Delusive Fate

#095

Lee Han-sol thought the world was like a giant trash can. A garbage bin beyond rehabilitation, where filth just piles up and up because no sanitation worker ever comes to clean it.

After repeating death and reincarnation, Lee Han-sol suddenly had a premonition that he would never be able to escape this foul-smelling cesspool. He realized that this was his fate from the beginning, and no matter how hard he tried, nothing would change…

After this realization, he felt a strong murderous intent that he had never experienced before in his life. It was malice directed at none other than himself. He wanted to escape this cycle so badly that he objectified himself, sincerely wanting to kill and eliminate Lee Han-sol.

At that time, as if suffering from depersonalization, he spent all day repeating thoughts of killing himself. For example, the thought of tearing his body and soul into pieces and dividing them into a hundred garbage bags. The thought of cutting himself into such tiny pieces that even if someone opened one of the bags, they wouldn’t be able to recognize that it contained Lee Han-sol’s flesh and soul. And the thought of scattering these pieces all over the world.

He wanted to be scattered like a difficult and tedious puzzle.

Then maybe fate would think it better to find someone else rather than painstakingly reassembling and reusing the pieces of Lee Han-sol.

Lost in such a daydream, Lee Han-sol lived in fantasies of dismembering himself, grinding himself in a blender, or crushing himself with a hydraulic press every day. A life of only imagining and wanting such things. It was a rock-bottom life, terribly so. And very paradoxically, Lee Han-sol also felt a sense of stability in that misery. If this was rock bottom, at least there would be no falling further down. That was the only reassurance.

But who knew there was another bottom below the bottom.

Lee Han-sol felt as if he had fallen into a hole somewhere unknown. Just when he was reassuring himself that nothing worse could happen, that he was at the maximum level of wretchedness and therefore had nowhere left to fall, a deep pit suddenly opened up as if to mock him. The place where Jung Yi-dam had pushed Lee Han-sol into…

Everything was a mess for Lee Han-sol after meeting Jung Yi-dam. As if pretending to be Anne Sullivan, Jung Yi-dam had pushed Lee Han-sol into an empty hole. As if saying, “The worst you know isn’t the real worst, so experience something even worse firsthand,” like teaching water by pouring water.

Lee Han-sol smiled a little as he plummeted vertically to the worst place when he felt most at ease. He found his past self foolish and embarrassing for believing in and boasting about a bottom that was nothing. He felt an overwhelming sense of defeat crushing him. Since meeting Jung Yi-dam, no, since Jung Yi-dam had arbitrarily sought him out, Lee Han-sol had been constantly, endlessly plummeting downwards. No bottom appeared.

How much worse can I possibly get?

Lee Han-sol collapsed like a rotten rubber band that had finally snapped after being stretched taut. He was just annoyed with everything. He just wanted to kill it all. Not an exaggerated fake anger, but a real murderous intent that he had long felt towards himself gushed out. He didn’t particularly feel the will to hold it back. So Lee Han-sol thought he’d just live recklessly.

I won’t hold back anything anymore.

If I want to kill, I’ll kill. It’s not even scary to kill someone anymore anyway. I’ve already killed once. The sensation of strangling Jung Yi-dam’s neck is still vivid in both hands.

Yeah, I’m just a human who’s endlessly the worst without limits. No, I can’t even be called human, I’m just an existence like a street pebble. Whether I struggle to survive or die spectacularly. Even my life-or-death struggle is nothing more than material for a psychopath like Jung Yi-dam to toy with when bored… An existence not even worth dust. Lee Han-sol thought with utter disillusionment.

But why should I live holding back?

“Ah… fuck.”

In a residential area of B District. Lee Han-sol, who had been walking with slippers dragging on his bare feet, stopped in annoyance. There was an irritating sight nearby that forced him to stop.

It was cold weather. People on the street were walking briskly, bundling up in thick coats. Among them, Lee Han-sol, with his bare white legs exposed below his shorts, certainly looked like a bit of a strange person.

Lee Han-sol himself didn’t care at all whether others thought he was crazy or cursed him inwardly while glancing at him. So what? Am I shit? If so, don’t bother me and just go away or whatever. Standing at the entrance of a quiet residential street, Lee Han-sol roughly thought this as he rubbed his face dry.

