NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 12
The hospital life that followed was nothing special. With only a smartphone to keep me occupied, I naturally found myself immersed in it. At first, I searched for articles about myself. It seemed that I had garnered quite a bit of attention not too long ago, as many articles had been published, but most of them did not stray far from the first article Ham Yejin had shown me.
If there was anything different, it was the articles that interviewed classmates who had attended school with me at the same time. Most of the interviews were filled with content criticizing me. They called me arrogant and selfish, said I casually brought up unpleasant topics, claimed I acted as though I hated women, and that I insulted people excessively during evaluations—basically, that sort of thing.
There were also articles concerning my novel.
They wrote about my debut work and representative piece, “The Womb of a Boy.”
Allow me to take a moment to discuss “The Womb of a Boy.”
“The Womb of a Boy” tells the story of a boy who suffers ongoing abuse from his mother and grows up meeting various women. It is not a warm story about healing wounds. The boy continues to be hurt while he meets women, advancing through life while carrying his wounds.
What the boy yearned for was the warm embrace of his mother’s arms. However, the women demanded various things from him—money, love, sex. The moment the boy could not satisfy the women, he was abandoned by them.
Thus, the boy comes to a realization. What he truly needed was not his mother’s womb. No matter how much he craved it, it could never be filled. Instead of filling himself, he decides to empty himself. He empties his greed, his desires, his lust, and his material wants. And then the boy meets his mother.
After abandoning the boy, his mother achieved success. She met a kind and diligent husband. Only then did she realize her sins. She recognized that the abuse she inflicted on the boy was terrible. The new husband was a remarkably kind and understanding person, willing to embrace even the child of his wife’s ex-husband. In order to atone for her mistakes, the mother seeks out the boy and finds him.
But it was too late. The boy had already emptied himself so much that what remained was no longer a boy. He was no longer a child who needed his mother. He leaves the mother, who is crying and apologizing, and goes to find the women he had met.
The women had changed. Some apologized to the boy, while others blamed him. The boy realizes again that they were all his mother. Though the women had all grown up, the boy, having emptied everything within him, remained a boy for life. He had no desires left to grow any further.
He couldn’t even feel jealousy toward them. He had discarded that too. Eventually, the boy decides to carve open his abdomen and create a womb inside. Abandoned by everyone, the boy embraces himself. He curls up like a fetus and waits slowly for death.
It was a piece I wrote as if I were squeezing out the words I had been contemplating since my university days. “The Womb of a Boy” had won the grand prize in a rather plausible publisher’s contest, allowing me to debut successfully. The publication was also successful. I had even briefly made it onto the bestseller list.
At that time, I had received quite a bit of attention from both the literary world and the public. Although saying “the public” only refers to the handful of people who read modern literature.
Anyway, it seemed that the interest from back then was now working as poison against me.
A reporter pointed out the misogynistic tendencies in my novel while mentioning it. Ha, it was ridiculous. I never called it misogyny.
It was rightful hatred.
If they were to be considered offenders, their first sin would be being born as women. The journalist’s name certainly appeared to be feminine. Was she writing such an article because her intelligence was lacking?
Trying to suppress my displeasure, I scrolled to the end of the article and found this written:
“Did the female-hating novelist, who wrote about a boy embracing his womb, receive divine punishment, getting sick and turning into the woman she despised? It’s truly laughable to see her practicing what she writes.”
For a moment, I felt like throwing my smartphone, but I held back. I was already in a tight financial situation and didn’t want to add the expense of a new smartphone on top of that.
Divine punishment? Divine punishment? That was nothing short of a ridiculous word. If a god truly existed, they wouldn’t have made me like this in the first place. How could there be a god in a world with facilities like orphanages? My very existence was proof that there was no god in this world.
Of course, it was funny for me to say such things, considering that not long ago, I was cursing gods and begging for help. But right now, all I wanted was to deny the existence of any deity.
After that, I became paranoid, searching for anything related to myself. They call it “ego-surfing.” I even logged into the social media platforms I knew to search.
The online world was more lowly and disgusting than I had imagined.
As I delved deeper, I found articles that sexually harassed me as if it were the norm, filled with all kinds of insults and belittlements. Half of them I couldn’t even understand, so I ended up searching for explanations, which were shockingly horrific.
“Disgusting 한남 (Han-nam) thinking about wearing a vagina and selectively mimicking women is gross…. Haha.”
“This bottom 한남 is trying to act like a woman while crawling on the floor; how ridiculous.”
“I was in the same department as this 한남, and he was quite famous. Guess he was an orphan abandoned by his creator; that’s probably why he only writes hateful articles against women. He must act like this since he resembles his father, right? Haha.”
