Ordan (1)
It was a crazy idea, no doubt about it.
A mere junior editorial board member had suddenly called an editorial meeting. And yet I did it.
No—more accurately, I had no choice but to do it.
Objectively speaking, I no longer belonged at editorial meetings. The rule was that the quarterly magazine was to be guided by the board like a shadow.
But it was hard to claim, I am the shadow, when the name value of Mok Hyunsun had already become far too grand. As soon as I requested the meeting,
Chief Editor Im Myeong-eul sent me a reply. “Come to the editorial meeting room tomorrow evening.” …That quickly? Well. Even better.
The more important the decision, the more boldly and swiftly it should be handled. The next day,
I went to work as usual.
And then I learned one thing:
no one except me knew there was an editorial meeting today.
Not even Team Leader Lee. It was a perfectly secret meeting.
A meeting unknown even to the staff in the office, and, I suspected, perhaps even to Representative Moon. What would be said there?
And what kind of proposal would the editorial board make to me?
I was curious. And then the office reached quitting time.
After the senior staff and team leaders had all drifted out one by one,
I lingered, watching for a moment, and left the office last.
After confirming there was no one nearby, I went upstairs to the editorial meeting room. The hallway had sunk into darkness.
Only the meeting room at the far end was brightly lit.
When I stepped inside, the editorial board members were already seated and waiting.
They greeted me with smiles first. “‘Soop’ was you, Professor Mok? We had our suspicions, but I never thought it would really be you.”
“You’re folding ‘Soop,’ aren’t you? I’m honestly sorry to hear that. If you can, why not just keep it going?”
“Young people really do have stamina. How did you even find the time to do that through social media? Isn’t Chief Editor Im being too easy on you?” Compliments mixed with jokes.
It was the appetizer before the main dish.
I simply smiled and sat down in the empty seat.
In the pleasantly warm atmosphere, Chief Editor Im spoke. “So, I’d like to hear the reason you called us here first.”
So I had to show my cards first.
Well, there was no need to hide it. “I’d like to resign as an editorial board member of Gyeongseong Geul. The reason, as you can probably guess, is that I’m concerned my staying on would create unnecessary noise.”
“It’s not only concern,” Professor Yeo Song-yeon said. “This may be a hasty assumption, but the worry is real. If we side with Professor Mok in editorial meetings, Gyeongseong Geul will be criticized for putting a star critic at the forefront. If we take a different position, then we’ll be accused of trying to keep Professor Mok in check.”
“A protruding stone gets struck by the hammer. Don’t take it too personally.”
“I’m not taking it personally at all. If I can resign from the board well, what would there be to feel hurt about?” Well.
In other words, I had something I wanted, too.
They were all among the brightest people in Korea, so they would have understood what I meant. Chief Editor Im said, “We don’t mean to just send you off, either. You haven’t done anything wrong, and if anything, this happened because we treated you too well. Naturally, if we’re going to let you go, we should do it well.”
In that case, I decided to hear them out first.
What had these elders prepared for me? “We’ll launch a separate webzine under both Gyeongseong Publishing and your name. We’ll move the editorial criticism section there, and you can cover independent magazines, films—whatever you want—inside it.”
“Do you mean I’d be able to publish articles without going through editorial meetings?”
“Yes. That’s the most important part, isn’t it?” Unscreened publication rights.
That was the true essence of Chief Editor Im’s proposal. “So if I want, I can upload any piece at any time?”
“Of course. That’s the advantage of a webzine, after all.” …Oh. They were offering more than I expected.
At the same time, another thought occurred to me.
If the editorial criticism section moved to a webzine, then
there would be no more entanglement between me and Gyeongseong Geul. It would draw a clean line between Mok Hyunsun and themselves.
That was how they planned to restore balance to Gyeongseong Geul and create a separate criticism platform for Mok Hyunsun.
They must have thought the webzine was the only answer that could make that happen. But my idea was a little different. “I appreciate the offer, but I’d like to ask for something else.”
