The Diaries of Yoo Seul-ho
Yoo Seul-ho had been a diligent sort who always dated his entries whenever he wrote in his diary.
The covers of the notebooks bore no indication of order, so at first I read them at random, but once I started checking the dates written inside, I made an effort to read them as close to chronological sequence as I could.
Year XX, Month X, Day X.
―I blew my lines again today. I couldn't face my mother, so I ran away to the bathroom. I stayed there hiding for a long while until one of the staff noonas came looking for me. By the time I came out, my mother had already left.
The fairly thick notebooks were crammed edge to edge with dense rows of writing.
The handwriting was neat and precise, yet perhaps because of what it said, every sentence seemed to be screaming.
Year XX... then Yoo Seul-ho would have been...
Wait. Wasn't that when he was in elementary school?
The moment I did the math, my head tilted on its own.
An elementary schooler keeping a diary — and not for a school assignment? Impressive.
Marveling inwardly, I read on, page after page. A few entries did betray the hand of a child, sure.
But for the most part, regardless of polish, most of the sentences carried a maturity of values far beyond his years.
He could have told me an adult wrote this and I'd have believed him.
―Am I a mutant? Both my father and mother are remarkable people, so why am I like this? Even though they kept giving me chances, I couldn't do anything with them. I hate myself for it.
―For the first time ever, my mother praised me today! She said my vocal delivery isn't bad, that I take after her. I held back tears with great effort. What a moving day.
―Day four of my parents treating me like an invisible man. I know I shouldn't whine, but it's so hard. The NG this time really wasn't my fault, but they won't believe me. Then again, maybe even that is my fault...
―My mother looks at me with contempt, and my father looks like he'd throw me out on the street any second. I'm terrified of that day coming — and yet some part of me wants it to come soon.
It was a relentless parade of sentences that weighed on the heart just to read.
I was trying to stay as objective as I could when one diary entry abruptly caught my eye.
―Boreum died. I'll end up like that too, someday.
Unlike the other entries, the one written that day was remarkably brief.
I worked out the date: Yoo Seul-ho had been in fifth grade of elementary school.
I puzzled for a moment over who Boreum might be, and then remembered the doghouse I'd seen earlier.
Was it the name of a pet?
It wasn't mentioned anywhere in the report I'd received from the Heungsinso either, which only made me want to know more — but this was both the first and the last time Boreum ever came up.
Strange. There should have been plenty more to write about.
Even granting that he might have been unwilling to describe how the dog died, not a single flicker of emotion about the event had made it onto the page, and that puzzled me. Nearly every diary entry Yoo Seul-ho had written up to that point had been built out of an account of events and the feelings attached to them.
Let it go for now.
I hadn't even finished the first notebook yet.
I picked up the pace of my reading.
―If I become good at acting, will my parents finally be pleased? I used to believe that without a shadow of a doubt, but these days I'm not so sure. What if I get so good that I steal the spotlight that belongs to the two of them? Somehow I feel like they'd resent me even more than they do now.
―I've begun to wonder if my parents only keep me in acting because of the position it puts them in — the power to hand me a casting on a platter. If they ever read this entry, I'd be finished.
―I hate my parents so much. I hate them so much I want to ruin my acting on purpose. I want everyone to see what a rotten kid I am, so my parents would be even more ashamed.
―Writing that yesterday was wrong. I shouldn't think such things about the parents who gave birth to me and raised me. Above all, I'm not a child anymore. The past — the times I flubbed my lines on purpose just to get their attention — is nothing but the past.
Many of the entries brimmed with turmoil — resentment toward his parents tangled up with guilt.
And as his age climbed, I could feel Yoo Seul-ho's thoughts sharpening into something colder and clearer.
―I am not good at acting. And I don't like it. Honestly, I don't even want to do it. People frighten me. The more I act, the more they hate me. Every morning I'm afraid to get out of bed.
―Just as it's taken for granted that I am Yoo Seul-ho, it's taken for granted that I am an actor. My mother is an actress, my father is an actor, so I must be one too. Anything else is impossible.
―I blew take after take today, beyond counting. I wanted to apologize to the director, but I couldn't — the words would reach my parents' ears. I hate myself for it.
―Every time my parents do something I can't understand, I'm thrown into confusion. They clearly support everything for my sake, so why can't I feel grateful deep down? What's wrong with me?
―Today I listened to Ran talk about her parents. They sounded so much like mine that before I knew it, I'd poured out everything on my mind — and regretted it the moment I got home. No matter what, I shouldn't have badmouthed my own parents to someone else. They're strict, sure... but they've never hit me, have they?
I found the entry that mentioned Choi Ran, too.
After that, it said, his heart raced uncomfortably every time he saw her, and it was difficult.
He kept replaying how he'd vented about his parents to her, terrified that someday they would find out — that was the narrative.
When I reached the sentence where he resolved to keep his distance from Choi Ran, my mouth twisted.
Tsk.
Time flowed on, and Yoo Seul-ho turned sixteen — a third-year middle school student.
And then, at some point, the diaries touched on something I'd read in the report.
