The Intern Presentation
5.
Team Leader Lee had not, strictly speaking, reported on the intern presentation.
But he had not hidden it, either.
After all, the editor in chief knew everything that went on in the department. Still, for him to show up in person like this…
A cold sweat slid down Team Leader Lee’s back. The staff were just as tense. What’s going on? Why did the editor in chief suddenly appear?
Was this intern really that impressive? Unbelievable.
Damn it, I should’ve read the manuscripts more carefully. This was the perfect chance to make an impression on the editor in chief.
Now that the editor in chief was here, this was no longer some little intern talent show.
For the staff, too, it had become a chance they had to seize if they could.
There was no room left for playfulness. “Ahem. Yes. Right… Then let’s begin. Please welcome the interns.”
From the lounge attached to the conference room, the three interns stepped out. The room went quiet.
Under normal circumstances, someone might have clapped for them, but the atmosphere was already as solemn as an interview room.
“Please take the chairs up front. From here on, you’ll read the review of the submission you prepared and answer feedback questions.”
The first to go was Yoo So-hyun. “Hm, hm….”
She took the microphone and cleared her throat.
She looked nervous, but she never let go of her smile. “The submission I selected is One of Us. Then I’ll read my review. What is the most important thing in this world? It is love…”
Her clear, ringing voice filled the room with a hymn to love.
Confusion spread across the faces of the staff.
One of Us wasn’t some fairy tale, for heaven’s sake,
so what was this airy, meaningless drivel?
“…In the end, it is we who overcome reality. Our most precious asset is love, and One of Us movingly shows the power of that love. That is all.”
A crushing silence settled over the conference room. Even if the editor in chief had not been present,
this was not something anyone could laugh off.
And yet, precisely because the editor in chief was there,
the staff had to offer feedback that was more blunt and more emotionless than usual. “We’ll take feedback now.”
The moment Team Leader Lee finished speaking, hands shot up all around the room.
“Why did you ignore the social discrimination and economic contradictions that One of Us deals with?”
“It feels like you dodged the realistic core and wrote the review only in abstract emotions. Did the work’s central problem not really come through to you?”
“The idea is far too naive, with no grounding in reality. That kind of review doesn’t work on kids these days, either.”
“At the very least, if you’d dealt with the economic issue in even one paragraph, I could’ve understood it. But this is too much, isn’t it? It feels like you deliberately left out the hard parts. The writing is just lazy.”
As the criticism poured in, Yoo So-hyun looked helpless.
She clutched the microphone so tightly that her knuckles whitened, but no words would come out. Somebody help me! She looked at her “big brothers” as if pleading for rescue.
Song Min-hoon avoided her eyes,
and Mok Hyunsun… only wore a faint smile, as if none of this had anything to do with him. W-what do I do…?
Everyone was looking at her with cold, unyielding eyes.
She could feel a panic attack coming on. If she had at least studied hard in her spare time, maybe this would have been different.
But Yoo So-hyun had always ridden on other people’s backs to get this far.
She had neither the ability nor the psychology to deal with a situation like this. “I-I… um…” Her face turned beet red, and tears began to well in her eyes.
Several staff members turned away, as if the sight itself made them uncomfortable.
Then— “Move on.”
The editor in chief spoke indifferently.
It wasn’t that he was covering for her,
but that he didn’t even think her excuses were worth hearing.
“Yes. Intern Yoo So-hyun, good work. Then next is the presentation and feedback for Intern Mok Hyunsun.”
The microphone passed to Mok Hyunsun.
Yoo So-hyun simply tried to hold back her tears, her face pale.
The atmosphere in the conference room had grown even worse than before.
For all that they were interns, their level was so low it had put everyone in a foul mood.
It was the worst possible timing to present.
But Mok Hyunsun didn’t waver. “The work I selected is The Man Who Looked for Ghosts. I’ll begin.”
In a calm voice, he recited his opening line. “There is a man who went through two wars.”
“…!”
What an arresting opening.
Everyone’s attention snapped into place at once. Mok Hyunsun unfolded his introduction by gently linking war to the question of human nature. …He’s good. Really good.
He wrote that? Why is he so good with words?
Ah, right. That novel. It was about human nature, wasn’t it? Sounds plausible.
“The wars this man experienced were two in number. One was the external war of the Vietnam War. The other was… Because those two wars are blended together, this novel reveals a uniquely schizophrenic charm. …”
At that moment, Team Leader Lee saw it.
The wave of astonishment spreading through the room.
Some people even began jotting things down in their notebooks,
and the Team Leader of Editorial Team 2 in the front row wrote something like this: [Schizophrenic charm. Sensory. Precise.]
“…This is not a special story. If the world we live in is an external war, then the various psychological hardships we endure in life are internal wars. … Perhaps The Man Who Looked for Ghosts is not simply about the Vietnam War at all, but about our lives. It asks whether our very lives are not themselves schizophrenic.”
“Ah….”
“That’s…”
Admiring exclamations rose from all around the room.
It was an utterly unguarded response, as if they had even forgotten there was an editor in chief standing behind them.
The climax came with Hemingway.
The section connecting The Man Who Looked for Ghosts with The Old Man and the Sea.
It was interesting enough to seize everyone’s attention, and provocative as well.
For people who read even a little, the keyword Hemingway was impossible to resist.
“…As for this novel, I’d like to say Hemingway has returned. The reason I’m deliberately saying ‘returned’ is that for a long time after Hemingway, we haven’t encountered a novel this pure and this hot-blooded. We waited a long time, and now we’ve met the Hemingway of this era.”
Insane.
It’s moving, too?
This is better than the novel itself.
Right before the final paragraph, Mok Hyunsun paused.
