No Matter How I Look at It, I'm Fucked

No matter how he turned it over in his mind, he was well and truly fucked. He could not drive the thought away.

"Well now. How's the work coming along?"

A carefree voice drifted in from behind him. Anyone listening would have taken the speaker for a man watching a fire from the far side of a river. Well, that was half right. The predicament he was in right now was every bit as dire as a house going up in flames. The only catch was that the man making those easygoing remarks lived in the same burning house.

"It's gone and hidden itself away. I can't find it no matter what I try. Searching every last corner of worlds that vast was never going to be realistic in the first place."

"That so? That's a real shame."

The man spoke in a bright, pleasant voice as he sat down beside him, a wide, cheerful smile sitting on his face. It was, quite frankly, an infuriating face.

"I don't even have a sense of how much longer the search will take. There's a chance I may never find it at all."

Nothing he said was a lie. Even so, the man speaking those words desperately wished they were.

"In that case, flipping the whole board over could be one way to handle it."

The man said it while whistling, and the remark drew a hollow laugh. It was a crystal-clear solution — and it had not a shred of practicality. Flip everything over? Was that even a serious suggestion? He might as well torch the whole thatched cottage to catch a single flea.

"You're awfully relaxed about this. If the world worked that easily, why would I be suffering through this in the first place?"

"Even if you could, you wouldn't. You're attached to it. You've got a world of your own in there, don't you?"

A chill ran down his spine at the man's words. So this was what it meant to have someone hit the bullseye. He gained a new understanding today. Struck to the core, he turned his gaze on the man with the stiff, creaking motion of a rusted mechanical arm that hadn't moved in a long time.

"Y-you knew?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Don't worry. I've got zero intention of reporting it upstairs. Honestly, I've had my own fun with a few things while managing my side of it."

"When you say 'a few things'..."

"That's a secret. Anyway, good luck."

With that, the man gave his shoulder a couple of light pats and stood up. He left the way he had come. Left alone, the remaining man let out a long sigh.

Nothing had changed. The key to solving the problem was still nowhere in sight. He felt as though he were adrift on a boundless ocean. He needed to find the source of the trouble as soon as possible, but nothing was unfolding as easily as he had hoped.

"Damn it. Where the hell did it run off to?"

He grumbled and got back to work. The worlds were many, and they were vast — so vast that hide-and-seek put the seeker at a crushing disadvantage. He was the seeker in this game. He had thrown up his hands and called it more times than he could count, but this round, it seemed, did not allow surrender.

No matter how I looked at it, I was well and truly fucked.

I flopped down onto the studio floor. When my temper is about to snap, the best thing to do is lie down and sort out my thoughts. The cold air of the floor crept up my spine, and my overheated head seemed to cool, little by little. I opened my eyes slowly.

A painfully familiar ceiling filled my vision. It wasn't dilapidated or filthy, exactly, but even being generous you couldn't call it clean — a stained, time-worn surface that quietly advertised the age of the building. I pushed myself up.

The messy, neglected studio came into view: a clutter of odds and ends whose purpose even I, their owner, could no longer name, mixed in with crumpled flyers, used tissues, and garbage that had migrated out to roll around the foot of the trash can. It was getting hard to tell whether a person lived here or a wild animal had made its den. I reached out, scooped up an empty drink can and a doughnut box, and tossed them into the bin. For the record, I am not a slob. Looking at this room, nobody would believe me.

"This slump just keeps dragging on. Maybe if I cleaned the place my head would clear a little."

I muttered it, but experience had already taught me otherwise. There is only one way for a writer to beat a slump. You wait.

I am a writer. The genre is erotica. As long as there's sex in it, I don't care whether the rest is fantasy, sci-fi, martial arts, or anything else — which is to say, I write erotica grafted onto everything. Like most writers, I didn't start out writing smut. I made my peace with reality, and now I'm a proper erotica author. "Proper" is a stretch. Honestly, I live hand to mouth.

"Huh? What's this?"

From the cluttered floor I picked up a single sheet of faded paper. It was about the size of two sheets of printer paper taped together, old and discolored enough to stand out sharply from the rest of the trash. More old papers lay scattered around it. They seemed to have spilled from a large box that had toppled over beside the wardrobe.

It was a box I had brought back from my parents' house last week, packed with childhood photographs and assorted junk. I hadn't particularly wanted it; Mom had pressed the whole thing on me just so I would take a few old pictures. I had been meaning to throw it out with the recyclables. One look at the state of this place — a disaster five minutes from total collapse — would tell you I hadn't managed even that. The slump had my head too crowded to deal with housework.

"This is my elementary school report card. Mom actually kept this stuff? Maybe because it was the only time my grades were any good?"

Back in elementary school I had, in my own way, even placed first in the whole school, and people used to say I was a strong student. After I started middle school my interest in studying dropped off, and my grades settled around average — not bad, not good. Fifteenth or so in a class of forty, if I remember right. In middle school, my dream had been to become a literary giant.

Looking at the graduation report, I found my class rankings for all six years of elementary school listed out. Except for fourth grade, I had been first in my class every year. The kind of record a mother could brag about. What caught my eye, though, wasn't the grades so much as the homeroom teacher's remarks printed underneath.

