Chapter 191

Novelist Running Through Time

TL: KSD

「Clothes are for wearing, but fashion is for showing. Therefore, fashion trends changed as quickly as people’s vanity. Every time the seasons changed, every time a designer made a splash at a fashion show, every time a superstar appeared in a drama with a new outfit, the trend shifted.

Accordingly, the homepage of the online shopping mall changed constantly, and naturally, every homepage design had to be pretty and sophisticated, and Min-ha, a web designer, had to spend the entire year with a pounding headache.

Submitting dozens of drafts to picky fashion designers, who were her bosses, only to be rejected repeatedly and eventually told that the very first draft was the best, was enough to drive anyone insane.

So Min-ha sat in the corner on the folding lounge bed in the break room, staring at the (crushed-face) baby that was staring intently at her, and wondered whether mental breakdowns due to workplace stress would be eligible for industrial accident compensation.

Slurp.

She drank down that pointless and hopeless worry along with her instant coffee.

When she came out of the break room and returned to her desk, the baby was, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, sitting on the edge of her desk.

Is this the kind of predicament you get into when you bring a baby to work? The stare she could clearly feel made it impossible to concentrate on her work.

“What are you staring at like that? Is there something on me?”

She was startled, thinking the baby had suddenly spoken. But the voice belonged to Team Leader Jeong Hee-joo, who was behind the baby.

Min-ha tried to sneak her head out to the side to see around the baby that was blocking her view, but she was worried that doing so would make her look truly strange.

So she stared directly at the crushed-face baby and spoke to the Team Leader who was beyond it.

To maintain her usual kind persona, she smiled faintly and said,

“No, nothing at all.”」

EP 11 – Evening Bell

You might think there’s no celebrity who isn’t vulnerable to their company, but among them, ‘idols’ are especially subordinate beings.

Concepts, members, music, choreography, and so on.

From beginning to end, everything is crafted by the company.

Thus, idols were closer to employees who followed company instructions than artists who created some form of beauty.

At least, Min Hyo-chan had a firm belief in that. Accordingly, Min Hyo-chan maintained the appropriate depth of guilt.

When the ambitious new album flopped, he didn’t feel the despair of an artist whose art had been crushed. Instead, he equipped himself with the mindset of an employee whose situation had gotten screwed because things just went terribly wrong.

“Sigh, fucking hell……”

In reality, there wasn’t much Min Hyo-chan could do. Resolving the crisis that had struck the boy group ‘Rapid Boys’ was the responsibility of Baekhak Entertainment, not his.

On the contrary, if he tried to suggest ideas, he would definitely just hear, “Stop acting up and stay quiet-”

So Min Hyo-chan kept his expressions moderately sulky, just enough not to be told, “Don’t you even care about the group’s future-”

And he just kept attending the lessons and training sessions as instructed by the company.

He could confidently say that he was conducting himself perfectly like a ‘company employee’.

To such a Min Hyo-chan, the sudden assignment of a book report was excessively ‘artist-like’.

“Tsk……”

Since his debut, Min Hyo-chan had never done anything resembling art, so this was an especially difficult task for him.

However, after the album failed, he had started avoiding students from the Practical Dance Department, and the Popular Culture and Arts Research Club had come to occupy quite a significant part of his social life.

So Min Hyo-chan even brought the damned book report assignment to the company.

And as a result, it was caught by Lee Soo, the leader of Rapid Boys.

“Hyo-chan, you bastard, this… don’t tell me you’re reading books?”

While he might strut around with his hands in his pockets at school, in Rapid Boys, Min Hyo-chan was nothing more than the youngest member.

If Min Hyo-min was the beloved youngest member of Benivis, whose name could be reversed and still sound cute, then Min Hyo-chan was Rapid Boys’ adorable maknae Min Hyo-Min-Hyo-chan.

As soon as the strange act of ‘reading’ was discovered, Min Hyo-chan, as the youngest, became the target of his older members’ overwhelming attention and affection.

“Is Hyo-chan planning to quit being an idol and take the college entrance exam or something?”

