Chapter 189 |
TL: KSD
「When she made eye contact with the baby whose face had been crushed, Min-ha couldn’t even scream. As if the sharp edge of a kitchen knife had pierced through the ribs, she clutched her chest and froze with a gasp.
People who encounter ghosts in horror films often scream, “Kyaaah!” But that wasn’t it. Min-ha learned that when someone is truly shocked, they become paralyzed and unable to do anything.
Like a traveler who comes face to face with a tiger on a mountain path at night, like a soldier who turns around to find the enemy aiming a gun at him, like an unfortunate pedestrian who suddenly faces a car veering onto the sidewalk, Min-ha also felt that she had come face to face with something.
Frozen in terror, Min-ha felt as if time were moving in slow motion.
It felt as if this horrifying moment of fear would last forever.
But that wasn’t the case.
Time flowed as it always had. And it would continue to flow.
Only then did Min-ha calmly examine the appearance of the baby with the crushed face.
The moment pity drove out fear, Min-ha realized she hadn’t been breathing this whole time.
Hyperventilation, and then coughing.
With her brain supplied with oxygen again, she began to think clearly.
A thirty-two-year-old wage laborer with a history of abortion, ground down at her company to the point of exhaustion, hallucinating a traumatic image from childhood, this was entirely plausible.
Therefore, rather than overreacting as if she were the protagonist of a horror film, Min-ha calmly set down her spoon and chose to return to her room and get some sleep.
What was scarier than the baby with the crushed face that appeared across from her while she was eating dinner, was the fact that she had to go to work again tomorrow. The fear doubled upon realizing that tomorrow was Saturday.
So Min-ha put off the dishwashing for “tomorrow’s Min-ha” wrapped herself in her blanket, lay on her side, and slept curled up like a shrimp. Hoping that when she woke up, this creepy incident would be over.
But when she blinked,
and saw the baby with the crushed face sitting on the vanity in the corner of the room, staring at her,
Min-ha had a foreboding feeling that the baby would appear again tomorrow.
And that feeling was not wrong.」
EP 11 – Evening Bell
“Mmm…”
Baek Seol (30, CEO of Baekhak Publishing), a wage laborer in her early thirties who, despite entering her thirties by Korean age, stubbornly insisted she was still in her twenties by Western age, didn’t feel that the hardships faced by the thirty-two-year-old wage laborer Min-ha were someone else’s problem. (TL Note: Korean age starts from 1, so if a baby is born, they are automatically 1 year old. By international standards, she is still not 30 years old.)
It wasn’t that she herself suddenly saw a baby with a crushed face or anything, but rather that the ‘sudden and unavoidable trials of life’ embodied by the ‘baby with the crushed face’ felt familiar.
Asking why the appearance of a stillborn baby as a ghost suddenly invokes the theme of life’s hardships is meaningless. That just means you haven’t read enough of Moon In’s work.
A seasoned otaku or rather, reader, inevitably becomes familiar with a writer’s repertoire.
Just as long-time readers of Haruki Murakami’s novels smile affectionately when the protagonist suddenly starts ‘masturbating’ and say, ‘Tsk, this old man’s at it again…’
Long-time reader Baek Seol smiles affectionately whenever she sees the writer bashing his protagonist out of nowhere, thinking, ‘Tsk, this guy’s at it again…’
As this insight shows, the novelist Moon In really loved throwing ‘sudden and unavoidable trials of life’ at his protagonists.
Those trials, as the saying goes, are often unavoidable, sudden, life-altering, and of the kind that powerless individuals cannot resist.
It’s unclear why he favors such developments, but…
Perhaps it follows the fatalistic worldview from ‘Cause of Death’ that said, ‘So many things were already decided the moment I was born.’
It’s a worldview likely to be held by a novelist who, with no choice, began life in an orphanage.
Of course, Baek Seol herself lived a life swayed by things already decided before her birth, so Moon In’s literature didn’t feel unfamiliar to her.
If she had to pick a preference, then certainly, it was a like.
But that was only from the standpoint of ‘Baek Seol the reader’.
As for ‘Baek Seol the editor’ and the many editors of Baekhak Publishing, the topic of the new manuscript set off a state of high alert.
“Ah, ahaha… This is a bit…”
Lee Eun-bi, Head of the PR and Marketing Team, gave an awkward laugh.
“It feels like… a somewhat inappropriate topic.”
Woo Ki-tae, Publishing Management Division Director, expressed concern as well.
“This is bad.”
Lim Yang-wook, Head of the Publishing Management Division, flatly declared, ‘This is bad.’
