Daily Life
Why do people get up in the morning?
…No. Let me rephrase that. I've already heard plenty of reasons why getting up early is supposedly good for you.
You get more hours in the day. Waking up early leaves you refreshed and clears your mind. I've heard that garbage so many times I'm sick of it.
At the very least, my mental health after dragging myself out of bed is so bad I want to die on the spot, so those claims are clearly complete bullshit.
Anyway—back to the real question. Here's a new one.
Why did human beings evolve to wake up in the morning at all?
Unfortunately, digging around online didn't turn up much on that.
So I'm going to freestyle a little theory of my own.
The first humans—primitive humanity—must have lived in constant danger. Savage beasts prowled everywhere, and there was nothing resembling a proper light source. The only light they had was sunlight falling from the sky and whatever tiny torch they could hold in their hands.
In that kind of world, night was genuinely terrifying.
Your field of vision shrank until even scouting your surroundings became difficult, while animals with physiques several times stronger than yours had been born with eyes that could see just fine in the dark.
The worst kind of risk arose as a matter of course.
Like it or not, you had no choice but to stay put at night. Nobody crazy enough to wander around after dark—when foraging was inefficient and the threats doubled—existed.
Or if they did, they were definitely already dead.
So our ancestors had no choice but to develop the habit of rising early. Wake with the sun, pack in as much activity as possible, and conserve strength in the evening. That was their most basic survival strategy.
And so the culture of getting up at the crack of dawn took root across the whole of human history, and it has persisted through the generations right up to the present day…
That was my theory, anyway.
…In which case.
Then what the fuck…
Now that humanity already stands at the apex of the planet—now that there are no animals left that can threaten us, and even the dark of night has been conquered by lightbulbs and LEDs—
Is there any reason we still have to get up early in the morning?
Is there, you bastards?
A sudden surge of injustice clenched my fist tight.
Pressure bit into the subway handstrap.
In that moment I was a revolutionary, an enlightener of human history.
Rotten customs like this needed to be torn out by the roots.
People have free will. They can judge and choose for themselves. And every individual is different—some people are simply built to sleep until dawn.
Forcing students to show up in the morning is no different from the way barbarians do things. A history of oppression and coercion!
Schools ought to introduce a midnight semester system starting yesterday!
…I shouted all of that inside the hell-train of a subway car.
Internally, of course.
"…Hah."
Venting the injustice inside my head left me feeling a little better.
I knew it was nonsense. Of course I knew. But I had to bleed off the anger somehow.
Otherwise there was no way I could endure being dragged to school at this ungodly hour.
…I'm so damn sleepy.
My eyelids were heavy. Something from above kept pressing them shut. Every time a blackout curtain dropped across my vision and the world went dark, my brain flicked its switch off and stopped working for a second.
The classic morning drowsiness.
Not a pleasant feeling.
After a few minutes of gravity dragging my head down, I finally reached my stop.
"This stop is—"
I let the deep male voice echoing through the train wash over me and stepped outside.
The time was 8:32. Plenty of time before the lecture started.
I eased the stiff lecture-hall door open as carefully as I could and slipped inside.
The noise hit me the second I entered.
"Alright, alright—today's sinner execution ceremony will now commence. The mid-lane piece of trash who skipped roaming entirely under the excuse of 'managing his lane' and then proceeded to throw the whole game. Step forward."
"What? I have to scale if we're going to win teamfights. You guys are the idiots for dying to him!"
"Such a complete lack of remorse is deeply offensive. Today's drink duty falls to this bastard."
I'd thought I was early, but the lecture hall was already fairly full.
The usual group of girls in the back talking about League of Legends. The guys up front chattering without a second to breathe.
At first I hadn't known who was who, but after about a week of showing up I could roughly see how the cliques had formed.
Basically two groups.
First: the girls in the back who were always loudly talking about League. They seemed close with the Physical Education majors and had a big presence.
Second: the guys up front who never stopped gossiping.
"—So then yesterday my noona goes and says to me—"
"Oh my god… that's so mean."
They were always chattering, but I never really caught what about. Part of it was deliberate—I couldn't stand those aegyo-soaked voices, so I tried not to listen.
