Novelist Running Through Time - Chapter 14
Only Krnovel
EP 1 – Cause of Death
A new semester has begun.
It is spring, when plants and flowers bloom freshly.
The children, now in 6th grade, went to school in a new class. Some children feel anxious looking back at unfamiliar faces, while others run happily when they see a familiar face.
This is the beginning of a guessing game.
New classrooms and new kids. A new society is being created there. If you don’t make friends at the beginning of the semester, school life becomes difficult.
So pretty kids get together, kids who like idols get together, kids who like soccer get together, kids who like otaku games get together.
Of course, there are children who cannot stick together.
His name is Moon In-seop. 13 years old(?).
He is a person of interest with evil rumors going around.
“He is the one who is so sad…”
“Shh! “I can hear you!”
“On the school vacation day, he called Iljin hyung and completely punished the kids who were bullying him…”
“My mom said that, she made hot coffee…”
“right? That guy, his parents…”
“If you touch it, you’ll be in big trouble…”
Basically, staying away from people who spread evil rumors will help you survive in this harsh world.
But this is no ordinary place.
This is Dosan Geomlim, the meat of the jungle,
And where the law of strong self-respect reigns.
A villain who carries around evil rumors.
They are nothing but prey to exalt the name of a charlatan.
“Why are you so scared?”
“Oh! Minjun Kim!”
“Just look.”
“hey···! They say that if you touch him, you will be sent to high school…”
“Is it alpha?”
“Of course, what’s important is an unbreakable heart.”
Kim Min-jun rose up to become the top student in class 2 of the 6th grade and raise the honor of his family.
He walks towards Moon In-seop without hesitation.
In his hand was a small piece of iron.
* * *
People don’t talk to themselves as much as we think.
In particular, saying your thoughts out loud without realizing it is nothing more than a convenient cliché found in novels and dramas.
Shy writers who try to gloss over a character’s complex thoughts with a single line of dialogue use such tricks.
“You’re an elementary school student…?”
However, muttering to himself came out of Lim Yang-wook’s mouth.
Without that, I couldn’t organize my thoughts. No way.
“Elementary student? Elementary student···”
Elementary student.
Young children aged 7 to 12 years. I’m definitely not old enough to write a novel. In particular, I am definitely not at the right age to write a novel like this.
Yangwook Lim has been an editor for 10 years. He even worked for eight years at Korea’s largest publishing company. There were countless books that passed through his hands.
The emotion he felt upon seeing the cause of death was not simple admiration. It was a feeling close to certainty.
This novel is beautiful. I can’t be the only one who reads it. It must be presented to the world.
For that purpose, I was even prepared to risk my political career at my last remaining company.
Yangwook Lim has already resigned over the rise and fall of this writing. It was that kind of writing.
So never.
This is a text that could never come from an elementary school student.
“I am the principal. “You came from a publishing company?”
“ah···. This is Yangwook Lim, head of the Publication Management TF Team. “I came to visit you for publishing-related work.”
Even the moment I met the principal, my doubts did not go away. I give her business card and ask her to call a student named Moon In-seop, but I wonder what she is doing right now.
Meanwhile, the principal had other thoughts.
oh my god! ‘Baekhak’ came to visit me to publish an elementary school student’s writing. Isn’t this a large company that everyone knows about?
This is luck. A student at my school is a genius? My drool is flowing and my heart is pounding.
Genius is useful. Young geniuses are even more useful. It can be used in various ways. This is a fact everyone knows.
You can show off your friendship by taking pictures together, you can benefit by introducing them to high-ranking people, and life becomes easier if you establish yourself as a trustworthy adult by coaxing them well.
You can spread the word that it is the school that produced that genius, sell it as an achievement to be submitted to the Office of Education, or claim that you are the person who taught this child.
This is not an idea that came about because the principal is a greedy person. When humans pass the age of 50, such judgments are made unconsciously.
The principal smiled brightly.
“It’s for the future of our school children, so of course we have to help! “I’ll call you right now.”
The announcement rang out immediately at school.
[Ah-ah- Student Inseop Moon. Inseop Moon, 6th grade, class 2, please come to the principal’s office immediately.]
