Hexagram (1)
Song Yeonghun could not understand it. “You really think reading the commentary somehow creates fun that wasn’t there to begin with? Besides, commentary is supposed to be read after you finish the novel, you brat.”
“Haa— how do I explain this to a stubborn old man?” His daughter rested her chin on her hand and thought for a moment. They had a relationship that was close, without much formality.
They were similar in temperament, and yet not.
Unlike Song Yeonghun, who was rigid and conservative in the manner of an old master writer, his daughter, who worked as a video editor for YouTube, was highly sensitive to trends.
“Ah, right! I know how to put it. Dad, you pick videos on YouTube by looking at the thumbnail first, don’t you?”
“What’s a thumbnail?”
“The screen that pops up before you click the video.”
“Ah. That. The flashy, over-the-top thing.”
His daughter was right, though. He might wonder why they’d made it so loud and gaudy, but if something inside it caught his eye, his hand would go to it all the same.
“You know this word? ‘Spoon theory.’” She pointed at the letters with the tip of her finger. “That word is like a thumbnail that draws kids in. It isn’t as loud as YouTube, but it’s still the kind of keyword that really hooks people, right?”
“This? Why?” Song Yeonghun frowned and looked at the commentary. “I know what spoon theory means. It’s that the conditions you’re born with decide your life, isn’t it?”
“Oh, you do know it.”
“Of course I know it. I wrote about it in a novel, idiot.”
“You did? I never saw that.”
“I didn’t use the phrase spoon theory, but the concept was the same. Great luck, good luck, terrible luck!”
His daughter slapped a hand to her forehead. “Who told you to use that in a novel? Spoon theory would never fit in a novel! What I’m saying is that the term itself is way more intuitive than hexagrams. It hits our generation more directly, you know? Great luck, good luck, bad luck works in fiction, sure, but the words themselves are a little old-fashioned.”
“Hmm….” He had nothing to say to that claim of resonance.
Still, he felt his pride sting.
“The editorial department said they wanted to release this commentary before the book even came out. Then is this really commentary? It’s advertising. If they’d just advertised it openly, I might understand, but this… I can’t make sense of it.”
Releasing the commentary before the book?
Even to his daughter, it was a novel concept.
But this commentary looked promising to her. “Dad. This is different from advertising. Advertising is more like forcing the work’s strengths into people’s heads, right? It can be kind of provocative and pushy. But this writing is elegant.”
Though he did not say it aloud, Song Yeonghun agreed.
At the very least, it was clearly good commentary.
“It walks you through the book comfortably without spoiling anything, and then reinterprets it through spoon theory. Advertising can’t do that. It doesn’t lower the dignity of your profound novel, but it’s written so that anyone can understand it easily. In this line of work, that’s a huge ability. Do you know how hard it is to take something difficult and turn it into something easy and appealing?”
She had made many thumbnails until now.
She knew better than most how difficult it was to make people want something.
In her eyes, this commentary was magically lowering the barrier to entry for Hexagram.
“Hmm. Is that so.” Song Yeonghun was beginning to waver.
If his young daughter said so, then maybe it was true after all.
But to simply accept that was… a little difficult. His daughter sprang to her feet.
She could no longer stand the sight of her father being so stubborn. “Ah, honestly. Dad!”
“?”
“Don’t try to understand it. Just trust me and give it a try. Who knows? It might even become a bestseller among people in their twenties and thirties!”
The phrase bestseller among people in their twenties and thirties drove straight into the chest of a nearly seventy-year-old veteran writer. His daughter’s talent for crafting thumbnails was not ordinary, either.
Once I had a little money in hand,
I started looking at houses right away.
I only had weekends free, but every single day felt good. Ending my life as a renter and leveling up to a jeonse lease.
An apartment lease, with no loan at all.
In that flower-garden of a reality, I wandered from real estate office to real estate office without even feeling tired. I decided on an area near Paju Book City.
Somewhere I could walk there without dealing with traffic.
As I drifted in and out of new officetels and apartment complexes like that, all I could think was, “Spacious….” “Clean….” “The kitchen is separated….” “There’s sunlight….” Everything in the world seemed beautiful. Ha. So this is what life is like. It’s good.
When I first left home, I had only 2 million won to my name.
It was what remained after I paid tuition with the money I’d saved from my sergeant’s salary.
I used that money to move into a goshiwon first,
and it took me a full year before I managed to save enough for a one-room monthly rental.
Back then, I hadn’t even been able to look at many properties.
There were few rooms that fit my budget,
and because I had no money, the real estate agents looked down on me too.
But now things were different.
I was meeting real estate brokers for the first time in my life who were actually this kind. “If your budget is at this level, you’ll have plenty of options. And if you work near the publishing complex, landlords around here really like that kind of tenant. They get the impression you’ll keep the place clean and be responsible.”
Well, what would publishing people even do at home?
Read books, I supposed.
“There’s a good listing. Would you like to come with me in my car? It’s close, but I’d still like to take you comfortably.”
I had been able to look at a handful of listings with ease.
And now.
“…Wow….” I had found a house I loved at first sight. The apartment at the far end of a newly built complex.
Sunlight streamed brightly through the living room’s floor-to-ceiling window,
and even though it was an empty place in the middle of winter, warmth lingered in the air. Best of all, it was quiet.
Paju was not a noisy place to begin with,
and because of the location, the window looked out only onto a small hill.
“It’s a nice place, right? It’s more expensive than the others, so I can’t show it to just anyone, but since you’ve got the funds….”
“Can I look around a little more?”
“Of course, of course.”
I toured the place in a daze.