As if even he found it satisfying, he smiled faintly, then spoke again. “And one more thing. I believe the man eventually found the ghost. Or that he will find it. Because the act of seeking human nature is itself a kind of human nature. The struggle of this man is profoundly human, and beautiful.”
Rustle.
He placed the paper he had been holding onto his knee.
Only then did he see it.
The faces around the room had changed completely from when he first started.
“….”
Quiet, but full.
Faced with that silence, Mok Hyunsun grew nervous a beat late. “If there’s any feedback….”
At his dazed expression, the mood broke all at once, and then— clap clap clap clap clap clap clap!!!!!!!!
The applause that had been held back burst out at last. The sound thundered through the conference room.
The one who looked flustered now was Mok Hyunsun.
“Ah… thank you. Yes. Thank you.”
He bowed first in thanks, but the applause only grew louder.
Not only had the irritation from the previous presentation vanished,
they had been so genuinely moved that they even forgot the editor in chief was there.
No—they had no choice but to be moved. It wasn’t simply because the writing was good.
The points that had felt vague to them before—
Mok Hyunsun had identified them cleanly and opened them up so refreshingly, hadn’t he?
So much so that it was hard to believe this had been written by an intern at all.
Only after the applause finally tapered off did the feedback begin. People asked questions and offered impressions with real goodwill, and Mok Hyunsun answered every one seriously.
Not once did he get stuck.
That was because every sentence in his review had come from the flawless logic in his head.
And at that moment, there was one person whose face was growing steadily darker.
That person was the next presenter, Song Min-hoon. W-what the hell. Mok Hyunsun that bastard. He wrote that well? That can’t be possible. …So this is what it means to be the son of a big-name writer?
He hated to admit it even if it killed him, but Mok Hyunsun was clearly formidable.
And he had realized it far too late. …I shouldn’t have provoked him.
Still, he wasn’t entirely without confidence.
The review he had brought was pretty good, after all.
With Yoo So-hyun having laid the groundwork so completely, if he played it right, he could at least come in somewhere in the middle. In the now-warm atmosphere,
Song Min-hoon’s presentation began. “…This economic contradiction shows that the novel… that the individual can never be free of it. Let’s follow the heroine’s emotional arc. …The structure of the novel also highlights this theme…”
People nodded now and then.
It wasn’t on Mok Hyunsun’s level, but for an intern, it was a pretty solid review.
He had covered everything he needed to, and he had not mumbled or evaded anything. The presentation ended there.
Clap, clap…
Because of the previous presentation, only light applause followed.
Song Min-hoon rose from his seat with a relieved expression and bowed over and over. “Thank you, thank you!!”
“Good. Then now for the feedback—”
“J-just a moment.”
It was Mok Hyunsun who interrupted the proceedings.
Everyone turned to look at him.
Mok Hyunsun wore a deeply bewildered expression. “The review just presented by Intern Song Min-hoon…”
“??”
“I think I wrote that.”
Song Min-hoon’s face went dead white. “Huh?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Mok intern wrote it? Then why is Song intern presenting it?”
The conference room erupted into noise.
Even Team Leader Lee could do nothing to contain the situation.
Then the editor in chief’s voice split through the room. “Can you prove it?”
“…Yes.”
Mok Hyunsun rose from his seat.
He pointed to the presentation laptop on the podium and asked Team Leader Lee, “May I use that?”
“…Go ahead.”
An Internet window opened on the large conference screen.
Mok Hyunsun calmly logged into his blog account.
And there, posted on the page, was… shockingly, the exact same review as Song Min-hoon’s.
The night before,
someone presumed to be Song Min-hoon had sent him a note.
Begging him to share the review.
After pretending to hesitate for a while, he shared it,
then posted the review on his blog as well.
Who would have thought Song Min-hoon would be so neatly caught in that trap?
With an utterly helpless, intern-like expression, Mok Hyunsun said, “My blog is too small, so I didn’t think anyone would look for it… I didn’t know Song Min-hoon would see it.”
“N-no! I mean, I…!” Song Min-hoon shot to his feet.
With a crash, his chair toppled backward.
Only now did he realize.
He had walked straight into Mok Hyunsun’s trap.
But just as he had played games through email before,
…there was no evidence.
“T-turn it off. Turn it off, you fucking— You did this on purpose from the start—!!”
Song Min-hoon lunged at Mok Hyunsun with his fist raised.
He was so flustered that his movements were sluggish and clumsy.
For one instant, Mok Hyunsun considered it. Should I just take the hit and finish him more decisively?
But he decided against it.
For one thing, being hit hurt.
For another, Song Min-hoon was already beyond saving.
Mok Hyunsun simply stepped back lightly. “Ugh—!”
Off balance, Song Min-hoon’s foot caught on the laptop cable. Crash!!! The laptop fell and shattered,
and the people nearby scrambled away in shock.
“Hey, hey. Grab him first. If Song Min-hoon keeps this up, he’ll cause a serious accident.”
“Pin him down, pin him down.”
The male staff members restrained him at once.
Song Min-hoon lost his reason and started screaming. “Let go, let go! That bastard is the one who messed everything up! I didn’t copy it because I wanted to copy it—! He, he’s a parachute, that’s what he is. A parachute—! I’m the one being wronged! Let go! Let go, you bastards!!”
There had never been a bigger uproar.
And then, without anyone noticing, the editor in chief had come up beside them and stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Everyone froze like still frames and looked at him. First,
he indicated the still-prone Song Min-hoon with a tilt of his chin. “You’ll come in only until today.”
Then he turned his gaze to the next person.
It landed on Mok Hyunsun.
The editor in chief said, “Come to my office now.”