Click.
The old television turned on.
The black screen was visible across all my vision and all my thoughts.
I couldn’t look away.
I had to watch.
Channel fixed!
For you,
an advertisement
is now
being shown.
A cheerful, old-fashioned orchestral tune began to play.
Then came the black-and-white footage.
Starring: Kim Soleum
A weary young office worker in his late twenties, dressed in a black suit. Sometimes barefaced in the office, filling out documents. Sometimes wearing a bizarre horned mask, narrowly escaping death while being chased through the dangers inside Ghost Stories…
Me.
Are you depressed?
Are you tired?
Are you suffering under exhausting work, verbal abuse, and office politics?
Are you anxious because no one can be trusted, and you never know when you might die?
If so, then you should sit in front of the TV and watch something new and interesting!
The me who had returned to company housing sat blankly in front of the TV, watching the screen.
The children’s cartoon I watched to calm my fear.
But because it was for children, the episodes were short, and they ended quickly.
I sat there for a while with hollow eyes, staring blankly ahead, then went into my room.
And tried to sleep, though sleep would not come.
Were you afraid of the show you were watching coming to an end?
Were you afraid of tomorrow arriving?
Didn’t you want to go back to that painful workplace, one that didn’t suit you, one where every day was nerve-racking and miserable?
Every time your thoughts deepened, it became even more exhausting and frightening, and yet you had no other options, did you?
Did you endure the horror only…