Expansion into Japan
Han Se-jin admitted that his emotions had been somewhat overwrought.
The interview. That first meeting.
He had lost all reason under the weight of recent defeat and inferiority — and the raw thirst of an artist. So he had dropped to his knees and declared he would sell his soul.
Honestly, once he got home, he had kicked his blanket a few times in pure cringe.
I was out of my mind…. Selling my soul to a junior that much younger than me? Even so.
But on his first day at work today, he had no choice but to admit it.
The person to whom he had sold his soul was a monster worth every bit of that price.
Clack-clack-clack-clack-!
The air in the private workroom was heavy. Hot, even. The epicenter of that heat sat right beside him — at Author Kang Minjun’s desk.
Can a human being… type at that speed?
Han Se-jin stopped mid-sentence and stared blankly to the side.
He couldn’t see the fingers. That was no exaggeration. The speed was so insane that only afterimages remained.
Most writers put down a sentence and pause. They need a moment to weigh the next line, to choose the right word. Kang Minjun had no commas. It was as if the sentences forming in his brain skipped the nerves entirely and shot straight into his fingertips.
The keystrokes never broke for a full twenty minutes.
Tak!
With the bright click of the Enter key, Kang Minjun stretched his arms overhead.
“Whew.”
Only then did Han Se-jin remember to breathe. He had been holding his breath without realizing it, watching the whole time.
“Author…”
“Yes?”
“How many… chapters did you just write?”
“Ah, I just finished chapter one.”
“Chapter one? In twenty minutes?”
“Yes. It’s flowing pretty well today.”
Kang Minjun answered as if it were nothing and took a sip of coffee.
Han Se-jin was stunned. A typical web novel chapter ran around fifty-five hundred characters. Hitting that in twenty minutes meant nearly three hundred keystrokes a minute without a single pause — no time for typos, no time for revision.
Speed is one thing. But the quality…
He carefully snuck a glance at Kang Minjun’s monitor. The manuscript just completed. Han Se-jin’s eyes raced down the lines — and he despaired.
…Perfect.
Not a single awkward sentence. The prose breathed clean and tight; the fight scenes were so vivid it felt like a video playing right in front of him. This was the kind of result he might — or might not — produce after agonizing for a full day, even two, chasing quality. This monster had whipped it up in the time it took to smoke a cigarette.
Genius. He could feel the wall of innate talent that no amount of effort would ever scale.
“Ah, Author. Mind if I take a look at what you’ve written?”
Kang Minjun swung his chair around and rolled closer. Han Se-jin desperately wanted to cover his own screen. After reading that monstrous prose, his own work looked pitiful.
“It’s still a draft, so it’s a little embarrassing…”
“Let’s see.”
Kang Minjun read through the writing with careful attention. His expression was serious. A moment later:
“Author Hanul.”
“Yes.”
“The pacing is too long.”
“The pacing?”
“Yes. This scene where the protagonist draws his sword and cuts down the enemy. The description is too ornate. The cold aura on the blade, the direction of the wind, the enemy’s terror… all of that is fine, but readers these days won’t wait for it.”
Kang Minjun pointed at a paragraph with his finger.
“A web novel is the delivery of information. It’s not a place to show off how well you write. The core is how effectively you deliver the scene the reader wants.”
“Ah…”
“These three paragraphs — try collapsing them into one sentence. The sword flashed, and a head fell. Like that.”
It felt like taking a blow to the skull.
“In a truly critical battle, sure — you pour every description you have into it. But at least in the early stages of a work, readers haven’t fully immersed themselves in the protagonist, the supporting cast, or the fights yet.”
He was right. Out of pride as a wuxia author, Han Se-jin had been clinging to the aesthetics of the sentence. Readers wanted a cold soda, and he had been performing a solitary tea ceremony.
“I’ll revise it.”
Han Se-jin fixed the lines at once. He stripped out the florid ornamentation and left only the core. And then—
…It got faster.
The sense of speed in the prose came roaring to life. A sluggish stretch of plot snapped tight with tension. It felt like a blocked artery had just cleared.
Kang Minjun’s advice was simple, but it struck like an awl driven straight into the vital point.
This man… is the real thing.
Han Se-jin shuddered once more. The master he had chosen was not a mistake.
That afternoon.
Knock-knock.
A knock sounded at the workroom door. It was Director Kang Suk-woo. His face was flushed; he had clearly come bearing good news.
“Author! Sorry to interrupt. An urgent call came in.”
“It’s fine. What’s going on?”
“We heard from Sirius headquarters. You know Neon, their partner platform on the Japanese side?”
“Yes. The number-one webtoon platform in Japan.”
“They’re pushing hard to launch your work.”
Japan. So it had finally arrived.
In the webtoon market, Japan carried a weight all its own — a vast territory that could still claim to be the ancestral home of comics. Webtoons and traditional manga were different markets, true, but it remained enormous. Succeed there, and you became world-class overnight.
“Great news. What are the terms?”
“Top-tier treatment. They’re offering four months of minimum guarantee paid upfront, and they’re guaranteeing a top-banner promotion slot.”
But a faint shadow crossed Director Kang’s face.
“There’s… one condition attached.”
“A condition?”
“Neon’s editor-in-chief wants to re-edit the work into manga format.”
My brow furrowed.
“Manga format? Not the vertical-scroll webtoon style — the page-turning print-manga format?”
