The One-to-One Rule
Late in the evening.
The topmost floor of the cabin—the attic. Soft lighting. The drifting scent of the forest. A black wooden desk set before a round window.
There, Ji-oh was organizing the rules he had discovered.
“So then…”
He went on.
“You could call it one-to-one.”
Inside this painting, Ji-oh could do anything.
He hadn’t actually tried everything, but it felt that way. In a world where he could even create a warm corpse, nothing was truly impossible for him.
But the moment reality gets involved, the story changes.
Asking Yu Seong-un to draw an apple had been part of testing that very point.
Whether I draw it or someone else draws it for me, from my side it’s the same picture, so I can enjoy it without a second thought. The second I smuggle it outside, though, it becomes real. If there were no restrictions at all, that would just be too much…
That was where the suspicion had begun.
“Lucky for me that Seong-un is such a kind person.”
He’d been genuinely moved when the man had simply drawn the apple for him without complaint, even after a sudden request out of nowhere.
“He’s really mature. Even when a portrait starts spouting nonsense, he just rolls with it.”
Thanks to that considerate caretaker’s patience and a few days of experiments, Ji-oh had finally grasped his situation.
When Ji-oh left the painting, his figure vanished from within it and the frame became nothing more than an ordinary landscape. If he wanted to give a gift to someone outside the painting, he first had to receive something from them.
In short: what comes in must go out. A one-to-one rule.
“……”
Of course, the snacks he had handed out to those seventeen staff members earlier had been pure goodwill.
Everyone looked so terrified I thought maybe some snacks would loosen the atmosphere a little.
And it had loosened—sort of. Fear had simply flipped into utter bewilderment. Well, if a black lump suddenly popped out of a painting and shoved a cookie into his hand, Ji-oh would have been pretty flustered too.
Those people really did help me, after all.
In the end he had simply been observing basic manners.
His grandmother had always told him: if someone has given you something, or if you owe them an apology, you offer tangible goods along with graceful words that charm the other person. That was the fundamental courtesy of living among people.
She used to say that gratitude or apology spoken with nothing but words is a corpse.
Speaking kindly was the bare minimum; whether you could afford it or not, you still gave even the smallest gift. For Seo Ji-oh—whose facial muscles had atrophied worse than a pony’s—that advice had been pure blood and flesh.
And so the good little potato Seo Ji-oh, even at twenty-nine, still faithfully followed the teachings of his life mentor, his grandmother. Without them he never would have become a teacher beloved by his students.
Anyway.
“I can’t just keep taking help.”
That was Seo Ji-oh’s iron rule.
“In that sense, this world’s rule suits me pretty well. Maybe it’s a reflection of my own nature—like the animals in the forest.”
He liked it.
“If I’m going to pass something into reality while I’m still a painting, I have to receive something in return.”
Ji-oh could do quite a lot freely.
Inside the painting he already enjoyed something close to a creator’s authority, of course. Even outside in reality he could move around without being bound by any special rules.
I can even make a passage with a painting and skip the elevator to reach other floors.
But when he remained a painting while the other party stood in reality, he could not break the one-to-one rule. That much he had learned while talking with Yu Seong-un, the staff member who managed the portrait.
“When I asked him to draw that apple, a system explanation popped up.”
It had told him to offer something in return—and there had even been a time limit.
About a week, I think.
He still didn’t know what would happen if he failed to give compensation within a week, but it didn’t sound like anything good, so he had delivered a gift the very next day.
“……”
Ji-oh rolled some odds and ends across the desk with his fingertip. They clattered softly against the wood.
“Gems…”
Among them were jewels of every color.
“I didn’t expect I could make these too.”
Ji-oh loved all sorts of painting styles.
A true artist was supposed to have a world uniquely his own, but as a mere teacher rather than a proper painter, Ji-oh had painted in every style imaginable. That same Seo Ji-oh happened to be quite skilled at hyperrealism.
The gems he was toying with now had been born that way.
“Using them to make paint made it much easier to draw the gems I gave Seong-un.”
It felt as though the paint itself, the picture itself, the finished product itself possessed a kind of life.
“……”
A clear sense of life dwelling in something that by rights should never breathe.
