What Is Life?
The shop was filled with the sound of Gong Ryun crying.
"Mom, why did you do that, Mommy aaaaahhhhh!!!!!!!"
His emotions running wild, Gong Ryun began to wail so loud it seemed the whole building might take flight.
"M-Mommy aaaaahhh!!! Waaah, waaah!!!"
The Succubus Boss, who by now roughly understood the situation, ached for him. She couldn't help but empathize. She, too, had been someone's daughter—and she was also someone's mother.
So she spoke to him gently.
"Gong Ryun~~ It's okay… Listen to me~~"
"Sniff… Y-yeah…?"
"My parents~~~, right before my eyes, they were stabbed by a communist's blade and chopped into pieces until they died~~~?"
"…?????"
Gong Ryun's expression went strange.
"Ah. That wasn't it~~? Hmm~~ Ah! Right! Listen, Gong Ryun~~~ My friend~~~ when she was little, her parents got addicted to gambling and blew through their entire fortune, and later they even tried to sell their own daughter to loan sharks, so the moment she became an adult she fled into the sewers to save her life and then wandered from city to city living a life on the run~~~?"
"……??????"
Gong Ryun had no idea what the boss was trying to say.
So he went right back to weeping sorrowfully.
"WAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!! What even is that!!!!!"
If anything, his condition had gotten worse.
Un-rang was just as baffled.
With an utterly puzzled look, he asked the boss,
"Uh… what in the world was that just now…?"
"Hmm~~~ That was Succubus-style comfort~~~ but it didn't land well~~~"
"Wait—that was supposed to be comfort? By what mechanism is anyone supposed to feel comforted by that?"
"Hmm~~~ It's a comforting method that goes something like 'It's okay, I got fucked worse than you,' or 'There are plenty of people in the world who got fucked worse than you,' making you realize the pain you're going through is relatively nothing~~~"
"Martial God have mercy… What kind of demonic rhetoric is that…?"
Un-rang was aghast. This was Succubus culture? What kind of mental circuitry did this species run on? He had taken a solid culture shock.
Was this how Gong Ryun felt, constantly getting culture-shocked by galactic murim?
In the end, the Succubus Boss's sudden outburst had made the atmosphere so strange that the two of them had no idea how to offer comfort, and there was nothing left to do but let Gong Ryun cry himself out.
They simply patted his back now and then and offered a simple word or two—"It's okay," "There, there," "Hang in there."
A few hours later. Dark evening.
The rooftop of the Korean restaurant building.
An artificial wind, generated periodically to circulate the city's air composition and regulate atmospheric temperature, swept past.
Gong Ryun stood with a rain-soaked gaze, facing into the wind.
Perched on the rooftop railing, he looked out over the city's nightscape.
He had calmed a little now and stopped crying, instead quietly lost in thought.
Pssht.
The sound of a can opening came from behind. Un-rang was cracking open a can of beer. He held it out to Gong Ryun.
"Feeling any better now?"
Gong Ryun took the can and took a sip. Carbonation bubbles wrapped around his tongue.
"Yes… I'm fine now."
Having escaped his incoherent state, Gong Ryun answered calmly. His speech had returned to that refined orthodox-sect register.
After thrashing about so violently, he had finally settled down.
"I owe you again."
"Hahaha. Well, that can happen."
"Thank you, Un-rang."
Un-rang looked a little sheepish as he cracked open a nano-robot beer of his own and took a swig.
"The view is truly lovely."
"This place? At this level it's pure countryside—nothing much to see."
"Still, I find it marvelous. Where I used to live was nothing but fields and farmhouses."
"We'll have to visit other planets sometime."
"Yes. Someday I'd like to see other planets as well."
After a few more sips of beer, and another gust of wind—
Un-rang put a question to Gong Ryun.
"Gong Ryun. Do you… have a dream?"
"…A dream."
"A goal you want to achieve, or a wish you desire—that sort of thing."
"…Well… To be honest, since escaping the planet, I've pretty much achieved everything I wanted."
"Oh? Such as?"
"I've eaten carbonara, freely drunk liquor and eaten meat, visited a café like the ones I only saw in dramas… What else… I once took a whole day off just to sleep, and in my free time I've watched dramas without worrying about being executed."
"Ah…"
"In a way, you could say every day is a dreamlike life."
"I see."
"Of course… I have no intention of staying here forever."
"Oh! Is that so?"
"Yes. I've gained freedom I never had my whole life. Wouldn't it be a waste to just keep living the same way until I die?"
"You're right about that."
"Until now I've been busy adapting to the outside world and earning a living. But I'm getting used to this life, bit by bit. I'm also slowly saving money. I want to keep living honestly and diligently, and have all kinds of experiences."
"A truly fine resolve. How admirable."
"A dream… I don't know if I have anything grand enough to call a dream yet, but there are things I want to do going forward."
"What are they?"
