The Nation’s Literary King
The work of the ‘Pig Platoon’ led by Yu Han-jin was simple.
Kill partisans. Kill irregular guerrilla fighters.
The war was already racing toward its end, and the Korean Peninsula had become one nation.
Those who could not accept that outcome—armed civilians—had to be eliminated.
That was what the Pig Platoon did.
A novel by Seo Yuja
Eating breakfast with bloodshot eyes made my parents worry.
It wasn’t just from lack of sleep. There was another reason.
I had been swallowed whole by my own novel.
Facing daily life in this state felt impossible.
If my life had once been a straight line, my mind was now a hopeless tangle of knotted thread.
When war breaks out, people have to die, right?
They fight for interests and power. Are those things really more important than human lives?
They must be, if people are willing to fight for them.
But if they’re that important…
Important to whom, exactly?
It was disgusting. Revolting.
That was why sleep had refused to come, leaving my eyes red and swollen.
“Um… I’m not going to school today. I’ll head to the publishing house instead.”
“Ah… okay, sure.”
The spoon scraped against the rice bowl with a clatter.
Pulling the chair made a long squeak.
Everything seemed connected to death now.
On the battlefield, that clatter might be the sound of someone grabbing a gun. The squeak could be the creak of tank treads rolling forward.
But maybe it wasn’t that at all.
Maybe that same squeak could be the scream a person makes when they’re dying.
Maybe the clatter comes when someone scrambles to escape death.
I needed to write.
I had a duty to do so.
Back in my room, I stared blankly at the wall for a while before calling Lee Han-hyeok.
“Please pick me up on your way to work. I’ll go to the studio and write.”
“Understood.”
I washed up and got dressed.
A short-sleeved shirt and a skirt. I wore my school uniform, of course.
I figured it was the most presentable look a student could manage.
I couldn’t show up looking like a mess.
Still, my complexion wasn’t great.
My skin itself was fine, at least.
I wrote until Lee Han-hyeok arrived, then continued writing in his car.
###
Jang Jae-hong had many dreams.
He had graduated from an arts high school and was now attending an arts university, painting still-life works.
His skill was good enough that he’d received business cards asking if he’d sell paintings at the upcoming graduation exhibition.
Yet he had never held a solo exhibition.
It all came down to money.
Ryu Seon-hak was a young man who cooked well.
He said he wanted to open a restaurant. He also talked about starting a franchise business.
In the end, making delicious food was Ryu Seon-hak’s goal and dream.
It might sound too grand to call it a dream.
Still, he really was good at cooking.
Both of them were dead now.
###
“Miss Yuja, we’ve arrived.”
“Thank you.”
I rode the elevator up with Lee Han-hyeok.
He was holding a hamburger in one hand.
On the way, he had bought two and offered me one, but I had already eaten breakfast and declined.
When the elevator stopped, we parted ways.
“Ah, Miss Yuja, take this with you. Eat it as a snack if you get hungry. I’ll come get you for lunch later.”
“Oh… thank you.”
Right now, nothing existed in my head except the novel.
With a hamburger in one hand and a bag containing my laptop and notebook slung over my shoulder, I entered the studio.
The writing facilities Manchang had prepared for its authors weren’t particularly impressive.
Just a chair and a desk, plus a cushioned sofa where you could lie down for a short rest.
I’d heard not many people actually used it.
You could only enter without feeling guilty if you had signed a ten-year contract like me, or if you had a follow-up book deal.
I settled in, set the hamburger bag down, pulled out my laptop, and began writing.
I honestly doubted the moment to eat that hamburger would ever come.
Imagining it slowly cooling inside the bag made me lose all appetite.
But after writing for about an hour, I suddenly wanted it.
More precisely, I wanted it with coffee.
It had been a long time since I’d had caffeine.
I hadn’t wanted to rely on it to write, and drinking it always ruined my sleep quality.
Still, today it felt necessary.
While the capsule coffee brewed in the break room, I tore open the hamburger wrapper and took a bite.
My mouth had definitely gotten smaller.
I used to be able to fit nearly a quarter of it in one bite.
At this rate, I could probably wrap it back up, pretend nothing happened, and claim a mouse had eaten it.
