Heavenly Army, Doraon dorai_ By Ooahan JS
In truth, nothing stays the same. Just as nothing in the universe is unchanging, a small shift had occurred in my life. After years of freeloading at my mom’s house, I’d finally moved into a tiny studio apartment.
Aside from that, nothing major had changed in my life. How I managed to endure those three years was beyond me; looking back, all it brought me were tears.
Hope was still absent. My days consisted of idly lingering in my cramped single room, letting each meaningless day drain away. I was merely sustaining an existence devoid of purpose.
When the body rests, the mind tends to wander. For some, those wandering thoughts turn into strokes of creative genius. For me, they simply gnawed away at my sanity.
Maybe that’s why I pushed myself so hard—to survive, to protect what little was left of me. Keeping myself too busy to think worked better than any antidepressant.
I tried everything, taking on any job that came my way. I dragged myself home utterly spent, collapsing into bed only to repeat the cycle the next day. Yet, not a day went by without tears.
The past is just that—the past. You can’t turn back the clock. Everyone says it’s wise to let it go and start fresh, and maybe they’re right. It’s better to cut ties, forget the past cleanly, and build a new life.
But it wasn’t that simple. Somehow, I found myself drowning in agony and despair, suffocated by a pain I couldn’t shake.
Five years passed. The world eventually learned of my misfortune, as if there were no secrets left to keep. A careless comment I made while drunk, combined with the empathy of a so-called friend, spread my misery far and wide like wildfire. My foolish past became everyone’s fodder.
People’s gazes never changed. Some openly called me crazy. Their eyes seemed to say, How can she still smile so brightly after going through all that?
One day, I realized no one was truly on my side. After that, I stopped sharing my story. Crying, grieving, and despairing—I reserved those for when I was alone. People thrive on the misery of others. Around here, someone like me is nothing more than a point of comparison, a twisted form of comfort: Well, at least I’m not as bad off as her. Even their words of encouragement—“Stay strong”—rang hollow, masking their joy in my downfall.
My heart had burned down to ashes, scattered by the wind until only emptiness remained. But I always wore a smile.
Five years wasted in futility, and now I was thirty, a proverbial “plate of eggs.” Perhaps out of pity, my team leader offered some unsolicited advice, though it only stoked my irritation.
“Miss Lee, you’re still young and full of potential. Maybe you should look for a new job. This place isn’t really cut out for women.”
As if I don’t know that.
“No, it’s fine,” I replied. “I’m a terrible person. I deserve this punishment.”
My words made him sigh in exasperation.
“Come on. Are you the bad one here? He’s the scumbag, not you. Why are you punishing yourself? Why do you let yourself suffer like this?”
The same old script. I shouldn’t have shared my past with anyone. I shouldn’t have left any room for their imaginations to fill in the blanks.
I turned my head away, signaling I didn’t want to continue the conversation. Picking up on my silence, the team leader eventually walked away.
Perhaps I’d internalized the belief that I deserved this suffering. I’m a wretched person, so this is my penance. This self-flagellation, paradoxically, was the only thing keeping me alive. The logic was simple: I did something bad, so I have to pay for it. Yet the punishment seemed never-ending.
After finishing my morning shift, I returned home, showered, and passed out in bed. Exhaustion from grueling labor was my only relief.
I set my alarm for three hours, thinking that would be enough to recover. True to its nature, time didn’t betray me, and the alarm buzzed right on cue. Like Pavlov’s dog, I opened my eyes instantly.
Still, I fell back asleep moments later. Might as well have set it for four hours.
Then came the dream. A bizarre, vivid dream where reality twisted into absurdity.
I was running through a forest, holding a giant dog in my arms. Music played as we twirled together, waltzing through the trees. I laughed, utterly euphoric, while the dog laughed too—yes, laughed—booming “Ha ha ha ha ha!”
It wasn’t a person in a dog costume; it was undeniably a dog. Yet, in the dream, this seemed perfectly natural.
Dreams are strange like that.
I woke up and immediately jotted everything down. Dreams fade quickly, so I needed to capture the details before they slipped away.
With nothing else to do, I fell into my usual habit of daydreaming. I’m a dreamer, after all.
Dreamer, fantasist—the terms sound similar but are worlds apart. Daydreams can be creative, artistic. Fantasies, on the other hand, are distortions of reality, delusions of grandeur. And I, unfortunately, was a fantasist.
My imagination was my only escape from the grim monotony of life, but it was also hopelessly unattainable. Like imagining myself as a celestial princess fallen to Earth—a frivolous, impossible fantasy. Still, it brought me fleeting joy.
That day, I was struck by a sudden idea: Could it be… a lottery dream?
Excited, I scoured the internet for dream interpretations. The con artist monk I’d once met said the first dream after three years could signal a turning point. Maybe this was a sign that my misfortune was finally ending.
But as I read on, I realized it was nothing more than a meaningless dream. A dog dream. Typical of someone as useless as me to conjure up such nonsense even in sleep.
Disappointment set in, and my stomach growled in protest. At least my body was honest about its needs.
“Can’t survive without food,” I muttered, opening the rice cooker. It was empty. Tears welled up—not from the chore of cooking but from the sheer misery of my situation.
I opened the fridge. Bare shelves greeted me, as desolate as my hollowed-out heart.
If only life offered a reset button. If I could go back and rewrite my story, how glorious it would be. But time only moves forward.
Still, in my imagination, I rewound the clock. If I could return to that moment, I’d kick that bastard in the crotch so hard he’d never recover.
Why did I cling to such thoughts? Was it regret? An inability to let go?
No, it wasn’t. I’m a rational woman. My suffering doesn’t stem from some trivial sob story.
My anger, my hatred—it was all directed at the stain on the once-beautiful narrative of my life. The one who splashed black ink across my story.
I could never forget. I wouldn’t stop until I’d seen him fall.
“I’ll watch you crumble, you piece of trash!”
I shouted to the empty room, but the weight of my emotions dragged my head down again.
What should I do to escape this suffocating pit? If I stayed like this, I’d crumble. The shards of my soul scattered around me felt like they’d cut me to pieces.
That’s why I pushed myself into grueling labor. Idle moments led to this spiral, so I worked myself to the bone to survive.
What a pitiful existence. My life was nothing but a cruel, pathetic joke.
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