Yangwook Lim and the principal waited with different expressions on their faces. One is doubt and the other is anticipation.
Just as the coffee for the guests was getting cold, there was a knock on the principal’s office door.
Knock. Knock.
The principal responded.
“ah! Come in!”
The child the adults were looking for came in carefully.
The smiling principal stiffened.
Moon In-seop’s glasses were locked.
“What did you call me for?”
“Uh… why did the teacher call me… no, it’s your glasses…”
Lim Yang-wook couldn’t see Moon In-seop’s face properly.
Of course, it’s because of the lock on the glasses.
So, the first impression of Moon In-seop was determined by the child’s behavior, clothing, and speaking style.
“What on earth are those glasses?”
“Just a little prank between friends.”
The child came and sat down on the sofa even before the principal told him to sit down. He is not afraid of adults.
Also, the expression ‘prank between friends’ had a hidden meaning that ‘even if you report it to adults, no action will be taken.’
He had a blanket draped over his shoulders, as if he was prone to cold, and his fingernails and lips showed signs of frequent biting.
It’s cynical. It’s crooked. The blade is being sharpened.
And I have no intention of hiding it.
It wasn’t like a child’s slap. Rather, it was a confidence that bordered on spirit.
Where does that confidence come from?
The answer was obvious.
It is confidence in one’s own abilities.
This kid is already a pro.
“oh my god···”
Im Yang-wook intuitively understood that this child was the author of Death.
It is not a rational judgment. But that was the atmosphere. I couldn’t think of anyone else but this kid who wrote that novel. It was a feeling closer to revelation than intuition.
Lim Yang-wook was not the only one who felt such a subtle emotion.
A relationship that cannot be explained by reason and rationality. Or fate.
The boy who felt these things smiled slightly.
The boy took off his padlocked glasses.
Lifeless eyes look towards a past relationship.
“Are you from a publishing company?”
* * *
– uh. I came from Baekhak Bookstore.
It wasn’t a self-introduction or a greeting. After saying such vague words, Lim Yang-wook recklessly entered my rooftop room.
That was my first meeting with editor Lim Yang-wook.
He said, kicking the clothes and blankets scattered on the floor with his socked feet.
– Do you live somewhere like this?
I think my pride was very hurt by those words. I asked him if he had contributed anything to living ‘in a place like this’.
Looking back, the hierarchical relationship between the unknown novelist and the editor of Baekhak Bookstore was clear.
So, even though a person whose name I did not know entered the house without permission, I could not stop him.
How impulsive is it to immediately get angry and respond to someone asking, ‘This is where you live?’
However, upon hearing those words, Lim Yang-wook just chuckled.
– I heard your parents aren’t here?
It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t have parents. However, whenever I was directly told that I had no parents in my life, I would freeze as if I had been caught in a big mistake.
Lim Yang-wook got angry when he saw me frozen.
– Oh my. Oh my. Then, you have to take out a lease loan and apply for a housing subscription. Are you wasting hundreds of thousands of won every month in this crappy monthly rent?
Subscription? Jeonse loan? I don’t even know what that is.
– You’re such a lingering bastard… I’ll cover any urgent expenses, so move house first.
I asked who are you to say such things?
– You submitted a novel to the Baekhak Literary Award, right?
It was like that.
– I’m the one in charge of that. You are the target.
I hugged Lim Yang-wook and ran wild like a crazy person.
It happened when I was 21 years old.
From then on, he liked my writing to a suspicious degree.
When everyone was criticizing my writing as sales continued to decline, Lim Yang-wook told everyone to shut up and published my writing.
Of course it didn’t sell. Because in the first place, I wasn’t the kind of writer who wrote things that sold well.
However, Lim Yang-wook published my article while receiving all kinds of criticism. When asked why, the answer is truly artistic.
– Money comes second. Art comes first. And you are art.
He was a man who liked my writing so much that it was suspicious.
And in the strange passage of time, all of this became nothing.
But were my tastes the same when I was young?
Yangwook Lim came to see me first again this time.
“Is it okay to do this?”
“In elementary school, you might hit the tinkle a few times, right?”
