Chapter 119

TL: KSD

A dark screen.

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.

‘Run away.’

A girl heard those words.

And she started running.

Into the darkness of the alley.

Into the darkness of the city.

Into the darkness of the world.

「Why don’t you have a name?」

「It’s not that I don’t have a name. I just haven’t decided on one yet.」

As time passed, the girl met a boy like her.

A wanderer drifting into the shadows of the gray city.

The two wandered together in the jungle made of buildings.

Thus, their purposeless journey began.

Chasing a squirrel into the deep mountain range.

Enjoying the warmth of odeng, relying on the kindness of a good-hearted food stall owner.

Playing an exciting game of hide-and-seek in a late-night department store.

Sitting under a park pavilion on a rainy day, playing the guitar to the rhythm of the rain...

The two glimpsed the hidden side of the city that couldn’t be seen through the eyes of adults. But their journey couldn’t last forever.

The boy had a place to return to, but the girl did not.

All of this was determined the moment they were born.

So the boy shouted.

「Why are you forcing me to make a choice?」

The girl answered.

「You need to choose, whether it’s something happy or sad. That’s the only way you can have your life.」

Eventually, the screen darkened.

Someone’s voice asked.

「Have you decided on a name?」

The emotional OST that played throughout the trailer ended appropriately, and a voice with a hint of laughter briefly answered in the darkness.

「Not yet.」

-また?. (TL: Not yet in Japanese)

EP 8–Dark Adaptation

“Wow...”

As the trailer ended, the screen in the Publishing Division office rolled up. The youngest staff member rapidly pressed the eight switches on the wall, turning on the lights and dispelling the movie theater-like atmosphere.

However, the lingering impact left by the trailer for the movie ‘Guitar’ had not yet disappeared. Even though it was just a trailer, the visual and musical artistry were exceptionally beautiful.

Unable to hide my admiration, I spoke to Lim Yang-wook.

“It’s really good...”

“Right? The full movie is even better.”

Lim Yang-wook grinned, showing his white teeth. With his recently grown beard, he might look like a yakuza when quiet, but his smile made him seem very naive.

“But the full movie hasn’t been released in Korea yet, right?”

“I can understand Japanese. I immediately booked a flight and went to a Fukuoka theater for a day trip. It was really great.”

“Is it that good?”

“Yes. Maybe because it’s an animated movie, the backgrounds are incredibly beautiful. The lush mountains, the rainy scenes... Of course, the most beautiful part is the protagonists!”

Deeply versed in otaku culture, Lim Yang-wook praised the work, mumbling about the animation and character design for a while.

“As expected from the Department Head! The previous works of that animation director...”

“Ah, right, right.”

Deputy head Kim Ga-ryung, who prides herself as Lim Yang-wook’s faithful subordinate, quickly joined in and agreed. The two otakus continued their animated discussion, mentioning the animation director’s name and previous works.

Of course, to my ears, it all just sounded like ‘Tanaka, Suzuki blah blah’. Japanese names are really hard to distinguish. However, if you asked me to name Japanese novelists, I could recall names like Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Natsume Soseki, Ryotaro Shiba, Osamu Dazai, Yasunari Kawabata, Haruki Murakami, Seicho Matsumoto, Kan Kikuchi, Kenzaburo Oe, Atsushi Nakajima, Ogai Mori, Shusaku Endo, Yukio Mishima, and so on...

In any case, I can’t understand the mindset of people who memorize the names of their favorite anime characters or animation directors.

Eventually, I intervened between the two anime otakus who had started a mental resonance.

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...”

“Stop it, please-!”

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...”

“Ahhh-!”

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.”

“I-is that so?”

“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-

-1st place. Guitar.

‘Guitar’ made waves.

It was happening in real-time.

*****

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