2
# Chapter 2. Brave New World — A Wonderful New World (2)
2.
---
A communion with my past life.
The life of a great literary master from four hundred years ago filled my mind.
‘I was Shakespeare...’
I slowly checked my signature again.
‘William Shakespeare. There’s no mistaking it, even after looking at it again.’
Handwriting I had never been able to read suddenly became legible.
At the same time, thousands of works that had never been published came flooding into my mind.
“If you’ve signed it, hurry up and give it to me.”
An unfamiliar voice snapped me out of my thoughts.
When I turned my head, the staff member, who was about to leave work, was gesturing impatiently with an annoyed
expression.
‘Give her what?’
Reality came rushing back a beat late, like a wave rolling in.
‘Ah, right. I came here to apply for a leave of absence.’
My thoughts naturally led back to the reason I had intended to take a leave of absence.
This was a land where freedom of religion was guaranteed.
There was no queen to worry about, and no Puritans shouting that writers were the children of Satan.
‘Right. This is a completely free world.’
Besides, this was the university I had so desperately wanted to attend.
The era was different, but it was still a place of education where I could explore a much broader literary world.
‘And I was going to take a leave of absence?’
I withdrew the leave-of-absence application from my hand.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve changed my mind.”
“What?”
“I’m not taking a leave of absence. Then, goodbye.”
“Wait, but...”
I walked out, leaving the bewildered staff member behind.
“Phew.”
I caught my breath.
The chilly wind of early spring brushed against my cheeks.
It wasn’t a dream.
I looked down at my arms and legs.
Then, as though I had been waiting for this moment, I started running.
I ran around the campus like a madman for a long time.
My bag slapped against my back, my breath grew ragged, and sweat trickled down my forehead.
Yet my young, energetic body was still overflowing with strength, screaming at me.
‘I can run farther. I can run faster.’
I was no longer an old man lying in bed, waiting only for death.
I was no longer that old man who had clutched at his chest because even taking a single breath had been difficult.
Suddenly, laughter burst from me.
Yet there was something slightly strange about that laughter.
My lips were definitely smiling,
but a single tear rolled down my cheek.
‘Youth. This vitality. This time... It’s so deeply moving.’
Still bracing myself against my knees, I let out heavy breaths.
My pounding heart gradually settled, followed by a brief wave of dizziness.
Everything was proof that I was alive.
Just a little while ago, it had been an ordinary day.
As miserable, difficult, and shitty as every other day.
‘But now things are different. I’ve been given another chance.’
I tore up the leave-of-absence application in my hand and threw it into the trash.
A student in the Department of Creative Writing.
A healthy body and a young age.
And on top of that, an environment where I could write as much as I wanted.
‘This is the world I’ve always dreamed of.’
My heart swelled with hope that surged like a spring.
The shoulders that had been hunched over were now proudly straight.
Then a thought suddenly occurred to me.
‘What would the great literary master from four hundred years ago have shouted at this moment?’
Of course, I already knew.
Because he was quietly murmuring inside me.
‘Unbelievable.’
---
I sat on a bench and closed my eyes for a long while.
Even now, the memories of my past life and present life were mixed together, causing a slight dizziness.
‘It’s mostly sorted out now.’
Countless memories were neatly arranged, like books displayed on a bookshelf.
At the same time, a mysterious sensation gradually filled my mind.
Acies.
A Latin word I had never learned circled around inside my head.
‘Put simply, this would be an ability to see through to the essence of things...’
I searched for a word more suitable for this era.
As my thoughts reached deep within me, a word surfaced.
At the same time, my lips slowly parted.
“Right. Insight.”
It was a flawless British pronunciation.
Insight.
Could I call it a kind of perception?
The cool air, traces of light, even the faint sounds echoing across the campus...
A world I had never been able to see before was being conveyed to me through all five senses.
‘It feels like those days.’
The sensation I had experienced when I had first gone up to London and devoted myself entirely to writing.
For me, it was an immensely welcome ability.
‘There’s no ability more useful to a writer than insight.’
A thrilling shiver ran through my entire body.