Not that I was seriously considering that.
I ate the hamburger while drinking the hot coffee.
It might sound like a strange combination, but the way the bun soaked up the hot coffee created a surprisingly pleasant texture in my mouth.
“Even moments like this are necessary, I suppose…”
I had been writing too relentlessly.
Roughly fourteen hours straight.
Not sleeping meant staying in the same mental state as yesterday, and that was clearly not healthy.
The mind gets worn down.
I was eating this hamburger and drinking coffee to replenish my depleted spirit.
When I returned to the studio to keep writing, I found a woman sitting in my seat.
It was the novelist Jeong Yuru.
“Did you write this too, Yuja?”
Wait, was secretly reading other people’s drafts actually a trend in this era?
###
The people Yu Han-jin killed were nothing special.
They were civilians holding weapons, and they weren’t all that different from him.
Soldiers had never been taught how to kill.
They had only learned how to fire a gun and that doing so was dangerous.
Modern warfare didn’t require looking into the eyes of those who were dying.
But Yu Han-jin had seen far too many of those dying eyes among the partisan bastards.
If those partisan bastards were bastards, then he supposed he was a United Forces bastard.
“I want a girlfriend.”
Yu Han-jin’s wish echoed across the battlefield.
It was a pitifully small wish.
###
If Yu Han-jin killed one to save a thousand, would that be right?
If he killed a thousand to save a thousand, would that be right?
If he killed ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million, ten million…
to save a thousand.
Would Yu Han-jin deserve condemnation?
In reality, the platoon Yu Han-jin led numbered around forty men.
Eight of them had died.
And Yu Han-jin had killed a thousand.
If killing a thousand to save forty made him righteous,
was he even still human?
Yu Han-jin stared at a burning world.
What burned wasn’t the world.
It was civilian homes, and the corpses those homes had sheltered.
The corpses were turning to ash.
They say one person carries an entire world inside them.
Yu Han-jin had burned a thousand worlds.
Even so, he remained nothing at all.
Suddenly, Yu Han-jin thought of the man modern people called the Napoleon of our time.
A man he had never properly seen.
“What makes you any different from Hitler?”
And then Yu Han-jin realized it.
He was no different.
###
“What did you think?”
“You’re really asking me that?”
Loud voices were generally forbidden in the studio.
But since the only novelists using it right now were the two of us, it didn’t matter.
I closed my laptop for a moment and talked with Jeong Yuru.
“You’ve even finished revising it?”
“No, this is just the first draft.”
“Hah…”
Jeong Yuru let out a long sigh.
She was staring at me as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
For some reason, standing in front of her always made me feel small and shabby.
Well, if you asked anyone to name the greatest living author in modern Korean literature, her name would come up. So maybe it was natural.
Jeong Yuru was famous for being eccentric.
When someone like her looked at you with such burdensome eyes, it was impossible not to feel insignificant.
“This is incredible. It started from my question, right?”
“Yes. If you had to choose between an innocent child and a thousand people…”
“I should have written this!”
When someone suddenly jumps up right in front of you, your body instinctively leans back.
I learned that just now.
Startled me.
“This is truly the best. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say When Yu Met Sally Again was written just so you could create this novel.”
“…Is it really that good?”
And when the person in front of you starts hopping up and down in excitement, your body leans back even farther.
Jeong Yuru was losing her mind with joy.
“You’re really asking that? I’ll give you my entire career—can’t you just hand this novel over to me?”
“…You know that’s not possible, right?”
“I know. That’s why I’m saying it.”
Only then did she seem to realize how undignified she was acting. She sat back down properly in her chair.
I felt like I had already seen every side of her.
And this was the person considered the pinnacle of Korean literature…
The moment I began worrying about the future of literature, Jeong Yuru spoke again.
“You know this is going to be extremely controversial, right?”
“…Yes.”
“It’s as dangerous as When Yu Met Sally Again.”
Jeong Yuru’s gaze was fixed on my laptop.
Yes. In a way, it was practically a nuclear bomb.
It would probably spread and influence countless people.
“…Still, it’s fine.”
“Why?”
The reason was always the same.
Not publishing this novel would be the greater sin.