I, the Weeded-Out Male
I found an interesting video on Mom's smartphone.
In the footage, a baby was wailing with a face all scrunched in on itself.
Age 0.
"Waaah, waaaaah! Waaah!!"
"Uh… excuse me, nurse."
A man whose face was pitted with pockmarks shuffled closer, mumbling. Dad, I guess?
Mom, cradling me carefully, glared at him.
"Honey. We're filming."
"No, just—hold on. Is this… is he supposed to look like that?"
Even under Mom's scolding he couldn't drop the question.
"Honey. Please."
"It's just that he seems… awfully wrinkly, is all…."
The nurse answered with a kindly smile.
"Everyone's a little shocked right after birth."
"Ah… right…."
"In a few days the wrinkles will smooth right out, so don't you worry."
"Haa… yeah. Thank you."
Dad wasn't a particularly good person. Looking back, I'm almost glad.
Age 3.
We ran into a neighborhood auntie at the supermarket.
She crouched down and ruffled my hair.
"Hweh… udadya!"
"There, there, oh my, aren't you precious."
Mom offered a warm smile and asked,
"Hehe. Our baby's handsome, isn't he?"
"Ahaha! I've never seen a little one this cute in my life."
Age 5.
Mom came to the daycare.
What could they possibly be talking about? She'd gone into the director's office ages ago and still hadn't come out.
Out of sheer impatience I pressed my ear to the door.
"He'd been rehearsing the knight who protects the princess the whole time… and then suddenly they told him he was a tree."
"I'm sorry. We have to submit the play video to the education office…"
"What? And that's a reason to change a child's role…?"
"…The camera just… didn't take well to him…."
After that I couldn't hear Mom's reply. Through the crack in the door I could see her shoulders trembling, little by little.
Age 8.
They were electing a class president.
I'd seen it in anime a dozen times. I knew exactly what the job was.
Obviously, I figured, it had to be me.
"I nominate myself!"
A brief silence fell.
"Yo, what did he just say…?"
"He nominated himself."
The final tally: two votes.
One of them was Yena's.
Mom said the other kids were just jealous of me.
Age 12.
On my twelfth birthday, something was stuffed inside my indoor-shoe bag.
I dug through the sour smell and pulled out a scrap of paper. Inside, in crooked handwriting, three characters: fat pig.
The kids called me an ugly fat pig. Even though I had a real name.
When I told Mom, she came to school. She yelled and yelled, furious. She cried, too.
It was humiliating. I decided I wouldn't tell her about school anymore.
Age 15.
Gym class. We played futsal. The artificial turf rose up around us, unnaturally green and a little menacing.
Teams had to be picked, and the method was the usual one: two captains stepped up and took turns claiming players after rock-paper-scissors.
It wasn't even an inter-class match. The reason a throwaway game of sides always ran this hot was simple—the girls were watching.
First pick matters, they say. Both of them looked tense before it even started.
"…Rock, paper, scissors!"
"Ah, fuck, I lost that."
"Thanks for the freebie."
The guy who won pointed at the skinny mop-haired kid beside me.
Unchosen to the end, I trudged toward the team that had been assigned to me by default.
I felt the sting of stares. Somewhere, a tongue clicked.
Age 17.
Gotta change my profile pic….
I flipped back and forth between a photo of my favorite baseball player and a car I wanted to drive someday.
I would have loved to set the male lead from the anime I'd been into lately, but Choi Yeon-ji would grab her stomach and laugh herself sick, no question.
Age 19.
24 Yellow Café.
A ginkgo-leaf sign with retro charm. When I pushed the door, a little bell jangled and pulled every eye my way.
I'd lost count of how many times I'd tried. If part-time work was this hard to land, how the hell was I supposed to get a real job later?
"So no prior café experience, then?"
"No, sir. I've never done it…."
"I see. We only hire people with experience… sorry, kid."
"Ah. Yes…."
I'd figured as much. I'd seen it on the owner's face the second I stepped inside.
Wonder what he would have said if I had been experienced.
Age 20.
I searched up club videos.
Looked fun.
Age 21.
A bunkhouse barracks drowning in cobwebs.
The seniors yakked every damn day and night; sleep was impossible.
"Whoa, she's hot as hell."
"Right? Next—what about this one."
"Damn… Sergeant Kim, you're the man. You for real gonna introduce me?"
"I already said I would, you idiot. What about her."
"No way, how are you even supposed to choose. Damn."
"Fucked, right? Next. Her."
A sudden silence.
"Ah. Uh."
For a second I felt a nasty pair of eyes on me.
"Let's just give this one to that bastard."
"Aack! Shit, that's hilarious. Perfect."
…Sons of bitches.
I swore that the moment I discharged, I was going to get myself a pretty girlfriend.
You think a face like this means I can't date? How to win a woman's heart. I was going to study it rigorously for the rest of my service.
…Or so I thought.
If I were just a little, just a tiny bit better looking.
Age 23.
Conversations like this are the most painful kind to receive.
Where the hell did this bastard go wrong.
Your current conversation is dominated by information-exchange questions.
Shift toward questions that let the other person talk about their own experiences — the taste of the food, the atmosphere, the situation around them.
Sharing one of your own experiences first is also effective.
Example: …
I almost typed, Go to a fucking interview?
"As if~."
I hammered the backspace bar and kept writing.
Clack.
The laptop, roughly handled, let out a squeal of protest.
