About

For a child's short legs, the slope was an endless climb. Resting once, then twice, and looking up, the view was a cluster of brick houses, soot-stained concrete walls, slate roofs, and fluttering laundry that blocked out the sky. Between the cramped one-room shacks, the winding path still had a long way to go before reaching home. Arriving after such a struggle, silence was nine-tenths of the welcome. The remaining tenth was better left unsaid. Slender limbs were too young to stop a father needing a vent for his wife's nagging, and tiny hands were too small to block a mother needing a scapegoat to dump her tattered life upon. Even the neighbors, unable to watch any longer, would click their tongues and say, "Being an easy target is a sin in itself." They beat him like a dog on a sweltering summer day, yet couldn't stand the sight of him eating. As soon as he grew a little, they hounded him, calling him a bastard who didn't earn a cent despite being fed and clothed. While his friends sat at desks listening to the chalky scratch of a teacher's lecture, he put studies aside. Before sunrise, he roamed the neighborhood with newspapers still wet with ink, working as a barker, a delivery boy for a Chinese restaurant, a shill for a medicine peddler's stall... He lived today simply because he woke up. Words telling him to look forward to a different tomorrow felt like a deliberate scratch against his nerves, even if they weren't meant with malice. He hated hearing them. Yet, humans are swayed by things as small as a mustard seed. Stealing glances at a decade-old "4-Down 5-Up" legend or a title match on the CRT television at the Chinese restaurant—even while getting slapped for it—planted a restless greed in him that he could earn money and change his life. A boy with nothing to eat scraped together his remaining coins, lingered in front of a gym for a long time, and finally stepped inside. Was it really just for the money? If the first thing that ever belonged to him was a pure ideal, a shining star, then it was enough to compensate for everything he had endured. Blinded by that light, he couldn't even see the ending where he would ultimately finish as a mere ordinary man... Living with that single passion, spouting nonsense about being fine with dying in the ring, all that remained at the end were trophies, medals, and plaques whispering that it wasn't in vain. But was it really? Behind them followed doubt, anxiety, and the deepening of a sickly spirit. Seeds sown in barren soil are twisted from germination, or perhaps they fail to sprout at all. Since that is invisible, there is no way to confirm it. What can be confirmed, however, is that the accumulated impact on his skull has already aggravated the diseased parts. Beneath a sturdy exterior, the inner lining is riddled with holes, gnawed by the traces of past deprivation and pathology. Dreams masked as delusions do not disappear, and there is no exit. Thinking that even anonymity is fine as long as he can continue, he clings to thread-like hope and takes any job he can get his hands on. With his sturdy body, he carries cement, pushes carts, acts as a strikebreaker, and works as hired muscle. What flies at him amidst the resentment is either filth or a preemptive strike; trading punches is inevitable. In the daze of a brawl, his father and mother from childhood suddenly come to mind. He wonders what he is doing here, if he lived so hard just to hurt people. The ten million won he received after three months of work was more than enough for wages back then, but it felt cheap for the price of selling something precious. When someone who has suffered long from hunger gets a taste of money, they can't escape it. He has truly fallen as far as he can go. It's been a long time since he quit, finding it miserable to climb into the ring with only the crumbs of a traded-away dream. Yet he can't throw away the symbols of honor; his eyes always find their way to the sports magazines. He's a fool who stops in his tracks when he sees a gym sign on the street, failing even at letting go. The neighborhood was cleared out long ago. Now, some parts remain while shiny new buildings have gone up, but people can't be cleared out and rebuilt. Tied to a family shattered into a thousand pieces, he just smokes all day long...