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# Chapter 3: To 1980 (2)
I couldn't help but tilt my head in confusion.
"Wasn't this novel originally supposed to be something else?"
The Ronan the Barbarian series, one of the greatest sword-and-sorcery hits of the 1980s, told the thrilling life story of Ronan, a barbarian warrior from an unknown land called Outland. Starting as the lowest of slaves and eventually becoming the king of a civilized nation, the story gave many readers a sense of vicarious satisfaction.
As a child, I had loved the story of a muscular giant who slaughtered every enemy standing in his way with overwhelming strength and a legendary sword. The Ronan the Barbarian series, which was later adapted into movies, remained a classic masterpiece that attracted many fans even in the future.
"But what the hell is this?"
Whore-Queen? Venereal disease?
Wondering what was going on, I examined the book's contents more closely. Before long, I laughed in disbelief.
It wasn't Ronan.
It was Ranan.
Ronan, not Ranan. The letters were so small, and I had been thinking only about Ronan, so I had mistakenly read it as Ronan.
The moment I realized this, a memory that had been sleeping somewhere in my mind resurfaced.
The Ranan the Barbarian series.
It was a parody novel released after the Ronan the Barbarian series became a hit.
"That sort of thing was common back then."
It was an era when the concept of copyright was inevitably less developed than in the future, so works like this openly existed.
I closed the page and examined the cover. The magazine wasn't called Guns and Sword Magazine either.
It was called Gut's and Storm Magazine.
"Why did I buy this again?"
I wondered for a moment, but soon understood.
Most of the works in Gut's and Storm Magazine were low-quality adult parodies of stories published in Guns and Sword Magazine. The magazine's creators wanted to ride the popularity of works published in major magazines and grab whatever scraps they could.
Most people simply saw the provocative covers without thinking much about it and read them anyway.
I hated Gut's and Storm Magazine.
Partly because I loved the works in Guns and Sword so much, and partly because the magazine's stories were nothing but provocative material without a shred of literary merit. They simply didn't suit my tastes.
Even so, it wasn't difficult to guess why my younger self had bought this issue.
The cover was incredibly provocative, especially by the standards of that time.
A blonde female warrior wearing bikini armor was riding on the tail of a dragon shaped like a male organ. It stimulated the secret desires of a sixteen-year-old boy, causing me to temporarily set aside my love for genre fiction and Guns and Sword and buy the magazine.
The novel was disgusting, but the illustrations scattered throughout were incredible.
Little by little, my old memories began returning.
The genre fiction industry during this period was nothing short of chaotic, just like most cultural content markets that emerged around that time.
Although the concept of genre fiction had existed before, this was the era when the business began expanding in earnest, leading to countless publishing companies appearing and disappearing.
A high-ranking executive from the publishing company I had briefly worked with once said this during the meeting where the drama adaptation contract for Dead Man's Heaven was finalized.
"Ah, author. I feel a real sense of accomplishment whenever a deal like this comes together. Things weren't like this in the past. This industry was about a hundred thousand light-years removed from mainstream culture."
After becoming a genre fiction author and officially entering the industry, I met several people who had lived through this period and heard various stories about what went on behind the scenes.
By the time I became an adult, genre fiction had gained a certain level of recognition through media adaptations into movies, dramas, and comics.
But things weren't like that during this period.
This time, I genuinely searched for and read Guns and Sword Magazine.
A magazine made from more than two hundred pages of cheap pulp paper.
It was published every other week and featured around ten serialized novels. Each novel consisted of approximately five pages and around twenty thousand characters.
The remaining pages contained D&D game logs, columns written by the magazine's journalists, advertisements, and illustrations.
To my younger self, it had been the realization of a true fantasy.
But of course, things were different now.
Many of the novels published during this period contained such blatantly racist undertones that it was difficult to accept them as humor.
I had always thought that novels reflected reality while also influencing it in return. But after gaining financial stability, I bought and reread novels from this period, and it felt as though my childhood was being violated.
