Chapter 126: Chapter 126

“…You went all the way to Japan and came back after saying just that?”

Hearing Park Chang-woon’s account of his trip to Japan, Gu Hak-jun was stunned. Telling a young junior struggling with anguish to just endure with sheer willpower? Even a devil wouldn’t give such a advice.

But Park Chang-woon responded shamelessly.

“Then what should I have done?”

“Still, you should have at least helped him think it through….”

“Oh! Do you think he’d listen to me if I did? As I’ve repeatedly said, it’s impossible for one person to teach another how to write.”

The way and virtue are found within one’s own heart, not in the eyes of society!

Park Chang-woon, who acted according to his convictions, wasn’t ashamed at all.

It wasn’t Park Chang-woon. He skipped school again today.

It wasn’t the homeroom teacher either. The scarecrow homeroom teacher had no real authority.

Naturally, it was Gu Yuna, the longtime boss, street leader, great white shark, inquisitor, and adorable mascot of the third-year Creative Writing Department at Baekhak Arts Middle School.

“Your. Question. Troublesome.”

With just one word, Gu Yuna stopped Moon In-seop, who had been bombarding the students with indiscriminate questions.

Then, with a flick of her finger, she isolated this problematic criminal from the class.

Moon In-seop, as if bewitched, followed Gu Yuna.

Of course, Gu Yuna didn’t take Moon In-seop to the club room to beat him up out of sight.

Gu Yuna considered herself Moon In-seop’s first disciple, so how could she dare commit such a rebellious act against her mentor?

However, as the guardian of the third-year Creative Writing Department, she was willing to pinch his side with the pinch of justice if Moon In-seop caused a bit more trouble.

Fortunately, Moon In-seop followed Gu Yuna willingly, and Gu Yuna didn’t have to resort to any ‘excessive measures’. So, for everyone involved, it was a good outcome.

Even someone like Gu Yuna, who was quicker with actions than words, started with a question.

“What on earth is going on?”

Moon In-seop didn’t have the knack for explaining difficult matters easily. So, he laid out his complicated worries in a complicated manner.

However, thanks to this, Gu Yuna was able to understand precisely what kind of agony Moon In-seop was going through. He had lost his literary direction and was staggering—this was the gist.

Gu Yuna’s sharp mind saw through the turmoil in Moon In-seop’s heart, but Moon In-seop didn’t have high expectations for Gu Yuna.

The Gu Yuna before him lacked the experience of ‘those days’ when she and Moon In-seop faced various literary challenges together.

To Moon In-seop, the current Gu Yuna was more like a level 1 chick.

A fledgling like that couldn’t possibly solve a dilemma that even Gu Hak-jun, Park Chang-woon, and Seo Woon-pil couldn’t address.

But Moon In-seop overlooked one thing: Gu Yuna was both his disciple and his reader, then and now.

Writers like Gu Hak-jun viewed Moon In-seop’s books from a ‘producer’s’ perspective, but Gu Yuna saw them from a ‘consumer’s’ viewpoint.

And while industry insiders nitpick and demand this and that, consumers enjoy it with a clear mind, laughing and liking it.

In this way, the still-young Gu Yuna, who hadn’t formed preconceived notions, opened her heart without bias and accepted Moon In-seop’s literature as it was.

And unlike Moon In-seop, who was caught up in delusions, Gu Yuna’s clear perspective and sharp intuition allowed her to understand Moon In-seop’s literature more accurately than he did in some ways.

Through Gu Yuna’s eyes, a certain flow became apparent.

It seemed like Moon In-seop’s literature was heading in a specific direction.

Therefore, she couldn’t understand Moon In-seop’s distress. With such a clear path visible, why did he claim not to know where to go?

Instead of giving a clear answer, Gu Yuna asked back with a puzzled expression.

“Wasn’t your next work supposed to be about the world?”

“That’s what I was expecting.”

In Moon In-seop’s mind, all his novels were stories about ‘me’. They were confessional novels, narrow in scope, a kind of cathartic act of discharging pain onto paper in a gloomy way.

Gu Yuna agreed with this. Moon In-seop’s novels, much like modern Japanese literature, focused more on lyricism than narrative. They had a relentless quality of digging into the human psyche.

For someone like Gu Yuna, who was curious about humans, there were no better novels.

That was true in the past and still is now.

However, as an acknowledged Moon In-seop fanatic, Gu Yuna could detect a trend in his literature that even the author wasn’t aware of, a trend that directly contradicted Moon In-seop’s assertions.

Moon In-seop’s writing wasn’t confined within the existence of ‘me’.

It began from the deepest part of ‘me’ and extended infinitely outward.

“…Can you explain a bit more?”

“Sure, it’s not a difficult thing.”

Renowned authors in history often have dedicated fields of study solely focused on them. Shakespeare, Tolkien, Arthur Conan Doyle, Cao Xueqin, Jin Yong…

But ‘Moon In’ had not left a name in history, and even more so for ‘Moon In-seop’. Who would study an obscure author from an orphanage?

