#1
How did it come to this?
Seo Yi-young looked down at the glass of alcohol in front of him.
There was only soju, without any drinking snacks. The only thing filling the quiet space was the news delivered in the announcer’s precise pronunciation.
[This has been Jung Hee-young reporting.]
Where Seo Yi-young’s gaze stopped was on the nearby mail.
It was mail containing a judgment ordering him to pay 800 million won in compensation for the full litigation costs and damages from the company’s tarnished image. It took three whole years for this result to come out. But there wasn’t a single news story covering this case anywhere.
800 million won.
If he assumed it was lottery winnings, 800 million felt like too small an amount, but thinking of it as the sum he had to pay back from now on made it feel endlessly distant. Even if Seo Yi-young got a job somewhere else right away and worked 20 hours a day,
would he be able to pay it back in his lifetime?
“……Haah.”
He covered his face with both hands and let out a long sigh.
Seo Yi-young was what the world commonly called a public interest whistleblower.
While working at a major corporation’s manufacturing plant, Seo Yi-young happened to discover that the factory was illegally disposing of toxic substances hundreds of times above the standard levels without reporting it, and he reported this to a broadcasting company.
People around him tried to stop Seo Yi-young first. They said he wouldn’t be able to win against Han-young, one of the nation’s leading conglomerates. That it was a reckless act. But Seo Yi-young believed. In justice. And he thought society would stand on Seo Yi-young’s side.
No matter how huge a corporation Han-young was, he thought he could fight against them as long as there were laws. What Seo Yi-young tried to expose was certainly a matter worthy of such action.
But.
-I cannot take your call right now, so you’ll be connected to voicemail.
This was the result.
No one remained.
Even the lawyers who had initially stood confidently on Seo Yi-young’s side gradually changed their attitudes as media and public interest waned. Later, they began subtly avoiding Seo Yi-young’s calls. It was fortunate if he could see their faces on court dates. Even when they were obviously in their offices, they avoided meetings with Seo Yi-young.
What about the media?
It had been so noisy, yet it didn’t even appear as a segment in the news.
The boycott movement that citizens had led on their own was also brief. It seemed to succeed briefly in the beginning, but it had long since faded under aggressive sales campaigns.
When public opinion quieted down, the company made it impossible for him to find re-employment by removing Seo Yi-young from his position and pushing him an “indefinite standby assignment” confirmation. They placed Seo Yi-young’s desk in the hallway where people came and went during commuting hours, made him just sit there quietly, and forced him to sign documents stating that although he had commuted to work, he agreed to salary deductions because he hadn’t worked due to personal circumstances.
If he refused to come to work because of such treatment, it would legally only result in resignation due to unauthorized absence. As an internal whistleblower and factory worker, Seo Yi-young had no choice but to suppress his desire to storm out immediately and sign the documents.
It was retaliation for the large-scale boycott movement and the enactment of new related legislation.
Even while receiving unfair treatment, believing that someday it would surely see the light, he endured three desperate years using the money he had saved as living expenses, but this was the result.
Thinking about it again was infuriating.
He thought he was acting for everyone’s sake, but in the end, only Seo Yi-young ended up bearing all the burden alone.
He believed he was doing the right thing.
No, he did do the right thing.
The problem was that he hadn’t factored his own misfortune into the consequences.
He poured a full glass of clear soju and threw it back. As the bitter liquid went down his throat, he naturally made a “keugh” sound.
He had worked hard on his small salary. However, the money he had saved was almost all spent on living expenses during those three years, and taking out a loan was unthinkable.
If only he could rely on family, he would have liked to try, but unfortunately, Seo Yi-young was alone.
“What the hell is this really.”
A self-deprecating laugh escaped him.
What came to Seo Yi-young’s mind now wasn’t anger at the world, but practical problems like how much he would have to repay each month to pay back 800 million won. So even though he knew it was unreasonable, one part of his heart was already prepared to comply. That was what was infuriating.
Well, even if it was unreasonable, what could he do? There was nothing more Seo Yi-young could do.
He was tired of going in and out of courts and spending time on it. He didn’t have the money to handle that either. Not only was it hard for Seo Yi-young himself to endure, but it was also hard to expect that there would be lawyers willing to help.
He really wanted to quit.
Of course, he hadn’t started without resolve. He thought he knew well enough that things could turn out this way. But knowing something in your head and experiencing it firsthand were completely different.
He really wanted to quit.
If only he could, he wanted to make it as if it had never happened.
If he could choose again, he would have just quietly pretended not to know and passed by like other people.
What was so great about him to step forward?
It wasn’t that other people lacked a sense of justice. They were realistic. They were smart.
Seo Yi-young had fallen into the delusion that he was special and caused trouble while intoxicated by petty righteousness. That was the difference, if there was one.
