The Great Storyteller

Translated by: ShawnSuh

Edited by: SootyOwl

“Other authors, huh?”

“Yeah, ’cause you’re gonna be out of the military in a year,” Seo Kwang said, and added, “Which means that’s how long they have to catch up to you. But, as we’re both aware, you don’t just become a better writer overnight. Though, we probably couldn’t say the same about you since you got to the top in almost no time.”

“Well, I can’t say you’re wrong,” Juho said with a mysterious smile.

At which point, Seo Kwang winced and said, “… They’re not Yun Woo, so they can’t catch up that quickly at the end of the day.”

“Hm.”

Juho brushed his hand down the book he was holding, while Seo Kwang stared at it. Juho was at the halfway point of his military service. In one more year, the monster that was being held captive would be set free. At which point, his fellow authors would probably wish that there was more time.

“He makes it big.”

Although caught off guard by the young author’s remark initially, Seo Kwang caught on to the meaning of it shortly after. Juho was referring to Sung Pil. Although he sounded oddly certain of the rookie author’s future to Seo Kwang, he shrugged it off and said, “I think he will as well, but who knows what could really happen?”

“It’ll happen sooner than you think.”

“…”

Seo Kwang couldn’t make sense of where Juho was coming from. The first. The youngest. First edition starting at one million copies. Yun Woo was a one-of-a-kind figure who wrapped himself in all sorts of dazzling adjectives. He was a dominant figure in the industry, and his life was undoubtedly successful. If anyone were to be offered to live the young author’s life on his behalf, nobody would think twice about accepting the offer. From time to time, Seo Kwang would become unbearably curious as to how the young author saw the world. What did he see that Seo Kwang didn’t? At that moment…

“It’s not good to talk about someone behind their back, you know,” Sung Pil said as he opened his eyes. He had been lying so still on the floor that he had looked almost lifeless.

“Ah!” Seo Kwang screamed out, grasping his chest.

However, Juho merely turned his head toward his author friend and said, “I thought we were pretty explicit.”

Then, Sung Pil sat up and said out of nowhere, “Can you lend me a razor?”

“…”

At his random remark, Juho clenched his lips tightly, and Seo Kwang gave him a puzzled look.

“What do you need a razor for?” Seo Kwang asked, looking at Sung Pil’s chin. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the place the rookie author was thinking about shaving.

“It’s for my eyebrows.”

“… Eyebrows? As in, a touch-up?”

“No. I need to shave them.”

“Shave them?!” Seo Kwang asked, even more confused. When he looked toward Juho expecting an explanation, the young author’s lips had narrowed, as if he was holding back laughter. Sung Pil was the only one serious.

“So, do you think I can borrow one?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“‘Cause I’m gonna end up thinking about your eyebrows every time I go to the bathroom,” Juho said, shaking his head emphatically. Rather than clinging to him and begging some more, Sung Pil nodded with understanding, smacking his lips. Then, he lay back on the floor.

“Did he just say that he wants to shave his eyebrows off?! What the heck was that about?” Seo Kwang asked, thoroughly confused. However, seeing that things had already moved on, he gave up and waved his hand. At that moment…

“Can somebody make me some honey water?” Bom asked. The Sun was about to set by the time Juho’s drunken friends started sobering up, looking for honey water. Upon checking the time, the young author was reminded that it was almost time for his other guests to arrive.

“Let’s clean up a little. This is embarrassing.”

“What? It ain’t that bad,” Seo Kwang said, waving and looking hassled. Walking over to the window, Juho opened it in order to ventilate the apartment, making everyone shiver with the cold air that came rushing into the living room. Paying no attention to them, Juho looked out the window and saw a familiar face in the distance, one who seemed to be headed for his apartment. At which point, Juho walked over to the front door in preparation to greet his guests. Then, as he opened the door, a voice came from the entrance.

“Some example you guys are.”

It was the younger members of the Literature Club: Bo Suk and the twins. Looking at their forebears drunk and sprawled about in broad daylight, the younger club members gave them somewhat pitiful looks. At the same time, they were glad to finally see their old clubmates.

