In the light, you cannot see the darkness.
Only in the darkness can you look into the darkness.
EP 8 – Dark Adaptation
Novelists are not a particularly pleasant breed.
They are sensitive, irritable, and filled with pride.
It is a stereotype often summarized as ‘picky artist’ depicted in dramas.
Park Chang-woon knew that this stereotype wasn’t entirely unfounded.
Being ‘sensitive’ was necessary to sharply employ literary imagination,
My eyes saw the world beyond the car window swaying slightly with the vehicle’s movement, but my mind was elsewhere.
Hatred is a self-destructive emotion. But sometimes, to survive, you have to hate someone.
I understood the feelings of the person who hated me. How much self-loathing did he endure before he spoke those words? It was probably a hatred that festered and festered until it burst.
But didn’t he know what situation he would face once he said it?
Even so, he probably couldn’t endure without saying it.
If I succeeded because I was young, and Gu Yubin succeeded because she was pretty, then it meant he hadn’t succeeded because they were lacking.
But from my perspective, success is determined not by people but by the heavens. It’s one of the few realizations of a foolish time traveler.
But why is it that humans cannot bear it without hating each other?
Why do they ignore the truth in front of them and lie to themselves to the point of hating others?
Looking back, this was my first question about the world.
Let me give an example. This example was also a familiar question to me.
Why do people despise orphans even though it’s not their choice to be one?
「……After my parents passed away, life in the orphanage was a series of incomprehensible events. I felt as if I had been thrown into another world.」
「Why wasn’t I allowed to have a cell phone, why did I have to get hit if I talked back, why couldn’t I rebel against irrational things, why…….」
「But the strangest thing was that a wall had formed between me and the kids I used to be close with not too long ago.」
「……It was only when I saw the orphanage teacher bowing helplessly in front of the other kids’ parents that I realized the hidden power dynamics behind the lies of human rights and equality.」
「So, I end up remembering those beautiful fish I saw in the aquarium when I was a child. In the end, humans, too, just prey on the weak.」
Gu Yu-na doesn’t discriminate in making friends. It’s people who discriminate against Gu Yu-na.
But as she read this manuscript, Gu Yu-na had a rare thought.
It was that ‘if you become close with your favorite, it makes your fan activities better.’
“Let’s stay friends from now on.”
Moon In, who was hit by the 1-2 combo of Gu Yu-na calling him “In-seop” and then saying, “Let’s stay friends from now on,” was completely sunk,
Gu Yu-na felt that transferring to the same school as Moon In to become friends was worth it.
Getting the next work from her favorite author in advance?
There was no greater heaven.
Gu Yu-na paused her reading and savored it as if she was enjoying a fine delicacy.
Min Hyo-chan and Min Hyo-min, who had witnessed the shocking remarks earlier and now this strange behavior, widened their eyes in disbelief, but Gu Yu-na remained engrossed in her own world.
“It has a stable taste…….”
Moon In had finally done something notable.
That’s how Gu Yu-na felt.
Moon In, who had been writing only commercial, non-literary, fairy tale-like, vulgar, and convenience-oriented works as if he had conformed to the trends, had finally written something that suited her taste.
Lim Yang-wook described it as ‘obscure, bizarre, and dark.’
But Gu Yu-na liked this piece.
Because it starkly revealed the bizarre nature of humans that was beyond understanding.
In Gu Yu-na’s view, humans were hypocritical beings full of contradictions.
From that perspective, this novel was ‘realistic’ from the start.
A corpse cleaner who rejects the concept of human dignity but wants to be dignified finds a book in the house of a woman who committed suicide.
The book is the memoir of a man. When he was young, he followed his mother to a large mart and witnessed fish being eaten by their own kind, leaving him traumatized.
He loses his parents and goes to an orphanage. There, he experiences the life of the ‘lower class’ that he didn’t know while his parents were alive.
He experiences the class that exists in modern society, experiences unfairness, receives hatred, and finally realizes.
That humans, in the end, are no different from the fish that prey on their kind……
She laughed brightly and out loud.
The club room was engulfed in shock and horror. Not only Min Hyo-chan and Min Hyo-min, but even author Moon In had his eyes quivering.
However, Gu Yu-na, wiping away tears mixed with laughter as if she had just watched a comedy show, prioritized literature over others’ feelings.
So, she said to Moon In.
“I really enjoyed reading it. The depiction of falling into hell the moment you become an orphan was excellent. The fear, anxiety, and contempt in the absence of a social safety net… As expected from Moon In.”
It could be interpreted as ‘you describe orphans well because you are one,’ causing Min Hyo-chan and Min Hyo-min to gasp and glance at Moon In.
The siblings, being siblings, even rolled their eyes in the same way as they watched.
Fortunately, Moon In was someone who could correctly interpret Gu Yu-na’s language, so there was no misunderstanding.
Just as Min Hyo-chan and Min Hyo-min breathed sighs of relief and clutched their chests in comfort.
“But how did you know the difference between living with parents and living without them?”
With a remark that bluntly implied ‘you don’t have a mom,’ Min Hyo-chan and Min Hyo-min were terrified.
They trembled nervously, anxiously waiting for Moon In’s anger to explode.
But Moon In understood that the concept of ‘malice’ in Gu Yu-na’s comment was as minimal as the shrimp in a shrimp cracker.
So, he thoroughly addressed Gu Yu-na’s pure literary curiosity.
“Hmm. I had a helper.”
“D-d-do I really have to do this…?”
Kim Byul anxiously looked around like a meerkat, worried that someone might be watching her.
Considering this was Baekhak Entertainment’s practice room, it was natural there wouldn’t be any audience.
Nevertheless, the request Moon In made to Kim Byul was something that defied social norms.
Thus, Kim Byul was trembling ‘out of fear that someone might see.’