I walked into the darkness of my house soaking wet, tiny droplets of water dripped off my clothing and onto the hardwood floor of my small living room. Lightning clashed out the front of my big front window, illuminating the room around me and some of the road and cliff directly outside.
‘Of course, I lose my job, my bus gets a flat tire and I end up rained on all on the same day.’ I thought with a defeated sigh.
I wiped my bag off as best I could, opened it up, grabbed my pen tablet and then set my drawing stuff down on the small coffee table. I dropped my bag onto the floor, with little care now that it didn’t house, my expensive tools of the trade, I turned left and walked towards the fridge. My stomach reminded me that Mr. Lee had given me zero time to actually eat anything this evening before he had headed off to go and schmooze with the rich and entitled brats who had all worked together to humiliate me.
I pulled open the door to the fridge and groaned. I had hoped I was wrong, but with how little I was home, I wasn’t expecting the fridge to be full of delicious food. Because what was the point in buying it if you were never home to eat it? And it wasn’t like I had anyone who cared about me that could or would bring me anything to eat.
Once again for the third time in my life. My life had become an empty void, nothing left... No friends, no family, no job, no food...
‘What did I even have? A house? My own creativity?’
‘What good was that going to do me?’
I closed the fridge door and walked over to my computer desk, which sat in front of the large window in my living room. The tiny one-bedroom house that I paid rent for was old, most things creaked and the wood paneling everywhere did little to inspire the mind.
But the view... The view had been worth a few little creeks. So despite the bedroom being big enough for just my bed and dresser, and the living room the size of Mr. Lee’s one workroom. It fit a couch, a small TV, table and my desk, and other than that. Well, I didn’t have anything else to put in there.
The view out the front window was a beautiful open sky, with the tops of a few trees just lightly encumbering in the corners of either side of its wide desk high frame. Below the beautiful sky was the edge of the cliff that was just past the road and its small guard railing. The road could be ignored, but the beautiful flowering trees in their multi-colors and the bright sky that changed and flowed quickly was breathtaking and demanded attention.
I sat down, turned on my computer and while it was starting up I stared at the sky, bright and beautiful tonight it was not. Tonight the clouds were heavy and dark, foreboding... And just as I had been about a mile from home those foreboding monsters had let down a torrent of rain just as they had been heralding all day.
The rain that fell against the window was hard and steady. The sound like a constant shower and the excess ran down the windows much like a car wash. When I looked back down at my computer my login screen was up, and the brightness took a moment for my eyes to adjust to it.
I stood up realizing I didn’t need to live in the darkness, just because I felt that way inside, and I unenthusiastically shuffled over to the light.
I turned it on and cursed my clumsiness as I adjusted to being in the light again. I plodded back and fell into my seat with a sigh. Logging in I waited for everything to start up. It only took a few moments as I had a very high processor so that it could handle my drawing tablet and program. Then I pulled up my program, and sighed, realizing my own folly, I carefully wheeled the chair across the floor to the coffee table where I had left my stuff before. The whole room filled with a plethora of creaking from the floors and squeaking from the chair, it was a cacophony amount of sound that would drive anyone unused to it mad with frustration. I grabbed the stuff and wheeled back, ignoring the noise I pulled out my drawing tablet and pen from its little fabric protective sheath and sighed.
I realized my desk was messy where the tablet was supposed to go, I wrinkled my nose at it. It was littered with week old snack packages and crumbs and I looked at it with dismayed interest before shoving it all further to the back against the wall.
I knew I could just as easily sweep it all into my hand and walk the twelve steps across my living room to my garbage. But I also just couldn’t be bothered.
What was the point in cleaning up anyway when you never had a single person come by? Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I did have my friend Hyeri, but she was always so busy and never really had time for me. I often wondered if she truly cared about me at all, she called and texted only when she wanted something. Whether that was alcohol or someone to complain too didn’t matter, I had this sense that in her caller’s list I was the last dial not the first.
My screen came to life with my last opened project. It was the only thing I had been working on for the past five years from home. And because I had poured all of my extra time and energy into it, I had a soft spot in my heart for my character Mark.
