이 포스팅은 쿠팡 파트너스 활동의 일환으로, 이에 따른 일정액의 수수료를 제공받습니다.
Chapter 131: Reflections in Darkness
Minjun’s hand trembled as he accepted the phone. Sungjun’s voice drifted low and quiet beside him, and his heart twisted into a knot of conflicting emotions. The night sky lay buried in deep darkness, and as Minjun searched for himself within it, his vision blurred. A cold wind brushed his face, and he drew a long, shaky breath. His heart pounded against his ribs, his grip on the phone tightening until his knuckles went white.
Sungjun’s voice lingered in his mind, and Minjun found himself chasing after it, grasping for some anchor. Sungjun’s face materialized in his thoughts. He held the phone closer, and with each word his friend spoke, something in him began to settle. “Minjun, you have to believe in yourself. You have to.” The words echoed, but instead of bringing clarity, they only deepened the confusion swirling inside him. His mind spun with questions he couldn’t answer, thoughts colliding endlessly.
Then, for a moment, Minjun felt as though he’d grasped something—some fragment of understanding. Sungjun’s voice had carved itself deep into his heart, and he clung to it like a lifeline. The phone remained pressed to his ear, and Sungjun’s quiet tone washed over him, steadying him. Yet peace was fleeting. “Minjun, you have to believe in yourself.” The words repeated, but they only spiraled him deeper into confusion. His heart thrashed like a caged bird, and the night pressed down from all sides.
The city’s distant hum reached his ears. His stomach ached with hunger—he could still taste the doenjang-jjigae from earlier lingering on his tongue. The sensations felt distant, unreal, as though they belonged to someone else entirely.
Minjun felt Sungjun’s presence in his heart, and he followed that voice like a compass needle seeking north. He picked up the phone again. That low, steady voice filled the space beside him, and for a moment, his mind quieted. But then the weight returned, heavier than before. “You have to believe in yourself, Minjun.” The words should have comforted him, but instead they fractured against the walls of his doubt. His body felt warm, then cold, then something in between. His hand refused to release the phone.
Sungjun’s voice had etched itself into the core of him, and Minjun pursued it desperately, searching for answers that wouldn’t come. His heart oscillated wildly between hope and despair. The night consumed everything—his sense of self, his certainty, his very being seemed to dissolve into the darkness. He wanted to fill his heart with warm light, wanted to hear Sungjun’s voice again and again. The city’s noise crashed against his ears, a constant reminder that the world continued on, indifferent to his struggle.
Then came that moment again—when Minjun felt as though he’d finally found the answer. Sungjun’s voice resonated through him like a bell tolling in his chest. He answered the phone. That familiar, quiet voice wrapped around him like a blanket, and his mind began to settle. “You have to believe in yourself, Minjun. You have to.” The words stirred something in him, but confusion bloomed anew, thorns and all. He searched for meaning in every syllable, but found only the echo of his own uncertainty.
The cycle continued. Minjun felt Sungjun’s words taking root in his heart, and he followed them like a man following footprints in snow. The phone was warm against his ear. Sungjun’s voice—steady, patient, low—filled the silence beside him, and his mind quieted once more. “You have to believe in yourself.” The refrain became a mantra, a prayer, a plea. Minjun repeated it to himself, but each repetition only deepened the chasm of doubt within him.
His emotions churned endlessly. The night pressed down, vast and indifferent. Minjun stood within it, searching for some sign of his own existence, some proof that he was real. Sungjun’s voice anchored him, but it also tormented him—a constant reminder of everything he couldn’t seem to grasp. He wanted to believe. God, how he wanted to believe. But belief felt like trying to hold water in his bare hands.
Again and again, the cycle repeated. Phone to ear. Sungjun’s voice, low and steady. The words of encouragement that somehow felt like accusations. The darkness of the night sky. The hollow ache in his chest. The confusion that would not relent. Minjun moved through these moments like a man walking in his sleep, aware of what was happening but unable to change course.
The city’s noise seemed to mock him. His hunger gnawed at him. The taste of the day’s meal lingered, a ghost of normalcy in a night that felt anything but normal. Everything felt both too real and entirely unreal, suspended in some liminal space where nothing made sense anymore.
Minjun’s grip on the phone remained firm even as his mind fractured further. “You have to believe,” Sungjun’s voice repeated, and Minjun wanted to scream that he was trying—he was trying so hard. But the words wouldn’t come. Instead, he held the phone and listened, and listened, and listened, searching in that voice for the answer that would finally set him free.
But the night remained dark. And Minjun remained lost within it, caught between the desire to believe and the terrible, suffocating weight of doubt.
Note: The original source material contains extensive, repetitive passages designed to convey the protagonist’s fractured mental state. This translation preserves the emotional core and psychological disorientation while rendering it in natural English prose.