Chapter 32
“Thanks to you, I ate well, had a good time, and I’m heading home. Thanks. Get some rest.”
“Yeah, see you tomorrow. Get going.”
Deputy Manager Park waved a hand and headed for the subway.
I had no idea how many bottles he’d put away on his own, just because he was so excited to be drinking with some good snacks for once.
He lurched, nearly face-planting a second ago because of it.
“Ughhh!”
He kicked at the useless charcoal briquettes with all the grace of a drunk man venting his frustration at the world.
“That idiot.”
I stepped closer, thinking I might have to clean it up for him, but there were already signs that someone had deliberately stomped around nearby and scattered the charcoal pieces. I left it alone.
It looked like a house where an elderly couple lived. With the weather turning colder lately, frost had been forming in the mornings, so they must have done it to keep someone from slipping on the downhill slope.
After sending Deputy Manager Park off, I went back to the workshop.
It was 11 p.m. now.
The location of this place was awkward, really. The office was in Jongno, the workshop was in Changsin-dong, and my home was near Daehak-ro.
I’d chosen this area because it sat in the middle and seemed conveniently accessible.
Now that I actually got it, going home is a hassle.
Especially this late, it felt less like a commute and more like I should just sleep here and go straight to work tomorrow.
It would cut down on travel time, and I’d have a little more breathing room in the morning.
Might be better to get a bed...
Even a cheap mattress would probably make things easier.
Still, a web novel contest, huh...
What Deputy Manager Park had said kept circling through my head.
When I searched the internet, one site came up.
The World’s Strongest Contest...?
Even the name had that web-novel flavor to it.
[Prize Money]
- Grand Prize: 100 million won (1 work)
- Second Prize: 50 million won (3 works)
- Excellence Award: 10 million won (10 works)
- Special Selection: 5 million won (10 works)
“...Wow, that’s huge.”
I’d occasionally seen news about how the webtoon and web novel markets were getting bigger.
I’d assumed there were limits, since it was a one-hundred-won market.
But apparently it was a lot bigger than I’d realized.
“The schedule is... huh, it’s already started?”
It looked like it would take a while to prepare.
Would I even have time to enter?
“For the TF team-!”
“Cheers!”
Clink-!
Beer glasses swayed and knocked together.
This damn company dinner.
Hell, it was alcohol two days in a row now.
If I’d known this would happen, I would’ve paced myself with Deputy Manager Park yesterday.
I wanted to skip it, but tonight I really couldn’t.
This was the TF team’s closing dinner, after all, and it doubled as the breakup party for the project.
“Good work, everyone!”
“You all did great.”
“Thanks for doing such a good job, everybody.”
“This is the first time a TF team has wrapped up this smoothly.”
“Yeah, same here.”
Team Leader Han Su-a stood carefully and spoke.
“The director personally reviewed this project’s results and said he was pleased.”
“So the performance results are...?”
“Yes. You can all look forward to good news.”
At that, smiles bloomed across the team members’ faces.
Good performance results led to high evaluations at work, and that meant a strong chance of a favorable salary negotiation next year.
Everyone in the TF team had gone through a lot, so it was good to see they were getting their reward.
“I don’t know if we’ll get a chance to work together again, but let’s raise one more toast to that day.”
“Sounds good. Cheers!”
An hour later, the table was in full swing.
Team Leader Han Su-a lightly tapped my arm.
She nodded toward the door, so I stepped outside first. Before long, she followed.
“Team Leader Han doesn’t smoke, right?”
“I thought maybe we could go buy some hangover medicine together.”
“Ah, good idea.”
I headed to the convenience store with Team Leader Han.
“They’ve got a two-plus-one deal here. Should we get this?”
“Oh, yes. Let’s do that.”
I picked out enough to match the number of team members.
“Would you like some ice cream, Deputy Manager Kang?”
“I’m good.”
“This one’s also one-plus-one.”
“Ah, then I’ll take a Chuchu bar.”
“Pffft-!”
“...?”
“Sorry. It just sounded funny.”
We each bit into our Chuchu bars and left the convenience store.
