I know the truth of life.
And I’m a high school student.
So I guess you could say I’m a high school student who knows the truth of life.
Someone might scoff—“What truth could a snot-nosed kid possibly know?”—but unfortunately, it’s true.
I wasn’t dirt poor. I wasn’t some pitiful kid who grew up abused.
I’m just an ordinary person, raised with ordinary love by ordinary parents.
That’s me.
The reason why I, an ordinary person and an ordinary high school student, came to understand life’s truths earlier than most…
is because, despite all that, I was deeply, relentlessly unhappy.
My life gave me the solid fence called family.
And inside that warm fence, I grew into an ordinary person.
But the fence I believed would never break—broke.
The love I thought would never waver—vanished.
I was living an ordinary life, but I ended up alone faster than everyone else.
So maybe—just maybe—you can believe me when I talk about the truth of life.
I lost a lot.
And through those losses, I learned.
First: The world is sometimes ugly, and sometimes beautiful.
To Plato, life was a stage of creation and destruction.
No one is forever beautiful, no country forever just.
That’s probably why he dreamed of the unchanging world of Ideals instead of this fleeting life.
But I believe life is meaningful because it’s fleeting.
Because happiness and misery constantly trade places.
Even if life is fucking shitty now, this particular brand of shittiness will end.
Happiness and pain—they're both just moments.
Plato didn’t get it.
That everything ends isn’t life’s tragedy—
It’s life’s mercy.
He should’ve sung of the greatness of endurance, not of eternal, perfect Forms.
Because if you hold on long enough,
There will come a time when you're glad you're still here.
Second: There's a mantra in life—three months.
Whenever life fucks me over, I think: three months.
No matter how bad it gets—
If you hold out for three months, things get bearable.
No, there’s no magic at the end.
But if you survive long enough,
There comes a moment when you just… stop caring.
So I whisper “three” to myself.
Three months.
Let’s get through this and see what happens.
Wounds heal.
Scars form.
And if things still feel like shit after that?
Then I can just die.
Third: No one gets to take away my dignity.
That’s why I’m still a person of value.
Even if someone spits in my face, mocks me—it doesn’t matter.
My worth doesn’t exist in other people’s eyes.
It’s something only I can know.
Something I prove only by living.
So I looked at the people in front of me—straight in the eyes.
Whatever they were feeling—
Disgust. Pity. Maybe guilt—
None of it could belittle me.
I sat up straight.
Don’t shrink.
Stay proud.
This shit isn’t even worth three months.
It’ll pass.
Life is sometimes a gift.
And sometimes, it’s just fucking hell.
I kept repeating the mantra to myself as I slowly opened my mouth.
“I didn’t molest Kim Shinju.”