After Story 242
Going with the flow, getting pushed if pushed; I had lived my whole life as a main?character of a monochromatic life drama.
I was born with around average weight, received compulsory education, and took the CSAT exams. I then went to a university to contribute to the 80% college enrollment rate statistic.
My major was biology. I didn’t have any interest in biology or even science for that matter, but I aimed for that department because my scores allowed me to and I managed to pass. After I enrolled, I heard a rumor that the university was lacking so many students that someone who was number 20 on the waiting list managed to pass.
I didn’t know whether that was true or not, but I did think that it was plausible. The university campus was old, the funding was precarious, and departments were being abolished or combined with others. Perhaps the wise decision would be to run away.
I played around a lot in my freshman year, following advice that I had heard many times before. When I felt guilty about playing around, I shook off my guilt with the peculiar logic that ‘it’s okay because I’m the one getting into debt to go to college.’
That didn’t mean, however, that I was playing around ‘like crazy’ to the point I was in the mouths of many students on campus. I just played around moderately as a gray particle, neither black nor white.
The best thing I had ever done was vomit behind some restaurant after drinking like crazy.
Even for my military service, I got discharged after doing just as much as the others. I did extreme cold training, guerilla training, and all sorts of other training that all others did. I suffered as much as the others and had just as many enjoyable memories as others.
Nothing changed even after I was discharged from the military, well, aside from getting older and getting a slight tan on my face.
This kind of life isn’t so bad: I told myself whenever I felt a sudden sense of jealousy. That kind of jealousy usually came to me when I looked at my friends.
There were things I could never do. For example, studying until I start bleeding from my nose or picking a fight with someone and punching them. When I saw my friends do things like that like it was nothing, I found myself extremely pathetic and was very envious of them.
Having lived as a gray particle my whole life, I admired their brilliant, perhaps brilliantly stupid, actions.
Of course, should there come an opportunity for me to partake in those actions, I would take a step back while saying this chant: a moderate life like this isn’t so bad.
Like that, I neither became able to fly nor crawled on the ground, just walking like everyone else did.
Just moderately.
That was my motto and the only pride I had. At the same time, it was a unique characteristic of mine that I wanted to abandon.
Maybe that was the reason.
I ended up accepting my grandfather’s words, his will, so to speak.
-Daejoo, I’d like you to continue the bookstore. What do you think?
On the day I said I’d succeed the store, grandfather was finally able to rest. That day, my family members told me that he had peace of mind thanks to me.
Yoo Wonjoong, my grandfather, was someone who was the polar opposite of me. He single-handedly formed our Yoo family after having lost every single family member in the war. He voluntarily took up dangerous jobs to feed the family, and from what I had heard, he had once become rich enough to not be envious of anyone through running a business.
Of course, having lived a rather roller coaster of a life, grandfather had screwed up and ruined his business in his later years.
Gaining massively and losing massively – grandfather’s chronicle was the dynamic life I had always yearned for. The bookstore was the one he set up after losing everything. As a gray particle, the bookstore that was suddenly given to me felt like a sparkling glass marble. It was an irresistible offer, and I became the next owner of the bookstore in grandfather’s stead.
After grandfather’s funeral, I went to the bookstore alone. I inserted the rusty key into the keyhole at the top of the glass door and rotated it. When I went inside, I could smell old books as well as a trace of grandfather.
This was the first time I had come to my grandfather’s bookstore since I was in middle school. Seeing the bookstore that was just as I remembered, I felt a sense of exhilaration. I felt like my monotone life had finally encountered a turning point.
I was excited like a child reading an adventure story. It became my everyday life to rush to the bookstore after lectures and clean up.
Whenever my friends asked me where I was going, I would pretend to hesitate before speaking in excitement: I was going to the bookstore I am going to run.
For months, I lived a really busy life. I was so passionate about it that I skipped multiple assignments and focused on the bookstore. I changed the interior design of the shop from the floor to the ceiling.
I didn’t even feel any fatigue because of the satisfaction that I was doing something different from everyone else, and all by myself even. I stripped the bookstore of the ‘old books’ image and decorated it in a coffee shop style, dreaming of becoming a famous indie book shop that seemed to exist intermittently.
I didn’t know that my straightforward life would encounter such a big change. Every single day was filled with joy. I especially felt an unspeakable sense of exhilaration when I talked about the bookstore to my friends.
The fact that I had escaped being a gray particle made me happy. I finally had something special of my own, just like the special people I had always admired.
On the first day I started the business, I kept staring at the door in breathtaking anticipation; I walked around the store in excitement and worry all day, checking if any dust had settled on the books, or if the signboard I put outside faded.
Then it became nighttime. Not a single person visited on the first day.
As a gray particle, my personality wasn’t so great as to be happy and sad over little things. I closed the store, thinking, ‘sure, that’s not unreasonable, maybe people will come tomorrow or the day after.’
My first customers were my friends. When I talked to them in a roundabout way that I started running a business, they came to visit. They were surprised when they visited and praised me for the interior design.
I put on an embarrassed face, but inwardly, I asked them to praise me more.
“You’re already a business owner at that age, huh? Yoo Daejoo, that’s great.”
“I’m just taking over my grandfather’s work, that’s all.”
“But I heard you did all of the interior design yourself. That’s amazing.”
Goodbye, gray particle. I will now live a colorful life as a young business owner.
