The First Printing
Printing.
I write the novel into a word processor and hit the print button. In mere seconds, my words appear on A4 paper. Punch holes through the stack with a binding machine, roughly stitch it together, and you’ve got a finished novel.
In this place, though, you have to start by hunting down lead type.
Thousands of printing characters sat neatly arranged in the corner of the print room.
I moved among them, picking out the characters needed for the novel one by one in the proper order—typesetting selection, they called it—while thinking about the advanced printing technology of the modern world.
Every time I do this, I feel like my eyeballs are going to fall out. If you don’t look closely, they all look the same.
“Hwarin. I’ve finished selecting type for one page’s worth. Can you handle the composition?”
“……Yeah.”
Why does her answer sound so drained?
Hwarin’s shoulders slumped a little as she began arranging the characters I had pulled, building the type frame for printing—the composition work.
Is she tired?
Sorting books, balancing the ledgers, cleaning, and every other odd job under the sun. Even with me and the elderly staff helping, the burden is heavy.
When fatigue piles up, it would be better to sleep early. For some reason lately, Hwarin refuses to go to bed until I’ve finished writing. Proofreading and checking for typos don’t even need to be done every single day.
Dangga Pungun is scheduled to go on sale tomorrow. Once we’re roughly done, I should send her upstairs to rest.
“Hwarin. We’re short on type. Did you put any extras aside somewhere?”
“There’s some we received in that box over there.”
“Found them.”
I pulled a bundle of frequently used characters from the corner box. At least we don’t have to do the casting work ourselves when we print. That much is a relief.
Casting means melting lead alloy and using a casting machine to form the desired type characters.
Printing work originally starts with casting. But casting is the process of creating the type itself, and it demands meticulous skill.
Who would have thought there’d be something harder about printing than changing a toner cartridge?
Thankfully, one of the retired employees still keeps a casting machine around as a hobby. He takes only the material costs and makes whatever type we’re short on beyond the existing stock.
Hwarin’s maternal grandfather really must have been a man of tremendous renown.
Pulling out type, I feel anew how crucial connections are in this world.
Just revealing that Hwarin is the granddaughter of the Baek Family is enough for most people in Yichang to go out of their way for her. Of course, money is another matter entirely.
“Hwarin. I’ve finished the selection work, so I’ll help you.”
Is it because she’s tired? Her hands seem especially slow today. Having finished selecting type, I moved to her side and began helping with the composition.
“……Yeah.”
Up close, Hwarin’s face looked less exhausted than shadowed somehow. Had something upset her?
She’d been in a good mood during the Chilbofun incident this afternoon.
“Hwarin. Do I smell weird or something?”
I made a show of exaggeratedly sniffing my own sleeve right in front of her.
“No. Why?”
“Hahaha. Just wondering if I still reek from the mess earlier.”
I brought up the funniest thing that had happened today, hoping to chase the gloom from her face.
“You don’t smell.”
Hwarin answered listlessly, the shadows under her eyes only deepening.
What’s with her? She should have been thrilled. While I cleaned up the aftermath, that young lady had demonstrated just how red a human face could turn.
Of course, I’d scolded her afterward—in an offhand way—to think about the other customers next time. Is that what’s bothering her?
“Well, good! That was seriously hilarious earlier, right?”
I laughed deliberately loud, acting as if the cleanup hadn’t bothered me at all.
Hwarin. Let’s talk about the fun parts of today and blow away the bad mood.
But she only looked up at me quietly, then carefully opened her mouth.
“……Do customers like that come around often?”
She means the female customers who strike up conversation with those odd little smiles.
“As if. To a black-haired barbarian like me? I’m lucky if they don’t laugh at me behind my back. Just the other day a bunch of young ladies came in together, pointed at me, and giggled among themselves. If they hadn’t been customers, I swear…”
I put on a sincerely aggrieved expression as I spoke to Hwarin. I didn’t even need to hear the words to know exactly what they’d said. I’m used to it.
“Hey, your boyfriend’s walking by.”
“Where? Where? You crazy bitch. He’s your boyfriend.”
At least lower your voices. The ugly guy hearing that might not count as a man in your eyes, but he can still get hurt. Try remembering that sometime.
Of course, my looks have improved since coming to this world. But that only helps when I’m performing as a foreigner Maedamja, a storyteller from afar.