―I heard our teacher has transferred schools. The principal said it was for personal reasons, but I know better. Our teacher is not the kind of person who would leave without even saying goodbye to us. I keep thinking it must be connected to my parents. He was the only one who ever listened to my whole story, beginning to end... I'm sorry, Teacher.
According to the report, Yoo Seul-ho's middle school homeroom teacher had submitted a suspected child abuse report concerning Yoo Seul-ho's parents — only for it to be buried at the school principal's level, and the teacher reassigned to some backwater post as a result.
From then on, the things I'd read in the report kept resurfacing in the shape of diary entries.
Yoo Seul-ho entering high school, then dropping out over his filming schedule, then preparing for homeschooling — all of it, step by step.
But then, judging by the dates, several months of blank space opened up all at once.
...?
The entries had been kept fairly regularly, if briefly, up to that point, which made the gap all the more baffling.
But the very next entry explained it.
―A few months ago, I talked back to my mother for the first time in my life. "Everything I say is for your own good" — I've heard that line my whole life, so I should be used to it, but that day, somehow, I couldn't swallow it. When I came back to myself, I was wailing and screaming at the top of my lungs. My mother didn't respond to a single word. Distraught, I went into my room and fell asleep — and the next day, I was committed to a hospital.
Ah.
Right. He'd said he was forcibly hospitalized in a psychiatric ward when he was eighteen.
―A doctor I'd never seen before locked me up in a hospital on the strength of a single diagnosis: "shows suicidal impulses." At first I was furious about it. I even caught myself thinking that maybe, just to prove how unfair it was, I ought to force myself to have suicidal urges. What did they take me for? No matter how hard things get, I'm not the kind of person who would end his own life!
"......"
I froze at that last line.
But I couldn't very well tell the Yoo Seul-ho inside the diary what would happen seven years later, so I quietly turned to the next page.
―Still, the three months in the hospital were good to me. I felt listless, but at the same time, liberated. I didn't have to act, and nobody hated me. If I could have, I'd have wanted to stay there forever. But my father came to collect me, on the grounds that a gap that long would damage my career. And so I returned to hell.
Once he came of age, Yoo Seul-ho had fled straight into the military, and from some point on, his diary entries grew sparse.
His tone, which was still comparatively light in the early entries, hardened with each passing page until it turned to stone.
And so, at last, he reached twenty-five.
These were the entries written in early this year — around the time I arrived in Yoo Seul-ho's body.
―I learned that something called a restriction of parental rights exists. After agonizing over it for days, I decided to file for it. Part of me wondered what the point could be, but I wanted to become, officially and publicly, a stranger to my parents. That public declaration mattered to me.
―But in the middle of preparing it, I found out too late. The moment a child reaches adulthood, parental rights terminate automatically. There is no legal mechanism for severing ties with your parents once you're grown. I was simply too late.
―My mind went somewhere far away, and I seem to have sat there blankly for a long while afterward. The lawyer, watching my face, said that an address confidentiality request would at least be possible. If I weren't a celebrity, would that even have helped? I told him to cancel everything and walked out. What on earth did I spend all those days agonizing over?
After that, the pages held nothing of any great consequence.
Without a word about his parents, they simply and calmly recorded what he'd done each day.
The very last entry read as follows:
―I should have smiled more for the people who smiled at me. I regret it.
With that flat, unadorned sentence, every last diary came to an end.
And my impression, having read them all?
"This kid never should have become an actor."
The words slipped out of my mouth with complete sincerity.
Yoo Seul-ho shouldn't have been an actor. He should have been a writer.
Seriously, how is he this good with words?
"What a waste."
As I swept through his diaries once more, only then did I notice how parched my throat was. A glance at the clock told me two hours had slipped by without my realizing.
That was how masterfully written they were — good enough that I hadn't felt the length of the time at all.
Whew.
Only now did the man called Yoo Seul-ho finally make sense to me.
My heart genuinely ached for him — for someone who must have lived his whole life steeped in guilt.
Truthfully, in the short time I'd known him, there'd been moments when he struck me as frustratingly passive. But now I understood: how could he have turned out any other way, growing up like that?
So this is gaslighting? That's what this is?
After decades of being manipulated by your own parents, breaking free couldn't have been easy.
Which was why, in the end, he'd made the choice that he did.
I do feel a little guilty, actually.
Reading sentences where he tormented himself — wondering whether, if someone else were living his life, that person would have made a far more pride-worthy son — I felt distinctly awkward.
Especially given that I'd just come back from putting on a full disrespectful-son performance at his family home.
Will Yoo Seul-ho ever open his eyes again?
What were the odds that the mind currently in my original body was Yoo Seul-ho's? And what were the odds that he would wake again and live out a second life of his own?
Strictly speaking, weighing probabilities on something so far-fetched was pointless.
And yet I found myself hoping that somewhere, somehow, he might find happiness from here on out.
It'd be heartbreaking for him — regaining consciousness only to find his own name being dragged through the mud.
I had no idea whether that day would ever come, but I resolved all the same to do everything within my power.
For me — and for you.
I'll work hard, Yoo Seul-ho.