And now, reading Guns and Sword Magazine again...
"Well, it is entertaining."
I smiled bitterly.
Even though nostalgia probably played a role, rereading the novels I had loved brought back old memories, and I found them genuinely entertaining.
When Ronan smashed an enemy's skull with his usual ferocity, or when Detective Lam pointed his gun and delivered his signature line, "Get your ass up, freak punk," I couldn't help nodding along.
I would describe the novels of this era as having the flavor of something completely raw.
The settings and plots were simple and clean enough.
Sword-and-sorcery stories, for example, generally followed a basic and ordinary narrative in which a hero discovered his calling and solved problems one by one.
And the muscular, handsome blonde men and sexy women beside them, which would be avoided for various reasons in the future, were used as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
I liked that.
I loved the straightforwardness that made you never question whether everything the protagonist did was good.
I liked the simplicity of falling in love with a beautiful woman, obtaining treasure, and punishing evil.
This was the era when the novels I had truly loved, but which now only caused me pain, were being serialized.
After finishing an entire issue of Guns and Sword Magazine and setting it on the floor, I stood up.
"Let's think this through."
To clear my complicated mind, I led my underdeveloped body into the closet and closed the door.
It had been a habit since childhood.
Even until recently, whenever my thoughts became too complicated while writing novels, I would lock myself away in a dark place to think.
I had always wondered where that habit came from.
"So it started here."
I sat with my back against a cushion that had been casually placed inside and recalled my memories.
It probably wasn't the worst childhood imaginable.
After my father died at the hands of a robber, my mother and I worked to overcome our grief and move forward.
People often said that everyone had their own hell, and I didn't think we had been particularly unfortunate compared to everyone else.
We had endured enormous amounts of debt and just as much racial discrimination, but we were okay.
Because I had overcome it through novels.
"That's what you call a memory, I suppose."
Perhaps that was why it had been even more special.
It had been a precious first experience, earned after overcoming the fear of the unknown and slowly moving forward during a time when I knew nothing and everything frightened me.
That was why I thought everyone longed for the past.
Because it was their first time.
Because they had never experienced anything like it before.
But when I became an adult and looked back at my own first experiences, they were quite different from what I had known.
That was why I couldn't miss the past.
"The memories I had chosen to love had denied my reality."
And as an adult, I had compromised with that reality.
"Hoo."
A sigh escaped me.
I had returned to a situation where I could choose everything all over again.
From my poverty-stricken childhood to the novels I would write as an author, perhaps I could even influence the direction of the industry itself if I played my cards right.
At the very least, I possessed a general understanding of how the industry and its trends would develop from the present onward.
No, even if I didn't go that far, I could at least choose how I, as an author, would be remembered in the industry if I started writing novels again.
Perhaps that was what I had wanted most desperately right before I fell asleep drunk in the basement.
I wanted to write novels that could heal my childhood self.
I wanted to prove that those stories had value in their own right.
"Well, even if it isn't that..."
Even if nothing else, I had to write novels to escape this miserable childhood poverty as quickly as possible.
Right here, in 1980.
---
I would write genre fiction.
Having made up my mind, I stepped outside the house.
Although I had accumulated a fair amount of knowledge about the industry through my career as a writer, some of it was a little hazy, perhaps because I had mostly heard it from others.
To seriously begin writing genre fiction, I first needed to understand what the genre fiction industry had been like in the 1980s.
The magazines at home had their limitations.
After all, novels were serialized in various places besides magazines during the 1980s.
That was why I headed toward Koreatown.
It was a place I had rarely visited since my mother passed away.
Returning to this moment, along with all those memories, gave me a strange and renewed sense of emotion.
I looked around as I made my way toward the Korean store my mother operated.
Naturally, the Korean merchants who recognized me called out.
"Hey! Han Shin! Did you get into school okay?"
"Nothing strange happen to you?"
