Turmoil (3)
What if someone at the company ended up reading Human Guilty?
What if they figured out that the novel was based on true events—and that the real people in it were me and Team Leader Hye-jeong?
Whenever anxieties like these seized me, I would always run a simulation in my head, and in that simulation, Han Yu-jae was always brimming with confidence.
"What kind of idiot would write down his own story like that? Aren't you the one who wrote it and is trying to frame me? I didn't even know this kind of lowbrow adult web novel culture existed."
Lines like that were already drafted in my head, too.
Right. All I had to do was brazen it out. Just recite the prepared lines with a thick enough face, and no one at the company would dare rashly conclude that I was the author of Human Guilty.
Or so I'd believed.
Han Yu-jae, you absolute moron. You went and pasted the link into the company messenger's team chatroom with your own two hands.
Hey, you fucking idiot, you brainless bastard. You deserve a beating, you really do.
There's a wine glass sitting right in front of me. The red liquid coating that thin glass is lodged in my vision like a thorn.
Yes. That poisoned cup is the cause of all this. The day Hye-jeong and I first committed our affair, we came here too and drained that same poisoned cup.
Damn it. Why didn't I foresee that something like this could happen? The Han Yu-jae of two days ago, who picked this place as our meeting spot, can go to hell.
The weather was already muggy enough—why didn't I just stick to makgeolli and kimchi pancakes? Goddamn idiot.
I snatched up the wine glass. Just before I could bring it crashing down on the crown of my own head, Hye-jeong grabbed my wrist.
"Stop drinking, you lunatic, and get a grip! Delete it. Delete it right now! The sender has to be the one to delete it! I can't delete it!"
I'd never seen Hye-jeong rage like this before. Even if she'd accidentally wiped an entire critical database at work, I doubt she'd have blown up this hard.
Yes—this was the roar of a beast. As desperate and as lonely as the howl of a wolf caught in a hunter's trap.
In that moment, we were no longer us. Because Team Leader Hye-jeong was looking at the Han Yu-jae in front of her as, unambiguously, an enemy.
An enemy threatening her career. A trap that had swallowed her forepaw and was burrowing into her very marrow. The look in her eyes was unmistakably that of someone confronting something that repulsive.
Thanks to that blade-cold glare, the alcohol burned out of me along with the murderous fumes.
I smacked the top of my head a couple of times with my right palm to pull myself together, then immediately picked up my phone and opened the team group chat on the company messenger.
The most recent message in that chatroom—titled "Dev Team 1 Comms"—was definitely mine.
The problematic link I'd sent stared back at me, vivid and unmistakable.
[https://novelympic.com/novel/445683]
Beneath it spread the link preview card for Novelympic, the web novel serialization platform.
That phrase, emblazoned on the preview card, seemed to be mocking me personally.
I prayed for some heaven-sent being to descend and tell me, "This is a dream." Unfortunately, what pierced my ears instead was Hye-jeong's tirade.
"Delete it right now, you fucking bastard!"
"Aaah… okay, okay!"
I pressed hard on my phone screen with my index finger. Thankfully, where my trembling finger landed was the offending message—the one containing the link to Human Guilty.
At last, a dropdown select box appeared, offering options for the message.
There was a button labeled "Edit" beside an icon of a pencil on a square sheet of paper, but that wasn't the one I was looking for.
There. A delete button with a trash can icon. That's the one.
It was 10:30 p.m. Who in their right mind would log into the company messenger at this ungodly hour? Nobody had seen the link yet.
If I deleted it quickly, all that would remain would be a "This message has been deleted" notice. Then I could simply append a brief follow-up:
Good. Hope still remained for us. Now, quickly, press the trash can button and… huh?
A notice popped up in the middle of the chatroom. I read it aloud without thinking.
"'Only messages that no one has read can be deleted'… it says? Someone's already read it?"
Hye-jeong turned deathly pale and asked back in a shaking voice.
"Could it be… is it because I read it…?"
Ah. That was a possibility. My mind already shattered, all I could do was stack up calm, detached observations like that inside my head.
Hye-jeong, on the other hand, was still in full panic mode.
"Hey! You fucker. Then forget delete—try Edit! There's an Edit button right there!"
Ah. That was an option too. Half out of my mind, I pressed the button labeled "Edit."
Another popup appeared in the middle of the chatroom. I thought it might be a field for entering the revised text, but there was no input box anywhere to be found.
Once again, all it said was this:
[Only messages that no one has read can be edited.]
