Isn’t this a bit much...?
Being born a man in this country is a crime.
What crime, you ask?
It is the crime of having to shoulder all responsibilities and duties simply for being a man, whilst living with the right to protection naturally stripped away.
I didn’t realise it when I was young.
No, I knew, but I pretended not to.
The reason, of course, was ‘because I’m a man.’
In primary school, if a girl cried, the boy was always the one who got told off.
“Why did you make her cry?”
In secondary school, I was reported for sexual harassment just for bumping into someone during PE.
Even if I felt wronged, I couldn’t speak up.
In sixth form, I kept my mouth shut altogether.
If I spoke too much, people said I was annoying; if I was quiet, they said I was unfriendly.
At university, even if we did all the group work, the final presentation was always given by a girl.
They said it was awkward if a boy took the lead.
And in the working world... what’s the point of even mentioning it?
[Expansion of hardship allowances for women]
[Increased funding for women’s shelters]
[Expansion of preferential loans for female entrepreneurs]
On TV, they chanted about protecting women day in, day out.
The government, corporations, the media—they were all on the women’s side.
Whenever I said anything, the first thing I heard was, “Why are men so sensitive?”
‘Fuck, I sacrificed two years of my youth to bust my arse in the army, so why is there no preferential treatment or protection for me?’
When I worked part-time, I was the one carrying all the heavy stuff; at job interviews, I was told, “We have no choice because of the current female recruitment quotas”; and all those preferential schemes for public sector jobs were tied up in ‘bonus points for women’.
One day, I dragged myself to work, barely able to stand due to a nasty cold, only to be told, “You’re late. Your contract is terminated.” That was all.
My body was shaking, and I could hardly breathe.
Going to the hospital was out of the question. I had no money. I had no one to turn to, nowhere to turn.
As I sat there slumped on the pavement, words I’d heard in the past began to surface one by one from somewhere in my mind.
Words that had been hammered into my ears.
Words spoken by some as if in jest, by others with utter sincerity.
“If you’re a man, you should be able to put up with that sort of thing.”
“If you can’t buy a house before you’re thirty, it just means you’re a failure.”
“You’re ill? Why are you complaining so much for a man?”
“A man has to take responsibility. That’s what makes him look like a man.”
“Men have done their military service anyway. You should be able to handle that much.”
I thought I’d brushed them off without a second thought back then, but looking back now, I realise I was already suffocating under those words.
That was all it took.
So I couldn’t hold on any longer.
My consciousness began to fade. My breathing grew laboured, and my vision blurred.
And so, I slowly faded away.
“In my next life... please let me be born into a world that cherishes men... just that, and nothing else...”
...And when I came round, at first I thought I was in a hospital.
I could barely open my eyes, but I was lying on a warm cloth, and the ceiling wasn’t filled with fluorescent lights... It was the sky.
A breeze brushed past me.
The air touching my skin was so cold.
I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t obey me.
And then, a cry burst forth.
...It was mine.
I was a baby in a basket.
***
“Applicant number 31, please come in.”
As the words trailed off, the automatic doors slowly closed.
The sound of a female candidate’s high heels fading away as she walked out of the door grew fainter and fainter.
A silence fell over the waiting room.
No, to be honest, it was only silence on the surface.
In reality, it was filled with whispers.
Those whispers were heavier than the air and closer than my own skin.
“She’s next.”
“Really? That lad?”
“Yeah, the one sitting over there. The one holding the pink number tag...”
I didn’t look up.
I’m used to it by now.
But those stares felt as vivid as if they were running down my cheeks, sweeping across the nape of my neck, brushing my stomach and flowing down my legs.
Something was licking at me with a filthy, sticky gaze.
I glanced away.
To my left.
Three female applicants were sitting together.
One had unbuttoned the top two buttons of her light purple shirt; another sat with her legs crossed over her knees, slowly rubbing her thigh with her fingers.
And the last one was biting her lip slightly, the corners of her mouth turned up.
“Hey, hey, hey... How tall is he? My neck’s killing me right now.”
“Did you see his shoulders? Wow, does a suit really fit like that?”
“Seriously... I can see the muscle definition from his chest to his abs. Did my lower abdomen just tremble?”
“Ugh... I can feel a dampness between my thighs right now. How is he like that?”
One of them reached out and held their mobile phone up slightly in my direction.
There was no flash, but I knew.
That was a selfie.
“Hey, hey, come on—this is an interview room!”
“Still... opportunities like this don’t come around often, do they?”
I glanced down at my ticket.
It was crumpled and damp.
Mind you, anyone would get sweaty palms under stares like that.
…Of course, I’m past the age of being surprised by such things now.
‘Ugh… here we go again.’
A place called an ‘interview room’, but read as an ‘exhibition hall’.
I’m not being assessed right now. I’m simply being gawked at.
