#121
“I was saving this to properly propose to you after graduation.”
“No need for a proposal. I think you’d go overboard with it.”
“Of course I was planning to rent a restaurant, get down on one knee, and propose.”
“Just try it.”
“You don’t want that?”
“If you propose while singing a serenade, I’ll run away.”
“That’s harsh.”
With a disgruntled expression, Gyo-ha touched Hwi-kyung’s left hand before extending his own left hand. Hwi-kyung, without complaint, slipped the ring onto Gyo-ha’s left ring finger.
“Even if other men flirt with you, no cheating.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“And don’t be too nice to other people either. You know how jealous I get.”
“You’re the one who should be careful. You’re nicer to people than I am.”
“That’s not true. I’m only nice to you, Hwi-kyung.”
“…”
“I’m not like that with other people.”
Those words made him feel embarrassed. Hwi-kyung awkwardly lowered his gaze.
Hwi-kyung still often wondered why Gyo-ha liked him. After all, Hwi-kyung wasn’t someone who could offer Gyo-ha any help.
Compared to how Gyo-ha had helped Hwi-kyung with all sorts of things, Hwi-kyung hadn’t done anything for Gyo-ha. He didn’t have much to offer in the first place. Lee Gyo-ha was a person who lacked nothing, while Jung Hwi-kyung had nothing.
Yet Gyo-ha considered Hwi-kyung special. Even though relationships don’t always operate on a clear give-and-take basis, Gyo-ha remained steadfast even after losing everything he had built up and injuring his hand because of Hwi-kyung.
Lee Gyo-ha loved Jung Hwi-kyung despite having nothing to gain.
It was truly difficult to understand. Sometimes Hwi-kyung wanted to ask Gyo-ha: what made him so special that Gyo-ha could so easily say he was only nice to him?
“You’re thinking strange thoughts again.”
“…I wasn’t thinking anything.”
“No, you were. I could sense something suspicious. That face that clearly wonders, ‘Why does he think I’m special?'”
“…”
“Am I right?”
Gyo-ha now seemed to read Hwi-kyung’s mind, exposing his inner thoughts. No matter how expressionless Hwi-kyung tried to remain, it was useless.
It wasn’t as if a system window was revealing Hwi-kyung’s thoughts, yet Gyo-ha remarkably noticed whenever Hwi-kyung was overthinking. Feeling awkward, Hwi-kyung just pressed his lips together.
“It’s not that I like someone who’s special.”
“Then what?”
“It’s that you become special because I like you.”
Gyo-ha still wasn’t particularly interested in other people. It wasn’t because he had some personality disorder like being a cold-blooded psychopath who was only warm to his own people—he simply didn’t particularly like many things.
There are people like that, aren’t there? Those who don’t have much interest in others and end up being good people because of it…
So nothing was special to him. He didn’t stop people from coming or going. Since he neither liked nor disliked them, there was no reason to be clingy.
But Hwi-kyung was different. Love is about finding the exception among otherwise similar people. In that sense, Hwi-kyung appeared before Gyo-ha embracing all “exceptions.”
Because of Hwi-kyung, Gyo-ha came to dislike cigarettes—those cancer-causing bundles—and thought long eyelashes were pretty. The stores Hwi-kyung liked came to mind more clearly than the ones he himself liked, and certain passages from books Hwi-kyung had enjoyed reading naturally came to mind without even trying to memorize them.
To Gyo-ha, that was what destined love meant.
The result of the wish he had made at seven years old. An achievement he had accomplished himself, and a sandcastle he had firmly protected so it wouldn’t crumble no matter how many times it was challenged.
“So I’d like you to consider me special too.”
Love me. Gyo-ha now openly demanded of Hwi-kyung. Love only me. Make me your only exception. I want to come before everyone else…
And Hwi-kyung willingly accepted this selfish request.
* * *
The mouse cursor blinks at the bottom of the unfinished dissertation page.
Gyo-ha’s new tenure-track professor said this dissertation was terrible. That wasn’t wrong. It lacked a proper sample group, insufficient prior research, and showed signs of being hastily scribbled.