“A special quality that suits this wonderful potato with no limits to his thinking… if I do say so myself.”
He had never felt this free—like stripping off his underwear at the ripe age of twenty-nine—but having so many things he could do was simply delightful. As a result, Ji-oh seemed to have evolved into an even more charmingly multicolored potato.
Having more or less finished organizing his thoughts, the man who was no better than an unemployed freeloader continued daydreaming.
…Tonight I’ll sleep outside. Looking up at the stars should feel nice. What should I cook tomorrow morning? Even just roasting potatoes and dipping them in salt would be delicious, right? And if I get bored I could always try farming. If I ask Seong-un…
The weather was good; crops would grow well. Finding seedlings he liked and tending them would be refreshing.
He would cook meals with the harvest, and of course send some as gifts to Seong-un outside the painting. He even thought he might like to bring bees home if he found any somewhere.
“Let’s wander around a lot.”
Then he would come back to the cabin and paint.
And when he painted…
“……”
Half-dozing in the languid spring air, Ji-oh quietly opened his eyes.
“I need a pet.”
The scale was a bit larger now, but this still counted as country living, didn’t it?
“Keeping a pet in a house with a yard is like samgyeopsal and soju. And I am a healthy Korean man who drinks soju with samgyeopsal… therefore I need a new family member. QED.”
The creatures of this forest were friendly toward him, yet they still retained a wild animal’s basic wariness, so he couldn’t easily touch them.
I wanted to knead them like rice cakes, but I got firmly rejected a few times.
And being a perfect gentleman, Ji-oh never manhandled a rabbit that said no.
The forest friends approached him easily and left just as easily—they were simply wild animals. Becoming friends with them would certainly be fun, but Ji-oh had another method available.
“If I paint them…”
He could not create humans, and he had no intention of trying. One human taking responsibility for himself was already more than enough.
But animals?
“…Can I make them?”
Ji-oh headed for the workshop on the second floor.
Until now, everything Ji-oh had painted had been objects.
“No self.”
Fruit, vegetables, food, plates, furniture—plenty of things, yet none of them living, breathing beings. Separate from the faint vitality he vaguely sensed in them.
“……”
Ji-oh sat before the canvas.
“…Would it work?”
He had failed with humans, but a small animal—might that be possible?
“…There’s no one else here, but there are other animals…”
It felt possible.
“……”
He rose from the chair and approached the wall covered in countless small drawers. It looked like the medicine cabinet you might find in an old herbal clinic.
There were too many to count, yet Ji-oh knew exactly where everything was.
“…In here, I’m sure…”
Click.
He opened one drawer.
“There it is.”
A blue, transparent gem lay inside.
Even Ji-oh did not know exactly what this jewel was. But it was cool. Not cold so much as refreshing; solid to the touch, yet inside it shifted fluidly, as though water were flowing.
“……”
Sparkling, flowing within a single form—it was liquid wearing the shape of a solid, and no different from living, breathing life clustered together.
“We’ll use this.”
Besides that, Seo Ji-oh took out a few more gems, dried leaves, and minerals.
He cracked the jewels with an awl and hammer. The leaves, still vivid in color despite being thoroughly dried, and the multicolored minerals—all of it he ground into powder. Flour-fine powder that, in Ji-oh’s hands, was reborn as paint.
“……”
Tree sap gathered from the forest gave it body.
“……”
He adjusted the ratios until he found just the right viscosity.
“……”
On a glass plate that let the colors show clearly, the finely ground paints glowed softly like fireflies.
…Pale as the Milky Way, yet…
It gave him an equally cool, refreshing feeling.
“Ready.”
Ji-oh began to paint.
This forest had no lake. Perhaps that was only natural, yet he couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. He had wanted something—whether a modest pond, a grand lake, or a vast sea—to give off the scent of water, endless and transparent.
Imagining the cool breeze that would blow from a wide pool of water, he moved his brush.
“……”
A round body.
Heads small, wings large. Beaks need not be big; they would only ever sing. They would build homes wherever water existed, and those homes themselves would become them.
“……”
Birds that were water itself.
“……”
What kind of birds would those be?
