Chapter 55

Traces of memory lingered in every corner of my body. Each place where a touch had landed felt as if it had become a mark of something filthy and unclean, embedded deep within my retina.

Naturally, there was nothing I could do in such a situation.

I tried to think rationally.

With time having passed, it was only natural to consider what needed to be done.

After all, what happened had already occurred. What was important was how I would proceed from here.

Nonetheless, I found myself trying desperately to avert my gaze from the nightmarish memories surrounding me. Unable to look around, all I could see was the sky and the ground.

The sky was infinitely high, while the ground was painfully close.

I wanted to deny the feelings I had experienced, but their nature was all too clear.

It was ‘fear.’

When had I truly felt fear?

During those times when I waited for my mother, who never came, I feared the fact that I had been abandoned.

When I appeared on the broadcast, I was terrified by Jin Seo-hye’s madness.

The fear regarding my mother had been transformed into disgust.

I confronted the madness of Jin Seo-hye with genuine responses.

However, the emotion I felt this time was something truly primal, directly and intensely etched into my heart.

It was the sinister, sticky, and grotesque malice and desire, wrapped in a layer of pure guise.

I did not respond. No, I couldn’t.

I chose to flee.

I ran away from the feelings that crawled into me, feelings I had never sensed before and that terrified me.

The reason I couldn’t respond was simple.

Because I was weak.

He was by no means a robust individual, but he had a body at the level of an average adult male. It meant that I, having fallen to such a state, could not confront him.

Of course, it wasn’t that I had been unaware of this before. However, knowing and feeling are two different matters.

The moment his hand touched my body, I felt an unspeakable terror of pure violence.

It made me nauseous. I could understand.

I could not win.

His hands were large, wrinkled, with hardened calluses.

I could not win against the firm callus lodged beneath the thumb of that right hand, which had gripped a pen.

No matter what it was, I could not defeat this ‘creature.’ It wasn’t merely an issue of physicality. It transcended physicality to include the mind, evil, fear, and his prowess with the pen that ruled over all of that.

It was a matter of species.

Damn it, until now I had thought he and I belonged to the same species, but in truth, we did not.

He was a different creature from me.

No, I misspoke.

‘I’ was a creature different from that.

He wasn’t the strange being.

The one who was strange was me.

Why had I not realized it?

I was, long ago,

not a ‘human.’

I was not human.

I was a being stripped of the qualifications of humanity. I had been robbed, looted, and had fallen.

Until yesterday, I had been soaring in the sky, yet now I didn’t even know how to crawl on the ground.

So I plunged into the water.

When I realized that I did not have gills, I had already ventured too far.

I was sinking.

The only one oblivious to this was me.

Such desperation made me

ridiculously fragile.

I was no longer a predator.

~

What is writing?

Writing is deficiency.

Everything originates from lack.

It is because we are insufficient, we long for what we do not have.

Some write to hide those deficiencies, some to fill the void, some to find what was lost,

Thus, they write.

Therefore, writing can only be the sum of negative emotions.

Inferiority, hatred, resentment, sorrow, pain, fear, longing.

For this reason, misfortune for a novelist becomes luck. Misfortune is the beginning. From escape, everything starts.

A person who is not unfortunate cannot become a true novelist.

Thus, my abandonment by my mother was misfortune as a human, but perhaps it was luck as a novelist.

My writing was pain and deficiency. I never once considered it enjoyable while writing. Nonetheless, I had to do it.

I had to write.

It was neither a mission nor a duty, nor even a desire.

It was simply because I write.

To survive, I must write.

As I could no longer breathe, instead, I wrote. I inhaled the pain and exhaled the words.

From the moment I was abandoned by my mother, I dyed my insides with white paint. The layered interiors became blank, and I felt a tremendous void within.

It was empty and hollow. Therefore, I filled it.

What did I fill it with?

No matter what I filled it with, the undeniable fact remained that the blank sheet had been layered.

Thus, I desperately concealed it, pretending not to know, writing over it.

Though it was not an exquisite and pure white, it was still my hiding place.

This time it was no different.

If marks remained, I could simply layer over them. I would paint it again with white paint and write over it.

Fill it again, layer it, write, and conceal.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that it was impossible.

I could not breathe.

It felt as if my brain had solidified, and my thoughts could not advance, while my hands felt stiff and could no longer move.

I needed to vomit out what was on my insides, but those things had already digested within, becoming one.

I was already dominated by fear.

That callus had left a significant mark within me. No, that was not it.

What that callus did was not leave a mark; it had revealed it.

It tore the blank paper, uncovering the tender flesh within.

I could not write a single sentence.

