Chapter 3

Name:Life, Once Again! Author:Wise Dragon
* * *“Don’t be late. We’re going to start cleaning out designated areas starting tomorrow, so remember that. Just go back home and study, you hear? I’d hate to see your sorry faces in some weird place outside school. The end.”The teacher exit the room after smacking the board lightly with his board. The kids stood up tiredly from their seats.“Where do you live?”“Guwol-dong.”“That’s pretty far. Do you bus here?”“Bike.”“Don’t you feel cold?”“Yeah, but it’s cheaper for sure.”“Fair enough.”“See you tomorrow.”Maru waved as he left the classroom. The first day went by well. He thought he might make a few mistakes due to his memory, but that never actually happened. Everything felt nostalgic though. Maru changed direction on his way home and went into one of the smaller streets. He was heading to the little PC bang near school.“This place never changed.”He spent quite a bit of money over the three years in high school. His entire friend group would assemble in the PC bang after school whenever one of them said ‘go?’. He played Starcraft, Warcraft, and Lineage harder than he ever studied. “I wonder if I’d play games in this life.”Maru turned away from the PC bang as he thought to himself. A new life. A fun life. What would a fun life entail? Maru couldn’t quite remember what he’d done for 45 years. He lived for his family after he married, but before that he did things without much of a purpose. He passed the college entrance exams with a decent enough score, so he went straight to college. And after failing his first exam there, he was sent straight to the military. He eventually graduated afterwards, and decided to work all sorts of jobs afterwards.Jobs.Maru slowed down a bit. He could see a cloud floating right above him. It resembled a wet tissue paper, moving about in the sky as the winds willed it to. Maru thought his life resembled the cloud a fair bit. “I didn’t think I lived a bad life… But I didn’t really life a good one either, huh.”Work before dreams. Things he had to do came before things he wanted to do. He never took risks, and he never looked far off into the future either.Tsk.Maru clicked his tongue without even realizing it. He did do fun things. He did experience happy things. But there was nothing that could sum up his life in one word. Well, he did have one.So-so.If anything, his life was just so-so.“How do I want to live?”That question came at Maru now harder than it ever did in the past 45 years.