Intern Presentation (1)
4.
The reason Yoo So-hyun had suddenly started acting like this was obvious.
She was declaring that she would latch onto me instead of Song Min-hoon. Last week, I had pointed out the flaws in Song Min-hoon’s writing. Then there was the time the team leader had brushed past my one-line critique.
So those things must have left quite an impression on her, I supposed. To be honest, I had no real interest in Yoo So-hyun. Song Min-hoon simply had to be that vile for me to even notice her.
I had taken Yoo So-hyun for nothing more than a calculating opportunist clinging to a man like him. But by now, I was revising my assessment of her.
She was a sociopath.
Otherwise, there was no way she could keep that face so shamelessly. “No. I’m not drinking it.”
“Oh, then, oppa, maybe coffee at least-”
“No caffeine, either.” Yet there was an empty coffee cup sitting right on my desk.
For a moment, Yoo So-hyun’s expression stiffened, but then she said, “Oh, I see? Got it, hon~,” and returned to her seat.
There. Anyone who could still smile after being treated like that had to be a sociopath.
A person like that might become more monstrous than Song Min-hoon if she ever got power. Still, work was work, and the assignment was the assignment.
We stayed busy all day with menial tasks like sorting documents and making copies, and only after clocking out were we able to start on the assignment in the intern room. Song Min-hoon in the seat in front kept tilting his head over and over. “Tsk... hmm...”
So it wasn’t going well.
Was Marx the only thing he could cling to, after all? If he was so confident, he should have kept pushing Marx to the end. But that kind of nerve didn’t seem to be in him, either.
Then Song Min-hoon shot me a glance and said, “I’m done. I’m heading out first,” and started gathering his things. It didn’t look like he was done at all.
Cheap bluffing, meant to dent my confidence.
He would probably run home and open his laptop the second he got there. “So-hyun, you coming with me?”
“Ah... I’m not finished yet. You go on ahead.”
“Suit yourself, then.” If it had been the usual Song Min-hoon, he would have kept trying to coax her.
Something about helping her, or eating first.
It was obvious he was on edge. Anyway, after Song Min-hoon left like that,
sure enough, “Oppa.” Yoo So-hyun slid her chair over toward me.
“...”
“Do you want to have dinner together? As they say, even Mount Geumgang is best enjoyed after a meal.”
“No.”
“You’ve got such a good body, oppa. Are you on a diet? Then oppa-aa, could you just read the review I wrote once?” Yoo So-hyun lifted her index finger to the tip of her nose and made a ridiculous attempt at aegyo.
So that was the real aim. As I had just confirmed, sociopaths knew no shame.
And when they wanted something, they clung until the bitter end.
I had no desire to endure that annoyance any longer, so
I decided to give her what she wanted.
But in my own way. “Let me see it.”
“Really?! Wow, thank you so much. If I do well, I’ll buy you a meal.” Yoo So-hyun immediately printed out her review and presented it to me with great care.
I scanned it once. She’d taken the road completely wrong, hadn’t she?
The keyword she had latched onto was the power of love.
A naïve, childish line of reasoning that claimed the power of love could overcome reality. Whether the novel was good or bad, the thing Our One Among Us absolutely had to address was economic struggle and social contradiction.
That was why Song Min-hoon had reached for Marx in the first place. Yoo So-hyun had barely touched on any of that.
She’d done nothing more than offer a shallow, passing mention in a single paragraph. So that was why she was always clinging to someone.
She had no ability.
And after seeing Song Min-hoon’s Marxian angle collapse, she must have been even more frightened.
“How is it, oppa?”
There was no need to use any grand ability.
She was standing right at the edge of a cliff.
All I had to do was tap her on the forehead with my fingertip and nudge her in the right direction. “The writing isn’t coherent.”
“Ah, is that so.... Still, I thought I should include the economic issue.”
“The more you try to cover, the messier the piece becomes. You know how important structure is in writing.”
“Ah, yes, I do.”
