I Became a Painting

Prologue

Why I might be a haunted portrait.

Chapter 1

I became a painting.

"……."

Not a memorial portrait. An actual painting.

"……."

And not just any painting — I had dropped straight into the middle of a cabin in the woods.

"…Well, it's interesting enough, so that works."

Even if, while still perfectly alive, I was about to be treated as a haunted portrait.

Seo Ji-oh had been an art teacher.

To explain how a perfectly ordinary working adult became a haunted portrait: when fire broke out at the school, Ji-oh failed to escape in time. Trapped in the art room, he fell — plop — into one of his own paintings.

"……."

That's the truth.

"If I was going to die anyway, I wanted to die in the place I loved most."

That place was the art storeroom — the room that held a landscape of a cabin in the woods, and the room that ultimately turned him into a talking painting.

"You live long enough, you end up experiencing things like this."

Ji-oh sat on a bench and took in the scenery inside the painting.

"……."

The air was mild.

Birdsong rose in harmonious chorus. A soft spring breeze drifted past, light and silky as fabric. Sunlight spilled like gems between dense leaves. The temperature was just right, and the forest smelled deep and damp, as if wet with dew.

"Mmm."

It was peaceful.

"This is nice."

Roughly a week had passed since he first came to in this cabin inside the painting.

Time moves strangely here, so I can't say for certain how long I've actually been…

Still, any new tenant inspects their home. Ji-oh had already figured out a few of the quiet rules that governed this painted world.

First: everything he drew here became real.

"……."

Seo Ji-oh studied an apple he had painted, then set it down with a soft tap. A ripe fragrance rose from it.

He felt proud.

I have been liberated from grocery bills.

Well done, me.

Haunted portrait or not, for a gourmet and a serious eater like Seo Ji-oh, this was excellent news. Draw an apple, and you got a real apple. Draw a bag of salt, and you got real salt. The same went for kitchenware — pots, spatulas — and for plants, flowers, and trees.

At this point, there's one thing anyone would wonder about.

He could not paint people.

Curious whether he might become the first human to sculpt a person from pigment, he had tried. What came out was a warm corpse — never a living, moving human being.

"Good thing the limits are clear."

Ji-oh had nearly panicked. For someone who valued friendship, peace, and love, the power to create humanity would only have been a problem. More importantly, Seo Ji-oh's dream leaned closer to "landlord" than "creator of the world."

I'm relieved I didn't end up with a power big enough to ruin the smallness and cuteness of my life.

And the second rule.

"……."

His gaze settled on a frame hanging from a wooden post.

"Like a front door, I suppose."

Through that frame, Ji-oh could see the world outside this place.

"Maybe it's there so I don't grow old alone — a reminder that communication matters."

He could even interact with reality and leave the painting whenever he wanted. Compared to the haunted portraits in all the ghost stories he knew, the freedom here was unusually high.

Of course. That's so me.

Even as a painting, he refused to take the same path as everyone else.

Ji-oh was thoroughly pleased with his uniqueness — something that would never appear twice in human history. He doubted anything like this existed elsewhere. And if it did, that would be fate, which would be even better.

"……."

Anyway. Moving on.

"…I don't really see a reason to step back out into that exhaust-scented society and start a whole new life."

Why would he leave this clean, pure zone?

"In just a few years, so much has changed from what I remember…"

It was a bitterly old-man thing to mutter at the vigorous age of twenty-nine, but reality was reality. Roughly thirty years had already passed since the fire.

Thirty-one years, to be exact.

Once he learned that, Ji-oh calmly returned into the painting. This talking potato had no confidence he could adapt to the new society.

"I've probably been legally dead for ages. What kind of human experimentation am I looking to walk into by going out there?"

He had no intention of abandoning this peaceful house — free of grocery costs, free of rent, free of electricity bills — just to suffer for no reason.

"I am a little worried about the kids in my class… but the world has changed so much I have no idea how any of them are doing."

Thirty-one years ago, on the day of the fire, the Earth itself had apparently been flipped upside down.

They call it the Great Cataclysm, I think.

From that day on, the world seemed to have transformed completely.

He had crawled out of a ruined school that had practically become the Amazon, struggled his way to a place where people gathered — and then watched, in pure disbelief, as a businessman in a suit fought a building-sized monster with a bow. Thoroughly rattled, Ji-oh quietly accepted his identity as a painting.

"These things happen in life."