“How funny! These parasites should never have been born! ^^”
“Agree.22222222”
“Agree.33333333333”
“Wow, I used to really like this author, but he was a 한남 after all… I really hate saying such things, but this is so disgusting and disappointing; I probably won’t read his books again.”
The content was all chillingly lowbrow and disgusting, but what was most terrible were the comments devaluing my novels as poorly written.
Starting from mocking me for getting what I wanted with “The Womb of a Boy” to calling my work a piece of firewood crafted from my personal experiences, stories about being abandoned by my parents were everywhere.
“Wow, ‘The Womb of a Boy’? Just the title is disgusting! Do you envy having nothing?”
“Don’t say too much; being abandoned by your mother is just a personal experience; you’ll probably die soon.”
“If you write stuff like this, even I could be abandoned like a 한남 parasite!”
“I read this, and it’s just firewood. Don’t bother thinking of reading it because it’ll attract the wrong kind of attention.”
“This piece (calling it that is already too generous) is filled with delusions and victim mentality from start to finish; I can’t understand how it received any acclaim; this is exactly what Korea is like!”
Stop it, this story is not something people like you can freely judge.
More terrifying than being criticized personally was seeing my work criticized. Most of those saying such things had probably never read my work. But that meant that among them, there were indeed people who had read my books.
The negation of my novels was the negation of my life.
I had already had the biggest thing in my life negated, and if the remaining ones were denied, I would have nothing left.
Continuing to search myself, I found numerous insults aimed at my illness as well.
“Fucking 한남s crying over being castrated, what about being a woman and whining? This rare disease is disgusting, like Korea!”
“Aren’t you just a fucking 트젠 (transgender)? Why should we treat the 한남 트젠 as a woman? I found out that there are all sorts of identity laundering; does the state really support this with my taxes?”
“Haha, you must be happy to have turned into the woman you despised so much.”
Switching to a different site, sexual harassment and inexplicable comments increased.
“Wow, is this guy now a pretty girl? I’m so fucking jealous!”
“My picture is blurry, but did my height shrink a lot? It’s just so fucking cute.”
“LOL seriously.”
“Wait a minute!!! The opponent is now a woman!!!! Everyone, choose your words carefully from now on!”
“Did this guy get TS’ed? Shouldn’t we strip him of human rights? That’s common sense.”
“He’ll be on a stream soon.”
“In a few years, he’ll probably catch a man and announce wedding news, LOL.”
“Hey, fucking homosexuals! They were originally women, so aren’t you planning to protest against that?”
“Come here, 언냐 (unni) LOL.”
“Yeah, I’ll fuck that TS pretty girl; you’re a ujeong-nyun (loser)!”
It felt like I had searched half of the internet in a single day. There were no allies for me. It seemed that the whole world had turned against me. Even this story had spread quite widely. And my head was now completely white.
What this meant was that the moment I stepped outside, everyone would know who I was. A chill ran down my spine. Would I be able to live properly in this country from now on?
No, perhaps I was thinking too negatively too soon. However, after spending the whole day absorbing such writings, I couldn’t help but think like that. Constantly reading negative comments transforms one’s outlook negatively.
I set my smartphone down.
I decided that as soon as I went outside, I would get my hair dyed first. Since Ham Yejin had mentioned dyeing, it should be manageable.
However, the next day’s visit from the doctor shattered my thoughts.
“Here are the precautions you need to observe after being discharged.”
The precautions handed to me by the doctor weren’t as plentiful as I expected. To put it simply, they were only about two pages long? There was nothing particularly special. Just minor notes warning that my body would probably be prone to various minor ailments due to being weaker than expected.
However, after reading the last sentence, I asked the doctor.
“Excuse me, what does it mean that it says not to dye my hair?”
“Hair dye is more toxic than you might think. You might be fine several years later when your body stabilizes, but if you dye your hair now, you could suffer from severe allergies.”
“But the National Intelligence Service said dyeing was possible…!”
“Well, up until now in Korea, cases have been possible, but your condition is quite bad, so you shouldn’t do it.”
“Then are you telling me to walk around with everyone in the country knowing about me with this hair color?”
“Well, for the time being… it could be covered with a wig or a hat. There is the option of shaving your head completely, too.”
More stress piled on. Yes, as soon as I step outside, I should go to the hair salon and cut this hair. There was nothing good about keeping this kind of hair. But the doctor’s following words once again plunged me into despair.
“Even if you shave your head, given your current condition, your hair will likely grow back quickly. Since you’ve already grown more than 10 CM since being hospitalized, it seems to be due to hormonal imbalances, but there is currently no solution for that either.”
“What… did you say?”