even though it was a Korean language class and a performance assessment for writing our own personal essay, isn't non-fiction still literature? If not, then why do the CSAT Korean exams cram in massive amounts of non-fiction passages? Why do university admissions even have essay sections?
So, for all sorts of reasons like that, I justified my opinion. Of course—this super-genius perfect PhD holder Seol Yujin couldn't possibly be wrong, I repeated to myself.
...So what's the point of this long preamble? The conclusion is simple.
"It's freezing…!"
Winter is cold. Brutally cold.
I huddled on a deserted park bench, struggling to zip up my threadbare puffer jacket, cursing Korea's climate.
The reason I ended up on this park bench wasn't some clichéd sob story like getting evicted for unpaid rent or fleeing bugs in the house. To explain, we have to go back about a week...
That day, I'd been scraping by for days on just a few energy bars and water. Exhaustion, hunger, and a onslaught of anxiety, fear, depression, rage, hatred, disgust, and apathy—it was like playing a hopeless defense game against life itself.
But then a miracle happened. My light. My star. My love. A being so beautiful it seemed woven from the most radiant starlight in the heavens descended into my rundown room and whispered to me.
"Ahh... Hoshigami Meru-sama...! Why didn't you deduct the 200,000 won I took first...!"
I dared to mention the grace she'd already bestowed upon me first, this fox-eared divine spirit from the heavens, but she showed ocean-deep mercy with, "Think of that as a bonus," granting me even more blessings.
"Ahh...! Aah...!"
Tears poured from my mouth like a waterfall. Overwhelmed by her mercy, I smiled and whispered, "Chicken for dinner tonight—jackpot."
And just like that, I had a sudden surplus of 200,000 won. I'd been meticulously planning how to use it for back rent and bare-minimum groceries, but now I faced a big dilemma: where to spend the remainder?
Then the most urgent issue caught my eye.
"...That has to go."
The wallpaper staining every wall of my room black with mold. Branch spore mold. Scientifically, Cladosporium cladosporioides thriving in full reproductive frenzy.
I immediately contacted the landlord, demanding wallpaper replacement. After some very thorough negotiation, we signed an outsourcing contract where I paid 170,000 won (and the landlord pocketed it).
Requesting wallpaper replacement is a tenant's basic right, but getting gouged for it is already unfair. But power logic is closer to law than actual law, and Korean law gets infinitely weaker when the other party is a landlord. Just look at the precedent where a 20-billion-won jeonse scam artist got two years' probation. This is Korean style!
A week later, the landlord showed up for the wallpaper job and told me to step out for a bit. Thus, homeless drifter that I was, I got shoved onto a park bench in the corner.
"Damn... Should've gone to a café..."
The park bench was ice-cold. And the razor winds howling unimpeded from all directions sliced into my limbs over and over. Only a ghost could withstand such a powerful technique. Ghost-types are immune to Normal, after all.
I thought about heading to a café right now for hot drinks, fat Wi-Fi, and blissfully scrolling illegal PDF papers (a.k.a. theses) while gallery-hopping. But my feet wouldn't budge.
Why? Well, uh... it's complicated.
Money was tight. Sure, coffee's only about 2,000 won, way cheaper than hospital bills even if pricey. Or... social anxiety. There'd only be a few people in a café on a weekday morning; I could just hunker in the corner.
No, not that...! I just hated it! Didn't want to go!
Why? Why did I feel that way?
"Because..."
The self-questioning led only to a tangled mess of emotions rising in my heart. Asking myself questions and finding my own answers—it's an old habit, maybe my greatest strength. Just as questions about why the sky is blue or why the sun rises and sets led to the birth of science, questioning expands thought, redefines problems, and uncovers solutions.
But right now, that sharp questioning was prodding deep into my heart.
Why don't I want to go to the café?
The helpless part of me finally spat out an answer.
"I used to tolerate the cold pretty well."
As a kid, I lived with my grandma. There were times I'd dump the blanket on her because I was too hot, and she'd hug me tight, saying she was stealing her cute grandson's warmth.
It was just... like that.
But even if I didn't know then, it's cold now. So why not go into the café?
My heart hemmed and hawed before answering.
"The subscribers on my barely-growing kirinuki channel bother me."
My kirinuki channel was hitting two weeks, but subs were stuck in the 100s. At this rate, monetization was a pipe dream—it'd just bleed money backward. Seeing that made me so bleak and upset I couldn't bring myself to enter a café with internet.
