The Alternative to a Ruined Reality
The events that befell Yeeun afterward were as follows. Just as Cheolmin had boastfully predicted, she was pumped and dumped. One day, Cheolmin called Yeeun out and plied her with as much alcohol as she could drink. Afterward, she was gang-banged by Cheolmin's friends who barged into his studio apartment. The very next day, as Yeeun stood there reeking of stale semen, Cheolmin unilaterally broke up with her. "I can't date a loose, dirty slut like you anymore."
"Cheolmin, I'm sorry. I was wrong." "I'll never do it again." "I must have been completely out of my mind." "I really can't live without you, Cheolmin. Please." "I'll get myself together and never do it again, Cheolmin, please."
During her school days, she had been widely known as a fierce, tomboyish beauty, but in front of Cheolmin, she was nothing more than a submissive female. Without even wiping the semen clinging to her body, Yeeun begged miserably, her makeup—which she hadn't washed off in her drunken stupor—smearing across her face in a messy blur of tears and snot.
"I'm so sorry, Cheolmin! I was wrong! I... I just drank too much... It was a mistake because of the alcohol. Please, please?" Yeeun fell to her knees, rubbing her hands together in desperate supplication. She clung to the hem of Cheolmin's pants, thrashing on the floor like a child throwing a tantrum.
Deep down, she had a vague inkling that Cheolmin was the one behind the entire setup. Yet, Yeeun desperately tried to push that thought out of her mind as she begged for forgiveness. It felt as though she couldn't possibly survive if she were separated from this man—this male. No, it felt as if he was the only male who could ever belong to her for the rest of her life. Perhaps it was an act. A tragic heroine begging a bad boy for love. It was impossible to tell which it was, but that was simply how women were. Yet, completely disregarding her desperate wishes, Cheolmin delivered his final blow. "Fuck off, you slut." With those words, Cheolmin bid her farewell. And just like that, Yeeun experienced her very first pump and dump.
In fictional media, a pump and dump is a monumental event capable of completely shifting the direction of a story. In reality, however, it is nothing of the sort. Such betrayals are common, and a woman's life simply goes on. Afterward, Yeeun begged Cheolmin over and over again. "It's all my fault. Really. I'll never do it again. I must have been crazy." She even went so far as to beg him at university, right in front of everyone.
But for Cheolmin, who had truly blossomed into a seasoned golden-haired playboy in his adulthood, this was an easily manageable situation. "You're the one who cheated on me, so why are you acting like this?" "Stop clinging to me, seriously. Are you mentally ill?" "I mean, you're the one who rolled around with other guys, so why the hell are you blaming me?"
Indeed, for a veteran playboy like Cheolmin, this level of information warfare was child's play. Within the university, Yeeun's reputation was swiftly dragged through the mud, reduced to that of an "obsessive ex," a "stalker," and a "psycho who cheated and now won't let go." To make matters worse, Cheolmin leaked a video of Yeeun onto the internet. Everywhere she went, she felt as if she could hear people whispering behind her back. Some men even recognized her and sent sexually harassing advances via messaging apps. Unable to bear it any longer, Yeeun took a leave of absence. She became a shut-in.
In typical fiction, Yeeun, after being pumped and dumped, would have sought out Dohyun, sparking a romance. But reality is dryly, relentlessly disappointing. She didn't have the slightest intention of looking for Dohyun, whom she had already branded in her mind as a "pathetic loser." Besides, a woman's mental fortitude is stronger than one might think. After all, countless women get pumped and dumped every single day; if every one of them suffered a total mental breakdown, how would the world even keep spinning? Time flowed on, indifferent.
Her university peers advanced to the next grade, and the male students enlisted in the military. Gossip within the campus shifted restlessly, and before long, the rumors surrounding Yeeun quietly fizzled out. Having gathered her shattered pieces, Yeeun returned to school. No one in particular seemed to recognize her. Or perhaps they did and simply pretended not to, but it didn't matter. Fortunately for Yeeun, Cheolmin's filming skills had been atrocious, meaning the quality of the leaked video was incredibly poor.
And so, Yeeun lived her life with quiet resilience. She dated, had sex, and occasionally got pumped and dumped again, gradually developing a sharper eye for men. She even had an abortion once, just like so many other women did. She didn't feel any particular guilt over it. After all, that was just how everyone lived. Her memories of Cheolmin faded into a distant, hazy recollection—the kind of youthful mistake everyone goes through. Once in a while, a faint pang of nostalgia would creep in. Our sexual chemistry really was amazing, though.
As for her memories of Dohyun... they didn't exist to begin with. She had never viewed a loser like him as a man in the first place, nor did she feel any need to remember him. Thus, Yeeun lived on, becoming a weathered, "ordinary" woman just like any other. The world was dryly, relentlessly disappointing in this exact way.
Dohyun forced himself to keep living. He managed to survive day by day, but every breath he took felt like swallowing poison. He wanted to stop it all entirely, but he lacked the courage to end his own life. Yeeun had never had any intention of "giving herself" to him from the very start. No, her first love had always been Cheolmin. Dohyun had merely been playing a solo orchestra of delusion, but such was the poignant, pathetic nature of a loser's first love.
Dohyun dragged himself through university for a while longer before finally enlisting. Military life was actually easier for him, as it left him no room to think about anything else. Then, he was discharged. Not long after his discharge, war broke out, and he was called up as a reservist. Fortunately, the war ended quickly. After a brief period of local stabilization operations, his mobilization was deactivated.
Dohyun returned to society as a civilian and a university student, but he felt profoundly out of place. Peace felt uncomfortable, like wearing clothes that didn't fit. Was it because he liked war? No, that wasn't it either. It was just that he felt as though he were still standing on those northern battlefields. And the battlefield was far too distant from this place. That was all. It was simply too far away.
