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# Chapter 5: To 1980 (4)
Ronald Reagan.
The 40th president of the United States.
The man who won the presidential election held in November 1980, drove Democratic President Jimmy Carter out of office, and planted the Republican flag in the White House.
He pursued an aggressive foreign policy based on strength, as though he intended to make up for the mistakes America had committed until then. Many Americans were enthusiastic about his staunch anti-communism.
Alongside British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he led the movement of neoliberalism and made significant contributions to ending the Cold War. Even in the future I knew, many Americans remembered him as the great president of the 1980s who restored America's pride when it had been sinking endlessly.
This was how I wanted to evaluate Reagan.
'A president who certainly had his faults, but was incredibly popular, at the very least.'
After all, he was one of the men who competed with John F. Kennedy for first and second place in rankings of the most popular American presidents of all time.
Due to the various diplomatic and economic failures of the incumbent Jimmy Carter administration, everyone expected Reagan to win. However, the Democratic Party wasn't willing to back down easily. Although the Los Angeles Times did not officially issue a statement endorsing Carter, it published articles that were blatantly biased to anyone who looked at them.
I wasn't particularly interested in politics, but I agreed with one thing. An election was, fundamentally, an act of calming passionate supporters while gathering votes from the center. However, the actions of the Los Angeles Times ultimately resulted in people losing their support for the Carter administration.
They had gone far too far in defending him.
'The Torrance New Media emerged as a result of that backlash.'
They, too, continued showing support for Reagan's side. But the problem was that public support for Reagan was currently enormous. California residents canceled their subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times, which appeared to be colluding with the Carter administration, and found a new home in the Torrance New Media.
Therefore, choosing the Torrance New Media as the place for my debut was an extremely rational decision.
'Because newspaper serialization is ultimately just a side attraction.'
Genre fiction magazines were naturally purchased by readers who intended to read them. Newspapers, however, were different. People who subscribed to newspapers treated serialized fiction as something they might glance at briefly after reading the rest of the articles, provided they had time left over.
That was why the size of the newspaper company inevitably mattered.
As the number of newspaper subscribers increased, so would the number of people reading the novels published in the cultural section. In other words, the possibility of my novel spreading through word of mouth among readers who enjoyed it would also increase.
'Since I've returned to the past, I should make full use of everything available to me.'
Now that I had decided where to attempt serialization, all that remained was to write the novel.
I decided that my debut work would be a novel capable of displaying the cultural colors of the East, the culture I belonged to. It was both atonement and a challenge for something I had been unable to do in my previous life because I had compromised with reality.
While returning to an ordinary sixteen-year-old's life in the 1980s, I naturally came up with an idea. Building on it, I gradually developed my thoughts and conceived a horror novel.
There were several reasons I had deliberately chosen horror as the genre, but I felt it would give me an opportunity to preserve the cultural color of the East while attracting readers of various races living in this era.
The American novelist and racist Howard Phillips Lovecraft once said:
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
A man who had spent his entire life refusing to understand other races and treating them as unknown entities unraveled his paranoid fears and created the vast universe known as the Cthulhu Mythos, establishing himself as the father of the genre known as cosmic horror.
The feelings ordinary Americans had toward the culture of the East fit that description perfectly.
At this point in time, their perception of Asians was largely divided into three categories.
The first was physical appearance: small eyes, yellow faces, and so on, as viewed through their eyes.
The second was a cultural image represented by Bruce Lee and the films of director Akira Kurosawa.
From their perspective, the East was a world that had preserved its ancient traditions even into the present day. In reality, Asian immigrants, beginning with Korean Americans, continued following the traditions of their homelands even after immigrating to America.
The final one was a modern image created through occupations such as running laundromats and grocery stores.
All of these images combined to make Americans view Asians as people with slanted eyes who gathered among themselves and worked diligently running laundromats.
'……Of course, I couldn't say this represented everyone.'
Among these, I planned to draw from the cultural image.
Yin and yang, mysterious shamanistic rituals, and the belief that one's Cho-sang, or ancestors, watched over them.
