Chapter 1: Author’s Note

My novel, “My Friends All Turned into Girls,” has finally been released today. Above all, I want to thank all my friends for their support and encouragement over the past few months. Tonight, I will be publishing my new book, “The Imperial Daughter’s Path to God-Slaying.” I welcome everyone to come and show their support!

Damn it, I’m launching two books at once! I’m going all out!

Alright, that was my release statement. Goodbye!

Just kidding…

To be honest, I don’t really have much to say in terms of a heartfelt statement. However, since I have this opportunity, I don’t want to make it too short and seem perfunctory.

Besides, discussing the future development of the novel here would be rather dull. Since I’m telling a story, I might as well talk about myself—my own story.

When I was a child, I actually had a bit of a literary inclination. I didn’t particularly enjoy classes; I mostly just slept through them.

However, there were two classes I genuinely loved: physical education and composition. My essays back then were quite good because I loved reading, and my vocabulary far surpassed that of other elementary schoolers.

As everyone knows, when writing essays as a child, the more affected and ornate words you crammed in, the higher your score.

My teachers at the time didn’t focus on narrative quality; they simply saw my flowery, incomprehensible prose and gave me an ‘A.’

I’m quite grateful to that teacher. Perhaps it was those composition books filled with ‘A’s that sparked a considerable interest in writing within me.

After all, I didn’t have many talents back then. Kids, you know, just love being praised, and my meager vanity was only satisfied when my essays were read aloud in front of the class.

Someone once taught me that vanity was a bad thing, but I felt it was alright to praise me a little. After all, I had been scolded my entire childhood, so a few words of commendation felt quite fortunate to me.

My uneventful elementary school life was followed by the middle school entrance exam, and then middle school itself.

At that time, both my parents were abroad, and I had no one to look after me. I was essentially a ball, tossed around by various relatives. Perhaps due to my early experiences, I’ve always struggled with social interaction.

To this day, I’m still not good at it. When I talk to people, I somehow always manage to annoy them, and even I don’t know why.

Back then, I couldn’t hide my emotions. Living in a third-tier city, I embraced the childish bravado of ‘righteousness reaching the clouds.’ The result, as you can imagine, was quite satisfying.

After a few fights, I was spectacularly expelled.

My expulsion was rather thorough. I left with three major demerits, and my grades were poor. The consequences seemed quite severe.

According to my maternal grandmother, no middle school in the entire Northeast region would accept me. I think that statement is debatable, but there was nothing to be done.

The elders were exhausted and couldn’t control me anymore. So, I went abroad to join my parents.

I am twenty years old this year. From the time I first reunited with my parents until now, there have been intermittent struggles and stumbles. The combined time I’ve known my mother and father is almost nine years.

After moving abroad, I lost my friends and the carefree days of before. My parents both worked outside the home.

My mother waited tables, my father worked on construction sites. One came home in the middle of the night, the other stayed at the site.

During those days, when I was home alone, staring blankly, all I could face was a riddled, extremely distorted version of myself.

My unattended childhood, coupled with an extreme aversion to being restrained, and my inherent lack of social skills, led me to develop an array of bizarre bad habits: smoking, drinking, extreme sensitivity, a lack of security, irritability, and an extremely fragile self-esteem.

Some of these I’ve managed to change, but others, even now, I haven’t been able to shake.

I still remember one incident. When I was in my first year of high school in Korea, I got into a fight at school over a very, very trivial matter. I won that fight; I clearly won.

When I looked up, everyone in the classroom was silent, staring at me with expressions as if I were trash.

After the fight, I wrote a self-reflection. After writing it, I went to the restroom for a cigarette, then walked home alone. When I arrived, the house was empty.

I looked at myself in the mirror, and for some reason, I suddenly slapped myself across the face.

One slap wasn’t enough. Then, facing the mirror, I hit myself hard, repeatedly, using both hands, slapping relentlessly, as if my face wasn’t even mine.

I remember both sides of my face swelled up. After I was done, I hugged my knees and cried. I actually hit myself until I cried.

While it seems almost laughable in retrospect, I cried so terribly back then.

I just felt such profound hatred for that version of myself.

Around my first year of high school, largely due to having no friends, I started reading.

At the time, I really disliked reading novels. I’m quite a pragmatic person, so I’d search online: ‘What to do when you always feel empty?’ ‘What to do about constant anxiety?’ ‘What to do about irritability?’

Online, I was recommended book lists: “The Power of Now,” “Controlling Anxiety,” “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind,” “The Willpower Instinct,” “Society is So Treacherous, You Need to Be Strong Inside,” “How to Win Friends and Influence People”… These are the only books I can recall by name without thinking.

Anyway, I was idle then, so I read in class, unable to understand the Korean being spoken on stage. My phone probably held several gigabytes of e-books.

They say that to write a good novel, one should read many successful works on the market, integrate their lessons, and learn their tropes. But honestly, I’ve read very few novels.

For example, I loved “Sword Snow Stride,” “Terror Infinity,” and “Battle Through the Heavens.” Beyond those three, nothing else. I haven’t read any other novels. The books on my phone are all about how to become mentally strong.

For a while, I was obsessed with psychological tests; the feeling of being understood in a single phrase was truly wonderful, and I was inherently a person who longed to be understood.

Later, I discovered the peculiar thing called MBTI. My test result was INTJ. Yet, I am someone who loves to dwell on things and is intensely interested in the unfathomable.

