Our Imperfect Utopia

“Yuna, you need to finish this by tonight,” her manager orders her.“Y-yes sir,” Yuna stutters.Sometime later, “Aah, finally, I finished this darned document. I have about 10 minutes to get to my part-time job, thanks to the manager,” she mumbles to herself while exiting the office. She barely has time to eat, so she eats tteokbokki (Korean rice cake) on her way to her job. Finally, she finishes her tiring convenience store job, where the weirdest people come at night, and leaves to go home.“So tiny and pretty,” Yuna whispers as she passes a nursery on her way home. She stares at the Korean red pine bonsai for ten seconds and leaves, hearing the old lady screaming at her violently.On her way home, she sees the same drunk man she saw at her job, so she changes direction.“Don’t wanna bump into him at this hour of the night,” Yuna whispers as she stares down at her phone, sending money to her mother who lives in the countryside.She arrives home, and the first thing she hears is her stepbrother screaming at her about why she is late, while he plays games on the phone he bought himself with Yuna’s hard-earned money. She nods to him and says sorry, even though she did nothing wrong. She cleans up her house and prepares dinner.“Where is Miss Kim?” Yuna asks politely.“Why do you need to know?” her stepbrother mumbles.The following week as Yuna steps into her office, running late, everyone is standing near the entrance, staring in her direction with different emotions showing on their faces. “Jamkkanman yo (Excuse me),” a voice says in Korean from behind her.As she turns around, she sees a mysterious man she has never seen before. She is awestruck seeing this majestic man walking gracefully among the workers like a major celebrity. His hair is beautifully parted, and he has a neat suit draped on his body, with his shiny gold watch gleaming in the artificial light in the office.Looking like an angel, he walks past her and flicks her forehead, saying with a grin, “Move it princess, you ain’t getting that much attention.” She stares at him in shock. He smacked those words right on her face. That’s when she realises that he is a complete JERK.Sometime later, she hears some office gossip about him being the heir to this company, and apparently his name is Euntae (Oon-tae). “But again, it’s office gossip. Can you trust it?” she sighs in embarrassment.The next day, Yuna finds out that he actually is the CEO of the company she works for.“Lucky jerk,” Yuna whines.“This is no time to be jealous over someone else’s fortune and be sad over my misfortune.” Yuna gives herself hope. “Let’s not worry about that and instead focus on my YouTube lessons,” Yuna scoffs with the little pride she has left.After her long, tiring day at her multiple jobs, she goes back home, and on the way, she sees the CEO.To her, it almost feels as if he is stalking her. After that day, she sees him multiple times near her outside of office hours.“Looks like I worked overtime today as well. I’m scared.” She hears light but somehow heavy (?!) footsteps. “YouTube video 18 | How to make fake moves, Trick 7!”She screams as she attacks with all her might but makes a false move with her num-chuks because she doesn’t want to hurt the stalker.As she looks at the tall, wide, dark figure, she squints her eyes to see who it is, and the second she realises who it is, her feet fall asleep right on the spot.“YOU USE WEAPONS?” Euntae screams, glancing at her confused face.She asks him in a stuttering voice why he follows her around everywhere she goes. He tells her that he thinks he has found the person he is looking for but isn’t sure about it.“W-why were you looking for someone like me?” Yuna asks Euntae.“Can’t tell you right now,” he says with a grin. “But if you really wanna know, then let’s be friends,” he says, knowing her answer.“OK!!!” Yuna screams, saying, “NOW TELL ME pleaaaase.”They make a deal to be friends for a few months, and only then he will tell her what’s so special about her.“Yunaaaa, since we are friends, can I come over to your house and we’ll have dinner?” Euntae asks in a childish voice.“Oh, okay, sure,” Yuna says blankly.When Yuna has a day off work, Euntae comes over at lunch time and decides to hang out as a friend.In her house, Euntae sees Yuna’s stepmother scolding her when they come in, asking why she brought a stranger to her house without her permission. She even slaps Yuna on her face, calling her rude names.Euntae gets angry and lashes out at that wretched woman who dares to lift her hand at an innocent girl. He makes Yuna’s stepmother apologise to Yuna. After seeing his bravery in that incident, respect for Euntae grows in Yuna’s eyes, and she starts calling him her big brother.