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# Chapter 3. Brave New World — A Wonderful New World (3)
3.
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‘Yes. This is the joy of writing.’
A delight I hadn’t tasted in a long time.
I had poured out my words freely, without any restrictions.
That was why the writing was somewhat rough, but at least I felt completely refreshed.
Me within the world.
The world once again contained within me.
At some point, the boundary between the two becomes blurred, and they become one. Thoughts that had been vague and indistinct begin to take shape, bubbling up until they become clear.
And finally, through countless repeated processes of contemplation, only one thing remains intact.
‘Myself.’
In the end, writing was the most perfect opportunity to meet myself.
And so, the season called spring came to hold an important meaning for me.
A shuddering exhilaration that had come to me after so long.
It was both the pain and the joy that could only be obtained through creation.
‘This is good.’
I slowly wandered around campus, enjoying the spring sunshine.
It was unmistakably spring.
My heart felt as light as my clothes.
I passed through the main gate and crossed the lawn along a small path.
The benches lining the path were occupied by the young people of the campus.
The voices of students calling out to one another across the lawn.
The scent of grass warming under the gentle sunlight.
It was undoubtedly the same place as yesterday, but I, the person walking through it, had changed considerably.
“Oppa, Seo-jun!”
Just as I was leaving the school,
I heard someone calling my name.
I turned my head and saw a woman approaching me, her long black hair fluttering behind her.
She was wearing a fresh-looking dress that suited the season perfectly.
Her appearance was enough to make every passing man turn around at least once.
‘Jo Ye-seul?’
She was my junior in the same department and the campus's representative queen bee.
But as she came closer, the look in her eyes as she stared at me grew cold.
“Oppa, I heard you were applying for a leave of absence?”
At first glance, her tone sounded almost accusatory.
Her expression was cold enough to make a winter wind seem warm.
Of course, there was a reason she treated me so coldly.
‘She’s my ex-girlfriend.’
During the freshman orientation at university,
I met Ye-seul, who was pure innocence itself.
She simply trusted and followed me, having been impressed by all the seniority perks I had received as an upperclassman.
Beautiful, kind, and, on top of that, the only daughter of the conglomerate Ilsung.
‘If I hadn’t been a freshman, would I ever have been able to date someone like her?’
That was why I felt even more burdened and uneasy.
I didn’t want to stand in the way of Ye-seul, whose future belonged to a completely different world.
So I broke up with her when I went into the military, but the shock had transformed Ye-seul into a completely different person.
“You’re taking a leave of absence just because you failed a few competitions? Oppa, were you really only this capable?”
Her expression and tone were utterly cold.
It was enough to make me wonder if she would glare at an actual enemy with that much hostility.
But I was beginning to see some things differently.
Her straight back.
Her perfectly composed posture.
Her crisp blouse without a single wrinkle reflected her meticulous personality.
‘But she didn’t dry her hair properly.’
And on top of that, her moist eyes and slightly trembling voice.
There was no room for doubt.
‘It’s love and hatred.’
I could read the sincerity she had hidden away so carefully.
A complicated emotion where love and hatred were mixed together.
I could hear a sincerity from her that I had never noticed before.
The corner of my mouth rose involuntarily.
“I don’t know where you heard that, but I’m not taking a leave of absence.”
“...What?”
“I’m not taking one. So you don’t have to worry.”
“...”
For a moment, Jo Ye-seul looked at me with wide, startled eyes.
Perhaps realizing belatedly that she had let her feelings show, she quickly composed her expression.
“W-what do you mean, worry? Why would I be worried about you?”
At the same time, a deep crease appeared between her brows.
It was the expression she always made whenever she was flustered.
But my attention was drawn not to Ye-seul’s words, but to her face.
More precisely, I noticed a small change that hadn’t been there a few days ago.
“By the way, you cut your hair?”
“...Huh?”
“Your bangs.”
My casual question caught Ye-seul off guard.
I wondered if it was really something worth being that surprised about, but I naturally added another word.
“It suits you.”
“...”
It was nothing more than a casual remark, tossed out without much thought.
Yet Ye-seul’s cold expression melted like a spring breeze.
“...Does it look strange?”
“You look pretty.”
“...”
Ye-seul smiled, then belatedly became flustered and bit down firmly on her lips.
“W-what? You think I’m going to be happy just because you suddenly pretend to care now?”
Her temperature dropping once again, Ye-seul abruptly turned around and walked away without even saying goodbye.
Contrary to what Ye-seul thought, I hadn’t paid any particular attention to it.
‘I simply told her what I genuinely thought.’
A pure celebration of radiant youth.
It was merely a confession tinged with the regret of a fool who had carelessly let such beauty slip away.
---
[Anyway, just try taking a leave of absence. I won’t let you get away with it.]
Jo Ye-seul went as far as enduring the trouble of sending me a text just to stop me from taking a leave of absence.
Yet the way she continued pretending not to care until the very end somehow made her look even more youthful and innocent.
‘She’s trying not to let me notice that she’s flustered by her own feelings.’
Yet she herself didn’t realize what those feelings were.
Human emotions were more complicated than the depths of ten fathoms of water.
Four hundred years ago or now, they were still an endlessly fascinating subject.
‘A protagonist like that could be interesting too.’
The corners of my mouth rose without me realizing it.
And naturally, the story continued.
Damn it.
I was turning even the wound of my first love into a story.
I really was a hopeless writer.
I walked aimlessly for a long time, sorting through my thoughts, and only arrived home around evening.
A semi-basement house deep in Mangwon-dong.
It was a cramped home with barely any ventilation, and mold was a regular visitor every summer.