“Yes. And… they also want every character name and place name fully localized into Japanese. Not Korean names — something like Tanaka-ryu.”
I stopped twirling my pen.
Localization. A common issue when expanding overseas. Change the names to lower the barrier for local readers; tear the setting apart and rebuild it to match that country’s sensibilities. Following the platform’s demands was usually standard practice.
But—
I don’t like it.
I shook my head. I thought of a work that had swept across South Korea — Level Up Together. When that series exploded worldwide, I had felt a genuine thrill. Especially when the anime adaptation aired, and Japanese voice actors spoke Korean names, and Korean place names appeared on screen without alteration. The rush I felt then went beyond simple national pride. It was cultural self-respect.
I want that too.
I wanted my work, my characters, to be known to the world under their Korean names. And more important than anything was the format.
“Director Kang.”
“Yes.”
“Changing the names — I can concede that a hundred times over. But changing the format is out of the question.”
“I figured… you’d say that.”
“Every bit of direction in my webtoon was designed for the scroll.”
I pointed at the monitor.
“Look. The gutter between this panel and the next. I calculated the half-second of lag while the reader’s finger drags the scroll, and I used that gap to build tension.”
A webtoon is an art of time. The act of scrolling itself is part of the direction. Slice that into page format and show it all at a glance? That would be the same as cutting the heart out of my work. The flavor would vanish completely.
“Please pass that along.”
I spoke with finality.
“Localization and format change. We’re rejecting both.”
A few hours later, Director Kang returned to the workroom. His expression looked troubled.
“Author… the Japanese editor is standing firm.”
“What did he say?”
“He says Japanese readers are conservative. They’re still unfamiliar with the scroll format — they find swiping down on a phone… lightweight. He says the work is too much of a masterpiece to be consumed lightly.”
“Huh.”
I was almost speechless. For the sake of the work itself — hard to argue with that.
The editor’s name was Tanaka, if I remembered right. He wasn’t doing this out of malice. If anything, he was a fan of my work, trying to choose the safe path so it wouldn’t fail in Japan. Everyone had their own position.
So I decided not to get angry or throw down unreasonable demands. Instead, I would persuade him calmly.
“Director Kang, call them back and pass this along.”
I steadied my breath and spoke.
“I understand the editor’s concerns. But this direction is a device designed to maximize the aesthetics of the vertical scroll. Damage it, and the fun of the work is cut in half.”
“I’ll relay it exactly as you said.”
“And let’s make one proposal.”
My eyes lit up.
“We go with the original as-is first. Korean names, scroll format intact.”
“And if… the response is poor?”
“Then I’ll yield. We’ll convert it to manga format the way the editor wants, and rename everyone Tanaka or Yamada or whatever he prefers.”
It was a kind of gambit. If my work didn’t land, then my stubbornness was wrong — and at that point, listening to the expert would be the right call. But I was certain. If it was fun, the format wouldn’t matter.
The next day, the answer came.
“Author! Neon accepted!”
Director Kang delivered the news in a bright voice.
“Editor Tanaka said this: he’s a fan of the work himself, so he actually wanted to preserve the original flavor. He was only worried because of the peculiarities of the Japanese market.”
“That’s a relief.”
“In exchange, they accepted our condition. If the early launch numbers fall short of expectations, we move immediately to a full revision.”
“Tell them I understand. That won’t happen.”
I smiled with confidence.
After the call ended, Han Se-jin — who had been listening quietly beside me — spoke up with a worried look.
“Author… will you be all right?”
“About what?”
“Japan is the homeland of manga, isn’t it? Honestly, I grew up on Japanese comics myself. I know how fierce their gatekeeping can be.”
Han Se-jin was genuinely concerned.
“Even Level Up Together blowing up — coldly speaking — was because the Japanese production company delivered an incredible anime adaptation. You need to succeed in the Japanese market if you want the path to an anime to stay open… If this leaves a bad taste with them…”
He had a point. The Japanese market was massive. And closed. Catering to their tastes might well be the safest, fastest road to success.
But—
“Author Hanul.”
“Yes.”
I looked at the face of my protagonist floating on the monitor and spoke.
“If I fail because my work doesn’t sell, I can accept that. That’s a lack of skill on my part.”
“…”
“But if I fail because I compromised and couldn’t properly show the scenes I wanted to show? I don’t think I could accept that even if I died.”
My eyes were full of certainty.
“Regretting bad numbers later is one thing. Regretting that I ruined a work that felt like my own child, with my own hands — that would be far more terrible.”
Han Se-jin stared at me blankly, as if he had just taken a hit. A moment later he gave a bitter smile and nodded.
“…I lose.”
“Pardon?”
“A writer, fretting over commercial success and forgetting the essence. I’m ashamed.”
Han Se-jin straightened his posture and set his hands back on the keyboard.
“I should write the way you do… without compromising.”
“Worrying about commercial success is necessary. I just didn’t want to drown in it and give up the things I refuse to surrender.”
The light in his eyes had changed. I smiled and turned my gaze back to my own monitor.
Japan. What kind of reaction would the readers across the sea show?
Unfamiliar with the scroll, were they?
I was curious myself. Whether they could receive, even through an unfamiliar format, the same shock Korean readers had felt. Whether the essence of fun could overcome even the feeling of strangeness.