Disclaimer: As the author, I request everyone to read the story first before coming to this part. The contents here won’t make any sense if you read this first anyway.

Warning: Mature contents and trigger warnings are present; Obscene language is used; Some parts are a bit taboo or unusual; Long chapter ahead; Full of grammatical errors (I’ll fix this when I already have the time)

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I’ll just share what I was thinking while writing this story. Unlike how I wrote the story, this chapter is extremely informal (lmao you’ll see).

This chapter is divided into four sections: pre-story timeline, commentaries/explanations, questions, and postscript.

PRE-STORY TIMELINE

I decided to include this here to make things easier (for me). This is the timeline of events that happened by the time Being in Time ended. All of which were mentioned in the story.

COMMENTARIES/EXPLANATIONS

The title was inspired from Martin Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ which I accidentally heard as ‘Being in Time’ in one of my classes before. It has been stuck in my mind ever since (haha). This story is not related to his work in any way though. Funnily, going with the chapter title format was the final decision I made before I published the first chapter. I only used the numbers as my reference while writing so I wouldn’t get confused, but a few minutes before I posted Chapter 01, I was like, “Ahh. So if I post it as is, then it literally becomes ‘being in time’ (living in the moment).” Get it? (hahaha)

Chorong’s character was the hardest one to write for me since we have completely opposite traits in real life. Bomi, on the other hand, is very spontaneous in real life that I could just add the scenes that I want without compromising anything because it’s expected of her anyway (lmao).

In the story, Chorong and Bomi both experienced something life-changing, but someone between them experienced it first before the other did. An example would be their relationships where Chorong was left by her past girlfriend Eunji (Chapter 06, Segment 05), and Bomi followed with Soyou wanting a divorce (Chapter 01, Segment 05). Another example would be having a loved one die where Bomi was the first to experience a loved one’s death in the story with Soyou from an accident (Chapter 04, Segment 01), and Chorong soon followed with the death of her sister Sojin from a sickness (Chapter 17, Segment 06). The reason was so that they could console each other. Since it already happened to one of them before, that person who experienced it first would know what to do when it happens to the other person (lol).

The scene at the beach (Chapter 06, Segment 02) was the most important scene for these two (and my most cherished scene of them) since the horizon is where the sky and the sea meet. The sky would often represent freedom while the sea would represent problems. Chorong was following Bomi behind on the seashore—that meant Chorong would be the next one to experience what Bomi had experienced which was the death of a loved one.

They went into a cave-like rock formation where there were vandalized writings on the wall (lol) that Bomi made with her late wife Soyou—their memories from their younger years. Chorong noticed the ‘semper tecum’ tattoo on Bomi’s right foot while climbing the rock formation and the biggest writing on the wall which was ‘ego semper tecum’. Chorong asked why is it that only ‘semper tecum’ was tattooed on Bomi and not the whole thing. Bomi replied that the ‘ego’ died with her wife, saying that the ‘ego’ was tattooed on Soyou. Bomi then said that the equation was now incomplete.

“But did the ‘ego’ really die?” was the question I asked myself while writing this. ‘Ego semper tecum’ means ‘I am always with you’ in Latin, so ‘ego’ would mean ‘I’ and ‘semper tecum’ would mean ‘always with you’ (though ‘semper tecum’ by itself is grammatically incorrect based on the research I made on this). You’re probably thinking now that the ‘ego’ was used like in Freud’s Id, Ego, and Superego but no (since I’m not too familiar with Psychology). Maybe there are similarities since the ‘ego’, as said by Freud, is that rational part of the personality that’s responsible for dealing with reality, but I was thinking of something else when I was writing this chapter which were similar to Locke’s Ego Theory and Hume’s Bundle Theory. Personal identity as said in the Ego Theory is created by a soul-like substance where there is a single observer who experiences life, while there is a bundle of thoughts, experiences, feelings, etc. that are all linked together that defines personal identity in the Bundle Theory (I encountered these theories in a Philosophy class as a Science Major so pardon me on how I loosely defined them; these were not the readings I used but you can read an easy version of them here: Freud’s Id, Ego, and Superego, Ego Theory & Bundle Theory). I took both Ego Theory and Bundle Theory into consideration before I posted the chapter and I ended up concluding in my thoughts that maybe the sentence ‘ego semper tecum’ was not meant to be shared with anyone in the first place. Maybe the equation was still complete, but Bomi failed to realize it in herself. After all, Bomi did say that “I am always here with you” to Chorong on the rooftop (lol) (Chapter 14, Segment 01). Don’t try to understand and just skip this part if you’re thinking that I’m already speaking gibberish or something since these are just my weird thoughts while writing (haha).

After this conversation, Bomi chopped off her hair and Chorong helped fixing her haircut afterwards, which was how Chorong will help Bomi in her ‘moving-on’ process (lmao).

Chorong’s red hair color in this story was inspired from their Five Era promotions (lol). Minah’s favorite color is red (Chapter 09, Segment 04) which is actually the case in real life (based on her profiles online and such). I was joking with myself that Minah grew affectionate towards Chorong because of her red hair (hahaha). Kiddings aside, Minah did grew fond of Chorong in the story, vice versa. Sojin knitted a red beanie for Minah and placed it on her head (Chapter 15, Segment 01) which meant that Chorong and Minah will become a family (haha).

In Chapter 14, Segment 01, Chorong questioned herself if she should jump from the rooftop or not. This was just a mere inquiry but Bomi thought otherwise and pulled Chorong to the safe side. After landing, Chorong started crying and hitting her chest.