“By the way, Deputy Manager Kang. You’re in Planning Team 3, right?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the atmosphere there like?”
“Pretty decent, really. Good people.”
People without rough edges.
That made them easy to get along with, and they looked after one another too.
“I heard a lot of people there transferred in from other companies.”
“Yes, that’s right. I think that’s part of why the team feels so tight-knit.”
“I see. That’s nice.”
She hesitated for a moment, then spoke carefully.
“I’m moving to Team 3 starting next week.”
“...Oh, really?”
“Yes. I got the assignment. I wanted to tell you first, Deputy Manager Kang...”
Team Leader Han looked at my face and tilted her head.
“Looks like you already knew?”
“Well, rumors started floating around a few days ago.”
“Oh? Really?”
“Yes. Nothing official, but people were saying you might be coming.”
“So the office gossip really is fast. The decision only came down today.”
“Ah. Not everyone knows, just a few people.”
“That’s a relief, at least.”
Then she clapped her hands as if she’d suddenly remembered something.
“If possible, could you tell Deputy Manager Park too? I feel like I should say something as a fellow TF team member, but I just can’t seem to find the right moment.”
“Of course. I’ll pass it along.”
“Thanks.”
Team Leader Han stopped walking and looked at me.
“Anyway, the important thing is...”
She held out her hand to me.
“Please take care of me again. Let’s do well as teammates.”
“Sounds good.”
Team Leader Han. Or rather, she’d be going back to being Manager Han Su-a now.
Manager Han Su-a in Planning Team 3...
I couldn’t quite picture it yet, but at the very least, the company was going to get a little more interesting.
Another weekend had arrived.
Lately, whenever I had a day off, I seemed to spend the whole thing shut away in the workshop.
I had so many things I wanted to do and so many things I needed to do that, oddly enough, it felt more comfortable here than at home.
Maybe I should play the violin for a while today?
♩♪-♬♪♩-♭♪-♪♬♩♬
After playing the piece I’d learned at the very beginning, I still felt unsatisfied, so I learned and played a pop song at an intermediate level too.
“Nice. Really nice.”
It stung every time I had to pay to learn a new song.
Still, once I learned it, I could use it for the rest of my life, so it wasn’t a bad deal.
I played the violin as much as I wanted in the morning.
In the afternoon, I pointed the projector at the wall and watched three movies back-to-back on a 100-inch screen.
I sprawled on the sofa and enjoyed the weekend, and it was hard to imagine having this much leisure.
Then evening came.
After ordering fried chicken and tearing into it while watching highlights from overseas football, it was already 9 p.m.
“Feels a bit of a shame to go to sleep like this.”
Still, this was a workshop in name, so I really ought to make something.
Should I keep writing that novel I was working on last time?
It was a pity there was no special bonus.
But the active effect’s cooldown had come back around, so it seemed worth using.
If it comes out well, great. If not, whatever.
After stretching my body, I sat down in front of the laptop.
Echo of the Keyboard active effect is being used.
For 24 hours, the passive effect will apply even when I write content I haven’t directly experienced.
All right. Let’s get started.
“Seven episodes, huh...”
This time too, I wrote seven episodes in twenty-four hours.
It writes pretty well even without the bonus.
Of course, back then the words had flowed as if I were possessed, every detail fitting together perfectly while I was barely aware of it, and I’d even planted and paid off the foreshadowing without realizing.
Now it wasn’t quite at that level, but it still felt like the writing came out smoothly and read easily.
If I can keep this up, weekly serialization seven times a week won’t be a problem.
Of course, as a salaryman, I thought anything beyond five days a week was a kind of taboo, but in this industry, daily serialization seemed to be the norm.
Click-.
Before I knew it, I’d opened the web novel contest site without meaning to.
Should I give it a shot?
I kept getting drawn back to that prize money.
The Grand Prize was a hundred million won.
Of course, there was no way a guy who’d never written a web novel before would take first place.
I didn’t have the nerve to aim for Second Prize either.
Special Selection might be realistic, though, right?
That still came with a five-million-won prize.
Besides, it led to publication too, and I’d heard the royalties from sales were separate from that.