“Why won’t they… just leave me alone…”

His slow voice was full of disillusionment. How many times is this now? Lee Han-sol felt his mind, which had been relatively calm until just a moment ago, suddenly boiling like lava, and he clenched his molars. Since meeting Jung Yi-dam, Lee Han-sol’s emotions had been running wild as if the reins had been loosened. He couldn’t control it at all. Anger would surge without rhyme or reason, and every five steps he took, someone he wanted to kill would catch his eye. And Lee Han-sol thought.

Not ‘Let’s be patient. That bastard probably thinks I’m as shitty as I think he is. Humans are all shitty beings anyway. Getting angry won’t make shitty things less shitty.’

But rather,

‘Why do I have to be angry? Why are there so many bastards like this? I was just quietly trying to go home… Those sons of bitches… I want to kill them right now… I’m going to kill them.’

Lee Han-sol lifted his face from his palms. He turned his head and glared at the quiet alley.

The long alley was ordinary. It was a narrow street that could be seen anywhere, typical of a residential area mixed with low-rise villas and commercial buildings. It was a very ordinary path between houses that Lee Han-sol had been too busy to notice, quickly passing by on his way here from the main road.

If it weren’t for the man crouching like a thug in front of a well-tended flower bed, this place would have been just another unremarkable ordinary street that wouldn’t have caught Lee Han-sol’s attention. So this is all because of that bastard doing that over there. Lee Han-sol, muttering inwardly, opened his mouth with a crooked attitude.

“Hey.”

At the sudden call, the man in front of the flower bed briefly glanced at Lee Han-sol. He looked Lee Han-sol up and down as if seeing something strange – wearing shorts and slippers in the middle of winter weather where it had even snowed a few days ago. Then, without much reaction, he focused back on what he was doing. He seemed to think there was no way Lee Han-sol could be calling him. It wasn’t an unusual reaction, given they were strangers.

Lee Han-sol called out to him again, undeterred.

“Hey, are you ignoring me?”

“What?”

“Someone’s calling you and you don’t answer. Did you eat your manners with soup or something…?”

“Manners? Are you saying that to me?”

The man asked, looking around. The man, aged twenty-seven, named Kim Young-chul. Height 183cm, weight 90kg. With his large build, huge head, and eyes that looked unusually small compared to the area of his face, he had an intimidating appearance that got him treated like a thug wherever he went, and he was a bit perplexed.

Kim Young-chul couldn’t quite believe that the “you” being rudely called out by the pale and thin Lee Han-sol standing at the entrance of the alley, saying “Yeah, you bastard, I’m talking to you. Who else is here besides you? Is there something wrong with your cognitive abilities?”, was actually referring to him.

True to his appearance, Kim Young-chul had a thuggish quality, and until now, he had always been the one to pick fights, never the one being picked on. Also, he had always fantasized that if he ever met his match and had to fight for his life and pride, his opponent would at least be someone similar to himself.

But Lee Han-sol, who was now actively seeming to pick a fight with him, was… Kim Young-chul briefly recalled a scene he had once witnessed and laughed at in bewilderment. A scrawny Chihuahua barking and drooling in front of a Jindo dog… That’s exactly what Lee Han-sol looked like.

Lee Han-sol not only didn’t match Kim Young-chul’s build, but he looked a full span smaller in height, width, and depth. His legs exposed below his shorts were pale and straight, giving an even more frail impression, and decisively, the face attached above his neck. Lee Han-sol’s appearance, which was incredible in a different sense from Kim Young-chul’s, left him speechless.

Without exaggeration, Lee Han-sol’s face, about the size of Kim Young-chul’s fist, looked like a doll someone had molded, making it feel a bit unreal. To be honest, Kim Young-chul was momentarily curious as to why someone who looked like that was standing alone in this neighborhood alley.

Looking like someone who might be begging without a home or money, but could be whisked away to a penthouse if spotted by an entertainment industry insider or a rich person… Why on earth was he in such ordinary neighborhood dressed like he was about to freeze to death…? And even picking a fight out of nowhere with someone who was just minding their own business, like a deranged old person?

Maybe… Kim Young-chul thought seriously.

Is he mentally ill…?