Independent Magazine (3)
On the basement level of a row house on the outskirts of Hongdae Entrance, a steel door hung a lonely panel that read “ZZ.” Anyone who didn’t know better might have wondered what it was supposed to be.
But this was, in fact, the headquarters of the independent magazine ZZ. It was very late when Lee Mo-yoon arrived in front of it.
She knocked with visible tension. Knock, knock. The door flew open. “You’re here?” Jang Hee-soo appeared.
In her mid-thirties, she was the editor-in-chief, publisher, and designer of ZZ.
Dark-skinned, all sharp angles and little meat on her bones, with tattoos covering both arms and thick-rimmed glasses on top of that.
She did not look like someone who could survive ordinary corporate life. “Sit. What do you want to drink?”
“No, I’m fine.” Lee Mo-yoon sat on the edge of the battered sofa in the living room.
It felt wrong to accept even a drink in a place like this.
Everything here came out of Jang Hee-soo’s own wallet.
To keep ZZ alive, Jang Hee-soo was willing to work two jobs, three jobs, whatever it took. She sat down in front of Lee Mo-yoon.
Then, as if by habit, she lit a cigarette. “I was surprised when I saw your email.” So this is the main point already. Lee Mo-yoon prayed silently.
She hoped Jang Hee-soo would allow Mok Hyunsun’s critique.
The odds were slim, but she still hoped. “You know that’s not possible, right?” …There was no twist.
Why would Lee Mo-yoon not know that? It went against everything ZZ stood for.
And yet, some contrary impulse rose up in her. “…Why not? We could try.” The words slipped out before she could stop them.
It was because she still had some lingering attachment to Mok Hyunsun’s critique.
Jang Hee-soo let out a dry little laugh. “Haha… So Mo-yoon’s really disappointed, huh? I get it. Hoo….”
Smoke poured from her mouth in a long stream.
Then she spoke in a calmer voice. “Mo-yoon. We made a promise from the very beginning, remember? When I first recognized your talent.”
She was right. The two of them had first met at a cultural center where literary writing was taught.
After reading Lee Mo-yoon’s fiction, Jang Hee-soo had made her an offer.
-I debuted as a poet once, but the literary world never accepted me. Your writing may be the same.
-Yes. I keep losing in the New Spring Literary Contest and every other competition.
-That’s because it’s unusual, unfamiliar, and it doesn’t behave itself. Mo-yoon, I’m going to make a magazine. If you want, I’ll fill it with your work. But promise me one thing.
-?
-While your work is in my magazine, don’t have anything to do with the literary establishment.
“When I told you not to have anything to do with the literary establishment back then, I wasn’t trying to isolate you. I was asking you to protect the spirit of ZZ.”
“I know. But the critic Mok Hyunsun-”
“He’s remarkable. I know that.” Jang Hee-soo’s expression hardened slightly. “But for me, the pride of ZZ matters too.”
“!”
“I thought you’d help me protect that pride.”
“…I’m sorry.” Once the conversation touched the emotional nerve, Lee Mo-yoon had nothing to say.
Jang Hee-soo was the one who had given a nobody like her a chance.
She had also made sure Lee Mo-yoon was paid, however small the amount, without ever missing a payment.
Lee Mo-yoon felt ashamed.
She had wavered the moment the literary world offered her a chance.
But that wavering had already proven something.
It proved she did not have the same pride in an independent magazine that Jang Hee-soo did. Jang Hee-soo gave a small snort. “It’s fine. That can happen. You’re only twenty-two. Of course you can wobble a little. Nothing to apologize for.”
“….”
“We didn’t exactly write up a contract, after all. I don’t have the right to stop you from receiving Mok Hyunsun’s critique.”
“….”
“But if you do get critiqued… it’ll be harder for me to give you more pages in the future.”
“!” A cold sentence delivered with a smiling face.
Lee Mo-yoon’s heart dropped.
More than seventy percent of her career was ZZ.
Against a one-off critique from Mok Hyunsun, there was no comparison.
ZZ, where she could publish regularly. For a novelist, space on the page was like land for a farmer.
