5
# Chapter 5. Good Riddance — What a Relief (2)
5.
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‘As expected, my sister told them about me.’
My sister wasn’t the type to lie in the first place. She had obviously told the producer everything about what had
happened.
‘Otherwise, there’d be no reason for the producer to specifically ask to meet me.’
But from my perspective, this was also an opportunity that had come looking for me.
‘They wouldn’t call someone they’d never even met just because he helped revise a script. They probably want to see
whether I have the skills to take on another project.’
It was also true that I had gotten a rough sense of things while helping my sister.
From my perspective, I was always happy to build connections that could be useful to me.
Web dramas.
A genre the old Kwon Seo-jun had never attempted.
But now that I had awakened the memories of my past life, I was confident.
‘I’ve gathered enough data thanks to my sister. It’s worth giving it a shot.’
I slowly nodded.
“Okay.”
“Good. You made the right decision. I’ll contact the producer and let you know the date.”
My sister took out her phone and sent a message.
Then she suddenly frowned and sniffed the air.
“But Mom, what’s this smell? Did the drain overflow again?”
“...Yeah.”
“Ah, seriously. What did the landlady say?”
“She said she’ll have it repaired soon. Just put up with it for a few days.”
“Yeah, right. I bet that woman really said that.”
This wasn’t the first or second time it had happened, so my sister spoke with absolute certainty.
“Just wait. I’ll make enough money to get us out of this damn semi-basement rental.”
My sister furrowed her brows deeply and tore into a chicken leg.
Watching her, Mom put down the chicken breast she had been holding.
“There you go again, saying unnecessary things. Whether we move or get the repairs done, I’ll take care of it. You two
just worry about your own futures.”
“How are you going to take care of it? Even a jeonse place would cost several thousand ten-thousand-won units upfront.
None of us can even get a loan.”
Mom, a restaurant assistant.
My sister, a freelance writer.
And me, still a university student.
There wasn’t exactly an easy way for us to come up with a large sum of money.
“...Don’t worry. I have everything figured out.”
Despite her words, Mom’s expression stiffened.
A trace of exhaustion showed around her wrinkled eyes.
After those words, heavy with a sigh, Mom got up from her seat.
“Ah, why are you getting up when you’ve barely eaten?”
“I’m full. And I need to sleep early so I won’t be tired tomorrow. Just leave everything there after you eat. I’ll get
up and clean it.”
“Ah, seriously. Mom!”
My sister called after her, but Mom closed the bedroom door.
Perhaps she had lost her appetite, because my sister also put down the chicken leg she was holding.
“This is seriously exhausting. When will we ever be able to live without worrying about money?”
My sister, who had barely eaten a few bites, also got up and went into her room.
In the end, an entire chicken remained untouched.
It was all mine.
Jackpot.
---
[This Friday at two.]
The appointment with the producer was finally set for a day when I had no classes.
‘Good.’
The argument between Mom and my sister had been unfortunate, but it was a problem that could be solved as long as I made
money.
When you thought about it, it wasn’t actually that big a problem in life.
‘It’s different from things beyond my control, like health, time, or natural disasters.’
Perhaps it was because I had lived for half a century.
My attitude toward observing life had changed considerably as well.
I leisurely enjoyed the spring sunshine as I slowly walked across campus.
Spring had arrived decisively, leaping right across the boundary between seasons.
My heart felt as light as my clothes.
Along the roads, I noticed banners put up by various departments.
[President’s Citation, Korea Culture and Arts Award. Professor Song Young-do, Department of Creative Writing]
[Professor Han Mi-jin. Congratulations on winning the Design Grand Prize!]
[Haesan Literary Award, Grand Prize Winner. Class of ’09, Student Jung Jo-hyun. Congratulations!]
Every few steps, I spotted news of awards won by professors, seniors, and juniors from the Creative Writing department.
As I looked around, one unexpected banner caught my eye.
My steps stopped without me realizing it.
[Songguk Ilbo New Year Literary Contest Winner. Congratulations to Student Song Jin-ho!]
‘Song Jin-ho...’
