TL: KSD
Everyone has their own set of personas.
School, work, home, etc.
A mask that changes slightly whenever one is in a different group.
The reason for wearing such masks is to slightly alter one’s outward personality to fit into the group, protecting one’s social status as social animal-
In other words, it is an instinctive behavior of humans.
Kim Byul is no exception.
As an actress, Kim Byul maintains a diet for weight management.
However, as a middle school girl, Kim Byul is enthusiastic about the food sold at the school cafeteria.
Therefore, Kim Byul sucked on an apple-flavored Pique-nique through a straw, savoring it.
It’s not because the manager doesn’t watch her like a hawk at school.
“Especially for actors, it’s a profession that involves creating and embodying different personas, so it’s necessary to recognize and train one’s various aspects. That’s why I don’t make a fuss about my diet even at school. Recognizing myself as a student is… a kind of acting training. Understand?”
“You want me to buy you another drink?”
“I’m glad we understand each other so well!”
Moon In-seop eventually ended up buying Kim Byul more Pique-niques and chocolates.
Only then did Kim Byul slightly ease her pout and open her ears.
“So… What is this all about?”
EP 3-Magic Sword~nim, please control me!
In front of the cafeteria, where the smell of tomato sauce faintly drifted due to an instant spaghetti brutally exploding in the microwave due to someone’s careless mistake.
Kim Byul sighed deeply as she looked at Moon In-seop and Gu Yu-na sitting at the table, while sucking on an apple-flavored Pique-nique.
“A club all of a sudden? And as its president? Me? What are you talking about? What if I was already in another club?”
“Kim sunbae, are you in any clubs?”
“Not really… but you asked too quickly. Isn’t something wrong with the order?”
“Before asking if I was your junior, you should have discipline-”
“Okay~ That’s enough.”
Kim Byul cut off Moon In-seop’s words to exclude the boy from the conversation.
Kim Byul extended her hand with a bright smile to Gu Yu-na.
“Nice to meet you! I’m sorry for the late introduction because of this guy. I’m Kim Byul, a third-year student majoring in acting in the Department of Theater and Film.”
“Hello.”
“……”
There’s something called verbal communication.
When you smile brightly and introduce yourself, the other person should introduce themselves too for the conversation to continue.
Kim Byul, who started socializing from a very young age, sensed something off with her radar.
But the level of ‘awkwardness’ wasn’t serious, so Kim Byul asked casually.
“So? What’s your name?”
“Gu Yu-na.”
“Nice to meet you, Yu-na.”
“It’s not Yoon-ah, it’s Yu-na.”
“……”
There’s something called non-verbal communication.
Kim Byul, (though she hated to get used to it) too familiar with the tension on set, was very sensitive to non-verbal cues.
To Kim Byul, Gu Yu-na was a peculiar kind of peculiarity.
No non-verbal communication at all. No facial expressions, gestures, or eye contact.
So motionless it was hard to distinguish.
‘What’s with her?’
Does she not like me? Why is she so prickly at first meeting?
Kim Byul was not one to lose in such a standoff.
“Haha, you don’t like me, do-”
“Yu-na is also a fan of yours, sunbae. She’s been nervous because she’s in front of someone she’s often seen on TV since she was young, and she found the movie Cause of Death very impressive.”
What’s with her?
“How do you know that?”
“Yu-na always makes sure to say her name isn’t Yoon-ah when introducing herself. It was a slip of the tongue earlier. And don’t you see she’s frozen solid because she’s in front of a celebrity?”
I don’t see it.
But now that Moon In-seop mentioned it, she seems a bit shy…?
Anyhow, as the creator and actor were in a hierarchy of superior and inferior, Kim Byeol conceded with an complex expression.
“Well, if you say so. So, what club is it? Culture and arts… what?”
“It’s the Popular Culture and Arts Study Club. The name isn’t important, let’s skip that. As you can see, sunbae, Yu-na here doesn’t have friends.”
“Umm~”
Kim Byul expressed her active agreement through non-verbal communication.
The only person who didn’t agree with the statement “Gu Yu-na has no friends” was Gu Yu-na herself.
“I have friends.”
“Who?”
“You and this unni.”
Kim Byul was shocked. Isn’t the ‘standard for friends’ too low? Kim Byul felt a bit sorry for Gu Yu-na.