“E-. I won’t take the critique. I’ll turn it down, so don’t say scary things like that.” I should have said from the start that I wouldn’t accept it.
Or maybe I shouldn’t have answered back at all.
Lee Mo-yoon shook her hands in regret. “That’s not it. It really isn’t.”
“In the end, it comes down to a choice. You’ve got talent, so of course Mok Hyunsun noticed you. I’m just... I want to know whether you feel the same way I do.” Jang Hee-soo took a deep drag from her cigarette.
Then she let it out with a sigh. Her cloudy eyes seemed to be pressing her.
What are you waiting for? Make your decision.
“Of course I-” Lee Mo-yoon could not get the words out.
It was not her complete truth.
“…Of course I feel the same way as you do, .” Lee Mo-yoon swallowed her shame again.
She didn’t have the courage to go mainstream,
and she couldn’t honestly say she supported Jang Hee-soo with all her heart either.
So she made a decision in silence.
She would stop wavering.
If she had chosen safety, then she had to accept self-deception too. Only then did Jang Hee-soo finally seem relieved.
The crease between her brows eased, and her eyes trembled. “Thanks for saying that, Mo-yoon. I was really scared. I thought you might leave me and go.”
In truth, Jang Hee-soo had also flinched when she saw the email.
Lee Mo-yoon was the most important writer in ZZ.
If even a faint smell of “the literary establishment” clung to her, that would become a problem.
Readers of independent magazines saw writers sniffing around the establishment as humiliating.
Say Lee Mo-yoon chose the literary establishment.
Would the establishment continue to take care of her after that?
Would they give a writer who had never even debuted that much space?
Absolutely not. The only person who would keep giving Lee Mo-yoon chances, in the end, was herself.
“Mo-yoon. You know we’re doing a full overhaul of ZZ soon, right?”
“Ah, yes. I know.” ZZ was fairly popular among independent magazines.
But sales were sluggish because the content was too miscellaneous. So Jang Hee-soo had decided to tear ZZ apart and rebuild it.
She wanted to keep its identity while making it profitable. “I’m getting rid of the self-important nobodies with no real skill and putting together a magazine with only the writers who are truly, properly good. Know what it’ll be called?”
“What?”
“ZZ : NOVEL.” ZZ : NOVEL.
Since NOVEL meant fiction,
“You’re not seriously only going to publish fiction, are you?”
“I am. I’ll carefully select a small number of novels and run only those. Toss out all the miscellaneous poems and reviews. Just five or so stories, plus a note from the editor-in-chief. What do you think the lead story for the very first issue of ZZ : NOVEL should be?” Jang Hee-soo grinned. “Cooking, Sex, Murder.”
Lee Mo-yoon’s eyes went round.
The overhaul was something Jang Hee-soo had been planning for a long time.
The fans were already curious about what form it would take.
And now she was putting my work at the front of it? “Uh, ... thank you so much. You really didn’t have to go this far.”
“Remember this, Mo-yoon.” Jang Hee-soo’s eyes flashed. “How much I believe in you. Remember that.”
Lee Mo-yoon was suddenly afraid.
Would there ever be anyone else who believed in her this much?
Would there ever be anyone else who gave her this many chances?
Without Jang Hee-soo... could she even keep living as a writer?
Lee Mo-yoon nodded in silence.
Back home, she sat motionless in front of her computer.
“I’m sorry, Critic Mok Hyunsun... about the critique... I’m afraid it may be disrespectful to ask... and if I accept a critique, it would also be disrespectful to the ZZ side... Please understand my situation...” She wrote line after line in her email.
All she had to do was press send.
“….” Why did her heart feel so heavy?
Even though she thought she was making the right choice,
it felt as if she were throwing away a huge opportunity with her own hands.
“…Right. I’m doing the right thing.” In the end, she pressed the send button.
With tears gathering for reasons she couldn’t quite explain.
─┼
“If I accept a critique, it would also be disrespectful to the ZZ side?” I muttered the sentence under my breath.
Had I been rejected?
Well, I could accept that. I hadn’t exactly expected to be welcomed with open arms.