Yet, even when he tried to find a place where he belonged, society wouldn't allow it, sneering at them as "crazy military parrots." The world—especially the older generation and the women—completely dismissed the war as if it had never happened. A heavy weight pressed down on his chest. Something was wrong with this world, deeply wrong. No, what did it even mean for something to be "wrong" in the first place? He didn't even know that anymore. He felt like a nomad wandering aimlessly between peace and war. Ultimately, unable to endure it any longer, Dohyun chose to take another leave of absence.
Dohyun worked like a man possessed. He took on double and triple shifts, laboring in factories, on construction sites, doing deliveries, and working as a designated driver. It wasn't because he was desperate for money; he already had more than enough to cover his tuition. Yet, he kept working. Day and night, like a madman. He pushed himself to his absolute physical limits, as if performing a monk's ascetic penance.
And then, one evening. "Look at that crazy bastard going at it again." Dohyun, who had grown close with his construction crew, was having a meal and some drinks with them at a nearby tavern, just like any other day. "Seriously, what a psycho." A man was standing right in the middle of the tavern, shouting and ranting about something. "Even if you kick him out, he just goes to another place and pulls the same shit." It seemed this wasn't the first or second time the man had behaved this way.
"Who is he?" Dohyun asked. "They say he used to be an academic... but nobody knows the details. Some young guy who lost his mind, wandering from one job site to another. Every single night, he comes to a tavern and starts raving like that. It's a regular occurrence." "Can't they just kick him out?" "Even if they do, he just goes somewhere else, gets kicked out there, wanders around, and then comes right back here... He's a real troublemaker. Everyone's just given up on him at this point."
"I wonder what he's even trying to achieve..." "Who knows. God knows what happened to a young guy like him... Actually, seeing how he showed up right after the war, something must have happened to him out there." "Well, it's not like he's the only one who lost his mind during the war." "True. At least he's just loud. He doesn't hit anyone or cause real trouble, so everyone just leaves him be." "Let's just ignore him and drink. He'll tire himself out and leave eventually." Dohyun and his construction crew ignored the man's grandiloquent rant and raised their glasses once more.
Yet, despite himself, Dohyun found his ears tuning in to the man's voice. The man's words were disjointed. He ranted about the state of the nation, the war, housing prices, and men's rights. It was a crude patchwork of plausible-sounding arguments one might easily stumble across on the internet. His logic was incoherent, and the subtext of his speech was riddled with contradictions. And yet, there was something strangely captivating about it. It failed to convince the intellect, but it gripped the heart. The man spoke with absolute conviction, pouring raw power into his words, completely indifferent to whether anyone was actually listening.
As he crossed paths with the man more frequently at the tavern, Dohyun's curiosity eventually got the better of him. One night, he approached him. "Let's have a drink together sometime." From then on, the two met occasionally, exchanging questions and answers.
"Why on earth do you do that?" "Because I want to speak. Is this not a world where, if you do not at least speak out, it becomes utterly unendurable?" "Why do you want to speak so badly?" "If a baby does not cry, how is anyone to know if it is hungry or if its diaper is wet?"
"Nothing you say makes any sense. It's completely contradictory." "To borrow a phrase from the scriptures: 'I believe because it is absurd.'" "..."
"Lowering housing prices while simultaneously boosting the economy? Is that even possible?" "It seems my words were slightly misunderstood." "Then what did you mean?" "Housing must not be cheap. Nor must it be expensive. We need a new price for housing—one that is neither cheap nor expensive." "A housing price that is neither cheap nor expensive?" "A new standard. A new price." "I don't understand you at all." "That is exactly as it should be."
"Why is the world in this state?" "Because that is simply how it was built to be." "How can we change it?" "We need an alternative."
"Whenever I see people stepping up claiming to be the 'alternative' to the bad, the foolish, or the greedy, they always turn out to be exactly the same as the rest." "No. It is not an alternative to the bad. It is not an alternative to the greedy." "Then what is it an alternative to?" "It is an alternative to both the bad and the good."
"An alternative to both?" "Indeed. What defines good and bad is order, and what defines right and wrong is the rule of law." "And?" "What has failed is not the bad. What has failed is not the good. What has failed is order itself, and what has failed is the rule of law. In other words, reality itself has failed."
"How can you have an alternative to reality?" "The alternative to order is chaos, and the alternative to the rule of law is lawlessness." "You sound as if you're saying the world needs to be flipped upside down." "Is it not already upside down?" The man shrugged his shoulders and continued.
"We are already trapped, wandering between the past and the present. We are trapped between our institutions and our reality. There is no reality left to collapse in the first place. All that exists is a cruel vacuum. This is what truly matters..."
The man traced a line of water across the table, placed two cups on it, and balanced his smartphone on top of them, creating the crude shape of a train. "The future is hazy, and the past is despairing. Where do we go now?" The man rocked the smartphone back and forth on the cups like a train on tracks. "Sometimes, a train must derail." With a sharp flick, he pushed the smartphone off.
"And once everything crumbles like this... well, it has probably already crumbled. Someone will eventually come along to build a new structure out of the ruins." The man casually wiped his smartphone with a napkin. "I simply want to prepare for the interim. As an alternative to a failed reality." After a brief pause, he let out a hollow laugh. "Surely, someone will listen."
"You, too, have despaired of reality," Dohyun remarked. "Is there any young man these days who hasn't?" The man smiled. Long after their drinking session ended, Dohyun wandered the streets. An alternative... an alternative... For some reason, the word refused to leave his mind.
This was the fateful meeting between Park Chungho, the man who would one day become the titan of the alt-right Men's Republican Party, and Dohyun, the future leader of its militant vanguard, the National Men's Vanguard.