So, I read through some of the MBTI books on the market, such as “Please Understand Me,” “No Need for Mars to Collide with Earth,” and “Psychological Types.”

Eventually, I was no longer irritable, no longer extremely sensitive internally, and no longer magnified negative emotions over trivial matters. I began to become quiet, silent, and started to understand others.

During that time, I developed a strong sense of insight. If someone did something, I could immediately understand what they were thinking. I’m not sure of the principle, but it was a very strange ability.

Coincidentally, there were band activities at school. I played the electronic keyboard well, was considered somewhat handsome, and had a quiet personality.

Soon, people started gravitating towards me daily, and my circle of friends gradually grew. Everything seemed to be slowly improving; more and more people spoke to me.

Boys gathered around me every day, and girls did too. Everyone gathered around me.

And then I developed depression.

This depression stayed with me for half of my high school life. Around my third year of high school, I became incredibly lazy. I was too lazy to get out of bed, too lazy to eat, too lazy to go out and play.

Life felt like stagnant water; I was even too lazy to live. I had done everything. To earn some pocket money, I worked at convenience stores, handed out flyers, waited tables, prepped vegetables in kitchens, worked day labor on construction sites, did logistics work at night, and even ran errands for logistics companies.

I even did despicable things like putting up small advertisements on people’s doors in the middle of the night. In Korea, it seemed I had done every kind of day labor except unclogging sewers.

My life was damn colorful, like colorful plastic bags floating in a foul river.

The stupidest and most wrong thing I did back then was one day, while drinking, I cried. I drunkenly sobbed to a relatively good friend, “Damn it, living is too painful, I want to die.”

My friend didn’t take it seriously, saying, “You’re just lacking love.”

He didn’t take it seriously, but I took it to heart.

I started preparing to fall in love.

My impression on others was always the same: silent, knowledgeable, exceptionally intuitive, and insightful. Of course, these aren’t things I made up; they’re what others said.

I don’t have much of an impression of myself. So, sometimes, when I recall my past actions, I realize more profoundly than others that I was a brain-damaged idiot, as if my brain was filled with swill and just crashed.

At the time, to prepare for dating, I did a lot of research. For example, I read “The Psychology of Love,” “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,” “The Mystery Method,” “Double Your Dating,” and “The Game”… Yes, I even read about PUA, the kind that teaches how to quickly get someone into bed.

It was about using rhetoric to give women fantasies, to make them believe that having fun with you would be exciting. Then, before they even realized what was happening, you’d pull out mercilessly, get out of bed, and leave.

I don’t really want to talk about what happened next.

Before that, I was a virgin who had hopes for love. Simply because I hadn’t experienced it, I was full of longing, feeling that if I fell in love, I wouldn’t be so lonely.

I imagined meeting a woman who understood me. We’d lie in bed together, doing nothing, with sunlight streaming through the curtains, just looking at each other. That would be happiness.

I messed up two girls, both of whom were lovely. One girl was gentle and quiet, always wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a ponytail. She was a university student.

We once went up to a rooftop together, looking at the faint stars in the sky, at Seoul’s quiet, brightly lit city, and at the distant Han River Bridge. She asked me to sing for her.

She didn’t like it when I sang “In Spring,” nor “Sister, Boldly Go Forward.” In the end, I sang “Nanshan South” for her, and she leaned against my shoulder amidst the brightly lit city in the distance.

After we broke up, the gentleness on her face disappeared. Recently, I saw her photos; she was wearing a backless black dress, with long blonde hair, and no longer wore those gold-rimmed glasses.

She had even started smoking, something she used to get angry at me for. In the photos, she looked very sexy, and also very cold.

The second was also a lovely woman. We dated for a week. I went to her place to play some things that men probably love to play. As a pure scumbag, I did everything a scumbag should do, applying what I learned from books with masterful skill.

I remember what she said the day she broke up with me; it was particularly classic and became a widely circulated joke among my friends.

“I want to ask you something: do you like me, or do you like games?”

At the time, I wanted to say I liked her, but I realized that I seemed to fundamentally lack the ability to love anyone, like a dog that had been castrated since birth.

She loved shopping and holding my arm, and even if I had no money and we just wandered the streets, she was quite happy. But I hated crowded places.

Back then, I wasn’t as calm on the surface as I appeared. I just wanted the whole world not to notice me. Every time we went out, she was still eager, while I was utterly exhausted.

I had had enough. Perhaps she deserved someone better, not someone fundamentally incapable of love. I said, “I’m sorry, I like games.”

She turned and left without a moment’s hesitation. My heart felt empty then. I looked at my Diamond III ranking and actually wanted to say, ‘I could teach you to play Riven.’

She was never heard from again.

Later, at an internet cafe, my friends nearly burst out laughing when they heard the story. They said, “You stayed single purely by your own skill.”

So I nodded and said with a smile, “Yeah.”

It was just a release statement, and I’ve rambled on for so many words. Please forgive me.

I am twenty years old this year.

I feel like an old person recovering from a serious illness, having just difficultly overcome the sickness, with no time to catch my breath before I must continue to confront the rest of my life.

After a period of struggle, I finally, with great difficulty, accepted myself. My heart began to truly find peace, and it seems the road ahead is still long.

The long road stretches ahead; young man, keep moving forward.

‘Keep moving forward’—I had that phrase tattooed on my arm.

Why did I write all of this?

Keep fighting, everyone!

My new book, “The Retired Wargod’s Wandering Life,” please come and show your support! I beg of you!

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