"Yes, thank you for worrying about me."
I greeted them with a smile.
Mr. Park, who operated a butcher shop, was someone my father had been close friends with during his lifetime.
But looking back, I didn't have particularly good memories of him.
Mr. Park couldn't speak English well, and under the pretense of advising my mother, who struggled to run the Korean store, he treated her terribly.
Verbal abuse was the norm, and he hadn't actually provided any material assistance. He was more the type to nag her just to show off his supposed generosity.
"What did he think he was, anyway?"
But my mother and I had no choice but to get used to it.
And it wasn't just Mr. Park. Most Koreans at the time were like that.
Koreatown wasn't simply a place where people from the same homeland gathered together.
It was another community within American society.
Centered around Korean churches, people united, shared information, and supported one another by buying each other's goods. In a very literal sense, everyone survived together.
As a result, becoming disliked in this community was practically equivalent to social suicide.
After my father died, we became completely vulnerable, and we had no choice but to rely on the powerful and appease them.
"Now I understand why I stopped visiting Koreatown after my mother passed away."
Feeling the cold reality of that time all over again, I arrived in front of the store.
My mother was standing there, sweeping fallen leaves. When she spotted me, her eyes widened.
"Shin, what are you doing here?"
"I came to help you with your work."
"Go home and study!"
Despite her words, she couldn't hide her smile.
She kept glancing around as if she secretly wanted to show me off to the neighboring merchants.
It was adorable.
...Although my mother looked so young that it felt a little strange, I was trying my best to adjust.
I half forcibly took the apron she was wearing and said.
"I'll watch the store, so go to a nearby teahouse and chat with your friends."
"N-No, it's fine! You can't handle this work. It's too difficult!"
"There's barely anything happening here anyway."
"Han Shin!"
"Take your time and enjoy yourself."
With a sly attitude, I sent my mother away, tied the apron around my waist, and entered the store.
Mr. Han's Store, commonly known as Han's, had been named by combining my father's and my family name.
It sold various daily necessities.
From baby diapers to cereal and even metal ladders, there was practically nothing the store didn't carry.
When my father was alive, we also provided deliveries, making the store something of a staple in Koreatown.
"Of course, that wasn't the case anymore."
My mother, who had spent her entire life as a housewife, struggled considerably with running the store and endured years of emotional hardship.
"I need to start earning money through writing quickly. At the very least, I should spare her some of that suffering."
I entered the store and headed toward the register.
The checkout counter had been fitted with metal bars to protect against potential robberies.
In front of it were all kinds of magazines and newspapers.
I picked up the printed publications one by one, searching for those that serialized novels.
Then, as I was about to step behind the counter and sit down, my stomach growled.
I glanced over my shoulder.
"Well, that's interesting."
After growing older, I had always needed to keep my stomach somewhat empty to feel comfortable.
But apparently, my sixteen-year-old body was completely different.
Even though I had eaten a hearty lunch earlier during the school tour, I was already hungry.
After thinking for a moment, I walked over to the refrigerator and looked at the various branded drinks inside.
Then I realized something.
"Not all my memories are unpleasant."
There was Pepsi, featuring the retro design I loved.
I had always preferred Pepsi over Coca-Cola.
I was also a fan of Pepsi-Man, who would appear later.
Pepsi had played a significant role in my sugar intake during childhood.
I also grabbed a bag of potato chips from the shelf and brought everything behind the counter.
I was now perfectly prepared to read novels.
"......"
I opened the bottle with a bottle opener and downed the cola in one go.
Gulp, gulp.
The refreshing drink slid down my throat.
I unconsciously muttered.
"Holy mother?"
I downed another Pepsi in one shot and still felt perfectly fine.
And there were potato chips, too.
Realizing that returning to childhood had given me another advantage, I followed my old habit and began reading novels while eating potato chips with Pepsi.
Of course, I didn't forget to quietly slip a few quarters from my pocket into the cash register.