However, Moon In-seop knew well that taking Gu Yu-na’s nonsense seriously would only tire him out, so he let it in one ear and out the other.
“I have connections with Author Gu Hak-jun, and I didn’t like seeing her being bullied, so I thought of creating a club to include her. There’s no legal way for her to skip school, so we can’t just let her sit around sucking her thumb during club time. And it wouldn’t do to send her to the most populous club in the literature department, only to have her feel left out there…”
The moment Kim Byul heard the name Gu Hak-jun, she realized that Gu Yu-na was the daughter of the great author Gu Hak-jun and unconsciously raised her level of caution by a notch.
It was more of a survival instinct that any social being ought to have, rather than a calculated cost-benefit analysis. It was a sense that shouldn’t exist at their age.
Through such mental machinations, Kim Byul adopted a more proactive attitude towards the creation of the club.
In other words,
She went from being actively opposed to passively opposed.
“A club? Sounds good. It’s nothing more than kids playing house and building relationships, but the friendships formed from a young age are the scariest. That’s why the school pours money into club activities, isn’t it? But do you know why didn’t I join one?”
“Because you have no friends?”
“Because I don’t have…. time! How could I do club activities when I’m often absent from school due to my schedule? Especially as a president, it would be extremely annoying. I don’t have time to invest in a Popular Culture… whatever club.”
Moon In-seop shrugged his shoulders.
“Then, it’s settled.”
“What is?”
“That’s the purpose of this club. Just to have a name and do nothing but eat snacks during club time.”
“…Oh.”
“Sunbae, even when you come to school, you’re just zoning out in the study room for 2 hours without studying. Wouldn’t it be more comfortable to lie down in the club room under a blanket?”
“What is that…”
It’s perfect, isn’t it?
Kim Byul’s eyes sparkled as she nodded vigorously.
“Great! Now I’m the president!”
“Do we need one more person?”
“I have many juniors, but strangely none of them attend this school…”
After briefly rifling through her mental Rolodex, Kim Byul found one candidate.
“Ah, there’s one.”
“Who?”
“You’ve seen him once, right? The kid who raps. What was the group name…”
“Who?”
“That, you know, the kid who appeared on a variety show with me. Dyed pink hair…”
“Ah, Min something.”
* * *
Rapid Boys’ main rapper
And a second-year student in the Dance Department at Baekhak Arts Middle School, specializing in practical dance, Min Hyo-chan was suddenly kidnapped.
It was because he had a brief career as a child actor when he was younger.
Having been in that circle for even a short while meant he couldn’t defy a senior’s order.
It absolutely wasn’t because he impulsively left his original club because he found Kim Byul attractive…
‘Why am I here…?’
The only writing Min Hyo-chan had ever done was raps.
And even those raps were criticized by the producer as being crappy.
Of course, officially, it was treated as his own creation…
Anyway, Min Hyo-chan had little to no connection with the Department of Creative Writing.
But before him was the department head of Literary Creation,
the madman Park Chang-woon.
(It sounds like a title, but it’s a nickname)
The reason Min Hyo-chan knew Park Chang-woon.
It wasn’t because Park Chang-woon was a senior novelist who got invited to the news every time he published a new work.
It was because he was the crazy person who, losing the budget battle within the department, used his connections to bring in a presidential candidate as a guest lecturer and then asked for more budget for the Creative Writing Department.
Since the school was turned upside down after that incident, a rumor has circulated among the students that even the principal can’t look Park Chang-woon in the eye…
It means the club budget is substantial. Hence, the regulations for establishing a club were quite strict. The larger the amount of money involved, the more complicated the procedures become.
But Novelist Park Chang-woon.
A person who teaches as a hobby.
No one can stop the event of a reclusive master.
“Ah, I should do it, I should.”
Park Chang-woon glanced at the faces of Author Moon, Gu Yu-na, and the other two riffraff, then coolly stamped his approval with a bang!
There were two reasons.
First, just seeing Author Moon’s face made him smile. Anyone who has spent their life watching the place they dedicated themselves to gradually decline, feeling helpless over decades, could sympathize.
Second, Gu Yu-na. The daughter of Gu Hak-jun.
It’s not cool to explain beyond this.
“There happens to be an empty classroom on the 4th floor that could be used as a club room, right? I’ll give you the key, so don’t lose it. Got it?”
“Thank you!”
“Alright then.”