"AAAAAAAAGH!"
Hye-jeong's harrowing scream filled the interior of the wine bar.
Every patron around us had already been staring our way for quite some time.
The bartender was visibly debating whether he ought to throw the two of us suspicious characters out of the establishment.
I looked around with hazy eyes, taking in the gaze of every single person around me, one by one.
Had I ever received this much spotlight in my entire life?
Ah. Well, my novel Human Guilty had always been basking in the spotlight of tens of thousands of readers, come to think of it.
The glowing comments I'd treasured swam through my head like a school of fish, darting past one after another.
My brain had clearly short-circuited somewhere. You know how it is—when the brain takes a sudden massive shock like this, it starts dredging up happy memories as a form of self-protection.
Or maybe it's more accurate to say my brain hadn't broken at all—it was thrashing desperately, trying everything it could to resuscitate what was left of me.
SLAP—!
Ah. My left cheek is stinging.
Team Leader Hye-jeong was glaring at me with the eyes of a tiger.
"Hey, Han Yu-jae. Snap out of it, you bastard. Delete that novel. Take the whole thing down. Wipe every last bit of it before the team sees it, you son of a bitch."
Hye-jeong hurled profanity at me in a voice pitched dangerously low, and her rhythm was something else. It genuinely felt like a hip-hop beat had been laid down underneath it.
Yo—! Han Yu-jae. Snap ya self togetha, ya lil bitch, boom boom pow…
Hold on. Take the novel down?
To that, I had no choice but to give a flat, unambiguous answer.
"Not happening. Do you have any idea what kind of work this is…"
What kind of work it was, you ask? The highest peak in my entire ten-plus-year career as a serial novelist, that's what.
I'd already signed my contract with Novelympic. Which meant the steady stream of income was more than enough to buy wine like this, or a birthday cake, no problem.
"Cut the crap, you bastard. Delete it while I'm asking nicely."
Hye-jeong looked at me with utter contempt. The curl of her lip, the droop of her eyes—every line of her face dripped with mockery. But beneath it all, an unmistakable current of desperation ran deep.
"You should be saying, 'Of course, I'll delete it right away, Master~' like you always do."
SLAP—!
My left cheek stung again. By now, the corners of Hye-jeong's eyes had gone damp.
Considering the towering monument of a professional image she'd spent years building, I could completely understand why she was venting this much pent-up fury.
But there was no way I could grant her request. If the current reader growth held, the revenue would soon be more than enough to make throwing away my pathetic office job not just viable but downright profitable.
Besides, I genuinely loved that work. I had never serialized anything with this much affection in my life.
"No. I told you, absolutely not. I'll quit the company instead. That solves it, doesn't it? 'That novel is the product of the deranged delusions Han Yu-jae spewed after he quit.' There, explanation done."
Realizing that words were no longer getting through to me, Hye-jeong shot up from her seat and stormed out of the wine bar.
Only then did the bartender approach me and speak up.
"Excuse me, sir…"
He'd probably come over to suggest that this might be a good time to call it a night.
I obliged the poor bartender's unspoken wish.
"Yes. I'll take the check, please."
After escaping that utterly wretched wine bar, I opened the messenger app to find dozens upon dozens of messages from Hye-jeong, each one a string of expletives.
I pulled up our private chat and scrolled all the way down. Her final message read:
I closed my chat with Hye-jeong and opened the one with my wife, Chae-rin, instead.
Steadying myself against the jarringly different atmosphere, I typed my reply.
And then, instead of hailing a taxi right away, I stood there staring blankly up at the sky, lost in thought.
Come to think of it, I'd been perpetually starved for inspiration ever since I started serializing Human Guilty.
It would have been fine if it had stayed at a manageable level, but at some point my thirst had surged beyond all control. Here I was, smiling like this at the mere thought of walking into the office tomorrow morning.
My heart was pounding. What on earth was going to happen?
What would Team Leader Hye-jeong say to me? What kind of eyes would Assistant Manager Yu look at me with?
What about the other teammates? The interns? Would the rumor spread like wildfire? Would the CEO recognize me—would I become a celebrity?
Just imagining it left me drunk on the feeling of inspiration bubbling up from somewhere deep inside. I ached for the day I could pour all of it, undiluted, into Human Guilty.
And then, thinking I might as well ride this feeling all the way home and finish the next installment, I hurriedly called a taxi.
Something in my brain had most definitely gone wrong.