We were on the second floor of a hamburger restaurant near the school. It’s still a while before school ends, but what’s my business? School permission? I can not admit it. Moon In-seop, a 6th grade elementary school student, is not afraid of leaving school early without notice.
“Well, I wasn’t a very nice guy when I was young either.”
Yangwook Lim looked at the hamburger and mocked himself.
“I just played without thinking. It was the same when I was in high school. So I went to a not-so-famous university.”
“Is that so?”
“I think I came to my senses and studied hard when I went to college. “I finally had a dream at that time.”
“What kind of dream is it?”
Lim Yang-wook spoke as if recalling something.
“I’m selling beautiful writing. “All over the world.”
I know.
That he lost a friend in an accident when he was young.
And that he wrote.
I knew it because I heard it myself.
But since that never happened anymore, I changed my story without making a show of it.
“How did you like my writing?”
“It was good. “It was very beautiful…”
“Enough to publish it in a book?”
“then! of course. So, I came to see you.”
“Then shall I pay?”
“what?”
“Let’s make a contract.”
Lim Yang-wook was embarrassed. It was a natural reaction for him.
“Well, is it okay to just decide something like that?”
“Then why don’t Team Leader Lim ask me if I am the author who wrote the autograph? “You might ask an elementary school student how he writes something like that.”
“That’s right…”
“It’s a feeling, right?”
“yes. Because it feels like that…”
“I just had a feeling. “I will sign a contract with team leader Yangwook Lim.”
I decided so. And I sucked on the cola straw. Like a child without any worries.
Lim Yang-wook looks at me like that and yells at me as if it’s absurd.
“I didn’t know that this guy was afraid of contracts… What kind of person would do something without even reading the contract? Hey!”
“Then shall we ask the teachers at the daycare center?”
“Wouldn’t that be correct?”
“Then how do you trust the daycare teachers?”
“uh······.”
“Even if we show the contract to the daycare teachers, how are they going to find out that a large corporation has deliberately hidden toxic clauses? But that doesn’t mean the daycare center will call a lawyer for me.”
“is it?”
“The reality is that even if children without parents work part-time jobs, they get paid very well. “I have to do that.”
Lim Yang-wook, who was endlessly awkward, seemed to be slowly adjusting to me.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that I might be able to answer a long-standing curiosity.
Why on earth did this guy like my writing so suspiciously?
I asked not the shameless, thick-faced, and inscrutable 46-year-old Managing Director Lim Yang-wook, but the moderately soft-spoken and sly 36-year-old team leader Lim Yang-wook.
“But what did you like about my novel?”
“hmm. “Suddenly that’s a difficult question.”
Yangwook Lim took some time to think about it.
Specifically, it was time for me to eat four french fries.
“You said your novel was beautiful, right?”
“yes.”
“Let’s say beauty is light.”
“yes.”
“For there to be light, there must be darkness.”
“It looks like you have that kind of philosophy.”
“okay. That darkness hit my chord. Loneliness, suffering, deprivation, poverty, etc. are not depicted in a too tragic way, but are portrayed as something fateful and routine…”
He hesitated for a moment.
“···Actually, I come from a facility too.”
“ah.”
“Never go anywhere and talk.”
I see.
That’s how it happened.
That’s how it happened…
* * *
“Well, that’s how it happened!”
Baek Seol was embarrassed. What nonsense is this hairless boss talking about now?
“You got your stamp right there?”
“That guy didn’t have a stamp, so he signed it.”
“You don’t even check to see if it’s really the author?”
“I think he was the right writer.”
If she said it out loud, she would probably be so angry that her face would turn red, but whenever this happened, Baekseol sometimes thought, ‘This is why I ruined the project.’
However, Lim Yang-wook calmly hummed and sat down at his desk, leaning back in his chair.
And then he put on his eyepatch and stretched out.
“I heard we’re coming on a company tour later in the afternoon, Baek Seol, so keep your eyes peeled until then.”
“···You just went to work? I?”
“Then, are you going to scatter the manuscripts that arrived in the submission box like you normally do? “The writer we will take care of has already been decided?”
“You didn’t even ask me!”
“Are you going to make a decision on the topic of new employees? Me indeed. “Back in my day, you had to brew coffee for about 25 years to be allowed to touch the manuscript.”
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