Maybe I was just tired. A stress I couldn't name kept rising in my chest.
Shoot was at three, so I needed to start getting ready. Let's see, the mirror…
Ugly as shit again today~.
Long, straight black hair.
Monolids, but big eyes and lips just full enough.
That woman.
"Hello!"
"Yes, hello."
A garden a pretty fairy might tend. Floor-to-ceiling glass and potted plants pulled all that green right into the interior.
A café engineered to nail the SNS aesthetic.
"We'll start with an Americano—that okay?"
"Yes! Americanos photograph the best."
Including her, the only unpretty thing in this place was me.
One hour. I had to squeeze every drop of value out of the booked shoot time, so I started giving directions at once.
"I'll take your hand first, then."
"Okay~."
"…Interlaced fingers all right?"
"Ah, sure."
Soft hands….
Next.
"Bite the straw a little, and look over here."
"Okay."
"Cheek to cheek for this one."
"…All right."
Cheeks really are soft.
Next.
"Could you do kissy lips toward my cheek?"
"Sorry? Kissy… lips?"
"Yes, the little pout—like this."
"Ah, ah, yes, yes, yes, yes, got it."
When the shoot was over and we stepped out of the café, I held out an envelope.
"Looking forward to working with you again."
"If you call me, I'll be the grateful one."
"Then get home safe."
"Yes, you too~!"
Hiss.
I stuck a cigarette in my mouth and watched her walk away.
Even from behind she was pretty. Same person—what the hell was with those proportions.
Somewhere in this world there were bastards who fucked women like that whenever they felt like it.
Would I ever manage it even once before I died… with a woman like that.
Haa, fuck.
Miserable and lonely.
This shit life.
I uploaded the photos to SNS. And after some time had passed—
Definitely a profitable racket. If I took all of these, how much would that even be?
Still, it didn't leave me feeling particularly good.
My first business was a success.
One month after launch, a massive number hit my bank account. The planning-stage "maybe" had become an "of course."
If I flashed that amount around, everyone would assume I was deliriously happy.
Fuck. What I felt was a mess of everything at once.
Those bastards.
I scatter my profile all over the place. People who see it usually think something like this:
Some fat pig thinks he's a dating consultant.
Whoa, ugly as hell. Has this fucker ever even dated once.
Trying to scrape a little cash together… haa, good effort, I guess.
The people who click my SNS link to gawk at a pathetic weeded-out male's thrashing are always surprised.
Because waiting there is a weeded-out male pressing his cheek to a insanely beautiful girlfriend while they sip coffee together.
Naturally, they think:
This guy must be ridiculously skilled.
A crush they've buried in their chest floats up. And then they pay.
That is my fucked-up way of making money.
No one would ever know, right? The allowance I send with the money I earn this way—the way Mom's face lights up as she calls me a good boy.
That thing that rips me to shreds every time I see her genuinely happy.
Age 25. Present day.
I don't even remember which card companies, how, or how much I borrowed. Which place was it I took the cash advance from…
Who cares. Honestly, I didn't have the luxury of fretting over card interest right now.
A chill ran down the back of my neck. If I didn't clean these bastards' money up first, there was a real chance the only answer left would be dying.
I have no regrets. I did everything I could for Mom. In the end she passed away, and that only makes it truer.
Mom was the only person who ever truly loved me. Rather than give her a single reason to regret me, I'd rather die with my limbs torn off.
…Which is how the debt stacked into a mountain, but honestly, I don't think much about it.
"So fucking what. If it comes to it, I'll just die."
The psychiatrist said, "Please stand in front of the mirror every day and compliment yourself."
What the doctor didn't know was that if the place was in front of a mirror, I could stand there all day and still not come up with a single compliment.
When I complained, he told me to just say "You're handsome"—and I saw that bastard fighting a laugh the whole time.
I changed strategies. Surprisingly, it worked pretty well. Every morning I look in the mirror and shout:
"So fucking what."
With that training, no matter what hits me, the first thing that rises now is so fucking what.
Everyone looks at my face and predicts my whole life. Then they decide for themselves that I must be crushed under it.
Don't make me laugh. Born with this face, an ordinary mental game won't keep you alive.
"Hello? Ah, yes, I need some money urgently. Would a consultation be possible?"
I'm not dying until I'm dead.
I was dumping yesterday's leftover fried chicken into my ramyeon when it happened.
My timid smartphone sang an awkward little tune.
"Hello?"
"Yaaa~ let's drink."
Ahh. Sugar water was pouring out of my ears.
"When."
"Tomorrow~!"
Tomorrow I was busy, though.
"Sure."
"Six? How's that!"
Even six in the morning would have been fine.
Yena does this sometimes—calls me out of nowhere. I don't have money for drinking, but I have money for drinking with Yena.
If you asked people, Who's the prettiest person you've ever seen?, everyone would come up with one or two names.
Round them all up for a beauty pageant, and Yena would take the crown.
No, I'm serious.
"Long time no see~ You been well?"
Yena waved her arm in a big arc as she greeted me. Her loose hoodie only made her slender frame stand out more.
"Yeah. Hey."
"Where should we go?"
"What. You didn't already decide before you called?"
"Ah? Aaaah!! I was supposed to decide?!"
"Just go to Toad."
"Oh, nice."
Drinks in front of a beautiful person taste twice as sweet. Tonight, because of alcohol three times as sweet, I ended up completely wasted.
Yena had brought sweet news with her: she was opening a waxing shop the next day.