An anger that couldn’t be defined, similar in size to his despair, crouched and settled inside Seo Yi-young.
In this situation, he couldn’t help but laugh.
If only he could go back to the beginning.
It would be nice if he could live a completely different life.
Seo Yi-young recalled a Hollywood movie he had seen before.
The world is not unique but exists in countless dimensions. And there’s another me in other dimensions too – what if the consciousness of me in this dimension switched with me in that dimension? It was a movie that started with such a premise.
Another dimensional me.
If there are countless dimensions, surely there must be at least one successful me among them.
What would it be like to live as that most successful Seo Yi-young?
Not this shitty life, but a Seo Yi-young who lives a life where he doesn’t fear anyone and doesn’t have to beg anyone for anything.
What would it really feel like to live like that? Really, wouldn’t it be an incredibly exhilarating thing?
He lay down sideways, overcome by the effects of alcohol, and closed his eyes.
Tomorrow morning, when he opens his eyes, he’ll probably spend another same day.
A life where he doesn’t even have money to pay taxes right now so he has to beg here and there, and reluctantly eats only one meal a day because even the money for a cup of instant noodles is precious.
“Fucking hell……”
He had really lived diligently, but the result was this.
He didn’t want to accept the unfair judgment and cold reality.
But not accepting it doesn’t change anything either. There’s nothing he can do. Even knowing the approaching future, he had to endure it with his hands and feet tied, unable to move.
All Seo Yi-young could do was escape from reality with thoughts like ‘I want to become me from another dimension.’
His stomach hurt, perhaps from the soju he had drunk on an empty stomach. It felt like a burning lump of fire had filled his stomach.
He rubbed his stomach with his hand and flopped down in place.
His eyes stung and his nose became sharp.
He absolutely must not cry.
No matter how miserable the situation, Seo Yi-young thought he shouldn’t shed tears, so he bit his lips tightly and squeezed his eyes shut.
Perhaps due to the alcohol, his mind gradually became hazy.
Another day passed like this.
*
The first feeling he had was that his body felt strangely refreshed.
Even though he had poured so much alcohol into his empty stomach, he had no hangover and his body felt incredibly light.
What the hell is this?
When he opened his eyes, it was a hard floor.
What could it be?
Seo Yi-young, who had raised his head to look around, stiffened his body. It wasn’t his shabby room. Far from shabby, it was so luxurious that it made his mind go blank. It was a room wide enough for ten people to sleep in.
“……What?”
When and how did he get into a place like this?
Could it be that he drunkenly barged in on his own? As Seo Yi-young was thinking this, he held his breath. It was because his thoughts had reached the possibility that he might have fallen into a trap. There was no other way to explain the current situation.
If others had heard this, they would have clicked their tongues saying he had fallen into excessive paranoid delusions, but considering the people Seo Yi-young had dealt with for the past three years, it wasn’t an excessive imagination at all.
Seo Yi-young’s complexion turned pale as he worried he might even be reported for breaking and entering.
They say bad things come one after another.
He already had an enormous amount of money to pay back, and he couldn’t be dragged to the police for breaking and entering on top of that.
Being dragged to the police itself was a problem, but what would follow after was an even bigger problem.
If Han-young was behind this, they would have done this to frame Seo Yi-young as a criminal.
What people expect from a public interest whistleblower is someone who is flawlessly innocent, honest, and pure – a good person who doesn’t even swear.
If Seo Yi-young, who had reported the crimes of a major corporation, committed breaking and entering while drunk, how would the public view him? If Han-young exerted their influence, it was obvious that this incident would be reported on public broadcasting news.
Seo Yi-young, who was about to get up to leave quickly, froze once again upon seeing his appearance.
It was silk pajamas.
Now he was starting to break into a cold sweat.
What on earth had he done while drunk? He couldn’t remember at all.
Seo Yi-young, who vowed never to drink again when bad things happened, frantically looked around. He thought there would be clothes he had taken off nearby. His only thought was to quickly change and get out of this place.
But no matter how much he looked around, he couldn’t see any clothes he would have taken off.
“……Don’t tell me they’re outside……?”
Seo Yi-young finally grabbed his head.
He had no idea what crazy things he had done while wandering around.
He slightly opened the door and looked outside. There was no sound at all. Fortunately, it seemed like no one was there.
Let’s quickly find clothes, change, and run away. If that doesn’t work, he’ll have to run away like this and then wash them and send them by delivery.
With such thoughts, as soon as he stepped outside the door, he couldn’t help but gape at the size of the house he encountered.
What kind of person really lives here? It would be nice if a house like this could be his own, even for just one day. He was curious what it would feel like to live in a place like this.
Seo Yi-young, who was looking around as if enchanted, turned pale at the sound of a door opening in the distance and someone coming in.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