“? Something else?”
“Yes. Maybe I’m just a country bumpkin at heart, but… rather than a webzine, I’d prefer something I can hold in my hands.”
“You mean money?” Professor Yoo Seung-beom asked.
I gave a short laugh and shook my head. “Of course not. If I wanted money, I’d have jumped ship like a grasshopper.”
“Something I can hold in my hands,” I said. “A book.”
“!”
“Please let me publish a quarterly criticism magazine under my own name.” A criticism-focused quarterly magazine. Yes. That was what I had wanted from the very beginning.
I had even told my father about this plan back at my family home. A periodical made entirely of criticism and reviews.
A quarterly that could still be fully literary even without fiction.
The editorial board looked stunned.
Even Chief Editor Im, who rarely showed what he was thinking, blinked in disbelief. “…What?”
Let’s go in with our heads held high.
You don’t act meek at a negotiation table. “The articles that would go into the editorial criticism section, and the pieces from ‘Soop’… I’d like to gather all of them and publish them as a quarterly. I think I’ve already proven I can write criticism across genres, and even if it isn’t as thick as Gyeongseong Geul, I believe I could manage at least a slim magazine.”
I had no intention of starting grandly from the beginning.
At first, even a newspaper-thin issue would be fine.
What mattered was that a quarterly under my name existed in the world. A silence fell.
A silence this long during an editorial meeting was… a first.
The one who broke it was Chief Editor Im. “Do you know what you’re saying right now?”
“I know exactly. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”
“You’re saying you want to become the chief editor.”
“!” I had never quite thought of it that way, but—
…that made sense.
From the editorial board’s perspective, it might even sound like a challenge to authority. I wasn’t actually trying to stage a coup, so there was no need to poke the hornet’s nest. “You don’t have to give me the position of chief editor. And if the company can’t spare the people, you don’t have to assign extra staff either.”
If I did it alone, it would be a lot of work.
Maybe the road ahead would open into sheer hardship.
And yet, even so, still.
I wanted to try. I had dreamed of it since Soop began to find its footing.
A quarterly where I could critique without being shackled by length, form, or genre. “Even saying this makes me nervous. I worry you may end up hating me for it. But anyone who has worked as a critic even once in the literary world… would understand how desperately I want this.” Three of the five editorial board members were critics.
They must have experienced it at least once.
The narrow place criticism occupied in the literary world. Whether they were professors like them or a salaried worker like me,
a critic had a hard time surviving in the literary world without a side job.
Not only were the fees too low,
but the space available for criticism was far smaller than that for fiction or poetry.
Gyeongseong Geul was no exception.
Where three or four poems and short stories might appear,
there were only two criticism pieces.
And before the editorial criticism section was created, there had only been one.
Maybe it was just my selfish desire, but
I wanted to collect every piece I wrote into a single volume and publish it every season.
Hadn’t I already spent enough time scattering my work all over the place like a wandering stray? Of course, I was confident I could pull it off. “I think I understand exactly how you feel….”
Professor Im Sun-mi, who was a critic herself, let the end of her sentence trail off.
Had I at least earned their sympathy?
I couldn’t tell.
Especially not from Chief Editor Im’s unreadable expression. “And if we don’t accept?”
I had thought about that too.
Without letting emotion take over, seriously.
And I had come to a somewhat cold conclusion. “Then I won’t ask the company for anything else and will return as the youngest editor on Team 1.”
And that youngest editor would resign.
To go somewhere that could make the dream of a quarterly criticism magazine come true.
That was my conclusion.
─┼
“…He really tossed it down.”
I had thrown away my life at Gyeongseong Publishing.
No brakes whatsoever.
I’d even threatened to leave the company if they wouldn’t give me the magazine.
Anyone who heard it would probably call me insane.
But I had thought it through for a long time and weighed it over and over. My place at Gyeongseong Publishing.