At the same time, countless stories I had never been able to bring out began surging inside me.
‘I want to write. Now.’
My lips felt parched from the burning desire to write.
“Huh? Kwon Seo-jun?”
Just then, one of my classmates who spotted me came hurrying over.
Jang Hyun-woong.
He had a build roughly twice the size of mine.
He was one of the few friends I had made after returning from a leave of absence, having transferred from another
department.
“Why are you here? Didn’t you say you were going to apply for a leave of absence?”
I had, until just a little while ago.
But so many things had happened to me since then.
“I no longer have a reason to take one.”
Perhaps it was because my way of speaking had changed.
Jang Hyun-woong looked at me questioningly for a moment before breaking into a broad smile.
“Anyway, that’s great. I was already feeling so lonely thinking I’d have to eat by myself.”
Birds of a feather, I suppose.
Jang Hyun-woong wasn’t a friend with a particularly wide circle of acquaintances either.
“Are you going to class?”
“No, I’m taking a walk. What about you?”
“I’m heading to the department office because of my work-study job. But did something happen to you? Your way of
speaking and your expression have been weird since earlier.”
It seemed that the personality and speech patterns from my past life were naturally showing through.
But I had no desire to hide them.
“I thought I’d change a little.”
“Don’t tell me that’s post-competition-failure trauma?”
Come to think of it, I had failed the competition.
Looking back on it now, the writing had been absurdly bad.
“By the way, if you’re not taking a leave of absence, did you submit Professor Song Young-do’s assignment?”
At Jang Hyun-woong’s words, I suddenly remembered the problem I had forgotten.
“Ah. I had that.”
It was an assignment I hadn’t needed to worry about because I had originally planned to take a leave of absence.
[Prose: Create a work based on the theme of spring.]
[Manuscript paper: Approximately 50 pages.]
I had to write and submit a short story.
For tomorrow’s critique session, it had to be uploaded to the class forum by today at the latest.
Fifty pages of manuscript paper.
In terms of A4 pages, that was roughly six pages.
It was by no means an easy assignment.
Seeing my reaction, Jang Hyun-woong’s eyes widened.
“What are you going to do? Professor’s class gives you an F if you don’t submit even one assignment.”
[Theory and Practice of Fiction Writing]
It was one of the classes famous for its brutal evaluations and stingy grades.
But right now, even that wasn’t a problem.
“I’ll write it now.”
Unlike my calm answer, the wrinkles between Jang Hyun-woong’s brows deepened seriously.
“What? Now? There are only two hours left! Why don’t you just go to the professor and explain your situation?”
“Begging isn’t really my style.”
“...What?”
Jang Hyun-woong tilted his head at a forty-five-degree angle as he stared at me.
Whether he was surprised or not, I continued.
“All I have to do is upload it to the forum within the time limit, right?”
“That’s true, but... Hey, just give up already. How are you supposed to do that now?”
Did he really think I couldn’t write it?
A laugh escaped me before I knew it.
“If I write it, what are you going to do?”
Jang Hyun-woong stared at me for a moment before laughing incredulously.
“Then wanna make a bet? If you can’t write it, you buy the drinks. If you can, I’ll buy. We’ll throw in some dried
pollack too. How about it? Deal?”
Dried pollack too.
There was no reason for me to refuse.
“Just don’t regret it.”
“You’d better not. Anyway, you know you can’t be late, right?”
When I nodded, Jang Hyun-woong checked the time on his phone and walked away.
Left alone, I found a seat on a nearby bench and took out my old laptop.
To avoid getting an F, I absolutely had to submit the story within two hours.
Two hours.
An absurdly short amount of time to write a short story.
But for me now, it wasn’t particularly difficult.
‘I’ve been dying to write like crazy anyway.’
I pressed my twitching lips together and took a deep breath.
‘Spring...’
My breathing deepened, and my shoulders relaxed.
Then my five senses reached into the abstract concept of spring.
Spring.
It was the season I loved most.
At the same time, it was the period when the frozen world underwent its most intense transformation.
‘When was the first time I came to love spring...?’
