BAEK KYUNG Just A Human Being

Self-Aware

It all started to piece together. Every page of "Secret" he turned was another stab to his now awaken consciousness. He finally understood that weird feeling nagging at him every day, all day long: it was his suppressed consciousness trying to tell him the world he lived in made no sense. For so long, he had been wondering if he was losing his mind. If everything really was what he thought it was. If he was who he thought he was. All the gaps in his memory, the sudden changes in his emotions, finding himself doing things he didn't really want to do, not being able to move like he wanted to during 'stage'...it was all because he was a Manwa character. DanOh, Dowha and Haru had been talking about a 'writer', 'changing stage', 'shadow', 'character', 'awareness'. Now he could finally understand them. Baek Kyung was a Manwa character. And not the protagonist at that, just a stupid supporting character that added more fillers to the main story to make the comic book long enough.

Once he became a self aware, unsurprisingly he was very mad. His feelings were all over the place. He'd been forced to fit the mould of the bad boy character the male protagonist hanged out with. He was always made with a permanent scowl on his face, always arrogant and rude towards people, constantly losing his temper, breaking women's hearts right and left, having band aids on his face from being abused by his father. How cliche.

His whole life was a set-up as DanOh and Dowha had been telling him: the supporting character to the protagonists of a very, very cliche romance manga. He was furious with the writer who played God with his life and made him suffer unforgivable things. He'd been forced to watch his mother die in front of his own eyes, forced to constantly get beat up by his father and not being able to do a thing for fear of abandonment, forced to reject and humiliate DanOh, the only person he truly cared about. He was hurt beyond repair. All for what? It made no sense: he had been living a destructive cycle for so long. All his life he'd been doing and feeling things that were decided by a writer that cared nothing for what happened to him in the end. The rage and betrayal he felt were crippling. A sense of hopelessness filled his heart. His back hit the bookshelf, he slid down on it and sat on the floor against the shelf. He shut his eyes 'Why did you do this to me?' he asked to whoever was listening.

Now that DanOh was self aware, he realised, she had been getting back at him for all the times he had hurt her with his cruel words. She hated him and she made sure he knew just how much. She looked at him the way she looked at at the tv screen in her hospital room: totally bored and eyes void of any excitement, she talked to him like she wanted to be anywhere but near him, she cared about his existence as much as she cared about a trash bag's. That deeply hurt him, not that he would ever admit being that vulnerable. The saddest thing was he understood her. She had every right to hurt him, he deserved all that and worse. Yet, he secretly hoped that when she was satisfied with how much she had hurt him back, that she'd come back to him.

But as the days went on, she only broke his heart more and more. Rejecting to even speak to him after "stage" ended. Hanging out with Haru all day long and it looked like she was actually happier with Haru. There was nothing that hurt Baek Kyung more than feeling rejected by the only person that had always loved him. As a protective mechanism, he shut out feeling rejected. He desperately wanted everything to go back to normal. He had no one without her. So, even though DanOh rejected him, again and again, just like he had done to her, he fought to get her back. This time, he had to fight for their relationship. Because, if even Eun DanOh turned her back on him, what did he have left to live for?

At the beginning the shadows felt like a blessing. He was finally free. Free from his disgusting money hungry father, free from the burden of all the intense pain he was holding in his heart, free from his awful character set up and finally free to pursue the girl he loved.