My desire as a critic.
Between the two, the scales had finally tipped toward the latter. And so the editorial meeting collapsed.
Neither their proposal nor mine had found purchase. It left a bitter taste in the mouth.
Lying in bed, I stared quietly at the ceiling. “...This is my problem.” When it came to the decisive moment, I could pull the trigger without hesitation,
but afterward, a strange self-censorship would come crashing down on me.
In other words, I was anxious. I sprang up from bed. If I stayed like that, of course I’d only get more uneasy.
I needed to prepare something, anything.
I sat down at my desk.
Then I opened my laptop and typed this: [Proposal]
Opportunities came to those who prepared.
If I were going to make a criticism-focused quarterly, I should first sketch out exactly what form it ought to take. “A way to include mainstream and non-mainstream literature in equal measure without drawing rigid boundaries… to inherit the freedom of ‘Soop’ and write reviews lightly, almost like magazine features….”
The proposal began to spill out of me with ease.
Of course it did.
I had been turning it over in my head for a long time.
Ka-talk! A message popped up on my PC.
I had meant to ignore it and turn it off, but—
[Park Jeong-shin – You want my novel, right?]
As expected, I really should have turned it off. [Me – I’m working right now. I’ll contact you tomorrow.]
[Park Jeong-shin – No, no, I finished the new piece.]
…He wrote a new piece? On his own? Nobody was even pressuring him? [Park Jeong-shin – You’re cursing me out in your head, aren’t you? I’m saying I really finished it As an editor, I’m letting you know first, obviously.]
[Me – Please send it over.]
[Park Jeong-shin – Don’t palm it off on someone else. I’m not handing my work to any editor other than you. Ah, since it’s a full-length novel, could you also write an introduction or something?]
Suddenly, a thought crossed my mind.
If I got fed up and left Gyeongseong Publishing, what would Park Jeong-shin do?
[Me – Don’t rely on me too much. What’s so trustworthy about a salaryman who might quit at any time?]
After sending it, I realized I’d sounded a bit off-kilter.
But then Park Jeong-shin sent an unexpected message.
[Park Jeong-shin – Then I’d have to follow you, wouldn’t I? What choice do I have.]
I snorted softly.
I don’t know.
I don’t know why that one line gave me so much strength.
Right then, Park Jeong-shin sent a file.
The file title was Ordan. I opened it immediately.
Rrrr— rrrr— I dragged the mouse wheel down, reading the novel as I scrolled.
The clear structure of the story and Park Jeong-shin’s dry prose.
All of it shone more brightly than in his previous work.
“...A fictional dystopian world. And a fairly long full-length novel at that.”
It was clear Park Jeong-shin was developing as a writer.
Whereas before he had written shorter long-form pieces that were still a bit on the lean side,
now he was handling a large-scale invented world with ease.
After meeting me, he had crossed some threshold and was rapidly strengthening his abilities as a writer.
And so I began reading Ordan out of nowhere.
Ordan was this story: humanity passes its age of prosperity and enters an era of darkness.
On a devastated Earth, the only place still preserving civilization is a great island called Ordan.
Survivors from every continent, wracked by war and famine, set sail toward Ordan.
The story unfolds through what happens aboard those ships.
Small boats with barely ten people crowded inside.
Rough waves and typhoons threaten their lives,
and hunger, frayed nerves, and tempers sometimes erupt into knife fights.
At this point, I thought it might simply be another human drama in the mold often seen in dystopian fiction. [BANG!!!!]
“Huh?” My finger, scrolling downward, froze in place. The guide, who had been steering the boat in silence, shot a gun and killed the man who had been causing the disturbance.
As the mood snapped into a completely different shape, the first part ended with his mysterious words: This ship is not going to Ordan.
“...Oh.”
Park Jeong-shin didn’t disappoint me.
I had only seen a third of it, but this was the real thing.
And if I played my cards right…
it felt like I might be able to use it in my proposal.