Then don't watch YouTube. Read hobby papers or gallery-hop. What's the problem?
My heart went silent.
...W-Well...
Anxious, depressed, angry—it clamped shut amid the whirlwind of emotions. Couldn't answer.
But my old habit and obsessive nature kept digging. I realized my heart didn't want to touch the internet, and in that process, I found a clue.
A certain paper. One paper heating up the world right now.
Its title was this:
Published in multiple prestigious journals
This paper argued that humanity might one day exist in simulations—that the brain-in-a-vat isn't just empty sci-fi.
Its author was Korean. 25 years old. MIT PhD. Pioneer opening new frontiers in neuroinformation theory. Name: Seol Yujin.
And... deceased.
"......"
Cause of death: accidental fall. On the day his PhD graduation was confirmed, blackout drunk and stumbling back to the dorm with colleagues' help, he bashed his head on a stair corner. What an idiotic accident.
"Ha, haha...!"
What a ridiculous death. So pathetic an end. Far too hollow a payoff for a desperate life.
I sat on the park bench, laughing bitterly. Had to, or I'd crumble.
I'd believed the world was honest. That it operated with intricate, truthful physics humanity hadn't fully grasped.
So when Seol Yujin's memories suddenly flooded into Seol Yuna's body, I considered the possibility this was another world. Like a clichéd TS webnovel—wake up one morning, and your identity and gender have magically swapped.
That's why I'd deliberately avoided looking up my past self, Seol Yujin. This world surely wouldn't have him. It had to be that way.
But the world is honest. It plainly stated that Seol Yujin's world and Seol Yuna's were one and the same. The only lie the world left was this half-assed something in between.
Now the whole world buzzed about Seol Yujin's great achievements and pathetic end. His funeral was grand. People who'd known him lined up for interviews, blabbing whatever about who he'd been. Kind guy who never swore. Quietly researched despite his lot. Blessed. Doomed genius.
Even his elementary school essay surfaced.
"Winter is cold." Just that short sentence.
People speculated on what kind of person Seol Yujin was based on it.
But... I knew things the world didn't.
"...Seol Yujin was actually really good at handling the cold."
His naturally healthy body had strong immunity and rarely caught colds. But he was extremely weak to cold. His grandma, noticing, would joke and stuff him under the blanket, draping most of it over him.
"...Seol Yujin could come up with really creative swears."
The slum he grew up in was full of thugs, alcoholics, sex workers—society's bottom rung. The kids he hung with as a child were pros at profanity and dirty talk. He toned it down to hide his background, to keep it from being ammo in society's battlefield.
"...Seol Yujin wasn't used to crying."
In school, tears signaled defeat and submission—a lesson burned deep. With his shabby background, losing momentum in brutal status wars meant defeat. Even at his only family member's funeral, no tears came... leaving him flustered and heartbroken.
"H-Huh... heh..."
But... so what? Even if I know these things about him, how do I prove it? How do I answer when people ask how I know?
How could Seol Yuna, someone he'd never met in life, become his sole true understander?
Someone who knows my full story might ask: "Why separate Seol Yujin and Seol Yuna as others?"
The answer lies plain in Seol Yujin's paper. Expert in neuroscience and information theory, he had profound insights into the soul. He said:
The soul can only exist in the human brain. Until future humanity builds machine brains from silicon compounds, the soul is a byproduct bound to human brains—your body is you.
Combining that, reason spoke. Something believing itself Seol Yujin spoke.
I can't abandon my identity as Seol Yujin. Dismiss this as a dream, and I'm no different from Seol Yuna, who gave up on life—so I reject it.
Yet I'm not Seol Yujin. Nor is whatever's seized control of Seol Yuna's body now.
If I define myself as Seol Yujin, my efforts are futile. It'd prove souls exist, no different.
Trapped in that paradox, I turn from myself. To focus on bodily pain over mental, I cling to this park bench.
Any counterarguments...?
None. Reason reached perfect conclusion, judging my heart.
But... drop- drop- Forcibly exposing buried wounds hurts like hell. Tears welling up is natural.
They fell too easily, wouldn't stop. And feeling so familiar made even more pour out.
Seol Yujin's empty shell was there. Alone on that bench, weeping in lonely sobs.