All of these things were 'unknown' to ordinary modern Americans.
If I stopped there, I would create a wonderful piece of fiction with racist undertones, something like Fu Manchu.
But naturally, I had no intention of stopping there. I planned to draw readers in by incorporating the Eastern cultural elements I had known and experienced, while also adding a character called 'me' into the story.
A second-generation immigrant.
Someone who had never even visited the land of his ancestors, who had grown up exposed to Eastern culture but whose thoughts were almost identical to those of an ordinary American.
I would place such a person in the role of the protagonist so that readers could immerse themselves in the story.
……I temporarily set aside all these thoughts as I began seriously developing the novel.
In genre fiction, such thematic intentions were merely secondary elements.
'In the end, it has to be entertaining.'
I recalled the 'unknown' I had encountered.
The students who were wary of one another.
The feelings I experienced when I became isolated as the weakest person among them.
The hymns I heard while going to a Korean church with my mother, whose lyrics I couldn't understand.
My ears had hurt, and I had been confused. It had been only a small amount of emotion, but I amplified it.
Then there were the people I met after arriving at the Korean church.
'All the way up to the time I attended the service.'
I viewed the Korean church entirely from the perspective of an 'outsider.'
……It was possible.
Perhaps it was because I had gained the ability to think differently.
Having returned from a distant future, I found the Korean church of this era awkward. I felt that I couldn't fit in. I thought it was different from me. The people I saw there seemed, yes, almost like characters in a ridiculous puppet show.
'What if I hadn't gone there of my own free will?'
Who would be the person forcing me to go?
“……”
Naturally, there could only be one person.
My mother, Mrs. Jin Sunbok.
Of course, there was no bad blood between my mother and me. The reason I had gone to the Korean church was for her. I wanted to help the woman who was struggling desperately to survive in the Korean community.
Even so, I amplified a small emotion within myself to an enormous degree.
'What if my mother had forced me to go to church?'
And what if that church were deeply twisted?
No, what if only my mother were twisted?
Various possibilities emerged. After choosing the material I liked most among them, I wrote the novel as though a blacksmith were hammering iron in a forge. The emotions that had begun in a tiny state, sometimes shrinking and sometimes growing enormous, were tempered until they became a single 'sword.'
I quietly smiled.
'This is interesting.'
Five episodes of a novel, each approximately 500 words long.
I laughed throughout the entire process, from completing the planning to writing the novel.
To a writer, a novel was a sword. A tool used to fight against the world. But if one didn't know how to use it properly, that sword would only stab its wielder. Their identity would be denied, and the writer would be wounded.
'That happened to me, too.'
In my previous life, the novel that had been a tool for expressing myself had ended up being used to compromise with reality.
I had been disappointed in myself, but fortunately, I had been given one more opportunity.
Wealth, fame, and my identity.
I carefully forged a sword that would allow me to obtain all of them.
---
Torrance, located right next to Los Angeles, was a city much like the moon.
Newspaper reporter Simon Carver usually explained it that way.
He wasn't saying it with any particular romantic sentiment. The city's population was 120,000, and compared to Los Angeles, which had nearly three million residents, he thought the difference in scale was roughly equivalent to that between Earth and the moon.
The Torrance New Media, published in that area, was a politically right-wing newspaper and was much smaller than the enormous, center-left Los Angeles Times. Perhaps it had managed to survive until now only because it had adopted an opposing political position.
The cultural section held a position similar to popcorn in such a newspaper.
Not popcorn from a movie theater, but popcorn in a multi-course meal. Someone would eat it, provided they weren't full.
This was especially true recently, as the November presidential election was drawing near.
Regardless of the individual political leanings of its reporters, the Torrance New Media harshly criticized Jimmy Carter's Democratic administration to maximize newspaper sales. At the same time, it tried to make it appear that it was contributing, even if only slightly, to the victory of Republican candidate Ronald Reagan.
Simon thought that it was still just the Torrance New Media, but the owner saw things a little differently.
During the morning meeting, one of the three regular meetings held each day, the owner applied the ridiculous logic that 'Reagan had once been the governor of California, so once he became president, he would look favorably upon the Torrance New Media for helping him!' and demanded that the reporters fight harder.