A genius who had entered the university through special admission after winning a youth literary award, he was regarded
as a promising next-generation writer who would carry on the legacy of Korean literary fiction.
On top of that, he came from a wealthy family, making him the envy of all our classmates.
He was in the same department as me and was also a member of the same literary club.
‘Come to think of it, wasn’t today the regular critique day?’
The critique sessions hadn’t been held for four weeks already.
Since I remembered it anyway, I headed toward the clubroom in Building D, partly to check the literary journal.
After climbing the stairs and passing through a narrow hallway, I spotted an old sign.
Munbi.
An abbreviation for Literature and Criticism.
It was a club with thirty years of history, centered around poetry, fiction, and essays, and held critique sessions at
least once a week.
Click.
I opened the door and walked in, only to find people inside.
“Huh?”
The junior and classmate who saw me stared at me in surprise.
It wasn’t just one person.
There were six of them sitting around a table.
‘Why are they gathered at this hour?’
At a glance, it looked like they had gathered for a critique session.
But I hadn’t received a single message about it.
‘Wait. Come to think of it, there haven’t been any messages in the group chat for quite a while.’
I was a club member too.
If there was a critique session, I obviously should have known.
Then, in an instant, I realized why I hadn’t been contacted all this time.
‘They deliberately excluded me.’
It wasn’t difficult to figure out why.
The guy who did nothing but work hard.
The guy who trembled whenever he had to present.
The guy who was useless during critique sessions.
‘That was how they saw me.’
But I had no intention of quietly putting up with this situation.
My personality had never been particularly easygoing to begin with.
“Was today the critique session? I didn’t get any notice.”
Several classmates looked at me awkwardly.
“...”
Silence fell over the clubroom.
A moment later, awkward smiles appeared on the faces of a few juniors.
“Senior Seo-jun, weren’t you taking a leave of absence?”
It was one of the juniors who had been badmouthing me in the lecture room yesterday.
“That’s right. We heard you were taking a leave of absence, so we didn’t contact you.”
I did?
I swore I had never once told them I was taking a leave of absence.
“If you weren’t going to take one, you should’ve told us in advance. Then we would’ve contacted you.”
They had jumped to a conclusion and were now shifting the blame for their own mistake onto me.
‘Is this what people call gaslighting these days?’
The old me probably would have apologized instead.
But things were different now.
“I never said I was taking a leave of absence. How could I have told you in advance that I wasn’t?”
“Ah, well...”
The junior dragged out his words and exchanged glances with the others.
Then their eyes naturally settled on one person.
The instigator behind this whole situation.
“There seems to have been a misunderstanding.”
One guy smiled as he stood up.
His hair was neatly arranged, and he held his chin high as though he were some sort of nobleman.
“It worked out for the best. Since you’re already here, why don’t you join us for the critique?”
It was Song Jin-ho.
If he was the sun, then perhaps I was nothing more than a firefly.
That was how different our positions were within the department.
“Sure. Let’s do it together, then.”
At Song Jin-ho’s words, the others reluctantly joined in.
“Hey, Kwon Seo-jun. Since you’re here anyway, go make seven copies of these too.”
They handed me the manuscripts with unmistakable annoyance.
They wouldn’t let me participate in the critique, yet they ordered me around.
Though phrased like a suggestion, it was no different from an order.
‘They’re basically saying they won’t let me participate unless I do this kind of errand.’
That was why I had always done whatever they wanted.
I had bowed and scraped before a world that refused to accept me, forcing myself into its mold.
A humiliating submission that had nevertheless become familiar.
I humored their adorable little abuse of authority and did as they asked.
A short while later, after finishing the copies and returning to the clubroom, I found that they hadn’t even waited for
me and were already deeply engrossed in the critique.
“Jin-ho, your piece for this assignment was amazing.”
“I know. An established writer really is on another level.”
It was closer to flattery than criticism, and I nearly laughed out loud.
Then again, none of them wrote better than Song Jin-ho, so perhaps it was only natural.
Just then, Song Jin-ho, who had been basking in their praise like a king, looked toward me.
“Now that Seo-jun’s here, why don’t we critique Seo-jun’s work first?”