“Oh dear, Hyo-chan. It’s too late to study now. Just give up…….”

“Min Hyo-chan… reading…?!”

“Is he sick or something? Why’s he suddenly reading a book……”

In front of the camera, the young men who usually kept up their dignity and style swarmed around Min Hyo-chan and unleashed the mischief they had been keeping in check.

Wrecked by the older members’ petty “pranks”, Min Hyo-chan screamed in agony.

“Ah, seriously-!”

At Min Hyo-chan’s roar, the members grumbled and backed off. It wasn’t really because they were scared of him, but because they knew that a “toy” lasts longer if you use it sparingly.

Watching this while chuckling, the leader Lee Soo spoke up.

“Still, you really are a rapper, huh? Are you using it for reference in writing lyrics?”

“It’s not like that! And what rapper? In an idol group, there’s no such thing. We just get everything from the lyricists……”

“Don’t beat yourself up too much, man. So what kind of novel is it?”

“Ah, this isn’t something I bought. At school……”

When the members heard that Min Hyo-chan had received a book report assignment from his school club and that the subject was none other than the new release by Moon In, the scattered members flocked around him again.

“What? Moon In’s new book?! Why is that in your hands!”

“…How much do you think it’d sell for?”

“Wow, when you said you were friends with Moon In, I thought you were just bullshitting……”

Min Hyo-chan couldn’t hide his surprise at their reactions.

Though Min Hyo-chan had a general sense of Moon In’s popularity, to him, Moon In’s image was more of a gloomy figure who always sat under a blanket scribbling in the clubroom.

So it was hard to adjust to the reactions of the members he saw every day.

“W-wait…!”

But the members had already snatched the notebook from his hands and were treating it like a sacred relic.

“This is a fragment of genius…!”

“Please let me win the Hugo Award too……”

“Why the hell would you win the Hugo Award, you crazy bastard.”

“Then let me win the Baeksang Arts Awards……”

“How the hell would you win that, you crazy bastard.”

“…?”

Min Hyo-chan looked at his hyungs, who were behaving like cavemen discovering modern technology, with a pitying gaze. Then suddenly, he felt a flash of inspiration strike his brain.

“Ah! Hyungs!”

“Hyo-chan, sorry but this is being confiscated. It’s too precious for someone like you to be holding……”

“I need to write a book report on this, but I’ll show it to you if you promise to help.”

***

Everyone has a decent plan.

Until they get punched in the face.

“The way Min-ha struggles with the sin of abortion she experienced during her school days is a self-portrait of the lonely modern individual groaning under the moral dilemmas of contemporary society……”

This was the opinion of Rapid Boys’ main vocalist JYS (real name Kim Chang-hoon). Everyone was so impressed they praised him with “Ooh, is this bastard from liberal arts?” – the reaction was that good.

But the voice from the clubroom was cold.

“That’s the worst.”

A stern voice of judgment followed.

“Putting aside that you arbitrarily declare abortion a sin, you clearly have no understanding of the value judgments within the novel. The protagonist doesn’t regard abortion as a sin or trauma, but as pain that flowed by naturally. She even shows signs of being confused between society’s perspective and her own recognition. That’s evident even in how she treats the baby. She doesn’t fear it, doesn’t suffer from it, and slowly approaches the unfamiliar being. That’s all clearly written in the book, so what the hell were you thinking when you came up with the expression ‘struggle’?”

Min Hyo-chan mustered the last of his strength and pleaded.

“P-please… please stop……”

But the voice continued mercilessly.

“The book report is strange. It doesn’t make sense. Earlier you said abortion was sin or whatever, but here you write ‘I felt from the novel a warm consideration toward women who have experienced abortion…’ What? This isn’t something someone else wrote, right? You really don’t get it, do you? To begin with, ‘Evening Bell’ isn’t even a novel about abortion, okay? It’s plainly written in the book, so why don’t you know that?”

And so, the book report filled with the dreams and hopes of Min Hyo-chan and Rapid Boys (If we write an amazing book report, Moon In will come and help promote us!) was shattered into pieces.

