Chapter 118: Chapter 118

A calm male narration.

「Everything flowed as it was meant to.」

「It was predetermined even before birth.」

In the shadows of the city, the hideout of a runaway teen gang where a girl stayed became a mess due to a knife fight.

A back alley stained with violence and coercion as police and delinquents entangled.

A single mother, staggering from a knife wound, reached out and cried.

Baekhak Publishing immediately set out to find the culprit.

Which fucking son of a bitch did this! Come out now!

If you come out now, I’ll let you off with just a finger…

As a tense atmosphere filled the company, someone, sweating nervously, raised their hand.

It was the princess. I see.

If the young lady thought that way…

Since it turned out well in the end, isn’t it a gain? Haha.

Although Kim Sang-guk, the CEO of Baekhak Publishing, insisted on investigating Baek Seol’s mistake, the legal team at headquarters thought otherwise.

From the moment Baek Do-hyun, the head of the Strategy Planning Office’s HR Enjoy reading on NovelHub - your free online novel platform.

In a way, she could be considered innocent from birth.

The cute ‘mistake’ made by Baek Seol, who was a fledgling chick at the time (and still is, but anyway), was as follows.

The large Japanese publishing conglomerates, though called ‘publishing’ conglomerates, are not actually just publishing conglomerates.

Strictly speaking, they are more like ‘cultural’ conglomerates. This means they do other things besides publishing.

Naturally, they also made animations.

And Baek Seol didn’t know that.

So when Baek Seol was just a chirping chick (she still is, but anyway), she got taken in by the businessman’s eloquence from the Japanese side.

This happened during her business trip to the US, at a meeting to coordinate the interests between American and Japanese publishing.

-What does this clause in the contract mean?

-Oh, the rights mentioned there are nothing significant. It’s just for things like drawing character faces on pencils. Of course, it would be great if the novel did well enough to produce merchandise, but if not, it’s a meaningless clause. Of course! We always prepare for the novel to sell well and put in such clauses. And we also do our best to ensure the novel sells well enough to produce merchandise. Haha!

-Oh, haha… Is that so…

Of course, the rights that were transferred weren’t for pencils but were used to make an animated movie.

However, making a movie doesn’t come cheap, and the Japanese publishing company didn’t initially acquire the rights to ‘Guitar’ with the intention of making a movie.

It was just because ‘it’s nice to have’.

They acquire the rights because it’s good to have them when signing the contract. Are you upset? If you’re upset, you can leave Japan.

While it’s accurate to change ‘publishing’ to ‘cultural’ when referring to the Japanese ‘publishing’ conglomerates, ‘conglomerate’ is not a misnomer.

They aren’t considered conglomerates simply because they are big; legally, they meet the criteria of overwhelmingly large ‘conglomerates’.

Moreover, considering that many of these conglomerates are subsidiaries of a single chaebol family, one can understand why the Japanese publishing industry is often described as a den of evil.

And no one in such a den would be kind enough to turn a single Korean novel into a movie.

Unless the author was nominated for the Booker International Prize.

“That’s how it happened…”

Though the fault lay with Baek Seol, it was Lim Yang-wook who explained.

But can the concepts of ‘Baek Seol’ and ‘fault’ coexist?

Can there be sin in one born of the most holy and noble lineage? Wouldn’t it be more natural for evil to be washed away under the splendor of Baekhak’s lineage?

“So, in the end, it’s Department head Lim’s fault for not supervising his subordinates properly?”

“Yes, it’s all my fault. I will cut my belly open to apologize.”

Hearing that, I had an epiphany as well.

I also began self-criticism like Lim Yang-wook.

“No, it’s because I wrote ‘Guitar’ in the first place that this happened… It’s my fault for creating a situation where Division Head Baek Seol made a mistake.”

“No, In-seop. It’s because this useless me was born into this world…”

At Baek Seol’s plea, we stopped our apology parade.

Ah, Division Head Baek Seol is indeed a merciful person.

I looked up at Baek Seol, whose face was flushed red, and said.

“Are you forgiving us?”

“No, it’s not about forgiveness; it’s my fault in the first place!”

“So merciful… so merciful…”

Having sufficiently teased Baek Seol, I returned to the main point.

So, didn’t the rights already get transferred, and they made an animation in the neighboring country on their own?

“Then, is there anything that benefits us?”

“There isn’t. In Japan, they have something called a production committee, so movies are made like a corporation. The profits go to the investors, not the creators.”

“Then we have nothing to worry about. Since we won’t be publishing in Japan after the fight with Author Siedehara during the Booker Prize…”

Strictly speaking, I didn’t fight with Author Siedehara, but the conflict over the literary prize became an international issue, so the rift wouldn’t easily close.

“Actually, that’s right…”

Lim Yang-wook replied in a weak voice, but since I wasn’t interested in money, I didn’t feel particularly let down.

“Then… this is just a simple mishap.”

“Then I’ll go back to writing. Goodbye.”

That day, I couldn’t go home right away and attended the Publishing Management Division’s dinner, smearing beef fat on my lips.

But since nothing significant came to mind regarding the Japanese animated movie ‘Guitar,’ it soon faded from my memory.

You should never be obsessed with a work you’ve already released into the world. If you follow it too much, it becomes self-replication, and if you reject it too much, it becomes self-censorship.

So it’s best to focus on creating a new world with a blank canvas in mind.

That had been my long-standing habit and principle.

I could have returned to my routine if the OST of the animated movie ‘Guitar’ hadn’t made it to #97 on the Billboard chart.

It was not particularly surprising that the movie ‘Guitar’ swept the Japanese box office.

The somewhat underwhelming Japanese theater scene has always been dominated by animated films.

So, it was only natural for a masterpiece animated film to secure the top spot reliably.

However, the events that unfolded when ‘Guitar’ began to be officially distributed in Korea were beyond my imagination.

There are several reasons, if you insist on attaching them.

Firstly, it was the time when J-pop started rising from subculture to mainstream, and Japanese animated films had been performing well in recent years.

Additionally, there were few strong competitors in theaters struggling from the COVID recession, and people perceived ‘Guitar’ as a legitimate ‘domestic’ film rather than a Japanese one.

But all these are analyses made after the fact.

No one foresaw this before it happened.

-This week’s box office rankings-