Ugly.
How many times in a life does a person get told that?
Normally, never.
......The problem is that I am not normal.
I am ugly.
So several times a day — no, dozens of times a day — I get to taste every humiliation the ugly are heir to.
Today is no exception.
Weekend afternoon, inside a cafe, a table booked for a group project in a university elective.
Across from me sits a girl from the year below me, my hoobae.
"Research is going to be the important part for this art history class. There really isn't much material on Pygmalion."
The topic of the assignment is Pygmalion.
The story of a sculptor who fell in love with the statue he carved.
-Pygmalion, a sculptor of Cyprus, looks upon the perfect woman he has carved and falls in love with her. At this the goddess of beauty breathes life into the statue and makes her a living person, and Pygmalion marries her.
My hoobae tilted her head.
"Honestly, I don't really get it. However much she's his ideal type, can you actually fall in love with a statue?"
I didn't bother answering.
Ordinary people fall in love with idols and 2D anime characters all the time.
What would make Pygmalion any different?
While I was chewing over this and that, whispering started up beside us.
"Hey. Look at her face. Not bad, right? Should I go get her number?"
Two men at the table diagonal from us, and where their eyes are pointed is our table.
"Looks like she's got a boyfriend. There's a guy sitting right across from her."
"You think that's a boyfriend?"
"Two of them out alone on a weekend? That's usually a boyfriend."
"That's because you haven't seen his face. No way that's a boyfriend."
"Come on, how bad can he possibly be......"
A man craned his head into my field of vision.
I considered meeting his eyes, then pretended not to notice.
"Fuck. What is that face?"
"Right?"
"Yeah, okay. That is not a boyfriend's mug."
"So when the girl's on her own, you'll go ask for her number?"
"What are you waiting for? Just walk over and ask. He isn't the boyfriend anyway, so there's nothing to feel bad about."
Voices pitched to sit right at the edge of hearing. Emboldened, the man rose from his chair and started toward us.
My hoobae must have heard them too, because she smiled with a troubled look.
"Sunbae. Should we call it here for today?"
"Yeah. Let's."
This is what real ugliness is.
I do nobody any harm. I only sit there. And still every insult in the world lands on me.
'......What a life.'
Maybe I shouldn't have suggested a cafe. I should have worn a mask.
Smiling bitterly, I pushed the cafe door open.
Jingle.
A clear little bell saw me out. My feet feel heavier than usual today.
***
I cinched my hood tight in case anyone might see me, and came home.
Creak—.
I opened the door, and the ones who welcomed me back were handsome men and beautiful women.
Figures shaped like people, to be precise.
I walked past the figures filling every inch of the living room and went into my workroom.
I peeled the hood off my face and threw it aside, and breathing came easier.
"Time to work."
My name is Seo Gang-woo. Twenty-nine years old.
I'm a late-starting university student in my final semester, but my real job is figure artist.
Making figures started out as a hobby.
There was an actor I liked, and I got so deep into a character he had thrown himself into that I built the character as a figure.
It looked good even to me, so I posted photos on an internet community, and......
'The response blew up.'
Skin with the texture of real skin, hyperrealism carried all the way down to the eyelashes.
Comments asking for my email piled up, and the second I posted an address, private commissions poured in.
That was only four years ago.
I covered my tuition and my living expenses on figures alone.
These days they know my name overseas too.
Didn't a review video of one of my figures pass ten million views a while back? Anyway, I'm good enough to take some private pride in it.
'If the god who shaped me had half the hands I do......'
When I look at the beautiful faces I carved out myself, my own face in the mirror feels strange all over again.
Still, I'm satisfied enough, I suppose.
How many jobs are there where you never have to meet a person?
And I like working over beautiful faces.
Handsome, lovely characters.
Beings unlike me, born to be loved by people.
The angle of an eyebrow that creases when a character smiles, the pose and the props from one particular scene, right down to the line that makes your chest boil.
All of it becomes my inspiration and prods my imagination.
Best of all, when I'm making a figure, I can look into a person's eyes without having to look away.
I observe in proportion to how much I've been despised, and I love in proportion to how much I've been shut out.