In these women’s eyes, I’m nothing more than a stuffed beast of fantasy.
A curious, alluring creature—and above all, one they’d like to touch at least once, to verify with their own hands.
It’s not that I’m afraid of the interview.
The fact that these stares no longer bother me is, perhaps, even funnier.
After all, it’s been twenty years since I started living as a man in this crazy, upside-down world.
A dark night when the snow was falling thick and fast.
The wind was cold enough to cut through the skin, and the world was silent.
That night, I was abandoned in front of an orphanage, tucked inside an old basket.
I was covered by a single thick piece of cloth, but the wind blew right through it, and I was shivering.
“Oh my, who on earth is this…?”
When the orphanage director opened the door and saw me, her voice trembled.
But that tremor was neither anger nor horror.
If anything, it was closer to excitement.
“Eh? But this is a boy?! Really, is it a baby boy?!”
In an instant, several staff members rushed over.
Surrounding the basket, their eyes sparkled as if they had discovered the Holy Grail.
“Goodness, who would abandon such a precious child...!”
“A baby boy? And with such a pretty face, too?”
“In this day and age, for something like this to happen...”
Their reaction was a shock.
No, to be honest, I was baffled.
Simply because I was a boy, they were swept up in a wave of joy and awe.
From that day on, I became a ‘special being’.
At the orphanage, I received an unusually large amount of attention.
My meals were always more generous, and the moment I showed the slightest sign of a cold, a nurse would be at my side.
At night, someone would stroke my hair and sing me a lullaby.
At first, I liked it.
In my previous life, back in Korea, I had always been someone pushed into a corner.
For a man, military service was a duty, sacrifice a virtue; emotions were trampled upon, and weakness was not permitted.
But in this life, I felt grateful to be ‘cherished’ like this.
Yet that feeling was short-lived.
Not long after starting primary school, I realised something was odd.
I was the only boy.
Truly.
Out of 327 pupils in the whole school, I was the sole male student.
The girls surrounded me and stared at me like I was a curiosity.
“Are you a real boy? Really, really?”
“Look at the colour of his eyes, they’re really different!”
“Smell his hair, isn’t it completely different?”
It felt as though I hadn’t gone to school, but had instead been taken to an exhibition of rare animals.
At first, I thought it was just an expression of curiosity.
Well, boys are rare, after all.
But as time went on, that interest began to take a rather strange turn.
During class, a folded piece of paper plops onto my desk. It reads: ‘What colour are your underpants?’
At lunchtime, a girl two years older than me comes and sits next to me.
She presses her knee against mine and whispers, staring at me.
“You’ve got to eat plenty of food~ That’s how you’ll get strong♥”
During PE, my sweat-soaked PE kit went missing.
Later, when she returned it, she said with a smile:
“It’s just… for reference. It smells so lovely~.”
At first, I was flustered.
And later, I felt a chill run down my spine.
And the teacher? She didn’t say a word.
No, in fact, it was clear that even the teacher was in on it.
“Our Hyun-woo is so popular~ Boys really are a rare commodity, aren’t they~.”
I wasn’t a rare commodity.
I was merely a ‘rare resource’ disappearing from this world, and a prize untouched by human hands.
‘...Oh God, I never asked for a world like this.’
I needed a boyfriend.
A friend!
Just someone of the same sex I could talk to!
So I’d even considered applying to a ‘boys-only special school’.
But I gave up on that idea pretty quickly.
Because that place was an even worse hell than this.
Socks with bows, glittery lip balm, nicknames ending in ‘~ring’, and ‘boys’ constantly rubbing cheeks while calling each other ‘cute’.
A place where little boys and girls giggled and laughed, hugging each other as they roamed the school grounds.
Fuck, there was no way I could set foot in that revolting place.
So I stayed.
Here.
Alone, an outsider.
And I soon realised.
In this world, there is only one way for a man to truly ‘survive’.
That is to be a ‘Hero’.
An official profession officially ‘permitted’ by the state to fight—the only one that tolerates strong men in this world.
You’re respected, you get hazard pay, and above all, it’s cool.
It’s every bloke’s dream, isn’t it?
So I thought to myself.
‘Right, I’ll go for that instead. It’s a hundred times better than acting like a faggot, slathering on glittery lip balm and going “Ooh, big bro~”!’
To be honest, back on Earth I was just an ordinary bloke, nothing special...
But in this life, at the very least, I wanted to be a special ‘human being’, not just a special ‘man’.
It’s my second go at life, so surely I ought to take on a challenge like this?
That was my escape route, my act of defiance, and perhaps my last resort to preserve my existence in this world.
And now, I stand before that ‘door’.
Like a man.
No, just like myself.
“Contestant number 32, enter… Eh, eh?!”
“Yes! Contestant number 32, Lee Hyun-woo, entering now.”