My older sister, who was working on her laptop in the living room, sensed my presence and glanced over.
“You’re back?”
“Where’s Mom?”
“Looks like she has a group of customers staying late.”
My sister took a swig from her can of beer and glanced at me.
“Oh, right. I heard you failed the competition?”
She must have heard from Mom.
“That’s how it turned out.”
The moment I answered, my sister let out a deep sigh.
“You remember your promise to Mom, right? That if you failed again, you’d quietly get a job?”
There was no way I could forget.
My plan to change majors had been because of my promise to Mom in the first place.
“Don’t get too discouraged. After doing it myself, I realized that writing is ultimately a matter of talent too. It might actually be better for you to change your career path sooner.”
My older sister, a freelance web-drama writer, gave a self-deprecating smile and picked up her beer.
Glug, glug, glug.
After finally emptying the can, she immediately picked up her phone and typed something.
Bzzzt.
A moment later, my phone vibrated.
It was Tatao Money sent by my sister.
A full 50,000 won.
“What’s this?”
“What do you think? Spending money. Buy something tasty and cheer up.”
It wasn’t the amount that mattered.
Knowing perfectly well how tight her own finances were, I found it touching that she still took care of her younger brother.
“If you’re hungry, there’s kimchi stew Mom made before she left. Make sure you eat.”
The moment she finished speaking, my sister began furiously pounding away at the keyboard with bloodshot eyes.
Judging from the deep frown on her face, the writing wasn’t going well.
I glanced at her monitor.
It looked like she was working on a web-drama script she had signed a contract for last year.
“Not going well?”
“Yeah. It’s a romance set on a campus, but the producer keeps telling me to revise it. Ugh. But he’s not exactly wrong either, which makes it even more maddening...”
Having already been asked to revise it several times, my sister was extremely sensitive.
Bzzzt.
Just then, her phone rang.
She checked the newly arrived email, and her expression immediately crumpled.
“Another revision? Seriously, how many times do they want me to revise this?”
After messing up her hair, my sister let out a deep sigh and called the producer.
Unlike her grumbling from moments ago, her voice was now incredibly sweet.
“Yes, Producer. I read through the revision notes... If I revise it the way you suggested, the female lead’s actions become a little too frustrating. And the male lead’s actions feel a bit out of nowhere, too. Yes? Ah, the CEO wants it that way? Yes, yes. No, it’s fine. I understand. Then I’ll revise it as you said and send it back. Yes, yes. Take care.”
The moment she hung up, her expression twisted again.
“Ugh. This is why I can’t quit drinking.”
As though trying to soothe her burning insides, my sister gulped down her beer.
“Want me to take a look?”
The moment I showed interest, my sister narrowed her eyes.
“You think you know anything? You don’t know the first thing about romance.”
“I don’t know romance?”
I reflexively questioned her.
Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet...
Every one of them contained fateful love and hatred.
Of course, my sister had no way of knowing that, and she snorted.
“Yeah. You’ve only dated once in your entire life.”
Well, in my sister’s eyes, I was still just an ordinary younger brother.
Her reaction was perfectly normal.
“Phew. How am I supposed to revise all this by tonight? Why are there so many revision points?”
The reason she couldn’t postpone the deadline despite how exhausted she was was a practical one.
‘I heard she’s already postponed the deadline several times. If she delays it again, she could even lose the advance payment.’
If that happened, even next month’s rent would immediately become a problem.
In the end, my sister’s crisis wasn’t hers alone.
“Ah, this is driving me crazy.”
She grabbed her hair again.
She was suffering from so much stress that I almost wondered if she was going to go bald.
“I can’t do this. I’m going to sleep for exactly one hour and then get up.”
After letting out a sigh, my sister finally set an alarm and lay down on the living room floor.
Perhaps because she had barely slept for the past few days, she fell asleep the moment her head touched the floor.
‘What exactly is making this so difficult for her?’
Curious, I looked at my sister’s monitor, where the script was still open.
[Title: First Love on Campus]
It was a story dealing with the practical worries and emotions experienced after a campus couple breaks up.
Late at night.
A rainy alley in front of a one-room apartment.
The woman looks at the street she had walked countless times with her former lover and becomes lost in old memories.
The convenience store, the café, the neighborhood pub they frequented.
He was everywhere she looked.
-There isn’t a road I walked that I didn’t walk with you, and there isn’t a place where I didn’t leave behind a memory of you.
The road that had once felt so short now stretched on endlessly.
The road that had once been filled with fondness was now filled with regret.
‘I remember those days.’
Watching the female protagonist’s painful dialogue,
I found myself remembering my own memories with Ye-seul.
That was right.
She had been my first love.
But just as firsts always tend to be, we had been lacking and clumsy.
I gently pushed the old memories aside and focused on the script again.
Thanks to the detailed emotional descriptions, the woman’s pain came vividly to mind.
‘I like the natural situations and dialogue. They make it quite immersive, too.’
Its strengths were obvious.
But its weaknesses stood out just as clearly.
‘The protagonist is too flat. That’s why the events don’t have much impact.’
Above all, the heartbreaking feeling simply wasn’t coming through.
It was a problem that could be solved by making the character just a little more three-dimensional.
‘But this isn’t really that difficult...’
I had only skimmed through it once, yet dozens of alternatives had already begun appearing in my mind.
‘Should I tweak it a little?’
That was all I had intended at first.
I merely wanted to give her about 50,000 won worth of help.
But before I knew it, the hunger inside me kept urging me on.
Quickly,
faster, write the story...
Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap.
As if possessed by something, I began losing myself in the writing.
And by the time I came to my senses,
I had revised the entire script.