I Couldn't Hold Back Anymore
Before I knew it, the line had grown long.
The center aisle was left clear for people getting off. I stood seventh in the left-hand queue. If the train came packed, there was a real chance I wouldn't make it on.
Well, so what. If I missed it, I'd just catch the next one.
I glanced around. Every single person had their head buried in their phone. It hadn't been this bad seven years ago. These days, everything lived online.
Then the train arrived.
It stopped, and people poured out like bottles tumbling off a beverage factory line. But with passengers boarding from both sides, the car filled to capacity within moments. There looked to be just enough room for me to squeeze in.
The instant I stepped toward the door—
Thud!
"Ugh!"
Someone from the center suddenly shoved through, slamming a shoulder hard into me as I tried to board, then nimbly hopped on. I barely kept my footing and locked eyes with him.
Grin—
The corners of his mouth curled up slyly beneath a massive pair of wireless headphones. He cut the line and now he was laughing at me?
"Ah…"
Ha. Just let it go. Dealing with guys like that only wears you out. I'd already planned on taking the next train anyway. Rage boiled up inside me, but I forced it down.
You don't avoid shit because you're scared of it—you avoid it because it's filthy…
No. Fuck it! I can't take this.
Filthy or not, I wasn't letting this slide.
Grab!
"Huh?"
The guy in his twenties with the headphones made a startled sound. The reason was simple. I'd reached out, seized his headphones, and yanked them hard.
Wait—have I always been this strong??
The headphones came free. I stared him down and dropped them right at the entrance. He scrambled out before the doors closed and scooped them up. In that same moment, I slipped onto the train.
The doors shut. Our eyes met through the glass as he stood there flustered, and I gave him a sweet smile and raised my middle finger.
That's right! There's a saying that you can't spit on a smiling face, isn't there?
His face went beet red. He jabbed a finger at me and seemed to be screaming curses. As a current brain tumor patient, I found myself genuinely concerned for him. Getting that worked up sends blood rushing straight to the head. Hate the sin, not the sinner—I recalled various maxims I'd picked up somewhere and watched him with worried eyes.
Right then.
Ghk, gaaah!
Through the receding window, the man—apparently completely oblivious to my concern—suddenly clutched the back of his neck and collapsed.
Tsk tsk… Just as I thought. Serves him right.
Wait. What am I thinking right now?
The moment I realized I was thinking like a sociopath, goosebumps prickled across my entire body. And at the same time, I felt a thrill I'd never experienced before.
What is this? Is this that dual-personality thing? It felt like another self had been born inside me. Maybe the desires I'd been suppressing all this time were finally showing their face.
"Well done. That was so satisfying. Guys with no manners need to get what's coming to them."
"Ah, yes…"
The middle-aged woman who'd boarded right in front of me offered encouragement, as if to say I'd done the right thing. I returned an awkward greeting, then looked around. Everyone else seemed completely uninterested, focused on their own business.
Ah. So even if I do something like this, nobody really cares. Maybe they were all thinking good for him on the inside. Come to think of it, I hadn't done anything wrong, had I? I'd simply upheld public decency.
That's what I told myself, but my heart was still hammering.
Ziiing— zzzing—
"Ugh!"
The headache hit again. Packed subway. I had no choice but to grit my teeth and endure it. The silver lining was that the pain was milder than before. By the time I got off, my whole body was soaked in cold sweat.
I came up to street level and trudged along for about twenty minutes. I lived in an old studio-apartment complex on a hillside on the outskirts of Seoul. It was dark and out of the way, so there were an unusual number of rough-looking young men around. Today, as always, youths who could have been minors or adults clustered in groups of three and five in the alley, smoking cigarettes, spitting, and shooting the breeze.
I didn't give them a glance. Eyes fixed straight ahead, I walked into the convenience store. I planned to grab something light for dinner.
Inside, a young-looking guy was raising his voice at the female clerk. His hair was bright yellow. No wonder he looked like a lost cause—even his prospects were yellow.
"Hey, fuck. I told you I'm twenty. I left my ID at home."
"Then please come back with your ID…"
The female clerk mumbled, thoroughly intimidated.
"What the fuck?! Am I some kind of dog? You training me like a dog right now?"
I silently picked a buy-one-get-one soda and a spicy pork rice bowl from the shelves and headed for the register.
Hmm? Smell of booze. The little shit had gotten drunk and come in here to cause a scene. I frowned and waited for the conversation to end. But Yellow Hair showed no sign of backing down.
Do I keep waiting… or just go to another store? What did that clerk ever do to deserve this?
"I live right out front, okay? The other convenience stores are fucking far. Fuck, what do you take customers for? Cough! Ptooey!"
Drunk Yellow Hair spat on the floor as he yelled. Right next to my shoe. This bastard was beyond saving. I couldn't take it anymore.
"Hey."
I called out to him. The guy who looked every bit a high schooler glared at me.
"What? You talking to me?"
"Yeah. You, you little shit. If you live right out front, go home and get your ID. Huh? Or try your luck at another store. Look at you—you're clearly a kid. Get out of here while I'm still being nice."
Even I had to admit that didn't sound particularly nice. When I came on strong, he looked slightly flustered.
