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# Chapter 1: There Are No Asian Protagonists in America
The old days were better.
Things were better back then than they are now.
It was something everyone said whenever life became difficult.
Michael Jackson over Bruno Mars.
Tupac over Jay-Z.
The Beach Boys over Maroon 5.
Michael Jordan over LeBron James.
Joe Montana over Tom Brady. Well, that one had already been surpassed.
Marlon Brando over Leonardo DiCaprio.
Stone Cold Steve Austin over John Cena.
Everyone said the past had been better than the present.
Especially Samantha Green, a fellow teacher I often worked with. She was practically an advocate for the good old days.
Along with another fellow teacher, Jack Malone, the three of us occasionally gathered at a pub in the nearby downtown
area to watch broadcasts and drink.
Whenever Samantha got a little drunk, she always repeated essentially the same stories. The details varied slightly, but
they always ended with the same conclusion: The old days were better.
Today was no different.
Whenever she arrived at the pub, she would immediately down two shots of vodka, earning herself the nickname "Two
Shots." On this winter night, as the season gradually deepened, she slammed her shot glass onto the table with a loud
bang before opening her mouth.
"Damn, we're too old."
Here we go again.
"Back in the day, we'd ride our bikes all over the neighborhood after school. It was so much fun."
"Yeah. And the marshmallows we roasted while camping every weekend were incredible."
Jack Malone, sitting beside Samantha, chimed in.
Jack was Black, and Samantha was white, meaning our group fulfilled the racial diversity that was so important in modern
times. All three of us had reached a fairly advanced age without getting married due to our individual circumstances,
and by now, we were practically like friends.
"I wanted to become a singer-songwriter back then, but now I'm just playing the piano in front of children."
"Who doesn't have a story like that? When I was in elementary school, my dream was to become Jordan."
"Mine was Mariah Carey."
From the moment we first heard "I am your father" in Star Wars Episode V to the day Michael Jordan won his sixth
championship in Chicago and stepped down from the throne himself.
We talked about all kinds of things that Americans of our age would probably remember, and I quietly listened before
asking casually.
"Jack, then I suppose you'd choose Jordan over LeBron as the GOAT."
"Oh, of course. The GOAT. LeBron has no romance."
Jack Malone, an NBA enthusiast to this day, expressed his deeply personal opinion.
Regardless of the statistics, it seemed that the very fact LeBron had switched teams in pursuit of championships made
Malone believe he did not deserve the title of GOAT. Hearing that, Samantha, already drunk, burst into laughter and
shouted.
"Do you guys realize you're repeating the exact same conversation for the hundredth time?"
"I know. But I'm curious. LeBron won his sixth championship this season, tying Jordan. Even so, I wonder if Mr. Jack
Malone's opinion has really remained unchanged."
I laughed along and looked at Jack.
With beer foam clinging to his mustache, he answered seriously.
"Like I said, LeBron has no romance."
"That damn romance."
"What does that even mean?"
"Jordan started with the Bulls and ended with the Bulls."
"Didn't he make his third comeback with Washington?"
"That wasn't Jordan."
"Then was it Weldon?"
Everyone seemed to be drunk, because our language had become rougher than usual.
As I laughed along with them, Samantha suddenly tapped me on the shoulder.
"Shin, tell us about yourself. What did you like most when you were a kid?"
"Well..."
I pursed my lips slightly.
"Probably novels."
"Novels?"
"Yeah. I liked things like pulp fiction."
"Oh, I liked those too. Stephen King's Misery. Honestly, I encountered it through the movie, though. What else? Wasn't
there anything else you liked?"
"D&D or comics? I think I played some board games, too."
"Oh, you were a total nerd."
Jack grinned, and I casually shot back.
"At least I was good at studying, so I helped the basketball players whenever they couldn't pass their pop quizzes."
"Ha-ha-ha! That's right, that's right. I did get a lot of help from the nerds."
"Shin, you must have been really good at studying."
"Yeah. I was pretty good."
"I studied hard, too."
"You, Samantha?"
Jack chuckled as he teased her, and Samantha became indignant.
"What? Are you looking down on me because I'm a blonde white woman?"