Though Baekhak Publishing appeared to have shifted from a two-pillar system of the Publishing Business Division and the Book Distribution Division to a three-pillar system with the addition of the Publishing Management Division, in reality, the Publishing Management Division had already consumed the Publishing Business Division.
Therefore, those gathered in the CEO’s office were the top authorities in Baekhak Publishing’s publishing line.
And considering that the Book Distribution Division was still firmly in the hands of COO Kim Geun-tae, these were, in fact, the few people Baek Seol could consult comfortably.
In other words, Baek Seol had gathered her few trusted advisors to ask their opinion on Moon In’s next work.
And all three of them shook their heads in shock.
Of course, these seasoned editors didn’t recoil from the novel in disgust like members of the Popular Culture and Arts Research Club might.
The reason they showed discomfort was the topic itself that the novel dealt with.
“The main topic seems… difficult to handle”
Division Director Woo Ki-tae cautiously offered advice.
Lim Yang-wook said the same thing more directly.
“Topics like abortion that are provocative, sensitive, likely to draw aggro from the public and media, and could potentially become political and social issues should preferably not be written as novels.”
Lee Eun-bi, the PR Team Head, who was lower in rank, just darted her eyes around nervously, reading the room.
But her expression alone showed she was clearly troubled.
If Moon In’s novel became a social issue, she would be the one on the frontlines getting hit, fighting, rebutting, apologizing, and explaining.
After calmly observing the reactions of the three, Baek Seol let out a deep sigh.
“Still, we can’t exactly forbid him from writing it…”
Anyone who finds it ironic that Baekhak Publishing, which handles tens of thousands of books, clings to a single author clearly doesn’t know how much ‘Starry Sky’ raked in last quarter in the US and Japan.
But the three people here knew Moon In’s revenue and also understood how much sales in the English-speaking world had increased following the Hugo Award and the rising global interest in Korean literature.
The timely nomination of author Gu Hak-jun for the International Booker Prize had only strengthened their belief in the ‘K-Literature Wave’. The phenomenon of a single genius sustaining an entire industry was no longer just theory or fantasy.
All the more so when that genius was the most significant achievement of a CEO with shaky footing.
Thus, Woo Ki-tae firmly said,
“Perhaps it might actually be better to stop him from writing it.”
PR Team Head Lee Eun-bi also mustered up the courage to add,
“And also, it’s election season… the chances of this becoming a controversial issue seem high.”
“Hmm.”
Upon hearing that, Baek Seol ran simulations in her head.
Baek Seol, wearing the most intimidating makeup possible, goes to find Moon In.
Then she tells him to change the topic of his novel.
Moon In’s response would be…
-Me?
-Yes.
-Why?
-Because writing on such a socially sensitive topic during election season could ignite a firestorm of controversy.
-I don’t want to.
-Uh…
Okay, failed!
Baek Seol, having failed spectacularly in her imagination, held her throbbing head.
“Ah, what do I do…”
Lim Yang-wook, not a secret power behind the throne but rather a loyal servant, quickly stepped up to ease his superior’s discomfort.
“There’s no need to worry just yet. It is indeed an issue that needs to be managed in terms of risk, but there’s no point in arguing over a novel that isn’t even finished yet.”
“Do you think so…?”
“Yes, let’s wait and see for now.”
Lim Yang-wook calmly sent CEO Baek Seol back to her office and also returned the anxious-looking Woo Ki-tae and Lee Eun-bi to their posts.
Then, he began to ponder alone.
In truth, this was something worth worrying about from the very beginning.
Because people didn’t see Moon In as a ‘novelist’ but rather as a ‘remarkable young genius who spread Korea’s name far and wide’.
That’s why Moon In could enjoy popularity far beyond that of a typical novelist, even in an era where literature was said to be dead, and that was precisely Lim Yang-wook’s ‘Publishing Management’.
The idol of the literary world.
Having gained idol-like popularity, he could also end up in controversy over trivial matters, just like an idol. What one gains always comes with a cost.
“……”
Lim Yang-wook had turned Moon In into a celebrity rather than a novelist.
But Moon In was not living like a celebrity, he was enjoying the freedom of a true novelist.
The essence of publishing management is to turn an author into a marionette of the company and manipulate them.
But Moon In, the core of the Publishing Management Division, could write something harmful to the company at any time.
Because he was a lunatic with mysterious personal standards, not driven by wealth or fame.
Moon In was clearly a strange one, and his genius stemmed precisely from that.
Lim Yang-wook could not grasp the bizarre and twisted literary world nestled within Moon In’s heart.
However.