“If I were you, I’d focus on a single keyword.”
“Then should I drop the economy? Would that really be okay...? I feel like I should still say something about it....” Yoo So-hyun looked uneasy.
She probably wasn’t sure whether she should trust me at all.
I smiled and handed the review back to her. “What oppa wants to say is just one thing. Focus on what you do best.” It was complete nonsense, but the way I said it kindly made it sound plausible.
Especially with that oppa slipping out of my mouth.
At that, Yoo So-hyun broke into a radiant smile.
As if it were proof that I had fallen for her. “Thank you so much, oppa.” Yoo So-hyun immediately returned to her seat.
Then tap, tap, she began typing away at the keyboard. That side had been settled easily enough.
Now all that remained was my own review. “...” I read The Man Looking for Ghosts again.
Slowly, seriously.
...It was strange. It felt as though I could see a path through the novel.
Words linked freely to words, sentences to sentences, and from those links new meanings were born without hesitation.
Only in my head, though. Come to think of it, since awakening this ability, I had never really tried writing properly.
I was curious.
How much would this ability affect my writing? With a tense heart, I placed my hands on the keyboard. Blink, blink.... A black cursor blinked on the white screen of Word, as if urging me on.
All right, then. Let’s do this. A first sentence came naturally to mind. [There was a man who lived through two wars.] Was it a good sentence?
I didn’t know yet.
If it was, the rest would come pouring out.
For now, I trusted my senses. And then. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.... My fingers began moving at an incredible speed.
The review, the sentences, the words, the consonants and vowels... they were all spilling out.
[But this is not a story about war. It is the end of humanity that one must face at least once in a lifetime, the cold skepticism one feels toward humanity, and even the suspicion that humanity may never have existed in the first place. All of this (...)] My hands never stopped.
[(...) A philosopher once said that we exist because we think, or doubt. Even this philosopher’s words are somewhat lazy before this novel. For this novel is the crystallization of struggle beyond doubt, of a burning obsession with recovering humanity.
The plot is as follows. A soldier stranded in the Vietnam War (...)]
Now I was getting into the main body.
The plot summary had to be as simple as possible. For the general reader.
Next came the most important part of the review. [The war this man endured was a war of two fronts. One was the external war of Vietnam. The other was the internal war of searching for his own humanity. Because those two wars are fused together, this novel reveals its distinctive, schizophrenic allure.(...)] Starting with this paragraph,
I began analyzing the appeal of The Man Looking for Ghosts in earnest. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.... No matter how much I wrote, the words kept going.
It felt strange.
Even as I wrote so quickly,
I didn’t feel the least bit rushed.
Rather, it was exhilarating, as if I were racing ahead. Tap. I struck the Enter key briskly. Done. The central argument was finished.
Now it was time to pull out the final hooking keyword.
That, too, was... Hemingway. [And that is why it is Hemingway. In the history of literature, have you ever seen a novel fight as fiercely for life as The Old Man and the Sea? The Man Looking for Ghosts follows that lineage and reaches for humanity. Hemingway (...)] I wrote an entire paragraph.
By then, I had almost filled the page count.
I could have ended it there, but...
I wanted to finish with a little more style.
For the first time, I took my hands off the keyboard and thought it over.
But in that moment, it felt as though my instincts were telling me to go back to the beginning. Back to the beginning?
[Hemingway returns?] “...Huh?” Why had I done that?
Why had I written that he was “returning” instead of “coming”? “Ah.” Right.
The phrase returns had slipped into my one-line judgment without my even realizing it.
There had been meaning folded into that word.
Tap, tap, tap.... Without hesitation, I added a few more sentences. When the piece was finally complete, a smile rose naturally to my face. I checked the clock.
The time it had taken was... fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes to write two full A4 pages?
That was possible? “Heh.” A laugh escaped me.
This ability was no joke. It was actually usable.
Feeling bright and refreshed, I started getting ready to go home.