Still, they seemed like the most energetic bunch in the class, so I remembered them. The leader in particular looked like he put real effort into his appearance; he was decently handsome.
His name was Han Ho-cheol, right?
For a name that sounded so manly, his behavior was pure gay-ass energy.
"Oh, right~ I bought a new bag this time—what do you think?"
His voice was thick with that nasal lilt.
Every so often he'd even use his looks to pull aegyo on the other guys, and every time I happened to witness it my stomach turned.
A guy doing aegyo… well, it seemed to work on the women, at least.
Anyway, those two were the biggest-looking groups.
The loudest, most visible kids in the class.
There were plenty of other students, of course, but most of them clustered in twos and threes—too small to really call a group.
Compared to those two cliques they barely registered, so none of them had stuck in my head yet.
Even inside a class of barely thirty people, every kind of human specimen existed. Memorizing them all in a short time was no easy job.
"Hello, everyone~"
I sat down and waited a bit, and then the professor walked in and class began.
Alright. Time to endure the boredom.
"Alright, that's it for today's class. Good work, everyone. See you next week."
"Thank you!"
Class ended and the students stood up one after another.
Everyone had clearly been waiting for this exact moment—the final "thank you" was packed with pure joy.
I understood the feeling well enough that I smiled a little on the inside.
I didn't have another class after this, so all I had to do was go straight home. The thought of my soft mattress waiting for me pulled a smile onto my face all by itself.
Heh heh heh. Just you wait, mattress—I'm going to ravage your lewd insides without mercy!
With that stupid thought in my head, I slowly stood up. The other kids had already cleared out; the lecture hall was already quiet.
The only ones left were a few girls who hadn't finished taking notes.
Curious how many remained, I glanced around.
Two or three girls were scattered evenly through the room.
Each of them was alone—friends waiting outside, or already gone ahead.
Huh? Wait.
The thought flashed through my head: is this an opportunity?
Until a moment ago everyone had been in groups, which made approaching anyone feel like a burden. But right now, with them sitting alone, conversation was entirely possible.
Me, Lee Se-won, the timid type. Weak against crowds, strong against small numbers. Right now was a real chance to break the ice.
Alright. Charge.
The instant I started to move, my eyes met one of the girls'.
For less than a second—a span of time that barely qualified as a moment—her pupils and mine overlapped.
"……!"
And then she dropped her gaze straight down. The look that had been aimed at me slammed into the floor.
"……."
I had no choice but to stay silent.
…Hmm.
What exactly was packed into that averted stare? Had she lowered her head out of embarrassment at locking eyes with a guy—or was it simply that my eyes looked too fierce?
Feels more like the latter…
If it were embarrassment, her ears would flush or there'd be some kind of physical reaction. She wouldn't just be reading the room like that.
Do I really have scary eyes…
That was when a memory from the original Lee Se-won surfaced.
(Lee Se-won): People have been telling me my eyes look scary for a long time.
I know, damn it. I already know, so you don't need to tell me. I've heard it plenty myself.
It was a sad state of affairs. Inside I was this timid and soft, but other people only saw the surface and never knew.
"…Hah."
With that, the urge to approach anyone evaporated. I walked out of the lecture hall with a dejected look on my face.
"Ah! Found you!"
The moment I stepped outside, someone called out.
I turned my head straight toward the sound. Lee Eun-byul was coming toward me, her night-sky hair streaming behind her.
My face twisted for a second.
Tsk.
After the last incident, there was no way Lee Eun-byul was going to look pleasant. The image of her trying to make a bet over me still left a bitter residue.
But the scowl only lasted a moment. I quickly smoothed my expression and looked at her.
"Hm? What's up?"
Alright. Time to put on the mask. There was no need to show the other person what I was really thinking.
I curved my lips into a gentle arc and greeted her with a reasonably bright face. Thankfully, the expression-management skills I'd built up working part-time jobs hadn't gone anywhere.
"Ah… it's nothing else, really."
She stopped in front of me and scratched the back of her neck for a second. Clearly she had something to say.
Her long, well-shaped legs fidgeted on the floor.
After a beat of that, she suddenly bowed her head.
"I'm sorry. I came to apologize for last week."