However, Gu Yuna did. She gladly did. She loved and studied Moon In-seop’s writings as passionately as if placing them among the greats in history.

And this wasn’t because of his life’s trajectory but because of an inherent imperfection they both shared.

Defective items recognize each other.

So, both then and now, Gu Yuna recognized Moon In-seop’s writing.

“The sixteen novels you wrote before your debut were, how should I put it… a bit all over the place. I liked them because they had a raw feel to them, but you can’t see them as a cohesive collection.”

That was only natural. Each story was written whenever a distressing event occurred in his life, and suffering didn’t arrive in a sequential order.

Eventually, Gu Yuna, who only spoke at length when discussing literature, began to showcase her expertise in ‘Moon In-seop studies’. It turned out that Moon In-seop wasn’t the only expert on Gu Yuna.

“The specific flow started to become noticeable from ‘Cause of Death’….”

‘Cause of Death’ was a story about death, while ‘Guitar’ was a story about life.

Death and life are things beyond human control, determined the moment one is born.

These are stories about existence.

“I still don’t know why death came before life….”

Muttering a hypothesis that briefly made Moon In-seop’s heart sink, Gu Yuna moved on to the next piece of literature.

‘Demonic Sword’ dealt with independence and dependence. ‘A Love Story’ dealt with love. ‘The Show Must Go On’ dealt with dreams.

These are things that humans can decide by their own will.

In other words, they are stories about actions.

“Right. Isomer. That’s where I became certain.”

In Gu Yuna’s view, Moon In-seop’s literature started from the deepest part of a person and extended infinitely outward.

The evidence of this was ‘Isomer’.

Isomer was a story not about ‘me’ but about ‘you’.

For the first time, Moon In-seop, who always wrote literature about himself, wrote about someone else.

“That’s why I hold ‘Isomer’ in the highest regard. It’s a monumental work, isn’t it? Though I didn’t quite like the ending….”

Gu Yuna didn’t mention that part of the reason she liked ‘Isomer’ the most was because she had a hand in its creation.

But if Moon In-seop had looked at Gu Yuna’s face, he might have seen her slightly twitching lips revealing her inner thoughts, but he wasn’t in the right mind to notice.

He was mesmerized by ‘Gu Yuna’s teaching’, something he thought he would never experience again, both before and after going back in time.

“So, what happens next?”

Moon In-seop asked Gu Yuna with a desperate expression.

Gu Yuna, surprised and somewhat delighted that she had caused such an expression on Moon In-seop’s face, concluded the lesson.

“I told you earlier, didn’t I? You’ve written about yourself, and then about others. Now, you should write about the world.”

“It might seem a bit forced, but isn’t that what criticism is about? The right to interpret lies with the reader, after all.”

Moon In-seop couldn’t respond.

He didn’t have the mental energy to even think of a reply.

His mind was reeling as if a firecracker had exploded in his brain.

It felt like all the teachings he had received over the past years, no, decades, were finally connecting.

– Moon In. There is no such thing as pure creation. Just as all people influence and change each other, literature too changes by influencing and being influenced by other literature. It’s not only influenced by literature, but also by philosophy, music, and the life of the writer… it’s like a living organism. That’s why writers need to study the world….

– Back in my day, literature was a weapon. Nobody listened to those noisy kids protesting, but everyone loved it when a beautifully written poem came along. Seeing that, I realized that literature changes people, and people change the world. Literature had the power to change the world. Although it eventually became a curse for the literary world….

All teachings ultimately spoke about the world.

Of course, not all those teachings were correct.

Gu Yuna’s words were the same. In her study of Moon In-seop, there were interpretations that could be seen as excessive distortions, and even interpretations that Moon In-seop could never accept.

But that conclusion clearly pinpointed Moon In-seop’s greatest agony.

Throughout his life, he had written about his pain and his suffering. It started with him and ended with him.

His literature had always remained within the shell of ‘me’.

But what if he wrote about the ‘world’?

Writing about the ‘world’ instead of writing about ‘me’.

Maybe that was the direction his literature needed to go.

But it was certainly something he had never tried before, and it was worth trying.

So what needed to be done was clear.

It was time to break out of the shell.

Looking down at the blank manuscript paper felt like being in the middle of an empty desert.

The saying ‘Starting is half the battle’ is used to mean that starting anything is important in any task.

But when it comes to writing a novel, it’s different.

Writing the first sentence is more difficult than writing half of the novel.

Moreover, this time I decided to write about the ‘world’ instead of a novel about ‘me’.

There were no emotions stirring within, no pain I wanted to pour out onto the paper.

So the sense of vagueness was doubled.

This was a challenge toward something new.

So, after briefly staring silently at the blank manuscript paper.

I decided not to wait for inspiration but to draw it out.

When you’ve accumulated experience, you often resort to tricks, and there’s always a way in situations .

It’s like when playing a game of finding a specific number between 1 and 100, you first ask if it’s above or below 50.

So, let’s gauge the literary imagery with a simple question.

Is the world I have experienced white or black?

The answer was obvious.

Without hesitation, I wrote a single character in the first box of the manuscript paper.