Chapter 169
Chapter 169
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 169
Chapter Title: 81. Snowman (3)
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A man buried in the snow snapped a selfie.
His face was completely covered in snow like a snowman, and he stared at us with dying eyes. His death rattle had been replaced by a comment.
This was the end of a comedian who had once dominated an era.
The forum users, who had been implicitly ignoring Hwang Daeseop, finally started mentioning him.
Not a single comment was favorable.
Here, let's borrow the words of Dongtanmom, who has the worst personality on our board.
The other users' thoughts weren't much different from Dongtanmom's, just varying in degree.
We had already seen too many deaths and tragedies.
We had also been subjected to his character assassination-level smears.
And so, the story of Hwang Daeseop, the star of "Neighbor's Ruin," seemed to end just like that.
But I wanted to expand on that story a bit more.
The trigger was an artistic duel that broke out afterward.
*
I'm different from John_nenon.
How should I put it? As a "disciple," this Park Gyu always has that blue-chip pedigree thing going on. No matter who he learns from, he ends up surpassing the master.
That's true for Jang Gi-young, and John_nenon is no exception.
I might not achieve immortal feats like them, but on a human level, I'm tougher, wiser, and more shameless.
If John_nenon had my kind of thick skin, he would've stuck around on our board. Then PaleNet never would've been born.
Anyway, after much deliberation on how to deal with rokaGG, who kept threatening me, I decided to confront him head-on. Of course, I didn't forget to ask for advice from those around me.
I finally got in touch with Dajeong after a long time.
She cut straight to the chase when she saw my dilemma.
I'd had the same thought as Dajeong.
But my perfectionist tendencies held me back.
For example, under the "Wife" piece, I'd added an artist's comment like this:
-As an unmarried man, I created this purely from imagination. It was tricky figuring out how to depict and compose an imaginary wife.
Materializing one form from countless mental images felt like the pain of childbirth. (etc.)
I'd done the same for "Mother."
-I tried expressing the passage of time with snow. It was no easy task. There was immense anguish and torment.
The idea struck like a comet! I challenged a technique no one had tried before... (etc.)
That's right.
If I'd just posted the photos, rokaGG wouldn't have had this much leverage over me.
My thoughtful addition of commentaries on the works had backfired and cornered me instead.
I disagreed with Dajeong's take on my reputation, but I decided to follow her advice.
Time to go on the offensive.
In a world where only the strong survive, it's the tough ones who make it.
The internet's the same way.
Isn't the internet just a mirror of the world?
And so, I chose to meet rokaGG's challenge head-on.
Unlike my role model, I acted boldly.
rokaGG seemed taken aback by my feral response and didn't reply.
It was a full day later when he messaged me again.
The moment I saw that message, I burst out laughing.
What gave him that confidence?
Did he think making snowmen was kid stuff?
It was kid stuff, but sculpting art out of snow like I did wasn't for just anyone.
You need to understand the ephemeral nature of snowflakes, the skill to mold it like clay, aesthetic sculpting sense, and endurance against the cold.
And so began an unplanned artistic duel.
Pieta.
A snow replica of Michelangelo's famous namesake work.
I rank it as the pinnacle of that Japanese artist's oeuvre too, but the problem is the difficulty.
H. Sawatari had rendered something tough even in clay using snow.
Three days wasn't long.
But I had experience from my past works and infinite time to kill.
For exiles like us with no end in sight, being able to focus on something is a blessing.
Not counting the hours.
Concentrating amid diligence, creating something.
And reaping applause as reward—what more could you want?
The three days flew by.
I gaze at my finished product.
"······."
Coldly assessing it, I hadn't captured even half the original's perfection.
Jesus Christ's face was a blurry monster mess, and the Virgin Mary looked like a panda, just like with "Wife."
Above all, recreating the crown of thorns had driven me nuts.
How did he get that sharp texture?
I had no choice but to fudge it into a lumpy approximation.
Even so, I didn't think of it as defeat.
I'd never seen anyone better than me.
But it was also true that a sliver of anxiety lingered in my heart.
rokaGG, that nobody, wouldn't have challenged me without reason.
Right after I posted my work, rokaGG uploaded his like he'd been waiting.
"?!"
The instant I saw rokaGG's Pieta, I double-checked H. Sawatari's.