That was a lot of brutal language for an elementary school report card. Come to think of it, they had given us some kind of mental health screening back then — a tedious test with close to five hundred questions, which I distinctly remember bubbling in at random. I think my parents had to come to the school a few times over it.

"This isn't the time. I've got a chapter that needs ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to go up tomorrow."

I tossed the report card in the trash, sat down at the desk, and stared at my laptop. The inside of my head was still nothing but storm clouds. When the words won't come, every kind of ugly thought rushes in to fill the space instead.

That report card had called me recklessly optimistic, and yet my mind was packed with nothing but black. This is why you should never listen to the bullshit those fucking psychologists spout.

I really am a piece of trash. The fact that I made it to twenty-four without realizing it is almost enough to make me weep. Or should I be grateful I figured it out at all? That felt like a pretty miserable consolation prize.

I pulled on some clothes and left the studio, then tipped my head back and looked at the sky with a slightly vacant expression. Walking around out here was a lot better than being crammed into a one-room apartment that barely cleared 170 square feet, locked in a staring contest with a laptop that wouldn't have looked out of place with a junk-disposal sticker on it.

Of course, the price of abandoning my livelihood was that I would have to worry about next month's rent — but that was a problem for next month's me to figure out somehow. Let's put our faith in future me. Future me has always done better than I expected.

The sky was a deep, complete black. Moonlight laid a beautiful gradient across it, and the whole thing had a quiet, almost theatrical charm. I didn't need to check the clock on my phone to know that midnight had come and gone.

The chirping of night insects tickled my ears — a white noise I didn't mind. Cold night air seeped into my lungs, and with it came a strange, sharp sense of reality. I could feel, with painful clarity, that I was running away.

I needed to go back. Sit down in that tiny room and hammer on the laptop. My head knew it. My heart refused to follow. If I thought about it, even a night walk like this was part of gathering new material. No. That was one hundred percent self-justification.

"Whew... I could really go for something warm right now."

I muttered it without thinking. But there wasn't a convenience store in sight, let alone another person. I stopped where I was and took stock of my location.

Walking without paying attention, I had arrived at the entrance to Mount Wolha.

It was a walking route I used often. I never actually climbed the mountain, of course. I always turned around at the trailhead.

"Should I try going up?"

Hiking by moonlight? It wasn't as if I were out doing midnight calisthenics. Even I had to admit it was a little absurd. The way reading suddenly becomes irresistibly appealing during exam season, a mountain I had never given a second thought now had my interest.

Climbing a mountain at night is genuinely dangerous, and not simply because it's dark. There was always the chance some stray monster might be prowling the slopes. Fortunately, Mount Wolha had no Dungeons. Follow the mountain's ley lines far enough and you would find a few, but that would mean going another twenty or thirty kilometers. In Korea, a country bizarrely packed with Dungeons, Mount Wolha counted as one of the safer mountains. Even so, hikers attacked by monsters on "safe" mountains like this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠still made the news a few times a year. You had to be careful.

In daylight you might still have a chance to run. At night, running into a monster meant you were done. As an Ordinary Human rather than a Hunter, that went double for me. Anyone with a functioning sense of self-preservation would never go hiking after dark.

All of a sudden, a line from that report card floated back to me. At times displays an attitude ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of reckless optimism, was it? Maybe they had a point. By the time I came back to myself, I was already picking my way carefully up the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠trail.

"Good thing the moon's bright. It's a full moon tonight."

A clear, luminous moon looked down on the earth from the sky. It seemed strangely larger than usual. Of course, I couldn't exactly climb an uneven mountain trail on moonlight alone. I switched on the flashlight on my phone. Luckily I had left the house with a full charge, so the battery would last a good while yet.

"A different kind of experience brings a different kind of material... It'd be nice if a good idea came to me."

Letting my thoughts slip out of my mouth now and then is a habit of mine. I don't think it's a good one. I had been called out for it more than a few times since I was a kid. Habits, though, don't fix themselves easily.

I walked the mountain path. It wasn't a hard one. Mount Wolha is a mountain even a seventy-year-old could climb without trouble — and that is only a slight exaggeration. You would be more honest calling it a hill. The dense trees, the varied plant life, the rest spots at regular intervals were all the same as any ordinary mountain. It was simply a little lower, and the trail a little kinder. For an out-of-shape modern person like me, it was a mountain to be grateful for.

After a short walk, a rest area came into view: a chin-up bar, exercise equipment of inscrutable purpose, and a small bench. It sat so close to the foot of an already low mountain that almost nobody actually stopped here to rest. Even kids under ten walked right past it.

I sat down on the bench anyway. Not because I was tired — I wanted a moment to catch my breath in the dark. Hiking by moonlight and a phone flashlight was harder than I had expected. If this hadn't been a mountain as forgiving as Mount Wolha, I would already have gone sprawling a few times.

The moment I sat, all kinds of thoughts brushed through my head. I let out a light sigh by instinct.

Sighs at all hours, for no reason at all. That, too, is one of my worse habits — a nastier one than talking to myself. But there is nothing to be done about it. This is the kind of person I am. And the sigh led me into yet another spiral of thought.