But the wording of the refusal was strange. Rather than being about her own will or conviction,
didn’t it sound as if she were worried about ZZ?
“Mok. What are you grumbling about now?” Senior Kim shoved his chair closer.
I explained everything that had happened and showed him the email.
Kim Senior’s face twisted. “Of all things, you picked ZZ? Hey, hey. Give it up. That female editor-in-chief is seriously scary. I can’t even make eye contact with her.”
“You’ve met her?”
“Not exactly met. I saw her at an event. They hold the book fair at COEX once a year, right? We participate too. I saw her at last year’s fair, and she showed up with a whole swarm of independent-publishing people. I think she even fought with the organizers over booth placement? Asked why the independent publishers were shoved into a corner.”
“Hm. Surely the organizers wouldn’t have done it on purpose?”
“…Maybe a little? They were looking down on them because they’re outside the mainstream. Anyway.” Kim Senior waved a hand. “Just stay away from them. Especially with that Gyeongseong Publishing tag on your back. What those people hate most in the literary world is critics.”
“Fair enough. Most of the people who handle editorial meetings or judge debuts are critics, after all.”
“Truth is, everyone knows it. Every now and then, there are some genuinely good works in independent magazines.”
“Yes. There are.”
“But critics don’t touch those pieces. If you poke the wrong thing, it becomes a pain in the ass. Anyway, just leave them be. If other people aren’t doing something, there’s a reason they’re not doing it, blah blah blah.” Kim Senior’s lecture gradually drifted away.
Only one of his lines kept floating in my head.
Critics don’t touch those pieces. In other words...
It was a pure white snowfield no one had touched yet?
That idea immediately caught my interest. In truth, until a moment ago, I had no burning desire to publish a critique at all.
If the writer Yomo didn’t want it, I was prepared to stop there. But now things were different. If independent magazines were an uncharted territory, I wanted to step into it.
Should I dress it up in grander terms? I wanted to broaden the horizon of criticism.
The unexplored ground beyond the horizon, known as “independent magazines.” I grabbed Kim Senior’s arm tightly. “Thanks, Senior. I’m really glad I brought it up with you.”
“Yeah. Which means you should get out of here as soon as possible, right?” He jerked his chin toward the monitor.
I just smiled. “Come to think of it, this year’s book fair is next week, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I guess it is. Not everyone in the editorial department has to go.”
Not everyone had to go, which meant someone did.
“I’ll go. That’s the kind of thing the newbie should handle.” First, I should take a proper look for myself.
That thing called independent magazines.
Kim Senior, not knowing a thing, let out an admiring sound. “Our Mok really is amazing at office politics, huh?”
─┼
Samsung Station COEX Mall. The great festival of publishers and devoted readers: the book fair.
Gyeongseong Publishing occupied the largest booth of them all. Because too many people might crowd in,
I stayed in the back and only checked the book inventory.
They were the new releases and bestsellers slated to be introduced at the fair. I had already done almost all the work,
and I was starting to get curious about the independent magazine booths.
I slipped the tent flap aside and looked toward the sales table.
It was a riot of people.
And when I heard someone ask, “Is Mok Hyunsun here too?”
I had to duck back behind the tent at once.
“Senior Yoo.” I called to Senior Yoo from Editorial Team Two, who was dealing with customers at the front line.
He quickly poked his head in through the gap in the tent. “What? Something wrong?”
“Should I go out and help too?”
“No. If more people pile in, somebody’ll get hurt. Just stay here.”
“I’ve already checked the inventory, so I feel bad just standing around. Then should I go get more books from the car?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. We’re almost out of the spring issue of Gyeongseong Geul anyway. Do that?”
“Yes.” So I left the Gyeongseong Publishing booth under the cover of legitimacy.
I was just about to head for the independent magazine booths when a woman stepped in front of me.
She had the bohemian look, dark skin, and a thin frame.
Tattoos climbing up her neck and a bare face without a trace of makeup. I recognized her immediately. “You must be the editor-in-chief of ZZ.”
Her eyes widened slightly in surprise.