In the Central Plains I remain a black-haired barbarian—discriminated against and despised. That fact never changes.
“It doesn’t seem like that’s the reason.”
Dang Hwarin looked at me with a faintly skeptical tone.
“What do you mean it doesn’t? I keep myself neat, so the prejudice is a little lighter. Try living as a barbarian in the Central Plains looking like a beggar. The whole world feels like your enemy.”
For a moment the old humiliations and discrimination unfurled in my mind like a panorama. Days when I’d beg for a single meal only to have even the rice bowl I was holding knocked into the dirt because I was a barbarian.
To have endured those years of shame and become a shopkeeper… life really is unpredictable.
“……If that’s how you understand it, fine.”
“What do you mean ‘understand it that way’? That’s just the truth.”
“Heh. Sure, sure.”
Dang Hwarin looked at my sulky face and let out a small laugh. Maybe my self-deprecation had cheered her up a little.
The shadows hadn’t completely left her expression, but some ease had returned.
With this atmosphere, we should be able to finish the remaining work just fine. In the slightly brighter mood we threw ourselves into the final preparations for tomorrow’s publication.
Printing and binding.
We worked busily, inking the type frames, printing page after page, stitching the sheets, and completing the books.
Finally finished.
Dangga Pungun.
Staring at the title stamped boldly on the cover, something rose up thickly in my chest. I couldn’t even begin to count how many things had happened to bring us this far.
If we’d copied these by hand, it would have taken forever.
Behind the volume in my hands, hundreds more copies of Dangga Pungun waited. Tteokhyeopji. Looking at the novels that would be called “color pulp” in this world, I smiled.
Just one last step, then carry them downstairs, and tomorrow we can start selling.
“Hwarin. You did great. I’ll handle the rest.”
“If we’re doing it, we do it together to the end. What kind of nonsense is that?”
“You’re tired. Go rest.”
“As if.”
“Yeah, as if for me too.”
I exaggeratedly mimicked her tone and gestures.
“What the hell is that. Heh.”
Hwarin couldn’t hold back her laughter. Brightest expression she’d worn since entering the print room.
“Binding’s done, so all that’s left is stamping and stacking them downstairs. Go on up and rest first.”
“Fine. Then…”
She nodded, apparently convinced by how firm I sounded.
When she tilted her head, a black smear of ink that the lighting and her mottled skin had hidden became suddenly visible.
“Hwarin. There’s ink on your face… Ah!”
The moment I raised the towel I was holding to wipe her face, Hwarin frantically seized my wrist.
“Ah! Sorry.”
Whether it had been pure instinctive defense or not, the second she realized I was in pain she hurriedly released me.
“No. I was too thoughtless.”
Whatever else might be, her face is a mass of complexes for her. She’ll make someone shit themselves in seven steps for laughing at it, and here I was about to touch the spot. Far too careless.
I gently cradled the wrist she had grabbed and bowed my head in apology. Dang Hwarin kept staring at my wrist with a guilty look, then lifted her gaze to my eyes.
“Yunho.”
She looked at me with the eyes of someone who had reached a serious decision.
“Hm?”
“Please.”
A flush of embarrassment crossed her face. Then she closed her eyes and offered me her chin.
“Uh? Uh, yeah. I’ll wipe it for you.”
Carefully I cupped her chin with one hand and brought the towel to the smear on her face with the other.
A quiet print room. Two people whose work was finished. The moment the towel touched her, Hwarin flinched strangely, then accepted my touch with a face that looked oddly flushed.
Atmosphere’s getting weird. Awkward.
“Yunho.”
“Huh? Yeah!”
I answered, startled.
“Because of the medicine you gave me, it doesn’t hurt.”
“That’s good.”
I answered absently, wiping the ink from her cheek.
“Thanks to you, I was able to keep this bookstore.”
“That’s good.”
“Thanks to you, this bookstore is doing well.”
“That’s good.”
“I don’t know if that book will succeed too, but…”
“Haha. I’ll make sure we don’t end up with leftovers.”
“Thank you.”
Hwarin gently stroked the wrist she had gripped earlier.
“This much is only natural between friends.”
“Right. Because we’re friends…”
Dang Hwarin’s voice sounded somehow deflated.
“Hwarin?”