"I want to try interstellar tourism… especially places like the Hwasan Sect resort… If I can, I'd like to stop by Terra as well… And that carbonara restaurant from the dramas—I don't know where it is, but I'd like to find it and go there once."
"Sounds good."
"I want to make a lot of money and live more comfortably… Maybe buy a cool ride. A personal spaceship, say. Am I going too far?"
"That's good too."
"If I keep living like that, maybe I'll meet the man who was my father. I don't particularly want to go looking for him, but you never know with people. Just if the chance comes."
"…"
"And learning martial arts is a good thing in itself, so I want to learn more… What else… Right. Someday, if fate allows, I might make a family of my own. Ah. But aren't these too far from what you'd call a dream? It's just a list of things I want to do."
"That is a dream. What more does a dream need to be? A dream doesn't have to be grand, and it doesn't have to be just one. A dream is a declaration about your own future. It's simply putting into words the thought that you'd like to live this way. A self-prophecy about your own life."
"…Is that so…"
Gong Ryun lifted his head and looked up at the stars.
He thought about what he would fill his life with.
He looked back on his past, and peered into his own heart.
And he spoke in a low voice.
"…I think I know how I should live."
"How will you live?"
"…"
"So that I won't be ashamed of Mother's sacrifice. I'll live my life with everything I have. I may advance slowly and feebly. I may die along the way. But even so, I'll live without any shame. So that when I die and meet Mom, I can smile and say I lived well. So that I can say thank you for giving me life."
"…Magnificent, Gong Ryun. Truly magnificent. I am proud of you."
Gong Ryun felt the depression that had tormented him all day begin to subside.
He looked out at the city's nightscape again. People passing along the streets. Families heading out for dinner. Soft music drifting from a café.
That the lights seemed to shine brighter than before was surely just his imagination.
With his spirit restored, Gong Ryun returned home.
Until the moment he fell asleep, he kept thinking about the conversation on the rooftop that day.
A life without shame before Mother. Yes. A life lived fully.
That was enough. That would have been what Mother wanted more than anything. Love, life—that was what they were.
And Gong Ryun sank into a complete sleep. An utterly peaceful sleep.
In that way, Gong Ryun set his heart on the direction he would live.
It was not some special enlightenment. He had merely drawn out into sentences and language the thoughts already latent in his heart. But precisely because of that, he could face himself. Understand himself more clearly.
That was what completed a philosophy of life. Every person has their own philosophy.
In truth, the universe is surprisingly personal. Because each person perceives the universe differently. No two eyes are the same, and no two ears are the same. Every person's brain structure, heartbeat, and hormone levels are different. Different sense organs for each person, different modes of perception for each person. And on top of that, each person has a different environment and a different past.
Therefore the world one person perceives is different from the world another person perceives. There are no two humans in this world who share completely the same world.
In other words, this world holds as many different kinds of universes as there are people who exist. Everyone lives within their own universe.
Each person's universe. Their own universe. A microcosm.
People define their own microcosm through their personal philosophy and convictions.
That day, Gong Ryun's microcosm was completed.
It was an enlightenment he could only gain because he had wandered and suffered to the fullest.
Chirp chirp.
Birdsong rang out. Birds that thrived on their own inside the city gathered atop streetlamps and sang.
Gong Ryun opened his eyes.
And he was extremely surprised.
Because his mind was clear.
Normally when he woke up in the morning there would be anxiety about the future, or the worry that escaping the planet had all been a dream and he'd woken up back on the Slave Planet, or at the very least a crushing drowsiness.
But to be this clear-headed…
Gong Ryun felt good.
So he sprang up.
BOING!!!!!!!!
"??? Wait, what??"
He had sprung up far too vigorously.
His upper body had practically launched off the bed as if it had a spring attached.
"Why am I so light?"
His body felt light.
Huh?
Gong Ryun reached for the personal device by his pillow, wondering what was going on. But then—
Whoosh!
His hand was ridiculously fast.
No. Not that it had gotten faster… more that it had gotten lighter?
His whole body felt light and refreshed.
"What…?"
Gong Ryun immediately closed his eyes and circulated his qi. The standard procedure when something felt off with the body was to start with qi circulation for self-diagnosis.
And Gong Ryun felt that the flow of his qi had improved.
"I haven't even practiced martial arts… and overnight…? Wait a second. Could this be…!"
Gong Ryun turned on his personal device and ran a search. The internet always had the answer.
And soon he had his answer.
"…A realm elevation?"
What divided Hwa-gyeong from Hyeon-gyeong? The condition for Hyeon-gyeong was the establishment of a microcosm.
In other words, it was an understanding of one's own life.
A direct confrontation with and observation of the life one had lived. And an unchanging conviction and resolve about the life one would live going forward. Binding the trajectory of one's life into a single flow.
The establishment of a microcosm. The manifestation of a human's personal universe. Affirming one's own existence, one's own life.
In short, a mental image of the self.
Having affirmed, understood, and faced his past and future, Gong Ryun had unconsciously established his own microcosm.
Gong Ryun had entered the Profound Realm.