CR: “How do I make it go away?”

BM: “It doesn’t go away.”

CR: “But why?”

BM: “I don’t know. The pain remains, but as time passes by, it eventually subsides. It stays as a memory that it happened at some point in our lives, that we went through this, that we experienced the cause of our pain.”

CR: “T-then why do we have to go through this?”

BM: “To make us stronger, for us to become better.”

CR: “How do you even know that?”

BM: “All I know is that I don’t know anything.”

Bomi’s last line is from Socrates (lol). I borrowed this line since there’s really no certainty in this world, but we can try to lessen this uncertainty with what we make of now—our present. There’s only much that we can do about our circumstances since a part of our life is already dictated by our culture, the family we were born in, etc. Most of the time, we do not forget about these important events that inflicted great pain in our lives because it has changed a part of us—may it be physically, mentally, spiritually, etc. Maybe that’s why these kinds of events happen, because these are what shaped us to the person we are now.

While on the rooftop, colorful lanterns suddenly appeared in the sky. This part was inspired from pictures of Taiwan that I saw during their Lantern Festival. Chorong’s name have several meanings. It could be lantern or lamp as said in other references, while it could be ‘chorongchorong’ (초롱초롱) which means brightly, clearly, gleamingly, sparkly, etc. Now when Chorong saw those colorful lanterns arranged like a rainbow in the sky, did she feel hopeful after seeing the rainbow or after being reminded of her name? What was that ‘timely reminder’ for her? I’d like to believe that it was both. And Bomi, by the end of the segment, was staring into Chorong’s eyes that were gleaming with light (haha I just want to mention this).

The bottles they snatched from each other represented what they thought of themselves, like the half empty Jack Daniel bottle that Bomi was holding when she passed out at the club (Chapter 05, Segment 03) and the empty beer bottle that Chorong was playing with in her room after her sister died (Chapter 19, Segment 02). Bomi’s bottle was half empty because she still had Minah even though she lost Soyou, but Chorong’s bottle was empty because she thought she had no one by her side anymore.

Now it’s the sleep-deprived couple’s turn, Eunji and Naeun (lmao). From the very first chapters, I already dropped hints that Eunji (or should I say Hyerim? lol) is Minah’s biological mother. The scar on her stomach (Chapter 08, Segment 01) and the one Hayoung bumped into at the orphanage which was her (Chapter 02, Segment 01) were the early clues. She was the one who inquired about a person from the orphanage, but Yuri who was the caretaker said that that person, Minah, was already long gone from there. Eunji’s question, “What will you do if you have all the money in the world?” established the fact that there was something that she wanted but couldn’t have, and this thought appeared after that first scene from the orphanage. She even asked this question twice to Naeun (Chapter 08, Segment 01; Chapter 09, Segment 01).

In Chapter 25, Segment 08, remember how Eunji called out Minah by her name ‘Eunji’? I already dropped a hint about Eunji’s real profile when Naeun opened the suitcase and saw the wads of cash in it (Chapter 09, Segment 01). Naeun suggested that Eunji should place the money in the bank but Eunji told her that she did not have any documents nor IDs to create a bank account. A similar scene happened again when they were planning against AG Linings, so Chorong volunteered to make fake documents for Eunji (Chapter 22). The day that Sojin found her was the day she gave up Minah in the orphanage (Chapter 07, Segment 02) and we’d know this if we connected the conversation Eunji had with Naeun about how Sojin found her on Minah’s exact birthday five years ago (Chapter 25, Segment 05), and with Yuri who told her that the person she was looking for, her daughter was there in front of them (Chapter 25, Segment 08). On the day Eunji left Minah at the orphanage, she embodied the identity of her own daughter and lived her everyday life without forgetting about what she did. I do feel like this was her gravest punishment, like living without getting any redemption or forgiveness. She would have had carried it her entire life if it wasn’t for Yuri who revealed the truth. Maybe the reason why she’s so afraid of children was because of the punishment she gave herself.

And Eunji chose to spend on a camera too because she lived in Chorong’s house when Sojin took her in, like maybe she grew fond of pictures from seeing them in that house before which Bomi noticed when Chorong brought her there the first time (Chapter 05, Segment 04).

I think this is the most important conversation Eunji and Naeun had in the story (Chapter 06, Segment 03).

EJ: “Why are all beautiful things out of reach?”

NE: “We wouldn’t know its beauty if it’s something that we can hold anyway. Once we have it, we take it for granted without even realizing its beauty.”

EJ: “So it’s possible to have something beautiful without seeing it as such?”

NE: “Maybe. But we wouldn’t know.”

In this conversation, they had their own ideas of what a ‘beautiful thing’ was. What was out of reach for Eunji at that time? What was it that Naeun was taking for granted that she could not see its beauty? Eunji knew or had an idea of what beautiful things were, but Naeun’s view of something beautiful seemed vague, as if Naeun didn’t have an idea what beauty is or as if she viewed beauty as something ideal and unachievable like how she perceived the flying lanterns (Chapter 13, Segment 06).

The previous CEO of AG Linings before Daehyun was Eunji (Chapter 24, Segment 04). So when Naeun asked Daehyun if he was an art collector because the office was full of beautiful artworks, Daehyun replied that he was not really one. The room of his predecessor Eunji was just turned over to him when he became the CEO. So why is Eunji’s apartment empty and not as pleasant-looking as her