Perhaps, Midterms (4)
Perhaps, Midterms (4)
With the exam over, I thought I could enjoy a leisurely, carefree life for a while.
But peace didn't last long.
One day, out of the blue, Professor Shim Sa-rang, who was in charge of the liberal arts course <Sex and Love: Exploration of Male and Female Culture>, called me in.
'What's this?'
Was my class attitude bad? Or was there a mix-up with attendance?
I thought about it for a while, but only one thing came to mind.
The assignment I'd submitted recently as a midterm replacement.
'...Could it be that my assignment was so freaking awesome she called me in to praise it?'
That would make sense.
After all, it wasn't a novel written purely from imagination, but a description based on 'real history' I'd personally experienced. From the perspective of the PhDs in this world, the quality must have been utterly shocking.
Maybe she even wanted to ask if she could present my report at an academic conference.
I headed to the professor's office, harboring pointless expectations.
[ Professor Shim Sa-rang's Office ]
I arrived at the door and lightly adjusted my clothes. Took a deep breath.
Tok tok.
"......"
A brief silence passed, then a calm voice came from inside.
— Yes, come in.
I carefully opened the door and entered.
Behind the desk, Professor Shim Sa-rang, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, was staring at her monitor.
"Hello, Professor. I'm Seol Jin-hyuk, a first-year in the Department of Computer Engineering."
I greeted her cheerfully and bowed my head. She slightly pushed up her glasses and stared at me intently.
"......"
Something... the atmosphere was strange. It wasn't the look of someone about to give praise. It felt a bit off.
Just as I was swallowing nervously, she gestured with her chin toward the chair in front.
"Oh, you're here. Student Seol Jin-hyuk."
"......"
"Have a seat over there for now, would you?"
"Yes, y-yes..."
I sat down on the chair like a meek lamb. All the bravado from moments ago was gone, and cold sweat started trickling down my spine.
'What the hell... am I screwed...?'
The professor's expression was ominous. Not a clap in sight, she looked as serious as a doctor about to deliver a terminal diagnosis.
Breaking the silence, the professor spoke.
"Um... the reason I called you is about the report you submitted this time, Jin-hyuk-ssi."
"Ah... yes."
Thud.
She placed my report on the desk.
"The content was so shocking that... I'm asking just in case, but did you write this yourself?"
"Yes, I did. Is there a problem..."
I wondered if someone had swapped it, but the thing on the desk was definitely my 'masterpiece' I'd poured all night into.
The professor took off her glasses, placed them on the desk, and let out a deep sigh. Then she began reading a passage from my report aloud.
"Here it says... 'If the gender ratio becomes 1:1, peace will not come. Rather, an era of hatred will arrive.'"
"Yes, that's right."
"...The specific examples were quite shocking."
'Online communities will become daily battlegrounds where men and women degrade each other by comparing one another to insects or livestock.'
'A bizarre festival will unfold every day—a festival where men and women only claim their own rights, shirk their obligations, and applaud the other's misfortune as if it were their victory.'
The professor's voice trembled slightly. Even just reading the text, she furrowed her brow as if taking psychic damage.
"And in the conclusion... 'Ultimately, men and women will perceive each other as potential aggressors, and they will walk the extreme path of extinction, rejecting marriage and childbirth.'... Is that correct?"
"Yes, exactly."
I nodded confidently.
This wasn't fiction. It was an unflinching depiction of the landscape of 21st century South Korea in a place called 'Earth' where I used to live—the very essence of hyper-realism.
But the professor looked at me with eyes full of pity, then pointed her finger at the middle section of my report, the [Compilation of Major Social Conflict Terminology] part.
"Student Jin-hyuk."
"Yes."
"At this part... I really doubted my eyes. I wondered what kind of alien language this was."
"Yes?"
She began to read the words I'd written aloud, with a careful touch as if handling radioactive waste.
"'Hannamechung'. Korean men are... bugs? And 'Jaegihae'?"
"......"
"'Kimchi-nyeo', 'Doenjang-nyeo'. Terms that degrade women by comparing them to specific foods or fermented products... Is that correct?"
Her recitation didn't stop there.
"And here... 'Samilhan'. 'Dried pollack and women taste best when beaten once every three days'...?"
"Ah, that's a satire of the authoritarian evils of the past patriarchal society..."
"Jin-hyuk-gun."
She looked at me with a mix of various emotions.
"No matter how fictional the scenario, this is... too... far-fetched and violent in its conception."
"......"
Even with ten mouths, I couldn't argue. But the real kicker was what came next.
"What I don't understand the most is this. 'Seolgeoji-ron' and 'Pongpong-nam'."
"Ah..."
"A married couple bound by love, compared to kitchen detergent... Describing the husband as a slave who earns money until he's covered in foam, and the wife as a fraud who hides her past...? Jin-hyuk-gun, what kind of... grotesque and sad metaphor is this?"
The professor pressed hard on her temples, as if her head was throbbing.
For someone who believed that even a man who's loved enough is lacking, to think he'd be treated like a slave only good for earning money—from her perspective, it must be nothing short of sci-fi horror.
"This isn't conflict analysis... It's like a dictionary of hatred. That such explicit language could be used in daily life... I honestly can't believe it."
The professor pressed her temples even harder.
"The moment you define a person as something other than a human, the relationship is already destroyed. And in this report... that destruction is so naturally taken for granted."
She added in a voice mixed with a sigh.
"That's why it's even scarier. It's too concrete to be mere imagination, and too familiar to be satire."
At that moment, her finger, which had been scrolling down the document, stopped dead.