Perhaps when I was eight?
I recalled the memory of spring that I had experienced with my entire body.
A long procession of yellow rapeseed flowers stretching along the road in front of my house.
A time when I would walk along the dirt path beside the stream, intoxicated by their fragrance.
The season was warm, bustling, and filled with the scent of flowers.
Within it, I walked along the dirt road with tiny steps.
Tap, tap, tap.
My footsteps, intoxicated by the scent of flowers, were as lively as the rhythm of a children’s song.
Tap-tap-tap.
My fingers added harmony to the child’s footsteps.
Tap-tap, tap, tap.
As the child’s footsteps grew faster, so did the fingers resting on the keyboard.
Unfortunately, my hands were too slow to pour out all the stories that came to mind.
‘Frustrating.’
But it was nothing compared to the days when I had written with a pen.
Tap-tap-tap-tatatat.
A rhythmic tapping sound, like the striking of piano keys, filled the air.
My fingers moved quickly, making sure not to lose the story that had begun flowing.
Suddenly, I remembered something Michelangelo had once said.
‘The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to
chisel away the superfluous material.’
(The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to
chisel away the superfluous material.)
That was right.
Just as Michelangelo had said he merely brought the sculpture contained within the marble to the surface, I was simply
listening to a certain story that already existed somewhere in this world.
Tap, tap, tap.
Before I knew it, the story of spring was gradually filling the white space.
‘The title is Spring, and Life.’
The creative process through which a story came into being.
At that moment, even the spirit of spring held its breath and listened to my story.
---
Jang Hyun-woong repeatedly went in and out of the forum created for submitting assignments.
Even though the deadline was approaching, Kwon Seo-jun’s assignment still hadn’t been uploaded.
He didn’t answer his calls, and he didn’t respond to his messages either.
“Seo-jun, what the hell happened to this guy? Did he end up not finishing it?”
A classmate working alongside him looked up.
“Obviously he couldn’t. How could anyone write that in two hours? It’s not even a poem. It’s an entire novel.”
Jang Hyun-woong knew that.
If anything, that was why he was worried.
He couldn’t just throw together random pieces of writing or submit something half-assed, either.
‘If he did that, Professor Song Young-do would absolutely tear him apart.’
Professor Song Young-do, who had won the Man Booker Prize, was famous for how demanding his classes were. He was also
notoriously stingy with grades, with only a handful of students receiving an A+ in any given semester.
“What on earth was he so confident about?”
Kwon Seo-jun had been acting very differently from usual.
He had always gone around looking like a crushed can, but suddenly it felt as though he had become an entirely different
person.
There was something different in both his expression and the way he spoke.
‘He really is acting strange. Did he actually lose his mind because he failed the competition?’
While Jang Hyun-woong tilted his head in confusion, his classmate casually joined the conversation.
“Why are you worrying about it so much? You’re the one who gets free drinks either way.”
“That’s true, but...”
Jang Hyun-woong clicked his tongue bitterly.
It was almost time for the assignment deadline to end.
‘Should I check one more time?’
Click.
He clicked the mouse one last time.
And then he saw a newly uploaded assignment.
-Spring and Life-
The submitter was none other than Kwon Seo-jun.
“Huh? It’s up. Did he really write a novel in two hours?”
“No way... He probably just threw something together.”
“Want to take a look?”
Jang Hyun-woong quickly downloaded Kwon Seo-jun’s assignment and examined it.
The classmate watching beside him naturally leaned closer to the manuscript as well.
“Huh?”
But the further they read, the quieter their breathing became.
The writing wasn’t dry at all, yet they found themselves blinking more rapidly.
And soon, a single remark filled with astonishment slipped out.
“No way...”
“He wrote this in two hours? Didn’t he have it written beforehand?”
“No. I definitely saw him start earlier.”
“Then...”
“....”
“...”
The two stared at each other, unable to speak as though they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
The quality was impossible to believe for something written in only two hours.
Stunned, Jang Hyun-woong couldn’t take his eyes off Kwon Seo-jun’s assignment for a long time.