I’d have to celebrate with a beer or two back home. But Yoo So-hyun didn’t look normal.
She was frowning as she texted someone.
Since I had a pretty good idea who it was, I asked casually, “Song Min-hoon?”
“Ah, yes. This guy keeps whining at me. He says that if he leaves out Marx, he doesn’t know what else to write with. He keeps begging me to show him mine.” So she meant she wasn’t going to show him.
It looked like Yoo So-hyun had completely cut Song Min-hoon off.
“He says there aren’t any blog reviews because it isn’t a published novel. So he can’t even google it.... Ugh, how annoying. Honestly.”
“Google?”
“Yes. Every time that guy writes something, he digs through blogs and steals the style or keywords. He probably couldn’t write at all without the internet.”
Hmm, so that’s how it was. I opened the intern room door and stepped out. “Oppa- dinner, or at least drinks-” I ignored the nonsense floating from behind me.
...
Clack, hiss. I popped open a can of beer and set it on the folding table.
Then I opened my laptop. Originally, I had intended only to enjoy the late night.
But if a fellow writer I cared about was having a hard time, how could I not help? I launched Word and began writing a review of Our One Among Us.
It wasn’t difficult.
First, I explained how economic structures affected individuals.
Then I analyzed the novel on that basis.
Finally, I praised the work’s steady form and sentences. It wasn’t as exhilarating as writing the review for The Man Looking for Ghosts.
The reason was simple.
Our One Among Us just wasn’t that good a novel.
Still, as a review, it had everything it needed. “Two pages, too. Perfect.” Next, I opened a browser window and logged into my blog.
The blog I had never used was pristine. I clicked Post and entered the title: I Read the Novel Our One Among Us.
The body was simple. [I read a friend’s novel, Our One Among Us.
It was such a good novel that I even wrote a review for it.
I sincerely hope that novel gets the recognition it deserves.]
I wrote only that much and clicked Publish. All that was left was to wait in peace. Glug, glug. I drank down the can of beer in one satisfied go.
“Aaaah... ah, that’s good.” So this was why office workers reached for beer the second they got off work.
When I had finished a whole can, ding-. A new note arrived in the blog inbox.
I smirked. “There it is.”
...
The next day at 1:00 p.m.
Under Team Leader Lee’s supervision, Editorial Teams 1, 2, and 3 from the periodicals department gathered in the conference room.
“They say these new interns are pretty sharp?”
“Their schools are good, and they don’t look half bad, either.”
“Wasn’t that girl pretty?”
“I thought she looked a little sly. What about that boy? The one with the unusual surname. He’s handsome, too.”
“Ah, Mok Hyunsun? I thought he looked kind of clueless.”
“He seems to have gotten it together lately, though?”
“Hey, after getting treated like that in society and you still don’t know? People don’t change.”
“Look at you, Mr. Psychoanalysis. Why don’t you go get a master’s in psychology while you’re at it?”
“How can you say something that harsh?” The atmosphere was bright and excited.
For them, the intern presentation was basically a little talent show.
One of the few oases in the stale life of the office, I supposed. Team Leader Lee took charge of the presentation. “Hello, I’m Lee Jae-woon, team leader of Editorial Team 1. First of all, thank you for making time for the interns.”
“Wow~.”
“Do we get an entry fee?”
“Are we going out for a company dinner?”
“All right, settle down and try not to be too tense. The presentation will proceed with review presentations of this round’s submissions. For the growth and development of the interns, please give them active feedback. Then, let me invite the interns—” That was when it happened.
The back door of the conference room opened, and someone stepped in quietly.
When Team Leader Lee saw him, his eyes widened. It was Editor-in-Chief Im. The editor-in-chief had arrived unannounced.
Everyone was startled into silence. The room fell quiet, as though a bucket of cold water had been dumped over it.
The editor-in-chief slowly took a seat in an empty chair at the back.
Then, in his usual cynical tone, he said, “What are you doing? Why haven’t you started?”