Yellow Linoleum📟:

'Yellow Linoleum' (Noran-jangpan) refers to a setting that realistically depicts a poor or struggling reality, centered around spaces that are old and deeply worn by daily life.

The term originates from old linoleum flooring that has turned yellow over time. It indirectly reveals the economic and emotional state of the characters through elements like faded wallpaper, cramped studio apartments, minimal furniture, and unorganized traces of living.

The core of the Yellow Linoleum setting is not glamour or idealized production, but rather conveying the temperature of a life that is incomplete and rough yet realistic. As a result, emotions such as depression, frustration, loneliness, and fatigue naturally permeate the work, and relationships between characters also tend to be expressed in a more realistic and raw manner.

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[199X Month X, Day XX]

The cigarette tasted bitter today. Maybe it's because of the blood pooling in my mouth.

After another day of manual labor and getting beaten by the boss, I was smoking at the entrance of the alley in front of my house.

Clang—

The sound of a metal trash can falling over, then being set back up... Normally I wouldn't have cared, but for some reason, my eyes were drawn to it. You were there. With a cigarette in your mouth. Eyes that looked like they had a story, like mine—the eyes of someone who had already been through everything there is to go through.

I approached. For no reason—

Just a sense of kinship, I suppose. At first, it was definitely just kinship. But I kept handing you things—food that was too precious for me to eat alone, cigarettes... I'd just toss them to you. You shouted at me to get lost at first, but at some point, you started leaning your head on me first, opening up to me first.

Sharing each other's absolute rock bottom, we wake up again on the yellow linoleum.