This body could die a hundred times over, be remade a hundred times more, until its bones turned to dust — and his soul would still be perfectly intact. Even so, the peaceful, comfortable life of a haunted portrait beat modern society, where people rubbed shoulders with monsters every day.

"There are many ways to live in this world, and among them is the life of a portrait…"

Which brought him to the third point.

"…Hmm."

This forest had its own ecosystem.

"Maybe I'll go foraging."

Ji-oh picked up a sturdy basket, planning to bring back as much food as he could carry.

All I painted was a two-story cabin and the forest around it. But as I wandered, I found plants and terrain I'd never drawn at all.

It seemed to have been built from his imagination.

"……."

Rustle.

"Hello."

"Beep."

"Alright then."

Ji-oh watched a rabbit burst from the undergrowth, rub itself against his ankle, and hop away without interfering.

It's small.

Far smaller and rounder than the rabbits of Korea he knew — which seemed to reflect Seo Ji-oh's preference for small, harmless things.

I like it.

Mostly because it looked incapable of hurting him. And because, if it ever came to a serious fight, he felt he could win. That was a comforting thought.

Maybe only harmless creatures live here because the painting's owner is harmless. A plausible theory…

After that, other creatures that differed slightly from their real-world counterparts passed him from time to time. A squirrel with absurdly puffed cheeks. A sparrow whose feathers fluffed as if it were winter. A deer with jewel-clear eyes and a long, graceful neck.

"……."

Ji-oh thought about it.

The fourth rule.

"…They're this friendly on first meeting. They must recognize me as their father."

Every being in this painting showed him goodwill.

Because I painted this place?

Even as a painting, Ji-oh was still a painter, and this world was still a work he had created.

It might be only natural that the creatures living inside that work would be fond of their master.

He continued walking upstream along the brook.

"…As befits an unemployed man with nothing to do, maybe I'll find a sunny spot and take a nap."

He was heading for the spring at the source of this vast forest.

And if I forage along the way, even better.

Seo Ji-oh was still a gourmet and a serious eater. Becoming a painting had stripped him of hunger and drowsiness, but he could still eat as much as he wanted and sleep whenever he liked.

If I eat too much I still feel bloated, and I can't fall straight back asleep after a deep rest… so the basic patterns of living still seem to hold.

Either way, being able to eat as much as he wanted was a tremendous advantage.

"…Ah."

Following the stream upstream, Ji-oh found a cluster of round red fruit.

"These would make perfect snacks."

The tree was short — under two meters — with thin branches curved like an overturned dish. Along those slender limbs hung fruit the size of stationery-store marbles, clustered thickly in soft, plump groups. In shape they were closer to a cherry tree than a grapevine.

"I wonder if drying them in the sun would give them a texture like raisins…"

In that moment, Ji-oh's "System" explained the small red fruit.

"…A little warning before you pop up would be nice…"

The fifth rule.

"…Yeah. This one's going to take some getting used to. Time will help, I suppose."

Strictly speaking, this wasn't a rule of the forest so much as something about him — Seo Ji-oh seemed to have "awakened." That phenomenon that appeared in the superpowered people who emerged after the Great Cataclysm. People on Earth now called those superpowered individuals "hunters," which was fascinating.

And now I'm one of them.

How to put it.

"It feels like a game."

As if he'd dropped into a healing game of foraging and cooking.

Maybe I should be grateful that feeling made it so easy to accept this strange environment.

He wasn't escaping reality by pretending this was a game. He simply meant that being placed in such a harmless, convenient environment made adaptation easy.

"…Hmm…"

After reading the System again, Ji-oh checked his basket. Plenty of room left.

"…Should I gather more?"

He plucked fruit until the bottom of the basket glowed red, then laid out a large, clean-washed leaf to separate the space — reserving room for anything else he might find. Thanks to that foresight, it wasn't long before he discovered another medicinal herb.

"What was that one again."

A small flower that looked something like an orchid.

The flavor is quite different, but the texture was something like thoroughly cooked spinach.

Vanilla-cream-scented spinach might sound absurd, but it was surprisingly pleasant to eat. Once cooked, it made a good snack when he felt peckish.

And the texture is fun — mash it with your tongue and it softens like a well-roasted chestnut, ready to fall apart.

For reference, a "Dorongdorong tree" was one of the trees in this forest: fat like a baobab, but far shorter. Its tightly curled leaves were plump and elastic as water-filled balloons. These trees grew near the cabin, so Ji-oh could gather the leaves easily.

"Just in case."

