The curse of ■■: 1. the soldier

[something I forgot to say: this essay is also an essay about how far a person can go for their loved ones. it is also how I wish to appreciate this one chatacter.]

Yoo Jongyuk (yjh), the protagonist, the supreme king, the soldier, the puppett of the oldest dream; a man written like an art critic in front of perfection, something that humans can't replicate but yet someone managed to; someone as handsome just as he is strong; a simple incarntion bound to bend the flow of star stream and incite fear in the souls of nebulas. Cold hearted but hot headed, aloof, cruel and aggressive. How does a man like this fall in the arms of depression? Stubborn as he is, I found it absurd to think he would kill himself so many times.

Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse (twsa) is the story of a man that worked as a pro gamer just to end up to survive a messed up Seoul by the hands of dokkaebis and their pursuit of a legendary story. He, as the protagonist, is bound to save the world; that's the role of the protagonist in every story: the charming prince fighting the evil dragon, the one destined to win the war and become the next king, a man that decided to change for the better in the end finds the path he always dreamed of; that's how stories are, and yjh is bound to that destiny from the second Seoul came down to destruction.

Yjh though was just a simple man: he was no incarnation, he was a young man making a living out of videogames, has a yonger sister he cares for and lived detached from his parents. He wasn't ready for that burden. He was no protagonist until that day, on that subway. And yet the protagonist can't die before of the good ending, even if he isn't good enough to survive in a ruined world, yjh had to survive.

That's when a blessing came down to save him forever: his mysterious constellation giving quietly aid to his undying will to survive regardless of the attempts he needed to complete. Immortality was his blessing. That same blessing then turned against him. Just... how?? How does a man so strong willed break?

How many times does a man need to die before finally give up and rest in the meaningless void we call "paradise"? How much a man can endure death before reaching his very last? How much does it take to break a man?

Immortality: such a beatiful desire yet so greedy and cursed evil. Kids learn how from books how humans turned into vampires turn too detached to their humanity to feel anything, to feel the sense of good or the morals of a greater good, to care of the consequence of a evil deed or the warmth of a community; kids learn of fated men trapped in infinite time loops and fall mad; Kim Dokja (kdj) learned of the evil truth of regressing.

The novel he read for ten years of his life was the story of a man that discovered the evil the world for one-thousand, eight-hundred and sixty-three "rounds". The story of a man that had to live the cruelty of the world the dokkaebis made for him for one-thousand, eight-hundred and sixty-three times. The story of yjh died the second a dokkaebi appeared in that subway; Twsa is the story of a cursed man forced to shape himself into a protagonist, because only a protagonist can save the world.

And so he did. He did for so long, for so many years and so many rounds; he died and came back from the very beginning and start again, with new combinations, new methods, new tricks, new skills coming from his past attempts. How long did it take to start breaking yjh? Three rounds and you could aready see the first few cracks. Three rounds were enough to question the meaning of his life during the fourth scenario, inside the cinema dungeon. Yjh grew to have just a few weaknesses: poisoning, his friends and family and psychological manipulation. Kdj also mentions how frequently he killed himself by just getting a little bewitched.

That's when I found out yjh was a miserable man.

[The reason I decided to write this very long essay was to write down all the shape of pain yjh had to suffer for the very least, how he endured it, how he lived forward it and how he remained human even after so many rounds.]

For all we know, yjh of the 3rd round lived four attempts, since there's a round 0 too. Fear and Hunger is the best way I'm able to describe, so imagine: it's like a videogame, the only thing is that you have this one change to get it all perfectly right; every single choice you make can turn against you and chage the course of time you remembered from the last time you' ve tried.

Yjh dies during the round 0 and finds out he can regress back in time.

"I can try again. This time I will do better."

Then in his 1st round he dashes through the familiar scenarios. He meets again the people he knew the name but none of them knew how deeply bound they were in that other time. Probably he's traumatised and does his best not to let them die, he gives them feedbacks and says just the right words, the same words they loved the last time. He keeps to himself how painful it is to ignore he was grieving just a while ago. He then sees new scenarios and new people and fights with them too.

"Perhaps this time I'll-"

But he fails as a protagonist again. So he wakes up in the same subway again.

"I need to be stronger."

He looks at the familiar faces again. He knows a few things his allies enjoy even if they don't know him at all. So introduces himself again but just briefly.

"There's no time to waste."

This time he'll try to run the scenarios faster, he looks for hidden treasures and beheads mercilessly the enemies in front of him. Yjh finally begins to get recognised by the constellations watching and they begin to question the fairness of it all.

"Something is not right... this is way different from the other round."

And so at some point he will die again. It is implied that this time he lost his lover, Lee Seolhwa (lsw), their child and most probably many if not all of his allies. One by one. At some point one death seem similar to a prevoius one, yjh would think that all those efforts were to waste if he failed to protect them. Once he dies again death feels a bit more of a nuissance.

"This time I'll fight alone."

This is not living anymore and it isn't surviving either. Even if he knew too well what meant regressing one more time, yjh did it again, and again, for countless of times he fought, he suffered and died again.

At some point he gave up on becoming the hero and focursed on mundane things, like getting better at cooking or training in the murim world. He focused each round on one specific thing to perfect and then moved to another regression. Just like vampires he began turning detached from his humanity and grew cruel: he killed innocents made his path through brute violence, in the 46th scenario he killed his companion and abbandoned her. Just like the men trapped in those same loops, he repeats the same steps again and again, with less mistakes, less time wasted, less care for his physical damage.

"If I die now I'll just repeat it again but better."

Tens of regressions turned in hundreds of attempts. He killed himself and tried again, he stopped waiting for his own death, he pursued it himself.

"Again." and so he'll die betrayed by Anna Croft (ann)

"Again." and he gets tricked by Asmodeus.

"I'll kill all constellations, one by one." but he dies again.

What is the meaning of life if you just keep on dying? Ann also gave up to find out the meaning of life. Suddenly those next rounds the prophet didn't seem to bother him again. Finally he was lonely and so he completely falls too. For many other long rounds he will continue on walking through hose rounds with apathy. If he dies, he'll revive again. Friends will die again and enemies will fall too, without finding ever the ending of the scenarios.

The main scenarios are flexible on the time they last: the scenario fo disasters lasted months while the first one was simply for about 10 mintues, so imagine what it means to die for so many times? how many years has yjh lived?

this is the curse of the oldest dream.