Chapter 54: The Meaning of Life
When the meaning of life begins to fade, humans feel emptiness and often find themselves thinking about depressing things.
Rather than recalling happy memories, they revisit the miseries of the past and fall into regret. As this repeats, they sink into self-loathing and guilt, degrading themselves until they finally come to harm themselves.
And the end of that line of choices is either survival—or death.
Some, standing at the edge of that extreme, manage to reclaim meaning and turn back. Others lose it entirely, are betrayed at the final moment, and give up on life.
Then what about Ha Giyeon? Before he returned, was he so unhappy that he felt driven out by his family, so miserable that he wanted to die?
There had been a time when he seriously considered death in his gosiwon. He’d sat, clutching his head, unable to believe that his parents had truly abandoned him, and regretted ever having been born. He wondered if dying might let him forget everything.
That ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ was the first time he dunked his face into a basin filled with water. Not knowing how to die properly, he’d simply chosen to block his breathing however he could.
No air to breathe, water rushing in. As he sank into it, all his miserable memories seemed to dissolve.
They say, when death approaches, you find peace.
It wasn’t true.
Both miserable memories—and happy ones—disappear. Nothing remains. In that emptiness, the only thought left is a desperate desire to live.
Remembering that sensation, Ha Giyeon had vowed to join the army. And now, that sensation returned to him once again.