"And lastly, this. 'Gunkangs'? Military service... is a 'vacation'...?"
The professor's expression stiffened instantly.
"Student Jin-hyuk, have you served in the military?"
"No, I haven't...."
"Then how can you compare military service to a 'vacation'? It's a place so cold, so hungry, so deprived of freedom. People go through hardship to defend their country, and instead of gratitude, there's mockery? Does that make sense?"
"......"
The professor's fact-bomb struck my bones. No, it wasn't the professor hitting my bones—it was the spicy reality of the 'original world' I'd lived in.
She plopped the report down on the desk, shaking her head as if she couldn't believe it.
"In a situation where even if people love each other and have children, we might barely stop the demographic cliff... yet they call each other bugs, call each other kimchi, hate each other, and try to kill each other."
The professor rested her chin on her interlaced hands and stared at me.
"Of course, other students also presented pessimistic outlooks. Things like 'competition will intensify' or 'there will be a job crisis.'"
"Yes, well..."
"But Jin-hyuk-gun's report... has a very different texture. This isn't social conflict level..."
She paused to choose her words, then added with a somber expression.
"It's just a lump of 'pure malice.' A world of perfect hatred, with not even a trace of humanity to be found."
"......"
"How a student barely twenty years old could have such a hellscape painted in his heart... it breaks my heart as a professor."
Haa... she let out a deep sigh.
"Of course, the world isn't all beautiful like a fairy tale. Conflict exists everywhere."
"Th-that's... true..?"
"But... I can say for certain that it's not this dark. Perhaps... the world inside Jin-hyuk-gun's heart is... much colder and lonelier than I think."
"...Yes?"
"Because otherwise... it wouldn't make sense."
She lightly stroked my report with her fingertip. Now it was as if she was caressing a painful wound, not something grotesque.
"How does a young man barely twenty years old... know expressions like these? 'They call each other bugs and hate each other,' 'They call the person they married for love a dishwashing task'..."
Her eyes became moist.
"This isn't a matter of imagination. Unless someone has suffered a very deep emotional wound... they couldn't make such a... desperate and sad depiction."
"No, wait, Professor. That's not a depiction, it's historical evidence..."
"Jin-hyuk-gun..."
She gently interrupted me and leaned forward.
"Could it be... that during your upbringing, there was some... pain regarding the opposite sex, or within your family, that was hard to bear?"
"......"
"You don't have to speak. You don't have to force it out. But..."
Slide.
She took a memo pad out of her desk drawer, wrote something down firmly, and carefully handed it to me.
On the memo she handed me was the phone number of the school's psychological counseling center and the name of a counselor.
"She's a very skilled counselor I know. I'll write you a good referral letter, so... could you think of it as just going for a cup of tea with a light heart... and give it a try?"
"......"
"This isn't about grades or assignments. As a senior in life... I truly hope that Jin-hyuk-gun can put down some of that heavy burden and also see the warm side of the world... I'm asking you from the bottom of my heart."
She meant it.
She wasn't trying to scold me. She genuinely thought my mind was completely wrecked, and she was worrying about me to the point of tears.
It was like telling a medieval person, "In the future, people will fight with machines the size of their palms all over the world," and the nun replies, "Oh dear... how much must he have suffered from evil spirits... poor little lamb..." while shedding tears.
The 20-plus years of Dynamic Korea I had experienced was being treated here as a defense mechanism born from excessive abuse, a crystallization of trauma that couldn't be looked at without tears.
I shut my mouth.
If I opened my mouth here without a clue and said,
"No, it's real! There really is a world like that! There, they mock soldiers as meat shields, and men and women are desperate to kill each other!"
...She would be convinced that my words were 'trauma-induced delusions' and might burst into tears on the spot. Then she'd call 119 and send me to a 'warm' locked ward.
'...Fuck.'
No doubt about it—in this life, even if it's out of spite, I had to live long.
.
.
.
Shuffling along.
I came out of the office like a cow that had barely escaped the slaughterhouse.
In my hand, crumpled and wrinkled, was the 'Student Psychological Counseling Center Referral Letter' the professor had pressed into my palm.
"Haa..."
I leaned against the window in the hallway and let out a long sigh.
But thank goodness for small favors—the professor's last words.
— Oh, and... Student Jin-hyuk.
— Yes.
— I'll give you... a really generous score. Don't worry.
— ......Yes?
— Even though the content was so painful... and so desperately hard to read... the logic and detail that built that world view were chillingly meticulous. Like someone who had actually seen it. Creativity score is perfect.
— ...... .
— Instead, can you promise me... that you'll go to counseling at least once?
Full marks for creativity. The real-life documentary I'd experienced had suddenly turned into a 'meticulously crafted dystopian horror novel.'
Well, as long as I get a good grade, that's what matters, right?
[Getting an A+ and being treated like a mental patient]
vs
[Getting an F and being treated like a normal person].
No-brainer.
I smacked my lips bitterly.
People in this world would never understand, even if they died and came back to life.
In this world where the gender ratio had become 1:9, turning men into precious resources and trophies, they couldn't even imagine it.
When the gender ratio is a perfect 1:1, how the 'Great Era of Hatred' arrives—where they hate each other, bite each other, and curse each other.
Here, they're in a frenzy because there aren't enough men, but over there, it was a world where a man could get cursed at just for breathing.
"Haa......"
There's an old saying. In a world of one-eyed people, the person with two perfectly good eyes is the one treated as abnormal.
That's exactly my situation now. The only two-eyed person who knows the truth ends up as a dangerous element here.
I shoved the crumpled referral letter into my pocket and muttered lowly into the air.
"Fuck..."