Not only were there three rooms,
but the kitchen, veranda, and storage room all felt perfectly laid out too. Click. Click. I took photos of every part of the listing.
I made sure to capture the living room’s light especially carefully. Then I sent them to my father.
After all, I was using the money he had given me,
so I figured I ought to do at least this much.
Since I was doing something I didn’t normally do, even my message came out curt.
Before long, my father replied.
This old man, seriously.
He had never once learned how to say anything nice in his life.
“I’ll take this one. There’s no need to look any further.”
Of course, I had never once learned how to listen to my father.
At my words, the broker smiled brightly. “Ah, is that so? You made a good choice. This place is really… and the reason is… and so on and so forth….”
The long explanation brushed past my ears and disappeared.
Once I liked something,
no one else’s explanation got through to me anyway.
Buzzz— buzzz—.
My phone rang.
The caller was Team Leader Lee.
“Excuse me for a moment. I need to take this call.”
“Of course. Take your time.”
I walked to the front of the living room window.
I answered while looking out over the hill as if it were already my own. “Yes, Team Leader.”
- Moka. Sorry to bother you on the weekend. Is everything okay for the approval?
“It’s fine. Please go ahead.”
- It’s about something else. I got a call from the editor-in-chief. Son Yeonghun accepted your proposal.
“Oh, really?” That was welcome news indeed.
- He seemed to have a lot to think about, but he said he’d trust us and give it a try. Ah, and while I’m at it, there’s something more important.
“?”
- There’s an editorial meeting for the spring issue of Gyeongseong Geul tomorrow.
“Yes.”
- I need you to come to that meeting.
“….”
Come where?
Thinking I’d misheard, I asked again. “Excuse me?”
- The editorial meeting. The board members have been talking. This time it’s just a special feature, but if it goes well, you could end up taking over an entire section of Gyeongseong Geul. This special feature is a pretty radical move, too.
“….”
- So let’s sit down and talk. I thought all I had to do was send the writing in.
I never would have guessed I’d be summoned to an editorial meeting in person.
The editorial meeting of Gyeongseong Geul.
A gathering of critics and professors who shaped the flow of literary circles.
Not to mention its influence,
each and every editorial board member had an impressive record.
It was not the sort of place just anyone could even hope to step into.
When I didn’t give much of a reply,
Team Leader Lee started worrying about me instead. - I guess that kind of position is pretty intimidating, huh? Should I tell them again that you’ll just be sending the writing in?
I swallowed.
They absolutely were not calling me just to praise my plan.
On the contrary, my debut had been too flashy,
I hadn’t even met them at the awards ceremony,
and the first work after my debut was also unusual…
They probably just wanted to see what kind of person I was.
And I decided to steady my mind.
If they wanted to see me, I would gladly show myself.
“No, Team Leader. I’ll attend.”
- …You sure that’s okay?
“What else am I supposed to do if it isn’t okay? I’ll go.”
- You’ve got nerves of steel. Then come to the fifth-floor editorial meeting room by 1 p.m. tomorrow. I’d normally go in and assist, but I’m taking the day off tomorrow. Ah, and the commentary you sent will be shared with the board members by the editor-in-chief today.
“Yes, understood.”
Only after I hung up did I realize it.
“…Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
But what else could I do?
If they called me, I had to go.
In a way, it made the whole thing feel even stranger.
A meeting on the weekend.
It felt a little like I was being invited into some secret scheme.
After all, shaping the flow of an industry was the kind of thing that happened behind closed doors.
With my arms folded, I quietly looked out the window.
I was settling my startled heart.
- The commentary you sent will be shared with the board members by the editor-in-chief today.
They were going to evaluate my writing on the spot.
Whether it was worthy of Gyeongseong Geul or not.
If that was the case, then I, too,
needed to review my own writing a little more carefully.
I spread two texts out in my mind. Whoosh, whoosh.
Song Yeonghun’s Hexagram.
And my commentary.
I began reading them simultaneously.
Hexagram, in a single phrase, was a novel of interlocking parts. The fortunes of great luck, good luck, and terrible luck intertwined with their births,
and those, in turn, intertwined with the events that took place on the grueling mountain trek.
Suspicion and desire moved back and forth along the currents of fate.
A dense, symbolic, finely detailed novel.
Because it was built so tightly, it was inevitably a heavy novel.
So I had explained Hexagram by likening it to spoon theory.
The aim was clear.
To make it easier for readers to approach.
That was also an important distinction between commentary and criticism.
If criticism focused more on experts or devoted readers,
commentary was better when it focused on the public.
Up to this point, it wasn’t bad.
No, it was the sort of thing I quite liked.
However….
“Hmm. It’s a little too much on the popular side.”
So far, I had seasoned it nicely with the right amount of spice.
Maybe now I should add a spoonful of wholesome ingredients that brought out a deeper flavor.
Then I could satisfy experts and devoted readers at the same time.
What kind of ingredient would that be?
A way to bring out more depth in Hexagram.
If I couldn’t think of anything, I should go back to the basics.
I set my commentary aside and left Hexagram alone.
The sea of language was heavy and solemn.
And yet I swam through it freely.
Though it rolled heavily beneath me, it was easy enough for me.
I searched for the point where all language first began.
The navel of the sea that was Hexagram.
There, I rediscovered one keyword.
“…Fate.”
Yes. Let’s return to the essence.
Hexagram was, in the end, a story about fighting against fate.
With a sudden rush, the sea in my mind disappeared.
In its place, countless books on the human condition spread open all at once.
Shhhhhh…..
Hundreds of books opened with the sound of wind.
Among them, one of the oldest caught my eye.
The father of fate theory in literature, the original source.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet.