No Reason
There was no particular reason. I had simply chased my dream with everything I had. Yet it felt as though some vast, transcendent being was looking down on me, sneering, “It’s all for nothing.” I had that thought on Christmas the year I turned twenty-two, when I saw the results of my health checkup from the hospital. Santa Claus had gifted me a three-month time bomb.
***
Click. I unlocked the front door and grasped the cold handle. Listening to the rusty hinges creak, my frozen body stepped inside. The entrance light was broken, its sensor dead, so I fumbled along the wall until I found the kitchen switch. Tick. The room lit up, and I frowned. “……I’m home.” No answer came to my muttered words. Only the cold air, no warmer than outside, brushed past my neck in reply. Even with three layers of seven-thousand-won thermal underwear, I couldn’t feel any warmth. Was it because of the record-breaking cold wave that hit every year? Because I couldn’t afford to turn on the heat? Because my cheap padded jacket had holes in it? Because I was going to die in three months? I didn’t know. The chill that had seeped into my heart went beyond pain and left me strangely numb. The three-month time bomb lodged in my chest refused to stir any emotion, as if denying its own existence.
“Life is……” Still clutching the health checkup results that had arrived by mail, I stared blankly at the most expensive thing in my room—the computer. As always, I sat down in front of it, turned it on, and opened some random livestream. It was an old habit. Whenever the empty room made me crave the sound of another person’s voice, whenever the world felt like it was grinding me down, whenever everything seemed hollow, I would turn on a stream and draw in their energy. Then I would edit that energy into videos and upload them to YouTube so I could share it with others. That was how I endured the pain. But today, my hands wouldn’t reach for the editing software. The bright voice of the streamer passed straight through my ears without leaving any words behind in my mind. I knew exactly why. I had lost my reason for living.
“Reason…… reason, huh……” I had always been quick to look for reasons. The reason I was an orphan was because my young parents hadn’t wanted to raise me. The reason I never went to university was because I didn’t even have money for today’s meal. The reason I kept on living was because I still believed that this small thread would one day become a great spool. “……” And now, I had finally found the reason for something I had always turned away from. Calmly, I picked up a pen and opened my notebook—the small one I used to organize my thoughts or make plans. On its final page, I wrote three lines.
1. Victim: Seo Joyeon, Perpetrator: Seo Joyeon
2. Weapon: Kitchen knife
3. Time of incident: 12/25 24:00
The moment I finished writing those short sentences, my vision suddenly blurred. Plop. Plop. I rubbed away the tears that had fallen onto the notebook and brought the pen to the last line.
4. Motive: ——————
But the words wouldn’t come. The tear-soaked paper refused to accept the ink, as if it were mirroring the very thing I couldn’t bring myself to write. Thud. I closed the notebook. Christmas was almost over. I stood up to carry out my plan. Suddenly, yesterday’s memory surfaced. While out for a walk, I had heard the sound of bells and approached a Salvation Army donation kettle. I had dropped the two thousand won I had in my wallet into it. Why had I done that? There was no particular reason. My death would be the same.
***
Was this my life flashing before my eyes? The memory of the day before seeped in.
Click, clack, tap, tap-tap, rattle, rattle.
[Here... jump like this...]
Tap, tap-tap.
[Huh? This wasn’t the right spot?!]
Tap-tap, tap, tap.
Subtitles were done. Next, sound effects. Hmm... maybe this one. I dragged a file from the sound effects list into the timeline box and adjusted it. Not too buried under the original audio. Not overpowering it, either. I scrolled the auxiliary wheel beside the mouse, examining the expanded timeline. The densely packed clips on the tracks slid past in a blur. I used a shortcut to set the playhead at the start of the compound clip and hit the spacebar. The video played with subtitles overlaid.
[Here... jump like this...]
[Huh? This wasn’t the right spot?!]
Thud—!
The auxiliary monitor played back the video I had just finished editing. Subtitles, visual effects, sound effects, and background music blended together to dramatically convey the protagonist’s shock. At a glance, it looked perfect, but I played it back two or three more times, meticulously checking for anything off. Typos in the subtitles? Effects lagging by a few frames? Sound effects and background music balanced properly? Colors looking natural? Looks good. I let a small smile tug at my lips. It meant there was nothing that would cause problems. I moved the mouse and exported the edited file as an .mp4. The computer was tuned specifically for editing, so even a fifteen-minute video encoded quickly. After that, I checked the encoded result one last time. Smooth scene transitions. Effects that weren’t overdone. Content that drew you in. And…… no scenes that could spark controversy. Perfect. After confirming the most important part, I opened a browser and went to YouTube. With practiced movements, I attached the video and the thumbnail I had prepared in advance, then clicked Next. The page asked whether I wanted to monetize the video, whether it contained sexual, firearm-related, or criminal content, and finally, how I wanted to upload it. I selected [Yes] for monetization, placed ads where they wouldn’t interfere with the video, scheduled the upload for my usual time, and waited for the copyright and ad suitability review.
38% 51% . . . 94% 100%
Upload complete. Processing complete…… . . . . . . Ah. I had been happy. I wouldn’t be able to do this anymore.
***
The church said those who took their own lives went to hell. The temple said those who finished their lives were reborn. But I was neither a Christian nor a Buddhist. So which god should I ask to explain this phenomenon that had happened to me?
“Get out of the way!”
I shoved aside whoever was blocking me and ran toward the calendar hanging on the wall. A large calendar covered in small, colorful notes on various dates, but none of that mattered. What caught my eye was something else.
“20……17?”
The four bold numbers printed in the upper left corner. Two of them had changed. I could have dismissed it as a dream or hallucination, but I had never had a dream this vivid. I had never experienced a hallucination, either. My brain was telling me that this moment was real. The calendar on the wall was saying: You’ve gone back ten years. And yesterday was Christmas.
“……Crazy.”
The words slipped out before I realized it.
“Crazy? This bitch even swears now? Guess you haven’t been hit enough.”
“Unni, maybe you hit her too hard?”
“You think? Hey, Seo Sua. Don’t tell the director you got hit, okay?”
“What are you staring at? Lower your eyes.”
Girls surrounded my frozen body, spitting out harsh words. They looked like upper-grade elementary students, but I had to tilt my head up to meet their eyes. Only then did I understand the situation. This was the orphanage I had lived in as a child. These were the older girls who had been here with me. And the place I was standing was the girls’ room—a place no boy was allowed.
“Why am I here……?”
The reason was simple.
“See, Unni? I told you you hit her too hard.”
“No, this bitch is just weak.”
“Isn’t it better this way? If she doesn’t remember, she won’t snitch.”
I turned my head toward the mirror stuck to the wall. A swollen red cheek. Disheveled hair. Eyes wet with tears. A girl in a yellow outfit was staring back at me.
“What is this……”
I had become a girl. The girl in the mirror widened her already large eyes even further. Then my vision flipped, and the world went dark. Strength drained from my entire body, and I collapsed on the spot.
“Hey, hey! What’s wrong with her!”
“Oh my god! I told you you hit her too hard!”
The flustered voices of the girls reached me, muffled as if echoing from the bottom of a cave. Just what was the reason I had traveled back ten years and turned into a girl? It was a phenomenon my mind couldn’t possibly comprehend. And as if watching me, some vast, transcendent being seemed to sneer and say:
“There’s no particular reason.”
Just like my death.