"No, no. If we're going by that logic, then damn, why is there fried chicken on our table right now?"
"Shin bought it from KFC. He gave two pieces to the bartender and got permission."
"Shin! How dare you..."
"No, that's not what I meant. In Korea, people eat chicken and beer together, so I bought some. I'm serious. It's
actually delicious, right? Chicken and beer."
I lightly raised my hands, proving my innocence.
There was a stereotype that blonde white women were stupid.
There was a stereotype that Black people liked fried chicken.
There was a stereotype that Asians were made to study extensively by their parents.
We exchanged a round of black humor based on our respective stereotypes and continued drinking.
I glanced at the television in the corner of the pub.
A drama had just begun airing, and Samantha and Jack, noticing the shift in my gaze, turned around.
A zombie apocalypse drama titled Dead Man's Heaven.
Samantha took a sip of vodka and began speaking.
"That show's pretty popular these days."
"Really? What's it about?"
"The protagonist's wife gets bitten by a zombie, and he tries to cure her."
"Huh? Why would he try to cure her?"
"Well, if I were in that situation, I probably wouldn't cure my husband either."
"...I can't believe you two are making jokes like that when neither of you is even married."
As I stared at them in disbelief, the two of them began laughing and watching the drama.
"The protagonist's actor is really handsome."
"Wasn't he a rookie?"
"Yeah. Those blue eyes are seriously something else."
"......"
"Hm? What is it, Shin? Didn't you like that drama?"
"Hmm, well..."
I casually avoided answering.
I wondered whether there was any point in deciding if I liked it or not.
Because I was the author who had written the original novel that drama was based on.
---
I had once seriously wondered about it.
Why did Samantha and Jack miss the past so much?
The conclusion I reached was simple. Reality was harsh. Despite growing older, they had been unable to build families
due to their individual circumstances and continued living the same routine. Naturally, they couldn't help longing for
their childhood, when every day had felt new.
But I was different.
Unlike Samantha and Jack, I didn't miss the past.
I no longer had any memories worth longing for, not like they did.
My childhood had been a struggle to escape misfortune, a resistance against the wretched poverty that had plagued us. It
had also been a process of accepting the discrimination I couldn't escape, no matter how hard I tried.
My father, who ran a Korean grocery store, was killed in a robbery shooting, and my mother and I were literally thrown
into American society. To survive in this place, which was like a jungle, we did practically anything we could. Along
the way, we endured many things I still didn't want to remember.
As a child, I didn't want to make my already struggling mother suffer even more.
So I became an obedient, exemplary student. I didn't form particularly deep friendships and focused entirely on my
studies, working to secure a stable, respectable job as quickly as possible. Back then, Asians in American society
weren't people who could freely pursue their dreams, and that was even more true for my family.
The only time I could dream was when I read novels.
My one and only act of rebellion as a good son to a single mother. That was genre fiction.
Sword and sorcery, hardboiled fiction, horror, science fiction, and everything else. I read those novels to briefly
forget my difficult everyday life.
Novels were my escape. They were the tools that allowed me to feel freedom and dream.
Eventually, time carried me into adulthood, and I became an English teacher at a nearby public high school. By then, my
family's financial situation had improved considerably. But in contrast, my life felt empty. I simply went back and
forth between work, home, and church.
Then one day, I came across a website selling old secondhand novels on the internet.
There, I discovered Conan the Barbarian and Dark Forest, books I had enjoyed reading in high school. Like someone under
a spell, I bought them immediately. As a child, I hadn't had enough money to buy individual volumes, so I remembered
cutting up biweekly magazines and binding them together like books to read. That memory suddenly stirred something
inside me.
From that moment on, I began collecting old novels.
And that wasn't all. I also started collecting D&D rulebooks, board games, and comics. It was compensation for the
childhood I had lost.
Gradually, my collection grew in the basement of our house. Even though I thought it was a strange hobby, I couldn't
stop. I continued buying and collecting novels, reading them one after another.
"Though I don't do that anymore."
When I arrived home, a quiet and eerie atmosphere filled the house.
"Hoo."
Surrendering myself to the effects of alcohol, I walked down to the basement.
Five bookshelves, each roughly as tall as I was, stood there. They were packed with novels.