The four students took the key and left the staff room, gleefully excited.
Watching their cheerful steps, Park Chang-woon seemed to smile contentedly.
The club budget, that trifle could be covered with personal funds.
But the memories of the youth are something that can never be bought with money.
The world may be going awry, turning upside down, but shouldn’t someone preserve the old-fashioned ways?
That day, a warm smile lingered on Park Chang-woon’s lips for a long time.
And exactly 2 months later.
Park Chang-woon would come to regret this decision, stomping his feet.
* * *
Autumn arrived.
The colorful autumn leaves have dyed the mountain ridges.
From the front yard of Professor Gu Hak-jun’s house, the secluded scenery of the mountains painted in vibrant colors was clearly visible.
Sitting on a rocking chair and savoring a café latte, Gu Hak-jun looked at the heaps of fallen leaves in the yard and thought:
‘This looks just perfect for hiding a body.’
A knife fight takes place in the red mountains. It’s a bloody battle between men who cannot share the same sky. The blood spilled on the ground covered with leaves becomes meaningless as it seeps into the autumn leaves. Finally, one falls, and one leaves, but it’s just like falling leaves. In the end, everything will rot and return to the soil, destined to slowly decompose in the pile of leaves, whether now or later. But just as the leaves color themselves brilliantly before dying, there is beauty in the colorful demise of human life…
Good! I must make a note of it before I forget.
“Hmm-hmm.”
Professor Gu Hak-jun hummed a tune, set down his coffee on the table next to the rocking chair, and took out his Galaxy Fold to jot down the imagery he had just thought of in raw, unrefined language.
He felt refreshed every time inspiration flowed like water. Maybe it’s because he has no worries these days.
His wife’s business is doing well, his eldest daughter is growing up sensible, albeit a bit gloomy, and his youngest daughter, who he was most worried about, seems to be fitting in well with friends at school.
At his age, the biggest worries are family-related, but since everyone in the family is doing well, Gu Hak-jun was the happiest middle-aged man.
Ah. Speaking of which, Yu-na mentioned something about preparing for a club presentation or something at school. It seems like they’re writing something to publish a doujinshi…
The strange, exotic culture of today’s youth has tainted the original meaning of ‘doujinshi’, but originally, doujinshis belonged to the realm of pure literature.
‘Literary doujinshis’ created by a group of like-minded authors have been a noble tradition illuminating the Korean literary world from the Enlightenment period to the present.
Thinking that Yu-na and Author Moon are leading the charge in protecting such culture, the future of the Korean literary world seems bright.
At that moment, Gu Hak-jun’s phone vibrated, displaying a photo of Gu Yubin. She was calling.
“Hey, Yubin. What’s up?”
-Well… Dad.
Gu Yubin relayed the news in a troubled voice.
-About the doujinshi that Yu-na and Author Moon were going to publish… It’s been uploaded on the internet.
“Ah, really? Well, it makes sense. Electronic publishing is the most convenient for young people without money. They’ve used their heads well, haven’t they?”
-No, it’s not the ebook you’re thinking of… Ah, never mind. You can find it immediately with an internet search, so please check it yourself.
Gu Yubin abruptly ended the call.
Gu Hak-jun, feeling bewildered, checked the internet.
As expected of Author Moon, his name was already climbing the real-time search rankings.
“Let’s see… Moon In-seop, web novel?”
Ah- A web novel.
He wrote a web novel…
Hmm…
Well, that’s possible.
Even famous authors have adapted to the new era by posting their writings on internet platforms.
Personally, I was a bit hesitant, but well, other authors might think differently.
Surely Moon In-seop didn’t write a genre fiction novel? (TL: Literary vs. Genre Fiction)
It’s okay. It’s fine.
Moon In-seop is an author who writes with solid fundamentals.
He’s the pride and future of the Korean literary world.
He would never stray from the path of pure literature. Yes! Definitely!
Gu Hak-jun brainwashed himself to maintain his composure.
However, his body was honest, and his fingertips trembled slightly as he lifted his coffee cup.
And finally, when Gu Hak-jun checked Moon In-seop’s new work.
Gu Hak-jun ended up witnessing it.
-Demonic Sword~nim, please control me!
The cover featured a 2D anime-style Dark Elf making a comical sad face while wielding a sword.
Coffee dribbled out of Gu Hak-jun’s mouth.
It was autumn.
****
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