I started drawing. It could have also been that he was special to me because I had spent five years on over one hundred and twenty chapters, but it was probably the fact that I had peppered his backstory with so much of my own. His pain and his frustration, his heartaches, and situations all reflected my own even if I had peppered his reality with some lush moments.
Wang Ji Yang was born in the city of Shanghai in the nineteen-ninety's. His story started when his mother died in a car crash with another man not his father, but then the man disappeared and his mother’s death was ruled an accident. Before he knew it, his Father Wang Xiao Gang was throwing him away as the illegitimate heir to the eight hundred billion dollars Wang ECCEnterprise in China. And he was being sent to live alone in Seoul at only nine years old where he took on the name Mark Wang. He grew up abandoned by all who should have called him family, but still became a polite gentleman who looks at the world with a kindhearted smile, rather than the cynical distance he could have. Despite all this, his life was riddled with even more problems when on his twenty-first birthday, he was told that without the missing papers of inheritance he would not be allowed to be a part of his own birthright as owner and CEO of his mother’s business He is the only direct bloodline heir of the giant advertisement agency Kim Company in Korea. Despite being a second-generation chaebol and the heir to Kim Company the money he uses is mostly self-made as he has always been a hard worker and has managed to amass almost a billion dollars on his own in the industry. To this day Mark has been searching for the missing papers, which have never been seen by anyone. And until he finds the person who mysteriously took his birthright and killed his mother he cannot rest.
Because of his past, he never ever forgot that what he had could disappear and now that he was twenty-eight he knew he had enemies who wanted to do just that. Making money wasn’t ever his priority, but fighting for the things he loved would always be.
He was an intellectual, a genius and a man who never ever underestimated anyone around him and yet he never failed to greet the world with a charming smile on his face.
And if sometimes that smile hid pain, sadness, and anger well you couldn’t blame him for keeping his emotions to himself, in a world where he had learned people couldn’t be trusted and could turn on you for only a rumor.
I shaded in his bright, brown eyes, that almost seemed to be ebbing with life underneath my pen. His chocolate cherry brown hair was swept back in one giant swoop to the left side and sweptback tightly against his head on the other. His sharp eyes looked down at his dark, sleek blue, almost black Audi and his hand reached out to grab its handle.
I had been stuck on this panel for a few months now. Unsure where I wanted to take the comic from this point. And really I was at that standstill because I was so conflicted in my own life. I had introduced everything you really could in an adventure like this. The only thing left was basically Mark finding out and confronting his uncle over the missing papers of ownership shares in Kim Enterprises, maybe Mark’s dad coming back, but I didn’t think that was really a possible storyline after all. But if I did the big reveal I was really unsure what to do after that point.
Did I just end it?
I mean he would have finally confronted the person who had destroyed his life, got him kicked out of two companies and abandoned by all his family, so what then? What happens after you do that?
I didn’t know.
I had never confronted the people who had ruined mine.
I always kept silent, handled my pain alone, and that’s what I had always drawn Mark doing we were so alike sometimes I wondered if I was drawing my sadness or if Mark was real. He had people in his life who loved him and one solid friend he felt like an echo of myself through various points in my life. I wished he was real because I knew we could get along, why not, I mean we both hid everything from the people near us, anyway. But because he wasn’t and because I had just stopped getting inspired. I wasn’t seeing anything, dreaming anything, I just had reached a stagnant place. So exactly what did you do once you faced the person who destroyed your life? Especially if you were used to keeping your pain inside of you.
In my life everything was destroyed, empty... Lifeless.
It was barely worth living... And having a ton of money I didn’t think would or could ever truly change that hot ache in your stomach and chest that occurred from abandonment and loss.
Because there was nothing to put in that space, it was hollow, dark and empty.
A flash of lightning crashed outside, illuminating the window as if to punctuate my thought. The lights flickered, then died and I was left in darkness the light of my computer the only light around. I stared at Mark’s almost glowing face, with his sad smile and my laptop flashed in the corner... Fifty percent battery.
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