“…They’ll probably live in flocks.”
They would live in groups.
Anywhere water existed they could stay, and even where there was none they could create a pond, a lake, a sea at any time.
Living, breathing, carrying life within them—they were transparent water and, at the same time, birds that stirred cool breezes.
“Their colors will all be different.”
Water is transparent, so once they possess a self, they will think…
I want a color of my own, so I can show myself.
They would make adorable friends.
To decorate their transparent selves, they would tuck all sorts of treasures into their bodies. Just as every bird preens its feathers, they would use their tiny beaks to choose treasures that suited them and tuck them inside their clear forms, adorning themselves.
It might be a flower. It might be a gem. It might be fruit hanging from a tree, or leftovers from a human meal. Perhaps they would even carry some ancient relic or a tiny fish.
“Everything…”
is up to you.
You who are both water and birds can do anything freely.
You may fall asleep in a flowing brook, or soar freely across the vast sky. Freedom was theirs.
“……”
Ji-oh painted a very small bird.
Body round, wings just large enough for that body, tail feathers long, beak short. Small as they were, they could hide anywhere, and they knew they themselves were water.
Water that possessed life.
“……”
Inside those transparent bodies, gems and flowers and fruit settled and shone in every color…
They were beautiful.
“……”
When Ji-oh carefully tapped the bird’s beak with a fingertip—
“Ah.”
—Flutter!
“……”
A bird cradling its own personal treasure settled on Ji-oh’s shoulder.
“…Hello.”
Rustle.
“Nice to meet you.”
Rustle-rustle, rustle!
“Yeah, me too.”
Instead of a cry, the bird made soft rustling sounds with the flower inside its body.
A quiet yet noisy little friend.
“You’re a chatterbox.”
The flower petals trapped inside the small transparent body made faint noises as they playfully cried out.
“Amazing.”
Before he knew it, Ji-oh’s room was filled with transparent, glittering birds.
They hovered around him for a moment, then poured out the open window in a rush. The wind raised by the wingbeats of living water droplets was far greater than he had imagined.
It was like watching cherry-blossom petals scatter on a bright spring breeze—a scene so beautiful it looked like a painting itself.
“……”
Ji-oh stood dazed for a moment, then moved his feet out onto the terrace.
“…Ah.”
There they were.
“They didn’t go far.”
They had formed a small pond right beside Ji-oh’s cabin. He rested his chin on the terrace railing and leaned against it.
“Good kids.”
The pond—or lake—that stretched long around the cabin flowed quietly.
Beneath it, countless “treasures” lay scattered like beach sand or river pebbles. Flowers, gems, fruit—all settled on the bottom—made the lake glitter rapturously under the moonlight.
They would merge into one and flow gently, then suddenly—plop!—pop up to look around, only to hide again and rejoin their friends to form the pond once more.
“……”
Ji-oh closed his eyes. Once the living, sparkling water vanished from sight, he could hear the sound of their breathing.
Instead of chirping cries there was the clink of gems, the brush of petals, the soft shift of tiny stones and sand. That was how these friends talked and sang.
It was just like the sound of summer insects in the grass…
“…Time for bed.”
Carrying only a single pillow, Ji-oh stepped outside the cabin. He lay down between the cabin and the pond.
“……”
Rustle—
As he settled to sleep, he heard animals approaching.
For creatures that always ran away the moment I tried to touch them, they’re coming pretty fast.
Birds that had been tilting their heads on the branches fluttered over and perched on Seo Ji-oh’s chest. A deer that had been sniffing at the shallow, wide pond stepped closer on long legs and settled beside him.
Squirrels that had been twitching in the underbrush dropped acorns and small berries into the pond, then crowded around him.
“……”
At the sight, Ji-oh muttered,
“…Toll fee?”
Like a highway tollgate charge?
Anyway, both the squirrels and the pond birds looked thoroughly satisfied.
Well, that’s fine then.
It was peaceful, wasn’t it?
As long as the friends he had created were not beings that deserved to be shunned, as long as they could mingle and blend with the existing ones, that alone was more than enough for him.
At that point, Ji-oh thought,
“……”
Decorating this portrait might be fun too.