“Hello, big bro!” Yuna says in a cheesy voice, embarrassing him in front of the other workers while he is snooping around to check on his employees.He asks to talk to her in private and scolds her, telling her not to embarrass him in the office.“Why, you are like a brother to me,” Yuna says, giggling.“Hah, whatever. OK, so I need to talk to you after you finish work, OK?” Euntae says with a serious expression.“OK, fine, then meet me after I finish my job at the pharmacy,” Yuna says in annoyance.After Yuna finishes her job, she meets up with Euntae to discuss whatever he wanted to talk about.“You looked serious, so I didn’t ask questions then. What happened?” Yuna asks.Euntae, with a hesitant voice, explains to her that she is a celestial being who was born in the human realm for a reason. She will sacrifice herself for the happiness of the whole world.“How do you know all this?” Yuna asks.“Well, I’m the demon of happiness, and the goddess of happiness told me about this,” Euntae says.She had to suffer her whole life to understand the importance of this act.“When the moon is half, I will take you to an abandoned temple. You will have to trap yourself inside a glass orb, but don’t worry – you’ll just be asleep the whole time in there unless it breaks and everything gets reversed,” Euntae says. Yuna is confused the whole time as he explains who she is…On the night of the half moon…“AAAAAH,” Euntae screams as he sees a whole family of tarantulas sitting there watching the show of Yuna and him.Yuna pulls his collar and drags him away from the entrance of the temple, further away from the family of spiders. She sighs, saying in the most depressed voice, “I’m here locking myself up, and there you are staring at some spiders, screaming like a baby!”She continues dragging him to the middle of the temple.There is an orb there. Euntae picks it up and channels his energy through it.Nothing happens…Then suddenly it begins changing shape in his hands.“It feels wet but dry and weird,” he whines.The orb turns into a completely different looking orb. He hands it over to Yuna and tells her to put her hand on top of it with the intention of fulfilling her duties as a celestial being.“Will it hurt???” she asks.“I don’t know, but don’t worry, I’m here for mental support,” Euntae reassures her.She immediately starts disintegrating into the orb, disappearing in a matter of a few seconds. As soon as she completely disappears, the orb drops. Euntae starts to cry, wondering if he will ever see her ever again. He goes away from the orb to the entrance of the temple, crying the whole time. He doesn’t even get scared of the spiders that haunt him the whole time in silence.A few days after Yuna sacrifices herself, the world suddenly shifts. The air, the look, the atmosphere just change in a matter of days.“What is happening these days?” Euntae says in an unamused tone.He goes around and looks at the changes the world has gone through. Sad, poor, hungry people on the streets look happier and have hopeful eyes, having ways of earning money.As he roams around, stalking people who were believed to be unhappy before, he feels as if someone is pulling his shirt. He turns and looks, but no one is there.“Some wimpy child pulling my shirt, I guess,” he says in a grouchy voice.He looks up at the sky and sees a transparent figure wearing a blood-red dress. He realises who it is and hugs her when she comes closer.It is Yuna, looking like she has murdered ten people and taken a bath in their blood. He notices that her behaviour has changed. He asks how she got back into the human realm, but then his alarm goes off and he realises that this was a dream, not reality.He suddenly remembers that Yuna has a mother in the countryside. “She probably won’t have any source of money,” he mumbles. Euntae feels bad for her and decides that to let Yuna rest in peace, he might just help her out financially. He meets up with her and clears things up with her by telling her the reality of what just happened to her daughter, which gives her the strength to fight for life since she was her only family.Yuna’s mother starts treating Euntae as her own son and lives in an imperfect utopia. He is happy, and our imperfect utopia is happy.