Introduction
‘Black company’ is a colloquial term for a company with an unhealthy corporate culture, using the dark and negative color imagery of black to visually define an evaluation of the company.
While black gives the impression of being neat and tidy, it also gives the impression of being stagnant and rotten. In Korea, companies that violate labor standards or make unreasonable demands of workers are often called black companies.
This term originated in Japan, starting from illegal businesses operated by Japanese gangsters being called “Black companies.” The term became popularized around 2009 with the release of a film titled “I’m Working at a Black Company, But I Don’t Know If I’ve Reached My Limit Yet.” In English-speaking countries, the term “sweatshop-type” is used to describe black companies.
Common examples of black companies in Korea can be classified into four types. First is exploiting workers unilaterally by using loopholes in employment contracts. It’s easy to find cases where companies employ workers for 11 months instead of 12 to avoid paying severance (which is required after one year of employment), as well as exploitation of workers through various employment types beyond regular and non-regular employees, such as interns, probationary employees, and open-ended contract workers… (omitted)
Gyo-ha had several other unfinished writings. The correlation between regression and physics, cultural-historical views on wishes and vows, alternative combinations of external beings and shamanic beliefs…
None of these were suitable dissertation topics for a business administration department. Even those eccentric British researchers who always conducted strange experiments would surely produce more productive dissertations than Gyo-ha.
However, some content was quite remarkable. Hypotheses about people unknowingly granting others’ wishes, how external beings capable of turning back time could erase the existence of humans in order to possess them while risking everything they had in a vow.
It all sounded absurd either way, but what Gyo-ha had written was half-true. Everything he had written was what Hwi-kyung and Gyo-ha had directly experienced and figured out.
The world consists of laws and rules. All sudden events are not coincidences; rather, each event is just the materialization of the most probable outcome among various possibilities.
Very small, rare possibilities are difficult to realize. The miracle of two people who would never meet without numerous interferences, multiple attempts, and rule-breaking turmoil with multiple sacrifices does not occur.
Physicists have shown great interest in going against or transcending time for a very long time. They have presented numerous hypotheses related to time reversal, including regression.
When time is defined as something with a quantum structure, it is possible, albeit extremely rare, to turn back time or peek at future events. One scientist described our world like this:
Just as only one sperm fertilizes an egg even if millions race, the world also results in and maintains a single outcome despite countless possibilities emerging.
But if we turn back time and twist the original outcome, can we be sure that we will exist within that result?
This is no longer just a physics issue. How can time going backward because someone messed up a job be an academic issue?
Simply put, Hwi-kyung was just unlucky. Several worst-case possibilities broke through slim probabilities and became reality. Repeated deaths and resurrections, sacrifices made to save and protect him, and a moment when he carelessly made a somewhat realistic wish for his one remaining family member… All of these endangered Hwi-kyung’s existence.
One outcome: Because of this, Hwi-kyung nearly lost his substance. Different possibilities began causing Hwi-kyung turmoil. Encounters, changes, people trying to fulfill his wish, unconditional affection, and someone from the opposite side of the world who followed Hwi-kyung’s regression…
That’s how Hwi-kyung finally escaped that regression. It was an escape with the help of a primate lower than a jellyfish, not some godlike external being. Despite a body that should have died early and sixteen regressions without his consent, Hwi-kyung’s life eventually led to ordinary normalcy.
His wish to live an ordinary life fulfilled the most unlikely possibility, condensing into a single outcome. The miracle of two people from opposite sides of the earth, who would never meet again, meeting once more. After thirteen regressions, repeated losses, worn-out minds and hopes…
Help me! A person is trapped in a company! Surrounded by nothing but black companies, I prayed for a good job and ended up ruining my life!
After begging like that, a chaebol heir who’s at the forefront of creating black companies appeared and said:
Wow! Can I be trapped with you? When the time comes, I’ll surely save you. I’m not sure how I’ll save you yet—we’ll have to see!
Another outcome: Oddly enough, salvation always comes like this.
Through sixteen regressions, the two proved “a certain possibility.” It was proof that no one in academia would acknowledge due to an inadequate sample group and unprecedented prior research.
The possibility they proved was that they would save each other and fall in love… something very rare and special.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