The broken fragments pierced Min Hyo-chan’s chest like blades and crushed the heart of a pure boy.

As expected,

This merciless voice belonged to Gu Yu-na.

“Why can’t you answer?”

“Ugh… uuuugh……”

Min Hyo-chan keenly realized why there existed a <Gu Yu-na Response Manual> in the Creative Writing Department at Baekhak Arts Middle School, as he succumbed to a fatal verbal strike that felt like it cut off his breath and met his untimely end.

Thud.

With his mental state shattered, Min Hyo-chan collapsed over his desk.

Next to him, his younger sister Min Hyo-min was slumped over like a limp vegetable,

And beside her, Kim Byul was staring into space, smiling vacantly in a daze.

And at the back of the classroom,

Moon Ji-seop and Ahn Joo-hee, who were also mentally destroyed, lay like cold corpses…

In the end, the terrifying blood demon Gu Yu-na, who had turned the classroom into a sea of blood, stood alone.

“……”

Gu Yu-na looked down at the fallen Min Hyo-chan expressionlessly, then muttered in a expressionless voice.

“Let’s move on to the next book report.”

While Moon In, a prodigy recognized by the master of proper learning Gu Hak-jun himself, trembled at the cruelty,

The madman Park Chang-woon, grinning with delight at the spectacle, burst into a loud and arrogant laugh.

“Next one? There is no next one! It’s already over!”

At that, Gu Yu-na stared at Min Hyo-chan’s cold corpse for a moment, then muttered to herself like someone unsatisfied to let it end here.

“…It’s over.”

“Right! You’ve slaughtered everyone in this critique session! Now what if the kids get scared and all run away next time?”

Just as Park Chang-woon was about to dust off his seat saying “Ay, that’s it, that’s it-” and get up,

Gu Yu-na’s gaze, which had been cast toward the floor the whole time,

Chillingly rose.

And locked onto Park Chang-woon.

“It’s not over yet.”

“…Huh?”

Her delicate finger floated through the air like a ghost,

Then pointed directly at someone.

None other than Park Chang-woon.

“There’s one person left.”

“…What?”

Park Chang-woon, singled out by Gu Yu-na, was flustered.

But the fluster didn’t last long.

Smirk-

A childlike delight spread across Park Chang-woon’s wrinkled face.

“Don’t tell me… you want to critique my book report?”

Gu Yu-na asked calmly.

“Is that not allowed?”

Park Chang-woon replied instantly.

“Of course it is.”

With that short exchange, the setup for a showdown formed instantly.

Park Chang-woon, who had been about to leave the classroom, found himself back at the teacher’s podium before he knew it.

Gu Yu-na sat calmly at the front.

Park Chang-woon was grinning like he couldn’t contain his joy at this situation.

“Let’s see… I suppose I have to present my book report first?”

“I suppose you do.”

“Heh heh…”

After letting out a hearty laugh, Park Chang-woon briefly pondered something,

Then gave his answer to Gu Yu-na.

“’Evening Bell…”

“……”

“Is a novel about connections.”

***

「”It appears to be schizophrenia caused by post-traumatic stress disorder… commonly referred to as PTSD. While many associate it with war or disasters, in truth, abortion is also a significant trigger for many PTSD cases…”

There was no particular emotion on Min-ha’s face as she left the psychiatric hospital. It felt like she had gone to the hospital because she thought something was wrong with her, and was told something really was wrong.

In fact, she even felt something had gone awry.

That the image of the baby, so vivid in her mind, was nothing more than a hallucination conjured by her brain? Then where had the soul of the baby that once resided in her belly gone?

Even now, the baby was peeking out from a corner of Min-ha’s vision. It didn’t feel like a hallucination at all.

Perhaps this was the denial of a schizophrenic clinging to the belief that they weren’t mentally ill, but Min-ha chose to make her last desperate stand to avoid accepting that she was insane.

Min-ha was someone who could have been this baby’s mother.

And she texted the person who could have been the baby’s father.

-Do you see the baby too?

The reply came back faster than expected.

-Let’s meet and talk.」

*****

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