My Heart In The Apocalypse
Are you there at the end of this world?
On a hazy evening, I find myself looking at an article that explores the true origins of Louvre’s Winged Victory of Samothrace, an exquisite Greek Hellenistic masterpiece—a statue of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, with a sole wing captivating the beholder’s eyes while the other remains lost to time.
Strangely, this statue reminds me of the protagonist from the South Korean television series Sweet Home—Cha Hyun-su’s monster form. When faced with a threat, his arm transforms into an obsidian, weaponized wing-like structure that cuts through flesh with ease and agility.
My friend texts, “I liked the emergence of neo-humans from monsters in the end. Fascinating evolution. They’re strangers to the new world order, like infants trying to grasp their surroundings.” She has read both Bastard and Sweet Home, two Webtoon series created by Carnby Kim and Youngchan Hwang, the latter of which got a TV adaptation.
As I hum on the dimly lit balcony, I think about many things now that the series has come to an end.
I think about the scene where a heartbroken and sickeningly devastated boy, on the brink of death, is saved by a girl on the opposite rooftop who is completely immersed in ballet. I think about Lee Eun-yu.
In the beginning, Lee Eun-yu has an unapproachable demeanour that she orchestrates with a rude and honest speech. A distraught adolescent who is unequipped to handle the pain of loss that the world inflicts on her, a world that never does anything for her. At least not enough.
All she can do is protect herself. If she lets herself feel anything, then she will feel it all. In her bones, in her blood, in her body and in her mind.
And in her heart.
But deeply, perhaps that’s what she wants. To feel, to love, to be loved. Like Maren in Bones & All by Camille DeAngelis.
So when society succumbs to darkness as people metamorphose into monsters, she looks for love but finds the world a wrong place. Again.
But she has people to protect, to fight for, and a brother to reconcile with—a promise that can’t be kept unfulfilled.
“You shouldn’t be worrying about monsters. No. Humans are…the scariest.”
Some believe that monsterization gives an outward, physical and grotesque shape to the hidden parts of humans—their abandoned unconscious.
She hopes that Cha Hyun-su succeeds in overpowering his primitive and disillusioned core, which is blinded by violence because it only knows how to fight and kill. Because he doesn’t know love, he never receives it.
A scene imprinted in my mind is where she lies down on the cold floor—the harsh coldness a contrast to her body’s warmth—and gazes at him, an innocent person who also revels in being berserk.
A boy who’s in between humanity and monstrosity, empathy and apathy, life and death. A boy she loves. A boy she is desperately trying to reach out to.
I play this image in my head and make a restless attempt to dig out faded memories of him. A forgotten lover lost to time. Perhaps the term “lover” is too descriptive.
“Mira, let’s not call him anything. You can find a seashell by the shore only if it’s destined to be found by you. But what would you call a man who never crossed the sea to get to you in the first place?”
My friends often ask me, cryptically expressing their distaste.
It has been a while—a year and a half—since I last talked about him.
I pretend to keep him nameless because that spares even the faintest of the aches I might feel inside of me. Things between us are to remain disarrayed, unorganised, dissonant and raw. Unlike Cha Hyun-su, he is never meant to be reached out to. He is not on the itinerary—he’s a distant trail that isn’t part of the journey.
I don’t think I miss him. I can barely recall him being a part of my memory. But I miss the version I’ve weaved in my mind, ever so beguiling and quiet. A creature of cool intelligence who strides in my path carefree and listens to what I have to say.
He is an idea nowadays, an art form that rests reserved in the gallery, where I trace his painted lips and explain my interpretation to a disinterested audience like an intrigued and infatuated docent. In reality, we only shared prolonged hours of silence. An unnoticed and uncared-for silence that stretched for weeks and months.
His face becomes blurred sometimes, replaced by that of an ancient man with an unknown past. A frantic writer’s delight or a handsome imagination that serves the same purpose as a comfort character.
I see him in my dreams, a luxury on spiritless nights.
It's a creative getaway for inspiration—I call it at times and laugh.
I search for him in my dreams. While navigating through the blizzards, pieces of ice ruthlessly pierce into my skin, like daggers at the disposal of a knife juggler, as I struggle to move forward. I huff in the white, blinding mist. I see an unending land stretching beneath the towering mountains. Mountains that are like dangerous, mystical serpentine creatures and gargantuan gargoyles, heralding something ominous. At daybreak, I find an isolated citadel with gates that are never open to anyone.
I think that’s what Eun-yu feels when she encounters Cha Hyun-su’s imposing and dangerous gates that are never open to anyone. Those sharp-edged and stringently chained gates of his true self are isolated from the outside world and her.
Through the apocalyptic backdrop, Sweet Home explores the human psyche and mankind at large. Life, love and loss. Strength, peace and hope.
It deals with a world that ceases to exist, where civilisation throttles to death and carnage is initiated by the people-turned-monsters who earlier fought hard to protect their lands.
“Do you think we’ll be together at the end of the world?” He asked me one night, two years ago, when he was a little drowsy from medication.
I smiled. Probably not. Figuratively and literally.
But at the end of this world, would we become a part of the same monstrosity that we are afraid of?
In the mornings, when I think of dilapidated buildings that would stand dismayed at one end of the street, avoiding the calls of the reaper’s scythe; in the nights, when I think of hot blood that’d rush to my throat and trap my words within; in the evenings, when I picture a society so inhuman and brutal, where the rivers would remain dreadful of rotting carcasses and where the soul would defy kindness, blinded by material greed, I wish for someone to be there. When I imagine being confined by the familiar darkness, unable to find light, I wish for someone to be there.
Someone who’s a comforting space, a space that radiates warmth. Like a pillow embraced at a melancholic midnight; like rain and the earthly scent of petrichor; like a sustained bonfire that doesn’t burn but rather heals like a warm concocted medicine.
Someone who’ll reach out to me till the end of his time.
In the doomed future, in another reality where I’d become a monster, oblivious to love and light, I wish that he would be my heart in the apocalypse.