“Been a while, Juho!” Gong Il said. Her once long, sharp eyes were now curving stylishly.

“It’s near impossible to see you in person these days,” Gong Pal added. Although looking quite similar to his twin sister, he was noticeably taller than her. He had been going through a growth spurt since becoming a junior.

“Here! We brought you a gift!” Bo Suk said, offering something in a plastic bag. It was a box of fried chicken.

“Is it food?”

“Yeah. We figured you don’t get to eat fried chicken at the base,” Bo Suk said, greeting her old clubmates behind Juho in a friendly manner, including Sung Pil, who she seemed to have met prior to that day. Meanwhile, the twins were busy pushing each other’s backs.

“Did you drink with Bo Suk too?”

“Yep,” Sung Pil said, looking intently at the twins, who were quietly arguing about who should introduce themselves first. Growing impatient, Seo Kwang took the initiative on their behalf, saying, “Gong Pal Kong. Gong Il Kong.”

Sung Pil tilted his head at the strange-sounding names.

“Your names?”

“Yeah, we were born on the eighteenth of the same month and year. For the record, I beat her to it by one minute.”

“If you’d been born on the seventeenth…” Sung Pil said, quickly changing the subject shortly after.

(TL’s Note: Last names comes before first names in Korea, which would make the name “Gong Chil Gong (or Kong),” “Gong Gong Chil,” which means 007 in Korean.)

“Sung Pil. Or Pil Sung. Call me whichever you feel like.”

The twins nodded emphatically. Then, raising their hands, they took turns to ask, “We have a question.”

“It’s about something we’ve been wanting to know.”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

“How did you come to use Sung Pil as your alias?”

Sung Pil looked at Juho by reflex. The author had a chicken wing in his mouth.

“It was a nickname.”

“From childhood?”

“Who gave it to you?”

“That guy,” Sung Pil said honestly.

From then on, the twins clung to the young author and started bombarding him with questions. At that moment, the young author was saved in the nick of time when Sun Hwa’s dying voice interjected, groaning, “I smell chicken.”

After calming the twins down, Juho took a seat. As the apartment became filled with people, the air became filled with their voices.

“We have thirty-one members now.”

“Whoa! The club’s massive now!”

Bo Suk and Gong Il had been the heads of the club during their last years. Although the position had hardly ever been a prominent one, that reality had come to change as the club grew bigger.

“People know our school as the school Yun Woo went to, so the school’s been supporting the Literature Club in major ways. Things got crazy after you guys graduated! People came to us willingly before we even started promoting the club!”

“Everyone was trying to see your short stories. It was chaos.”

“Which created a world of problems.”

“It was so upsetting. It still is whenever I think about that time. I can’t remember how many times I found myself missing the old times, when things were quieter and more peaceful,” Bo Suk said. She clearly missed the club experience with her old clubmates.

“Well, it’s all in the past now,” she added. At which point, Juho brought up a certain person that came to mind, saying, “I’m surprised Mr. Moon is still teaching.”

Agreeing with Juho’s remark at once, Bo Suk said, “He was NOT happy about what became of the club, though. He was pretty upset actually, saying that what was meant to be an outlet had become part of work. I thought he would quit teaching after that, but he didn’t. He said that there were bills to be paid.”

“That sound about right,” Juho said. That was the kind of person Mr. Moon was. After listening quietly, Sung Pil said, “The almighty Yun Woo.”

“Well, things have calmed down since,” Juho said, shrugging it off.

The name Yun Woo was bound to be forgotten at some point in the future, and there was no way to prevent it… even if it was Yun Woo.

“Calm?”

“Juho!” Bo Suk called to the young author, overpowering Sung Pil’s curiosity. “Tell us what happened since the last time we met! You haven’t hung out with us since coming back from Germany. You kept saying that you were writing! You didn’t even hang out with us when you came out on breaks after you went off to the military!” she exclaimed with a beer in her hand. Sucking on her greasy fingers, she said, “Also, can I touch your hair?”

In the end, the hangout lasted well into the night, and Seo Kwang and Sung Pil even spent the night at the young author’s apartment. The three-day vacation went by in the blink of an eye. After following Juho to the subway station to send him off, the two friends said goodbye to the young author.