He did know how people would react when a piece of writing deviated from societal norms.
The world is never forgiving of what is ‘twisted’. Just like Lim Yang-wook himself…
So what should be done?
Should he allow Moon In that freedom, knowing this is a world where even flawed celebrities struggle to survive?
Or…
***
‘That bastard Moon In! He’s just a celebrity from the start!’
Ahn Joo-hee silently cursed Moon In in her heart, like a heavy metal fan who can’t stand a visually polished pop band.
It wasn’t simply because Ahn Joo-hee had a twisted personality.
Though she was admittedly a twisted kid, there was still no shortage of public opinion that downplayed Moon In’s literary prowess.
Ironically, the reason was that Moon In had become too famous.
Asked whether he belonged to the major leagues or the minor leagues, the answer was obviously the major leagues.
And since the publishing industry had always been the minor of the minors, Moon In, to those who had been barely holding on in the shadows of the minor league, was an incompatible figure they couldn’t easily accept.
In short, he was ‘a writer who succeeded by selling sob stories, liked only by the general public’.
However, Moon In’s fandom was not to be underestimated either. So whenever his ‘level’ became a topic online, battles between light and darkness would inevitably unfold.
Ahn Joo-hee, too, was one of the apostles of darkness.
“Honestly, if Baekhak Publishing pushed me as hard as they pushed Moon In, I would’ve been just as successful…”
In this life, Moon In had barely participated in writing contests, so Ahn Joo-hee had rarely missed first place in national youth literature awards, except when she occasionally ran into Gu Yu-na.
Having been objectively proven to be the top of all youth literary hopefuls, Ahn Joo-hee sometimes thought her writing skill was equal to or greater than Moon In’s.
But as a complicated and sensitive first-year high school student, both light and darkness slept in Ahn Joo-hee’s heart…
The Ahn Joo-hee of light had her heart race the moment Moon In recognized her, while the Ahn Joo-hee of darkness tried to undermine Moon In’s literary talent.
Unaware of her complicated feelings, Moon Ji-seop firmly replied,
“No. Get a grip. You’re not on Moon In’s level. If you say something like that somewhere, you’re gonna get into big troooouble-!”
Ahn Joo-hee’s sincere punch struck Moon Ji-seop’s forearm.
Leaving behind Moon Ji-seop clutching his arm and whining like a girl, Ahn Joo-hee turned her back coldly.
Then she scanned her surroundings with a sharp gaze.
Kim Byul, fiddling aloofly with her smartphone like a refined actress. Min Hyo-chan, immersed in some disgusting otaku game. And even the idol Min Hyo-min.
She figured she’d already surpassed those three in writing skill.
The problem was that tiny monster sitting on Min Hyo-min’s lap, being petted…
“Tch…!”
Gu Yu-na.
The devil of youth writing contests.
And along with Moon In, the lucky brat who won the Hugo Award…
But since her talent was worthy of recognition, Ahn Joo-hee kept a wary eye on Gu Yu-na, laced with caution.
Thus, the only two people Ahn Joo-hee had to surpass in this club were Moon In and Gu Yu-na.
She swallowed hard and waited eagerly for the literary practice of the Popular Culture and Arts Research Club, which was to begin today.
Soon, Moon In, who would be leading the practice, arrived at the clubroom.
“Ah, sorry I’m la-”
“Why are you so late?!”
“I’m not sorry.”
Arriving at the clubroom a bit late, Moon In boldly retracted his apology the moment he heard Ahn Joo-hee’s sharp rebuke, she had been waiting more eagerly than anyone for the practice.
But Ahn Joo-hee couldn’t latch onto that shamelessness, because an old man with a long white beard walked in behind Moon In.
Ahn Joo-hee recognized him. He was the homeroom teacher who had briefly shown his face at the start of the semester. He never actually taught any classes, so his presence quickly faded away.
She could barely even remember his name now. What is that guy even doing at the school…
But just as Ahn Joo-hee was experiencing a sense of deja vu that she’d seen that old man’s face somewhere before, Moon In stepped forward to introduce the guest.
“This is Park Chang-woon-nim, our homeroom teacher in the Creative Writing Department and an active novelist. I invited him since he offered to help with the club’s literary classes, so let’s all give him a round of applause.”
“Applaud.”
Park Chang-woon.
The moment she heard those three syllables, Ahn Joo-hee shot up from her seat, eyes wide open.
“Don’t tell me, Park Chang-woon of <Circulation>?!”
Park Chang-woon grinned and stroked his beard.
“Hooo?”
Then smiled as if he’d found an amusing toy.
*****
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