Chapter 55
“Everyone makes the wrong choice.”
Everyone fails.
“Not many people live a life of only success. The vast majority experience failure. That’s just how people live. At every moment, they just try to find the best they can do. No one chooses with the intention of failing.”
People who fear failure can’t move forward. They end up postponing decisions forever. You might think that means staying in place, but…
“…But, Mr. Lee Hyun. Not choosing is also a choice.”
In the end, time keeps moving. If time passes without making a choice, then you’ve chosen to do nothing.
That’s how it is. Say I’m holding a cream bun right now, wondering whether to eat it or not. I don’t know if it tastes good or bad; it doesn’t even look like there’s any cream inside. But I’m hungry.
If I keep hesitating, wondering whether it tastes good or not, and delay the decision, then I’ve chosen ‘not’ to eat it. Time doesn’t wait forever for me to decide.
To act or not to act… if you postpone that decision, then you’ve chosen ‘not’ to act.
Lee Hyun blinked blankly as he listened. That perfect state of “nothingness” people talk about doesn’t exist. There is no perfectly stagnant state. Our lives aren’t still water.
“Have you ever experienced failure, Mr. Lee Hyun?”
At the sudden shift in topic, he blinked for a moment.
“Anything’s fine, could you tell me something you remember?”
He dug through his memories and brought up his failures. Not placing in an academic competition, failing a club interview, small things, to heavier ones like failing a promotion.
“Did you enter the competition because you wanted to?”
“…No. My mother… said it would be good to try.”
“Did you apply to the club because you wanted to join?”
“No. A friend… suggested it.”
“In that operation, who gave the order to advance first?”
“…A colleague did.”
The memories of failure he had, almost none of them were things he had chosen himself.
“……”
Even if others made the choices, it didn’t really change anything. Saying it wasn’t ‘his’ failure because he didn’t choose it felt strange. In the end, those failures were still carved into his life.
The counseling time was nearing its end. I asked again:
“Shall we slowly summarize our conversation? What did you come to hear from me, Mr. Lee Hyun?”
He avoided my gaze, staring only at his hands. Body language. I watched him closely. Was he accepting this situation, or not?
Avoiding eye contact was clearly avoidance. But he wasn’t showing anxiety. He wasn’t fidgeting, trying to run away.
Then was this avoidance part of the process of internalizing everything we talked about? If so, that was a positive sign. At least it meant he was ‘listening’ and ‘thinking’.
He answered quietly.
“…An answer.”
I gave a brief pause after hearing that.
“What answer?”
He didn’t respond immediately. His silence was longer than the one I had given him.
“…Whether what I did was wrong…”
His posture shrank, like a child waiting to be scolded.
“What did I say to that?”
“……”
I waited. After a moment, he answered.
“…You said I already knew.”
I deliberately slowed the tempo again. A brief silence flowed, not to make him uncomfortable, but to let him process.
His tangled breathing gradually loosened in the quiet.
“What did I say you already knew?”
“The right thing…”
He paused, then added:
“You said I already knew the answer to my question… the right thing.”
Again, I slowed things down. Letting him absorb the conversation without letting his emotions spiral too far.
If pushed too far, negative emotions like self-loathing or guilt could overwhelm him and trigger deeper issues.
“What is ‘the right thing’?”
His breath came out unevenly.
“…I still… don’t know well. Justice is…”
“……”
“Justice… is too difficult. It’s hard to distinguish what’s right. Sometimes… what’s right stops being right, and sometimes what’s not right becomes right.”
“Then let’s narrow it down. Let’s limit it to ‘your actions’. Don’t think of it as ‘justice’… just think about whether your actions were right, based on your own judgment.”
Even I didn’t know what “justice” was. If you confine actions to such a massive concept, the same act and result can be judged as justice by some and not by others.
So I brought it down to something smaller. Personal. Narrow.
“……”
He closed his mouth. Then, as if forcing out his soul, he spoke.
“…It wasn’t right. It was ugly. I was too ugly…”
He was gasping. I gave him time to breathe deeply.
“Let’s take a short break. Focus on your breathing and organize your thoughts. Slowly. Just say what you can. If you can’t say it out loud, it’s okay to rest longer. You don’t have to say everything.”
He nodded while breathing deeply.
“Shall we stop here?”
At my gentle question, he shook his head.
“…I can continue.”
He was following. I respected that. After quietly breathing for a while, he nodded again, signaling he was ready. I gestured for him to continue.
“Under someone else’s judgment… I abandoned my duty as a police officer. No… I abandoned my duty as a person. If I am a person… if I want to be treated as one… I shouldn’t have treated others that way. If I want to be respected as a human being…”
His voice was filled with self-loathing. I stopped him again.
“Slowly. Don’t pour out too many emotions at once. Let’s go with your breathing. We have time. I can wait.”
We didn’t actually have much time, but I deliberately chose words that created space. The room was shabby, but warm sunlight filtered in as if it were around 3 p.m., paired with soft lighting that created a cozy atmosphere.
Maybe because of that, he didn’t feel overwhelmed. He was following remarkably well.
‘How old was he again, according to the setting?’
Late 20s to early 30s. A grown adult who had spent his entire life depending on others… it wasn’t easy for someone like that to establish a sense of self and answer based on it.
It wouldn’t have been strange if he had answered everything with “I don’t know,” “I’ve never thought about it,” or “Please tell me.”
But he answered each question, one by one. Even if I guided him, the fact that he spoke his own answers was proof that he was moving forward.
He slowly began to release his emotions. Instead of swallowing what I had interrupted, he let it out in trembling breaths. I didn’t rush him.
“Slowly.”
I only reminded him when things got too intense.
He followed exactly. Slowly exhaling.
When he stabilized, I still didn’t rush him, waiting for him to speak on his own.
If he didn’t speak, I could just ask again. He still struggled to speak on his own, so I asked:
“What do you think a choice is?”
His hands trembled slightly, and he covered his face. A defense mechanism? Would he not answer? I waited.
That’s all I could do.
That’s what counseling is like. You don’t input variables and instantly get results. You input them and wait until the result emerges.
He murmured:
“…Something I cannot do.”
“Why?”
“…I… don’t know what I should choose. If no one decides for me… if someone… if someone chooses for me… their choice is more correct than mine…”
He was still covering his face. It was avoidance, but because of it, deeper words came out.
His emotions seemed to hover at a critical threshold, but hadn’t crossed it.
I needed to draw it out carefully. How should I say this?
I didn’t expect him to keep following me. No, more than that, he needed time to stand alone. A situation where no one acted as his lighthouse.
This wasn’t reality. If it were, counseling would proceed alongside medical diagnosis. But here, there was no time for that.
Whether it had been built over 30 years or 80, if it couldn’t be addressed now, there was no guarantee it ever would be.
“Were all of their choices correct?”
I asked.
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