“Take care,” Sung Pil said, and Seo Kwang added, “Enjoy your last year at the base.”

“Will do.”

With that, Juho waved at his two friends and went down the stairs into the station. Standing by the entrance, the two watched their friend disappear into the underground.

“The uniform suits him,” Seo Kwang said, thinking back to the uniform that had been hanging from the wall in Juho’s apartment.

“I’m sure we’ll be wearing that soon too.”

“… Don’t go there, Sung Pil.”

“Why?”

Seo Kwang let out a small sigh at Sung Pil’s oblivious attitude. Having become part of the crowd, Juho slowly faded into the distance. Unlike when he had come out as a celebrity author and while he was a civilian, nobody in the crowd seemed to recognize him, shout or ask for an autograph upon seeing him. Nobody was calling out to him. To Seo Kwang, it all looked too foreign and awkward.

“They can’t have forgotten about Yun Woo in just a year.”

“I agree.”

Seo Kwang waved as Juho looked back at his friends one last time, waving back and disappearing into the underground subway station. Yun Woo was nowhere to be found.

“It is so quiet,” Seo Kwang said quietly. When Sung Pil stared intently at him, he added, almost as an excuse, “I mean, I thought it would look and sound a lot more chaotic.”

Shoving his hands in his pocket, he added, “Maybe people forget about each other more often than we think.”

Sung Pil wondered if the longevity of Yun Woo’s popularity had something to do with the pace at which the young author had progressed. Perhaps, that had been why Juho had joked about being forgotten so nonchalantly.

“That’s not entirely true,” Sung Pil said emphatically, and Seo Kwang looked at him. At his soon-to-be-shaved-off eyebrows, to be exact.

“Look.”

“What?” Seo Kwang let out, looking in the direction Sung Pil was pointing. There were two people coming up the stairs, looking ecstatic about something, their fingers tapping frantically against the screen of their phones. As they came up to the surface and walked past Seo Kwang and Sung Pil, their conversation became audible.

“That’s what I call a coincidence!”

“We should’ve tried talking to him.”

“He was in his uniform, though.”

“Oh, man! My heart’s racing!”

Meanwhile, Sung Pil stood quietly in his place, realizing that he had been worrying over nothing. Then, rubbing his stomach, Seo Kwang suggested, “Can we go get somethin’ to eat?”

“Sure.”

“Why don’t you come over to my place if you’re free? My parents own a bookstore.”

“I’ll be there.”

With that, the two went on their way, blending into the crowd.

“Maybe I need to speed things up a little,” Juho murmured in the subway. The thunderous roar of the train overpowered everything. Time flew by like the train, moving at a frightening speed.

—

“It’s almost Christmas.”

Nam Kyung nodded in confirmation to Ms. Song’s remark. He was in the middle of looking through the edits of a recently imported book’s manuscript.

“Mr. Woo’s book should be coming out soon, right?”

“Yep,” Nam Kyung said briefly.

At his seemingly indifferent attitude, Ms. Song looked toward him and asked, “Aren’t you excited?”

“Of course, I am.”

“You don’t seem like it,” she said, sipping the coffee that she had bought on her way back to the office. “Personally, I was really sad that he was gone at first, but time flew by as I kept working and reading other books by different authors. Then, when I remembered that his new book was coming out and the release date was just around the corner, I found myself getting really stoked. I’ve been on a Yun-Woo marathon for a week now.”

At that, Nam Kyung burst into laughter and said, “Yeah. Bummer that he’s gonna start with another publisher after he gets discharged.”

He had already been informed of the sequel to ‘Language of God’ by the young author.

“Oh! You mean the sequel? There’s a rumor circulating about it right now.”

The rumor of the sequel was widespread in the publishing industry. Knowing that, Nam Kyung nodded affirmatively.

“Is it true though?” she asked.

“Who knows? I’d say it is.”

“Did you not hear anything from Mr. Woo?”

“He’s very busy.”

At that, a look of utter disappointment appeared on Ms. Song’s face.

“Well, I hope it comes out soon,” she said, genuinely and earnestly.