Novel: "Under the Blue Night Sky, Let Us Quietly Raise Our Middle Fingers in Our Pockets"

Chapter 1: Returning from the Mission

December 26, 2025. The city had shed the festivities of the previous day and was painted over with a raw sense of impatience. The "purification of society," achieved by thoroughly eliminating anything unpleasant or rude, simultaneously robs humans of the outlet for anger they were originally meant to have. People forget how to express emotions appropriately and instead channel their unprocessable stress into hate, which they spew out in the name of "justice." It was a physical inevitability that friction would increase as density rose.
As I exhale cigarette smoke on the street, the noise known as gazes pierces me. They cannot tolerate anyone rewriting even a little bit of the program of rules they share. What drifts there is an exclusive self-righteousness that forces others to be obedient. A middle-aged man on a bicycle gestures for me not to smoke. I put on my earphones, thought about the meaning of the gesture, and uttered an "ah," but by the time I understood the meaning, the man was already gone.
It was while I was returning from a mission; for a split second when the traffic light changed, my consciousness was at different coordinates. When I crossed that crosswalk, the light was red. When sinking into a sea of thought, real-world light signals are nothing more than electromagnetic waves of a specific wavelength. Safety was ensured, and logically speaking, there should have been no room for others to intervene. However, a stranger went out of their way to spit out poison.
“Don't ignore the red light.”
There wasn't a shred of goodwill wishing for safety mixed into that voice. It was merely an outlet for misplaced anger, vented by striking at the foreign object known as "me" that happened to enter their field of vision. The cleaner the city becomes, the harder it is for impurities like us to breathe.
According to society's definition, I am likely the "strange" one. Labeled with mental illness or developmental disorders, I was excluded from the center of the system long ago. But even from the perspective of that abnormal person, this city is crazier than I am. Justice, which should have been a means, has transformed into an end for confirming one's own superiority by attacking others, and that "correctness" is suffocating the world.
I swallow benzodiazepines, connect my nerves with atomoxetine, and smoke cigarettes to barely maintain myself. Healthy people might call putting chemicals into one's body a risk. But we are different. Pouring these into our bodies is a "step forward" to survive. I connect today by physically rewriting my brain's circuits. In the single point that I do not mind this "arming with chemicals," I think of us as beings with much more resolve than them. That is the pride of a patient as a madman.
I have no words to retort to them. The layers of logic are too different. So, I just walk away in silence.
But let us quietly raise our middle fingers in our pockets.
That finger is not a weapon to hurt anyone. It is a vow never to assimilate into the madness of those who believe without doubt that "we are the normal ones." A quiet rejection of the label of "correctness" decided from the outside after being cast out of society. An absolute ritual of rejection to protect the quiet universe within. No matter how much we are excluded, this small resistance inside my pocket can never be exposed by anyone.
I look up at the sky. The hustle and bustle on the ground is, after all, nothing but noise. I sink my consciousness into the world of imagination within my own heart, the place closest to and farthest from this reality.
At the end of 2025, shrouded in opaque fog, I will survive this crazy world in my own way.
Accompanied by medicine, smoke, and a little bit of irony.

Chapter 2: The Correct Argument on the Other Side of the Mirror

December 26, 2025. The winter night air was nauseatingly sharp.
On the way home from a formless ritual called a year-end party. The cheap alcohol remaining in my stomach flows back up my esophagus with an unpleasant heat. Once you pass your mid-40s, the world is filled with a list of "things that aren't functioning correctly," and the day ends just by checking them off.
The intersection leading to the station. There was a figure standing blankly in front of the traffic light.
Holding a cigarette, not young, but with a somewhat unreal presence. Even when the light turned red, that individual seemed to have lost sight of the boundary, sending their consciousness to different coordinates. A person I wouldn't want to get close to.
The moment I saw that man, an inescapable anger welled up from the bottom of my drunken consciousness.
(Why can't you just act normal?)
It was closer to a sense of duty than anger. I follow the rules. I nod at my boss's boring stories even while clouding my thoughts with alcohol, and I endure this desolate December air while wearing myself down as a cog in society. Yet, this man in front of me is holed up in his own "thoughts" as if he has escaped that gravity.
“Don't ignore the red light.”
The words I spat out were filled with more filth than I expected.
But the sense of omnipotence in that moment. A cheap sense of satisfaction that I, myself, represented the discipline of society and corrected a bug that had deviated. Street smoking.
I didn't need to see his expression. Just by striking at him, I felt that the "curse of living correctly and earnestly" that had accumulated inside me had lightened for just a moment.
I start walking with a staggering gait. My heartbeat is fast.
Suddenly, I put my hand in my pocket. My fingertips touched something.
It is not the "medicine of resolve."
It is the empty shell of the medicine I poured down to mask my upset stomach before the party started, and the pathetic remains of myself who could only end today by numbing my senses with alcohol.
(...Is it him who is strange, or the world?)
For a moment, my vision blurred.
The boundary separating the man I just spat poison at and my current self becomes as vague as the winter fog.
I, too, am merely wandering through this purified hell, numbing my nerves with alcohol, burning my throat with smoke, and barely wearing the costume of a "normal 40-something."
Didn't I strike him because I saw in him the "pure self" that I wanted to kill even if it meant drinking alcohol?
In my pocket, my fingertips tingle from the cold.
“Damn it.”
I muttered unconsciously in that darkness where no one could see.
To that pathetic self who was forcing a fake smile at the party. And to this ugly self who cannot help but vent that frustration on others.
When I get home, I'll play a "game."
In that world, I'll land headshots all over the place.