He continued foraging diligently. He needed more than food — medicine for emergencies as well — so a wide range of gathering was necessary.

Following that path, Ji-oh finally reached the spring that was the source of the stream.

"……."

Drip.

Trickle…

"……."

Spring water cupped by pure white tree roots, as if they had gathered sunlight and moonlight both. Between the glass-clear, glittering pools bloomed flowers thin and beautiful as silk spun from gems — lush blossoms that faintly resembled lotuses.

"With these…"

"If I make some medicine now, I'll probably need it someday."

Thump.

He set the basket down.

I doubt I'll actually have a use for it, but I was bored anyway…

Thinking it perfect new content, he washed his hands clean in the spring water and reached for a Lurupu flower.

With his usual blunt, gloomy expression, Ji-oh snipped the stem with a soft snap. The hands that handled the flower were remarkably delicate, completely at odds with his sunken face.

Taking it root and all might be interesting, but this isn't a plant I've ever grown before… Being a flower made of water, I don't even know where the roots begin and end. If I try carelessly and the population shrinks, I'll be upset, so I should be careful.

The Lurupu he cut was already fully bloomed, so it did not melt and run as water. That meant he had harvested it the correct way.

"The scent is lovely."

Ji-oh carefully placed the bud into his basket.

About twenty flowers bloomed around the spring; unsure of the right amount, he took only three. The petals themselves were so large and full, like lotuses, that taking more felt wasteful.

The stems are quite sturdy, too. I wonder if there's another use for them. They feel fibrous — if I tear them lengthwise into thin strips, they might peel like thread…

Before long he had packed all the flowers away.

"This should be enough."

He decided to get a feel for the exact proportions while actually making the medicine, and set the flower-filled basket back on the ground.

Then he simply looked at the spring.

"……."

Trickle,

trickle…

"……."

The sound of shallow, transparent water. The clear fragrance rising from a pure spring. Forest air heavy with moisture.

"…This is nice."

This spring — which existed even though he had never painted it — was more beautiful than he could have imagined.

The tree, already dead yet standing firm, shone pure white, like precious Carrara marble. Through its complex veins, fine enough to let the sky filter through, transparent spring water poured out, shattering gold-like sunlight as it fell.

Like a thin wash of pearl.

This tree's sap had hardened into jewels. It must have secreted sap before dying; wide, undulating plate-shaped gems tinted with pale blue jutted from the trunk like wood-ear mushrooms. Clear and blue-green, they looked like dishes carved from enormous jewels. Each held spring water that had caught the sun, cradling a gentle light.

"……."

Trickle…

The spring water spilled from those jewel dishes in sequence — from the highest, carefully, one by one — ringing like dawn jade beads as it bounced from plate to plate. If you listened closely, it almost sounded like a butterfly's song.

Sunlight filtering through the forest leaves scattered across the marble-like tree, and for a moment it felt as though he had stepped into a temple.

"……."

The water that descended gathered at the roots of the dead tree into a shallow well. What overflowed spread throughout the forest, and butterflies with sunlit wings lit the surrounding air — exactly like fireflies.

Fireflies you could see in broad daylight.

"Magnificent."

The spring, rooted in that towering tree, looked almost like a vast pond.

…There's a saying that good water has a fragrance. I guess it applies even to water this pure.

The air around this place was nutty and sweet, as if he were lying in a flower field. Perhaps the scent of the Lurupu petals was dyeing the spring itself.

I really do love this.

Ji-oh liked it here.

He settled into a bed of moss as soft as a quilt and slowly requested a midday sleep.

"It's here."

The art storeroom of a forgotten abandoned school.

Inside the portrait hanging there, a man sat with his eyes quietly closed.

"Look at this painting."

"Whoa — how did this survive without burning?"

"Condition's good… Think they'll count this as a find if we take it?"

"Looks like it has a title, too."

"It has a name? So it's an item."

And so, the final rule.

Ji-oh had become a painting.

"……."

"It says Portrait of Ji-oh."

That much, at least, was undeniable fact.

"Having someone with an appraisal skill around is so convenient…. But is this even from Earth?"

"Would an ordinary portrait end up in a ruined school, deep in the mountains of Gangwon-do, this pristine? With no one around to maintain it?"

"Yeah, fair point."

"Obviously it drifted out of some dungeon. There are plenty of other dungeons around here."

"Anyway, the collectors are going to love this. I hear they go crazy for stuff like this."

And while Ji-oh slept,

the entrance to his painting was changing hands without his permission.

(To be continued)