Hwang Jin Man

He always knew he had a talent for writing, but he lived life the conventional way. After graduating from a good university and landing a stable job, everything seemed to be going smoothly. Then one day, driven by a strange restlessness, he casually wrote a poem and submitted it to a literary contest. When it unexpectedly won, his life began to unravel.

He quit his job, knowing poetry alone couldn’t support him, and went to graduate school with the plan of becoming a professor so he could spend his life writing. Intelligent and used to achieving whatever he set his mind to, he believed things would naturally work out. But instead, he ran headfirst into the limits of his own ability and began to fall apart.

He wasn’t the only one affected. Watching his older brother collapse under the weight of failure left Dong Man shaken as well, often breaking down in tears over it. Dong Man eventually moved into his brother’s small apartment, quietly looking after him, something Jin Man understands all too well. Carrying that heavy guilt in his chest, Jin Man drifts through each day, numbing himself with alcohol just to keep going.

(Source: jTBC)