Chapter 3: Breathing in the Painless Deep Sea

December 26, 2025. A room in a high-rise apartment. The room's humidifier was blowing out mist without a sound.
I didn't take a bath today either, tied up my greasy hair haphazardly, and pushed IEMs worth tens of thousands of dollars deep into my ears.
My perfect parents are downstairs, quietly watching over my "recuperation." They never bang on my room door violently. Meals are placed in front of the door, my hobbies, my withdrawal, everything is wrapped in a membrane called the "leisure" of a wealthy family, and everything about me is affirmed.
That one novel I picked up in the sea of the internet.
The "arming with medicine" of the man in the first chapter, and the "murderous intent painted over with correctness" of the man in the second chapter.
I felt dizzy at the sharpness of the words there.
(...I don't understand. I don't understand this pain, and I don't want to be involved.)
I don't have any desperate medicine to keep myself together, nor do I have a dry anger enough to yell at someone. Occasionally, there are men who send messages to my SNS DMs with self-righteous confessions (sometimes even attaching photos of their pathetic male genitalia) saying "I want to save you." They don't know my filth or the void in my heart, and they are in love with an idol they created on their own. Even that shallow love cannot shake my world. Well, even the "void in my heart" is just me trying to look cool; I'm satisfied with my current days.
I make handmade resin accessories.
The work of enclosing expensive parts in transparent resin is like making a specimen of my current self. I don't need to be financially independent, and I am "kept alive" without any inconvenience. I just do what I want to do, and I have no anxiety. I have plenty of men to choose from, too. That fact gradually numbs my skin. While feeling a sense of guilt, I have no courage or need to let go of that peace.
I tap the keyboard.
I press one "like."
I can only interact with their stories as a "reviewer." The cigarette smoke the man in the first chapter inhales, and the poison the man in the second chapter spat out, do not reach this soundproof room.
They are causing friction with reality and scattering sparks.
I am floating in a vacuum without friction.
(Who would understand the cruelty of being blessed?)
I realize that I feel an inescapable "jealousy" toward the men in the first and second chapters. They, who are excluded, labeled, and fighting while raising their middle fingers, at least feel the sensation of "living" at their fingertips. My middle finger cannot even find a target to raise it at, and it just trembles aimlessly in the cold air.
Even if I were to raise my middle finger, it wouldn't be any kind of statement.

I am like a calm sea.
There's no such person?
Yes there is, right here.

I swap the plugs of my favorite IEMs.
The sound changes with the cable, but my certain kind of emptiness does not. As a reviewer, I arrange their dissonance into a single "melody" and stream it onto the internet. That is the "pseudo-prayer" for me, who does not allow myself to fight or get hurt, to touch the world for the only time.
(Your pain is too dazzling for me.)
I publish the review and escape back into the silence of noise-canceling. The gentle sound of dishes clinking together heard from downstairs.
That is the sound of a heavy, gentle anchor that keeps me tethered to this painless deep sea.

Suddenly, a cat was meowing downstairs.

I don't know why the meowing of a cat feels cute, and I don't need to know.
Our daily lives continue.
I don't want the men who raise their middle fingers and crotches to understand.
If I were to die, I would want to die while remaining perfect, and even if that were realistically impossible, it's okay for me to remain perfect.

Try pointing that raised middle finger at me.
Even that would only be my pleasure. It would only be a delight.

The cat meowed again.
The old cat, which no longer even tried to leave the house, was still gazing outside from the house's window.