When my friends left and I was alone again, I cheered silently and jumped around. Yoo Daejoo! This is the life you’re living!
The next day, I had more customers. They were girls around my age. I greeted them politely before indifferently putting away some books. That was the image I was trying to go with as the owner of the shop. Someone who’s kind but indifferent.
I sold two books. They were books that my grandfather had left behind. I just started off but had already raised sales. Maybe this would one day become a big franchise?
Even while telling myself not to be happy with such a little thing, my thoughts swam into the sea of optimism. Everything was going well, and it felt like it would continue to go well. The monotone life until now felt like the time to accumulate energy.
I took a gap year at the start of the holidays. I wanted to go ‘all in.’ My life was turning more proactive. I felt like I was the true owner of my life.
Yes, perhaps this was my true self.
The number of customers visiting the bookstore increased. Apparently, a blogger introduced my bookstore as a pretty bookstore on social media.
Luck was following me as well. Perhaps thanks to my grandfather’s bloodline, I seemed to have talent in business as well.
Everything was smooth sailing. Everything was heading towards happiness.
At least, I felt that way.
Two months had passed since I opened the shop. The number of customers dropped rapidly. Even those who came to admire the pretty interior stopped altogether.
There were many new pretty shops, and people didn’t have a reason to come to this remote place where transportation was not good, so it was only a matter of time.
Something infiltrated the seemingly rose-colored business. At first, I didn’t know what it was. It was when I started talking to the landlord and the book distributor that I found out its identity.
The companion of life, money.
I was severely lacking money. After changing the contract to my name, I could see the thorns beneath the pretty roses.
As soon as I felt the need for money, I stopped like a robot that ran out of fuel. That was when I realized that it wasn’t satisfaction that fed men, but food.
A drop of gray ink known as money fell onto the life I thought had changed. That was enough for me to return to being a gray particle.
The bookstore was a product of labor. Strictly speaking, it was work. However, I had to start taking up part-time jobs in order to maintain that bookstore.
It was quite funny even if I thought about it to myself. What kind of contradiction was this? I was working in order to work.
After my part-time jobs, I would sit down in the empty bookstore and look outside in a daze. I still had no customers. I started to wonder what it was that I was doing.
I heard the news from my friends. Busy with assignments, busy with exams, busy drinking, busy dating… the life that looked monotonous to me once looked to be sparkling more brilliantly than ever.
The life of a brilliantly shining bookstore owner had turned even more grayish than ever when I pulled myself together.
At this point, it made me think like this: Oh, a gray particle would always be gray.
The unfunny situation of having to work in order to run a bookstore without visitors continued for about four months.
Around six months after opening the bookstore, I felt a change in the neighborhood. More people started visiting the unpopulated and quiet neighborhoods. With more visitors, the bookstore naturally received more customers.
I walked around the area looking for the starting point of the change. A bakery opened up in one of the empty stores. It was a place that had become famous through social media.
On one hand, I wondered when such a place came to be, and on another hand, I felt grateful. Thanks to that, I had some customers thanks to them.
As the days passed, more and more people started visiting the neighborhood. Some handicraft workshops that were chased out of a famous street had all come to this place.
A few months later, the neighborhood became famous enough to be introduced on TV, as the livelihood of young business owners. People flocked like a herd of sheep. Thanks to that, the bookstore also enjoyed a boom.
I could more boldly order new books from the person from the book distributor and act more arrogantly in front of independent authors of books.
Rose-colored light was shining once again.
Just like my grandfather’s life, which was like a wave, the waves were coming for me, the son of the Yoo family.
This wave was one that would take me high up into the skies. I proactively promoted the shop on social media and held small events. Numerous people said that the bookstore was decent.
Yes!: I thought.
I managed to ride the wave of opportunity properly.
“Either pull out or I raise the deposit and the monthly rent. Choose one. I’m not negotiating.”
Shit.
I thought the wave would take me high up into the skies, but instead, it drove me into the endless depths of the sea.
* * *
“Sir, please be generous. The business just started getting on track,” Maru said as he looked at the actor in front of him.
He tried his best to convey the complex feelings that Daejoo must be feeling.
“I have already been generous. Look at those other places. They raised the rent a long time ago. I held back in consideration of the old relationship with the hyung-nim that ran the bookstore, but I need to make a living too. Taxes aren’t free.”
“But sir, if you raise it so suddenly like this…”
“If you don’t want to pull out, then try changing your line of business. It’s not like a bookstore even earns that much. Look at the other places. They’re raking in money running cafés.”
The actor playing the role of the landlord clicked his tongue and left the store. Maru pulled his hair out and smacked his head into the table. He slowly breathed in, out, and then in again.
He wanted to vent out his frustrations, but Daejoo was not that kind of person. The only thing he could do was swear at the wall.
“Son of a bitch. He’s so greedy, god dammit.”
He huffed and puffed and looked outside the window. He slowly started walking according to the plan while taking into account the distance between him and the camera.
Being conscious of the camera shooting from behind him, he straightened his back before opening the door powerlessly.
He left and started walking without any energy. He could hear the word ‘cut’ next to him.
“Hyung, that was good, but let’s do that again.”
“You’ve become a full-fledged director, Yoonseok. Good but again. That’s what all directors like to say.”
Maru laughed as he looked at Yoonseok. Two weeks into the shoot, the atmosphere at the set was still pretty good.
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