"You… fuck! Who the hell are you talking down to? You know me?"
"Do you know this clerk? Who are you to talk down to her and curse her out? There's CCTV here. Want me to call the cops and sort this out? If you're scared, get the hell out. I need to check out."
I fired it all off rapid-fire before he could get a word in. Whoa. Since when was I this good with words?
"You… fucking… asshole… Just you wait."
Yellow Hair jabbed a finger at me over and over as he stormed out, like the circuits in his brain had shorted.
Just wait for what, you idiot. I'm dying soon anyway, you little shit.
I silently paid for the spicy pork rice bowl, heated it in the microwave, and was about to leave. That was when—
"Thank you for helping me."
Hmm?
I turned my head and found the female clerk bowing to me in thanks. I instinctively returned the bow and stepped out of the store.
"What a day."
The subway lady, and now the convenience store clerk. Today really was a strange day.
I left the convenience store and went straight into my apartment building. Fourth floor of a four-story walk-up, the unit at the end of the hall. It wasn't inconvenient. That didn't mean I had no complaints.
The place was so poorly maintained the cleaning was a joke. Sometimes dog urine and feces were just left lying around. And the number of dogs people kept in these tiny studios—the barking made it nearly impossible to sleep. Sometimes I genuinely couldn't tell if people were living in doghouses or dogs were living in people's houses.
"Haa…"
I'd put up with it all this time, but I didn't think I could take much more. Wait. Did the stress from this give me the brain tumor? No way. What am I thinking.
When I got home, a bare two-room unit greeted me. At least the end units were two-rooms, roomier than a studio. I didn't have much stuff. Bed, desk, hanging rack, sink. Just the bare essentials. Not many clothes, no clutter.
Ever heard of minimalist living? I was pursuing a forced minimalist lifestyle because I couldn't bear to spend money shopping.
As I changed clothes, the dust piled on the hanging rack's bar and the hair scattered on the floor caught my eye more than usual.
"Hmm."
I rolled up my sleeves, brought in the vacuum from the narrow balcony, and cleaned every corner of the place. I finished with a wrung-out rag, and while I was at it, I tidied the whole apartment until it was spotless.
Have I always been this good at cleaning? It did feel refreshing. All that physical activity left me hungry.
I sat at the desk, eating the spicy pork lunchbox while searching malignant brain tumor on my phone. What had caused it, exactly? The biggest cause was supposedly stress. Thinking about it, I'd never lived a day free of stress, so it was hard to pin down which stress in particular. Maybe every stress I'd ever accumulated had gathered into this monster called a brain tumor.
By the time I finished the spicy pork, I'd realized further searching was pointless.
"Hmm…"
I washed the plastic container, set it upside down to dry, and went into the bathroom for a shower. While washing my hair, I checked my hands—thankfully, I wasn't losing much hair. Ah, hair loss is from radiation treatment, right?
After rinsing, I looked in the mirror and something felt off. My body seemed a bit better. Was it just my imagination? I checked myself over several times, tilting my head.
After the shower, I lay on the bed and turned on the TV. The one big purchase I'd made—a wall-mounted set. A mid-tier brand, sure, but a decent sixty-five-inch. My one and only hobby was lying in bed watching movies.
But tonight, drowsiness hit hard, and I sank into a deep sleep the moment the opening credits rolled. My brain must have overexerted itself today.
The next morning.
When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to find my head and body felt light. I couldn't explain it, but it was like the illness had vanished. Wishful thinking, of course.
I showered quickly and hurried to get ready for work. I pulled out a freshly dry-cleaned suit and peeled off the plastic. I changed suits once a week.
I left the house and walked downhill for fifteen minutes. I dropped off the suit I'd worn all week at the dry cleaner's on the main road, then boarded the subway. The usual crush of people. I claimed a spot to stand and scrolled through the day's news on my phone.
Strange. Normally I got through the hellish commute by watching short clips from news YouTubers, but today I had no desire to watch any of them. Instead, I rapidly scanned the countless articles floating around the internet—politics, economy, culture—and began stacking them neatly in my mind. Just from the headlines, the core points of each article surfaced naturally.
This is industry reaction to a policy direction. This is media spin. This is corporate image-washing.
I wasn't reading sentences. I was reading context. A truly strange habit seemed to have taken root.
The moment I stepped off the subway, the LK Telecom headquarters came into view. An affiliate of the LK Group—not the top telecom in Korea, but one with solid name recognition. Working as an assistant manager at the Seoul headquarters was, by any measure, a fairly successful career path.
Monthly take-home after all deductions: about five million won. Not a small sum, but factor in rent, living expenses, insurance, savings, and money sent to family, and it was tight. On top of that, this industry chewed people up fast if you didn't work hard. There was no telling how long I'd last here. So I needed to save as much as possible. Of course, no matter how hard I saved, buying a house in Seoul had always been a pipe dream.
Ah. Right. I don't have to do any of that anymore. I'm dying soon anyway.
Once again, I stamped the mental seal of my condition onto my mind as I clocked in. Still, I needed to earn money for as long as I was functional. That was my life.
Not that I intended to live exactly the same as before.