The reporters responded in their own ways.
'It's not like Reagan isn't already insanely popular. You've seen all the stupid things Carter's done.'
'Wouldn't it be better to join forces with the Los Angeles Times?'
'I heard those guys at LAT are planning to print the newspaper in color soon.'
'Wow, really? I should subscribe to LAT, too.'
Their remarks lay somewhere between defeatism and nihilism.
Upon hearing them, the owner trembled his split mustache and shouted.
'Get out there right now and bring back at least one story we can use to tear the Democrats apart!! A sex scandal! A drug scandal! Hell, I don't care if you tell me that Jimmy Carter's damn dog finally got the neighbor's dog pregnant!'
And so, the lengthy meeting came to an end.
Simon Carver, who had been sitting quietly in the far corner of the meeting room, leisurely poured two cups of coffee from the machine purchased with company funds. He gave one to Miss Brown from accounting, chatted with her for a while, and then returned to his desk.
“Phew.”
Then he sighed.
A small city called Torrance. A small newspaper company within it. And within that company, he was politically sidelined, doing little more than checking and proofreading writers' manuscripts before handing them over to the typesetter at the scheduled time every day.
Could he really call himself a reporter?
He had no grand aspirations regarding journalism, but it was boring.
'It's not as though I'm someone bold enough to get involved in political battles, either.'
Simon knew his own limitations well.
If he hadn't been able to earn some extra income by selling decent manuscripts to nearby publishing houses, he probably would have gone mad long ago, on top of enduring a reporter's meager salary.
He was a practical reporter who wanted to discover a spectacular work and change the entire landscape, yet couldn't bring himself to take the initiative.
That was Simon Carver.
He looked out the window.
The Torrance New Media occupied the largest building in this small city. That was one of the few things he could find comfort in. Even if he couldn't learn how vast the sea was within this narrow well, he could still live while gazing at beautiful stars.
After spending the entire morning sipping coffee, Simon checked the manuscript that had arrived by facsimile.
“Shit.”
He frowned.
The manuscript for Golden Quest still hadn't arrived.
He had already been worried because only one episode remained in the reserve, and now the inevitable problem had occurred. Simon immediately returned to his desk and called the writer Andrew Smith, who lived in Torrance.
Ring, ring.
[Hello?]
“Ah, Mr. Writer. This is Simon Carver. Is now a good time to talk?”
[……Mr. Smith isn't here right now.]
“You're the author, aren't you?”
[No. I'm his son.]
“Your son is two years old.”
[Damn it.]
“When are you going to submit the manuscript?”
[It's almost finished.]
“Exactly when? We've already used up the reserve manuscripts. You haven't submitted anything for ten days now.”
Golden Quest was a novel about an ordinary protagonist who one day discovers that a map has been drawn on the glasses belonging to his grandfather, who had once been an adventurer, and sets off on an adventure to find gold. It was planned to conclude in twenty-five episodes and was gradually approaching its climax, but Andrew was making almost no progress.
Simon spoke calmly.
“Is there some kind of problem?”
As the only reporter in charge of the cultural section, Simon also had the responsibility of managing the writers.
The most troublesome cases were situations like this one, when a writer couldn't make any progress on their manuscript.
[……The protagonist is about to discover the gold after fighting the Indians, isn't he?]
“That's right.”
[And he falls in love with an Indian woman here.]
“It's a wonderful story.”
[But I'm wondering whether having gold as the final reward for the quest is really a good ending. Considering everything the protagonist has experienced and his actions throughout the story, I think it would be better for him to gain a lesson greater than mere material wealth at the end. I'm just having trouble figuring out how to develop that.]
“……”
Simon quietly muttered, “Here we go.”
Even when he wanted to accomplish something, there were no good writers available.
While Simon found himself in that situation, he noticed an envelope on his desk, unsure how long it had been there.
A letter from someone named Shin Han, living in Los Angeles.
He had no idea that the contents of that letter would drastically change his career as a reporter.