“Sounds good.”
“It’s been a while, so let’s really go over it properly.”
In their hands was the poem I had submitted an entire month ago.
Curious to see how they would handle it, I adjusted my posture and sat down.
“First of all, the transitions between images are awkward. There’s no sense of unity, so the whole thing feels messy.
There are also too many expressions that seem to have been written by lumping words together without understanding their
precise meanings. And the theme itself is pretty bad.”
Song Jin-ho pointed out the problems one by one.
The others nodded as though they were under some kind of mass hypnosis.
“Right. Thinking about it, it’s all style and no substance. The excessive embellishment makes it impossible to picture
what you’re actually trying to say.”
“I’m curious about this part. What exactly does ‘a black room where dazzling silence lingers in the distance’ even mean?
Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can convey something that doesn’t exist in your own head to someone else. Just
sticking words together doesn’t make it writing.”
“I agree. There’s nothing inside it. So there isn’t really anything to say.”
Sharp criticism poured out one after another.
Yet I deliberately said nothing.
Why?
Because their criticisms weren’t particularly wrong.
‘There’s some merit to what they’re saying. Their analysis is sharp, too.’
I couldn’t deny it.
Until a day ago, that had genuinely been the level of my writing.
But the real problem lay somewhere else.
This was supposed to be a critique session.
When I simply continued listening, one of them frowned.
“Kwon Seo-jun, why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Seriously, even after we’ve explained all this, you still have nothing to say?”
“If you’re just going to keep your mouth shut every time, why even come to a critique session?”
They bared their teeth like wolves surrounding an injured deer.
Normally, I would have said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ll work harder.’
But things were different now.
“You’re all right, so I don’t have anything to say.”
“Seriously? That’s it? Then what’s the point of having a critique session?”
I couldn’t help laughing at his reaction, considering how he was pretending to care so deeply about the purpose of
critique.
“What? Why are you laughing?”
I forced down the corner of my mouth that kept rising and looked at them.
“Because everything you said is right. So what’s your alternative?”
At my question, they stared at me blankly for a moment.
“...What?”
“Honestly, saying ‘this is wrong’ or ‘this is strange’... that’s easy, isn’t it? There are plenty of reasons to
criticize a winning piece, a bestseller, or even Shakespeare’s writing. That’s why all those critics are still making a
comfortable living.”
One of them immediately became enraged.
“Y-you’re saying this crappy piece is fine and our critique is the problem?”
The flustered guy even began stammering.
I think I understood why I had never been able to find a theme in his writing.
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying we should have a higher-quality critique. It shouldn’t be, ‘You wrote this
terribly.’ It should be, ‘I think you could write it better if you did this.’ If there’s no alternative, it isn’t
criticism. It’s just condemnation.”
“...”
“Am I wrong? The reason we hold critiques isn’t just to find problems. We’re supposed to find solutions to those
problems too. So how am I supposed to fix what you pointed out?”
Only then did one of them timidly open his mouth.
“Well... Maybe you could bring out the metaphorical aspect a little more?”
“Wouldn’t that just add more abstract meaning through excessive embellishment? That contradicts what you said earlier.”
“...”
My question immediately brought the conversation to a halt, and silence filled the clubroom.
That brief silence contained a great deal of information.
‘It means they’ve never actually thought about an alternative for my work.’
In other words, their goal had simply been to tear down my writing.
“Hey, why are you picking a fight with us just because you can’t write?”
At that moment, one of them, unable to stand the silence, shouted irritably.
I almost burst out laughing.
I had already admitted that I couldn’t write well.
I had actually asked for alternatives precisely because I wanted a higher-quality critique, yet his instinctive anger
proved that my thinking hadn’t been wrong.
Now that the truth had been laid bare, there was no reason to continue this critique.
“Picking a fight... If talking about the proper function of a critique is ‘picking a fight,’ then I have nothing more to
say. I’m done here. A critique without alternatives is meaningless.”
As I answered, I put down the manuscript I had been holding.
“Oh, and I’m not running errands for you guys anymore either. Take care.”
Thud.
Their mouths fell open.