After checking how full the dehumidifier's water tank had become, I leaned back and sat on the old sofa.
I no longer read the novels I had collected in such large quantities.
Because at some point, I realized those stories weren't meant for someone like me.
When I reread those novels as an adult, they were filled with all kinds of racial stereotypes and clichés. Ronan, the
muscular white macho hero, fought against and defeated an evil Asian sorcerer. In the Detective Lam series, a wealthy
Chinese man was thoroughly humiliated. Horror novels portrayed Asian culture in an extremely narrow-minded way.
I could no longer look at those novels with the same innocent eyes I had as a child.
Samantha Green, who had admired Mariah Carey.
Jack Malone, who had admired Michael Jordan.
But as an Asian, there was no one I could admire.
"Bruce Lee? Johnny Yune, at best?"
It was a brutal reality.
The very tools that had once allowed me to briefly escape the unfairness of reality during my childhood were, in fact,
encouraging that unfairness more than anything else.
So I wrote novels myself. It was an act of comforting my childhood self, a struggle to reach out to people like me.
I poured my own image of myself into my writing. It was a satisfying experience. I felt immense satisfaction as I
portrayed in my stories the self I couldn't reveal in everyday life, or the kind of person I ideally wanted to be.
Fortunately, one of the publishing houses took notice of the novel I had written, and it was eventually published as a
book.
My first horror novel, which featured a Korean American like myself as its protagonist, fell into complete failure,
accompanied by internet criticism that the work was too outdated.
Even so, I didn't give up writing. I continued communicating with the publishing house and kept writing.
After my second, third, and subsequent works, the deeper my love for writing became, the stronger my desire for success
grew.
Then one day, an editor said something to me.
"Your writing is all good, but your personal style is too strong. How should I put it? I feel like you're so obsessed
with that style that you're missing the truly important parts. If you wrote novels that more people could enjoy, I'm
sure you could become successful."
The editor left the company for health reasons not long after saying those words.
But the comment continued to bother me, so I gradually began reducing my personal style.
I no longer thought about deeply moving readers or changing their perceptions. I simply wanted people to buy and read my
novels, and for money to come to me as a result.
Around that time, I realized something. For a novelist, money was an extremely important factor.
Because it was the result of converting people's recognition into something tangible.
After writing my fourth, fifth, and sixth works, I eventually wrote Dead Man's Heaven.
A work successful enough to be adapted into a television drama.
And the protagonist of this drama, which had gained tremendous public support since the airing of its first season, was
white.
As I had gradually become more conscious of mainstream appeal, I hadn't specifically stated the protagonist's race in
Dead Man's Heaven. I had also chosen a name that could be used across various cultures.
That had been fine as a novel, but when the work sold and was adapted into a drama, a problem arose.
The production company wanted to cast a white actor.
Naturally, I objected. If he wasn't Asian, then he certainly wasn't white.
I conveyed my wishes to them, but the production company dismissed my objections by citing the contract.
The clause stating, "The author's wishes shall be respected as much as possible, but production circumstances shall take
precedence," gave them considerable authority.
And I lost all motivation.
Only then did I fully realize it.
No matter how much I struggled, the massive media industry moved according to the logic of capital. There was no way to
resist it.
And I, too, had sold my pride for money and accepted that reality.
The work achieved even greater success because of the drama adaptation, but that was all.
I had compromised with reality and earned a large amount of money by insulting my own childhood.
"What good did any of that do?"
Of course, the success of Dead Man's Heaven probably wasn't entirely because the protagonist was white.
After writing several works, I had learned how to make readers interested in my writing. That experience had naturally
allowed me to write stories with broader appeal.
There was probably an effect from that as well.
But people who created content still believed that stories with white protagonists sold better.
"Or they would change a white character into a Black one before releasing it."
But not an Asian.
I let out a small, bitter laugh at the irony of reality and slowly closed my eyes.
I was so completely broken that I no longer felt like writing.
"Even so, if someday... perhaps later. If I sleep for a while and wake up with motivation again."
I wanted to prove something to the world.
That someone like me could become a superhero, too.
As sleep gradually overtook me, I slowly closed my eyes.