He hadn't stolen the photo.
It was rokaGG's work.
My impression was simple.
This can't win.
The match is over.
rokaGG had recreated H. Sawatari's snowman almost 100% perfectly.
The Virgin Mary's tender expression, the dying Jesus Christ's agony, even the crown of thorns I'd struggled with.
Compared to his, my Pieta was just cheap Chinese knockoff trash.
In this crisis, I acted fast.
"······."
Click.
I deleted Skeleton's Pieta.
Like bailing before the execution scaffold, a half-beat early retreat.
rokaGG's mockery didn't bother me.
I'd been called worse plenty of times.
What mattered was that I'd won in the end.
rokaGG smugly wrote a long post criticizing my "reinterpretation."
The reaction, however, was ice cold.
···
···
I lost on artistry, but won public opinion.
rokaGG knew how to criticize but lacked my mental fortitude.
Without a single excuse, he deleted his sniping post and Pieta.
It's true his Pieta was far superior to mine.
I won't distort that fact.
The issue is intent.
Me, clumsily but earnestly reinterpreting snowmen to counter Hwang Daeseop's malice on the board,
Versus rokaGG, purely out to humiliate me by making his own snowman.
That difference led to this outcome.
Even if the duel had continued, it wouldn't have drawn much attention.
Then came Hwang Daeseop's epilogue.
A PaleNet user living near Hwang Daeseop found him and his family as snowmen, investigated his house, and posted a summary on our board.
The suicide note from the PaleNet anonymous user "Anonymous" was a single line:
-Why isn't anyone laughing?
Seeing that note, for some reason, I recalled Hwang Daeseop's final comment.
As his body and mind reached their end, hurtling toward death, his fingers probably wouldn't move as he wanted.
That typo is death in present continuous.
I interpreted the "/" as a "?"
Because we're in the same spot.
It's the typo you get without hitting shift or switching keyboards.
So what did the unfinished "ㅁ" mean?
Others didn't read much into the typo, but lately I'd been obsessed with the concept of "the subject's intent."
"······."
I looked up Hwang Daeseop's posts.
He called us losers.
We felt strong revulsion and interpreted his actions as the curses of a dying man.
But in nearly every post, Hwang Daeseop kept asking why we weren't laughing.
He repeatedly asked why we weren't finding it funny.
It's peculiar.
If he hated us, he could've just cursed or damned us.
No need to phrase it as not getting the fun.
I recalled the YouTube series "Neighbor's Ruin" I'd watched back then.
Hwang Daeseop's bumbling Ruin character was a straightforward, action-driven dimwit—not a complex one tossing out meaning and reeling in reactions.
Ruin's actions were one-dimensional.
So maybe Hwang Daeseop's questions weren't mockery or curses, but genuine inquiries into our non-reaction, taken literally.
Meanwhile, his suicide note simply read: Why isn't anyone laughing?
Let's analyze his final intent based on that.
To me, the Hwang Daeseop saying goodbye with that selfie wasn't the real Hwang Daeseop.
He wasn't the comedian Hwang Daeseop, but "Ruin Hwang Daeseop"—the fusion that gave him his second heyday before the war.
A blend of Ruin and Hwang Daeseop.
His final snowman series was the gloomy epilogue of "Ruin Hwang Daeseop" performing "Neighbor's Ruin."
He saw his own wretched fate as comedy fodder for us ruin enthusiasts and staged his last farce on that premise.
His comedy didn't land as comedy because his reality was too dark.
Even the material he thought would amuse us couldn't escape the pitch-black darkness surrounding him by an inch.
Everyone misunderstood his true intent.
In indifference colder than snow, Hwang Daeseop became a snowman and died.
So in my view, that "ㅁ" was Hwang Daeseop's unfinished "sorry" to us.
Skeleton's "Pieta" was re-uploaded to the board with the new title "Hwang Daeseop."
I made a few edits.
Changed Jesus Christ's bungled crown face to resemble Hwang Daeseop, tweaked the Virgin Mary's hack-job face to look more masculine, and added "VIVA" on the forehead.
Unlike my other works, this one had no commentary—not a single line.
"Hwang Daeseop" didn't make popular post status.
A fitting appraisal for a comedian broken in despair, whose story had ended long ago.
End of <81. Snowman (3)>