Pygmalion probably felt something close to this.
'They said a lot of the craftsmen of ancient Rome were called ugly men.'
Men too frail to go to war, or with some defect of the body.
Pygmalion, too, was probably despised the way I was.
Sculpture must have been his refuge.
Something more handsome, something more beautiful.
He would have longed for what he did not have himself.
That is a feeling any person carries.
Pygmalion had it, and I have it.
If there's a difference between him and me, it's this.
He tried to sculpt his ideal type. I am shaping my ideal.
"I might as well finish today's work."
The piece I'm making now is a slightly unusual private commission.
[Sender: GOD Geumson]
[Sent: 2032/12/25]
[Reference: Please make me an incredibly handsome man. A man as handsome as the artist can possibly imagine. And if you can, make him the way the artist himself would want to look!]
[Size: 1/6 scale]
[Term: within 180 days of acceptance]
[Fee: 10,000,000 won.]
A commission that came in last Christmas. Four months ago already.
The payment is a full ten million won, so it has to be made well. Really, really well.
"Incredibly handsome, he says......"
From the 3D modeling to the texture of the skin, the life in the eyes, every strand of hair — I breathed my soul into all of it.
If the house caught fire and I could only carry one figure out with me, I would pick this one without a second's hesitation.
The airbrush work is done, the paint is finished, and I'm on the last steps now.
'Should I add more gloss to the skin? No. It's exactly right as it is.'
A nose bridge sharp as marble cut with precision, deep clear eyes, broad shoulders and a narrow waist, legs of perfect proportion, and dimples set just barely in.
The body came out well too, and I even gave him a clean line of abdominal muscle.
A face that would carry a life along a paved road just by breathing — and it stands a step away from finished.
"There."
Even a god might fall in love, looking at this shape.
"That fellow really is good-looking."
I try on a little of what Pygmalion must have felt.
What would it be like, living with a face like that? Life would be maddeningly easy.
"I wish your face were my face, kid."
I gave the chest of the figure I'd spent months on a light tap.
I've grown as attached as anyone could, but it was made on commission, so tomorrow I have to send it off.
"I'll pack you in plenty of cushioning and get you there safe. Find yourself a good owner."
My eyelids ached. It was time to sleep.
***
A very old memory surfaces.
I was ten, maybe, and I went to the market with my mother.
There was a hotteok stall filling the whole market aisle with a sweet smell, and
"Hey! What do you think you're doing, touching that with your dirty hands?"
I got cursed out for standing in front of the stall and looking.
"I didn't touch it."
"Your spit'll get on it. Move back."
"I didn't even open my mouth......"
"Look at the state of you, and the mouth on you, honestly. If you're not buying, get lost!"
I remember being genuinely frightened of that hotteok woman and the way she screamed.
......And yet.
"Aigo~ aren't you precious. Our little angel. Did you come to buy hotteok?"
That same hotteok woman is standing in front of me right now.
Not with the venomous face in my memory, but with the kindest, warmest smile in the world.
Heat is coming through my palm.
A hotteok held in a sheet of coated paper. Sugar syrup has started leaking out under the grip of my hand.
"This one's free from auntie. Because our little one is so pretty. Aigoo, look at those chubby cheeks. So pretty."
What is happening? The world has gotten enormous.
The hotteok woman keeps talking to me.
"What's your name, little one?"
"Gang-woo. Seo Gang-woo."
"Gang-woo? Handsome face, handsome name too! Anything else you like besides hotteok? Should auntie scoop you a cup of fish cake broth? What can I give you that our Gang-woo would like? Hmm?"
I have no idea what is going on.
The only certain thing is that hotteok, which I couldn't even get a look at back then, is in my hand now.
I couldn't tell dream from waking, so I took a bite.
'Sweet.'
Sweet enough to ache in my teeth.
A taste this vivid means it isn't a dream.
That was when.
I catch sight of the mirror hanging on the hotteok stall's post, and the calendar next to it.
[2010 / December]
I have regressed.
"......What is this?"
Wearing the boyhood face of the figure I made with my own hands.