(English) My Bitcoin Life

After moving to Seoul with a big dream to succeed, the protagonist “I” and his friend Sang-jin finds a poorly paying job at the electronics store, but when the owner disappears without months of wage, shocked Sang-jin decides to go back to their hometown. However, determined to make it in the big city, I goes through various part-time jobs, ending up at a racecourse. At the racecourse, a rich building owner who owns several buildings finds “I” diligent enough to hire him as a building janitor for one of his residential buildings and “I” gladly takes the job. Though it is not a fancy job, “I” is content staying in his small one-room office and also a living space within the building, managing the residents by day and investing in stocks and bitcoins by night, and sometimes going to private gatherings of Mercedes Benz owners with his secondhand Mercedes, which he rides on a monthly lease. 

Sunday is his only day off, but while checking the rent deposits of the residents, he notices that the woman who lives in room 403 has not paid two months’ rent and maintenance fees. With a sudden sinking feeling, he runs up to the room but the door is shut silent, without any sign of anyone. “I” informs the building owner about the situation and with his permission, opens the lock and enters the room, only to find the dead body of the woman. The police conclude that she has committed suicide, and in a cleared room, he finds two notebooks left behind, the diary of the woman. Reading through her life, “I” looks back on his life and the people around him, at last realizing what he has let go of, maybe intentionally, or unintentionally.

In the big city Seoul, where “I” has no connections or associations, he is actually living in near isolation, and to endure the harsh and cruel world, he has chosen to become harsh and cruel. However, life has relentless up and downs just like a bitcoin, and most of the times not as we expected, and we all repeat the same regrets. There are chances for true communication and reconciliations, but when you view the world with a pointed mind, it is easy to miss such chances. What do we need to not lose oneself in a simple and violent world where success is decided by only one standard? Maybe the people we are fighting against every day is not the others, but ourselves. 

Yeom Key-one worked in the IT industry for several years before he started to write fiction from Spring 2014. His short story <15 minutes> won the grand prize at the inaugural Convergence Story Short Fiction Awards in 2014, and debuted as a writer when his short story <Man Living in Hell> won the debut writer’s award from quarterly Spring of Literature. He currently writes fiction and works in lecturing and consulting. In 2019, he won the 5th Hwangsanbeol Youth Literary Award with Gudi Yeanne d’Arc.

고등학교 졸업 후 서울에 올라와 가리지 않고 일을 하며 하루하루 치열하게 살아가는 ‘나’. 함께 상경한 친구는 끝내 서울 사람이 되지 못한 채 고향으로 내려가고, ‘나’는 연고 없는 서울에서 사실상 고립에 가까운 삶을 살고 있다. 하지만 오피스텔 관리인으로 일하며 자신의 사무실이자 주거 공간인 여섯 평짜리 방에서 낮에는 입주민 관리를 하고, 밤에는 주식과 코인을 하고, 가끔은 중고 벤츠를 몰고 다니며 동호회에 나가는 삶에 나름의 자부심을 느낀다. 그러던 어느 날 여느 때처럼 입주자들의 입금 내역을 확인하던 ‘나’는 403호 입주자가 월세와 관리비를 두 달째 미납 중이라는 사실을 발견한다. 혹시나 하는 마음에 올라가봤지만 인기척이 전혀 느껴지지 않는 집. 불길한 예감에 사장에게 전화를 한 후 급히 문을 따고 들어가지만, 403호 여자는 이미 스스로 목숨을 끊은 뒤였다. 경찰이 다녀가고 치울 것도 없이 휑한 방 안에 놓여 있는 노트 두 권. 그는 무심코 그 일기장을 펼쳐 읽게 된다.