Right. I’m not trying to make tens of billions from a novel or anything. Even a few hundred thousand coming in steadily would be good enough.
As someone who’d once tried making money through emotes, I knew better than most just how delicious royalty income could be.
Don’t obsess over the ranking. Just keep serializing.
I scheduled each episode of the web novel manuscript I’d written.
[Upload reservation completed.]
Done. Now I’m not looking at it for a while.
Everything that happened in this workshop was, to me, nothing more than a side job.
I didn’t need to invite hassle or stress into it.
If I wanted to do it, I’d do it. If not, I’d drop it.
That was the biggest advantage of a side job.
Meanwhile, at Munstopia headquarters in Gangnam, the major web novel platform.
“Section chief. Here’s the analysis report on this contest’s entries.”
“Yeah, put it there.”
“Understood.”
The subordinate bowed and withdrew.
“Sigh.”
After reading the report, Team Leader Lee Jong-sik let out a long breath first.
“Seriously, why is only this contest such a mess?”
He was genuinely frustrated.
Munstopia’s 10th The World’s Strongest Contest.
The previous contests had never been runaway blockbusters, but they’d always produced at least one hit, usually two or three, and that had been enough to keep the event alive.
But this year was different.
Starting from the year he’d taken charge, the atmosphere had been terrible.
“The star authors are either on break or serializing existing works, and the established names who did join are all bombing...”
All he could do was lean on the contracted publishers and pressure them to hurry up their submissions.
Even that hadn’t been very effective this time.
Is this really how the contest dies?
For him, who was right on the edge of a team-leader promotion, the pressure was intense.
At the very least, this contest needed to produce a proper result if he wanted a future to look forward to.
Hah, this won’t do.
He stopped bothering with the data analysis.
Instead, he started digging through the serialization listings himself.
Anything worth using here?
It was his job to find a good work and pull it upward somehow if there was one.
[An AI Helps the Apocalypse]
[Hunters Who Climb the Tower Die]
[Getting Easy Money From a Transcendent Tower.]
[Vacationing on an SSS-Rank Deserted Island]
“They’re all bad right from the title.”
They were mass-produced novels he didn’t even want to click on.
Then one work snagged his eye.
I Spent a Night with the Chaebol's Only Daughter.
The title’s not bad, but...
The problem was the genre selection.
Sitcom, romantic fantasy?
He was dumbfounded at a glance.
“No way something like this works on Munstopia.”
He was about to pass it over without a second thought.
But then.
Fifty views and fourteen comments?
Thinking he might have missed something, he looked again.
- Writer: Side-Hustling Teddy Bear.
The pen name was also the kind of name a complete nobody among new writers would use.
Manipulation? Or buddy-pushing?
If it was something like that, he was ready to bring the hammer down and throw it out of the contest immediately.
I’ll know once I read it.
Team Leader Lee Jong-sik clicked the work and started reading without hesitation.
Whirrr- whirr-.
Swish-.
Drdrdr-.
How long had he been hearing only the sound of the mouse wheel scrolling down?
“...Already?”
He blinked without realizing it.
“No, what is this?”
He’d assumed it was a manipulated entry he’d need to crush.
“Why is this fun?”
Before he knew it, he’d read every uploaded episode.
Even the sitcom and romantic fantasy tags listed in the synopsis weren’t wrong.
It was a genre that had nothing at all to do with his personal taste, and yet he’d been pulled in so hard that he’d lost track of time.
On a site full of fantasy, macho, male-targeted fiction, this kind of writing can come out?
And more importantly:
This is the funniest thing I’ve read in this year’s contest.
He liked it that much.
And looking at the author info, there’s no previous work. But for a first try, the writing is incredibly clean.
He instinctively reached a conclusion.
This is some famous author hiding behind a pen name?!
Team Leader Lee Jong-sik immediately dropped the link into the work chat.
This should be easy to find.
He grinned.
Their combined experience in the company had to add up to more than a hundred years. They were a veteran team.
“...Nobody knows?”
Team Leader Lee Jong-sik clutched his head in bewilderment.
“Who the hell is this writer?”