Perhaps I never wrote.

~

On the first day I wet the bed, I did nothing.

I could have done something.

I could have spoken to someone about what I experienced and sought help; I could have contacted that author and somehow resolved it.

But I didn’t.

It was foolish, yet I didn’t realize it.

I ran away.

I turned away.

It was something I could forget.

Making a big deal out of such a minor matter felt absurd.

So I went on as if nothing had happened, keeping my usual demeanor.

I casually answered the call from Hwa-won.

After all, my tutoring sessions with Jae-Ah had paused for the time being.

Muk Ha-neul hadn’t contacted me, and Ham Yejin was intentionally avoiding meetings.

And I poured all my remaining time into writing.

I poured the whole day into a piece that had not moved a single sentence, and while it was painfully slow, time still passed.

A day passed, then two days, three days, and four days.

During that time, I had done nothing.

Fortunately, I hadn’t wet the bed since that day.

I hadn’t cried either.

I hadn’t written, played games, read books, or even had conversations with anyone.

There was no one around me, but I continued to pretend to be ordinary, just like any other day.

This was normal.

It had to be normal.

There was plenty of time.

With time, I could return.

I would return to my original self.

Blocking my thoughts, I spent the whole day watching YouTube shorts, and amusingly, I thought that way.

I truly believed it.

I wanted to believe it.

But,

the story had already begun.

A story that had begun does not stop until it has reached its end.

A tale that cannot end without bloodshed.

A call came from the editor.

I ended the call and sent a KakaoTalk message.

[I’ve caught a cold, and it’s hard to speak. Let’s converse like this.]

[Oh, is that so?]

[What’s the matter?]

[Well, I’m truly sorry, but I have something urgent to discuss.]

[What is it?]

Something felt uneasy.

[Are you still working on the new piece?]

[Yes.]

I lied.

[…I’m really sorry, but our publisher has decided to terminate the contract with Seol-guk. It seems we will not be able to publish your new work.]

…What?

~

To summarize the editor’s words:

They stated that the book was still selling well. However, higher-ups felt it was too risky to continue with an author who had such significant controversy surrounding them. Of course, sales are good now, but it’s uncertain how long it will last, and they concluded that it wouldn’t be wise to take on that risk.

Therefore, they proposed the termination of the contract with mutual consent.

Naturally, it was little different from notification.

I protested, of course. It didn’t make sense to do this suddenly. Although I wasn’t well-versed in law, I knew it was clearly unfair. Terminating the contract abruptly like this would have justified legal action.

However, the editor said.

Ending the contract with mutual consent, after all, is the publisher’s ‘goodwill.’

In light of the disgrace and honor lost by the publisher due to the events I had caused, pursuing legal action would not suffice. There was indeed a clause regarding maintaining dignity in the actual contract.

Ending the contract in such a gentle manner also came because sales had increased, which the publisher had tolerated.

I could not accept this, but the editor’s subsequent words forced me to give up.

[I’m truly sorry. It’s my fault for being insufficient.]

The editor, Kim Sung-kyu, was half a lunatic, had a terrible personality, and we weren’t particularly close. I had seen him for years, but there was nothing likable about him. Naturally, he wasn’t the type to easily offer apologies.

Since we were discussing things via text, I had no way of knowing his actual thoughts.

I couldn’t tell whether he genuinely felt sorry or if it was merely a face-saving statement.

Regardless, seeing those words of apology drained me of my strength.

While I remained firm in my belief that the treatment was unfair, the fact that the cause lay with me could not be changed.

At the very least, Kim Sung-kyu’s judgment would not have influenced this matter. The sight of a man like him apologizing as if it were his responsibility felt so absurd that I could no longer say anything to him.

Even if the contract were terminated, royalties would still come in. Finding a new publisher wouldn’t be easy, but as an author with a certain level of notoriety, there would be a place willing to take the risk.

Moreover, I was in no position to write properly.

It would take a long time for the new piece to be completed, so it wasn’t urgent to find a publisher to release my work.

There was plenty of time.

Even if my contract ended, it wouldn’t affect my livelihood.

And if I disagreed with this decision and filed a lawsuit, I doubt I could win. Even if I did, it would only end up with a tiny compensation. An author could not publish a book with the publisher they sued.

Whether I won or lost, the time and money spent would be significant. While time might be less of an issue, I had no resources for money. And I lacked the mental strength to endure such a lengthy legal battle.

It felt unpleasant, but it wasn’t such a significant problem.

After some time passed, I messaged the editor, or rather Kim Sung-kyu, again.

[Thank you for your efforts up to now.]

There was no response.

I had no way of knowing what he was thinking.

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