No Wings for a Falling Life
They say that right before you die, your entire life flashes before your eyes like a film reel. I used to think that was just pathetic sentimentality. But now, as I plunge toward the asphalt in free fall, I realize it’s true.
The human brain is an incredible thing. Thirty-five unremarkable years—neither particularly short nor long—play back in a single instant as a high-definition panorama.
Middle school. High school. Retaking the college entrance exam. That cowardly confession I made right before enlisting, followed by the brutal rejection. The lonely campus life after I returned from the military, where everyone treated me like some kind of fossil. It was a thoroughly ordinary existence.
I wasn’t blessed with iron willpower or a brilliant mind. All I had was the ability to plant my ass in a chair and stay there. After years of grinding through exams, I somehow scraped together a certified public accountant license around the age of thirty.
What if I’d been born a woman instead?
Even that useless thought flickers through my mind. If I hadn’t wasted all that dopamine jerking off and had just studied, I would’ve passed the exam faster than that worthless bastard.
Choi Jeongbin.
A high school junior who was one year younger than me, and later a college classmate. The guy had been the school’s star soccer player, yet somehow dodged military service with the laughable excuse of flat feet. While I was out digging trenches in the army, he cruised through the exam and passed with flying colors.
He was the protagonist of all the gossip—the man who dumped his long-term girlfriend to marry the daughter of a client company’s CEO and climb the social ladder.
Why the hell am I thinking about a piece of shit like him right before I die?
Because just a few days ago, that same bastard had crawled out of my bedroom half-naked.
Fuck.