“It’s nothing. Nothing at all. I’m just being a total bitch today. I’m going up. Finish the rest.”
Without looking back, she left the print room.
“What’s with her…?”
Dang Hwarin hurried up to the attic room and headed for the washbasin.
She stared at the face reflected in the mirror.
The grotesque visage below her nose. The blotchy, ruined skin ended at her jaw; her neck was clean. But if she lifted her upper clothes, her torso looked much the same.
“Between friends.”
Looking into the mirror, Hwarin wore a bitter expression as she began thinking about the first friend she had ever gained.
The thing she had longed for so desperately.
Not her background, but the outsider who had looked at her and approached anyway.
The person who gently offered a hand when she was so exhausted and in pain that she had simply collapsed.
The friend who, when she had lost everything and being near her would only bring him loss, looked disappointed and asked why she hadn’t come to him for help.
Whenever Hwarin watched the back of the man writing late into the night with a tired body for her sake, warmth filled her chest.
She kept thinking about the man who filled her mind completely.
“This is the life I wanted.”
The bird that had escaped its cage had barely found a nest of its own.
When she was with him, she felt like an ordinary person too. Living with a friend she could share her heart with was happier than the wealthy life at the Seong Family Manor.
The precious everyday life she had finally managed to grasp.
Lately, though, she had begun to feel a little stifled.
“Don’t get the wrong idea with a face like this.”
Hwarin warned herself while staring into the mirror.
Yunho has a painful past. The grief of losing his closest friend.
It was only because of the guilt he felt toward his Dokin friend that a relationship like this could exist at all.
Because Yunho once had a Dokin friend, he was able to treat her normally. He is being kind to her as atonement, giving her the warmth he could not give that friend.
She must not misunderstand his kindness.
Don’t misunderstand, Dang Hwarin.
“What we have now is good.”
She warned herself once more.
The stifling feeling inside her chest. An emotion she still could not name clearly. If she vomited it out in front of him, even the relationship they had now might collapse.
She deliberately ignored the certain feeling slowly sprouting in her heart and began washing herself.
No matter how much she scrubbed, the ink stains disappeared, but the stains on her skin did not.
The finishing touch that brings the dragon to life.
Just one more thing and everything would be complete.
I was drowning in a massive dilemma as I prepared to put the final dot on the eye of the dragon that would become real.
That dilemma was this:
Pen name. What should I use?
Nicknames matter.
Choose a bad nickname and at an online game meetup you get middle-aged bearded guys yelling, “Tinkerbell, you little shit! Are you the Fairy of Love?!”
Or a web novel platform or management company cheerfully greeting you with, “Hello, Author BigTitsDumping. Haha. Hello, Author BiggerTitsAreBetter. You changed your nickname, I see.”
A pen name is another name for yourself.
You can’t decide it carelessly. You have to be careful.
Even if I use a pen name, my renown still rises.
That had already been proven when I was active as the black-haired Maedamja Kang Mo, suppressing the Heavenly Killing Star’s murderous intent and easing a Dokin’s pain. The real problem was which pen name to choose.
Kang Mo is better left unused from now on. It could still get tangled up with Heokho Fort somehow.
Should I just use my real name?
For a moment I saw a woman in far-off Liaodong Province, a place almost unimaginably distant from Hubei, seeing me off with tears.
“Huuuuuh.”
I let out a long sigh.
If I become famous, I will have to face her someday. But there’s no need to rush it.
Maybe I should borrow the pen names of famous seniors from the original world.
The countless wuxia seniors who laid the foundation for modern martial arts novels and revived them.
If we’re talking founding fathers of wuxia, it’s Author Waryongsaeng. For the pulp stuff it’s Author Waryonggang. So maybe I should try Waryongho? No. Something about it feels lacking.
Or “Friend of Paper”—Jiu?
Somehow it feels like a pen name that would get me sued regularly. Doesn’t suit me.
No matter how much I pondered, an easy conclusion refused to appear.
“What a luxurious problem to have.”
I laughed at myself for fretting over something like this.
Just the other day I was going to sleep clutching an empty stomach, worrying whether I’d even get to eat the next day.
Just as I told Hwarin, this world is far too harsh to barbarians.
Even if Kang Yunho becomes famous through writing, there will still be people who point and call him a barbarian.
“There was a good pen name after all.”
Smiling, I pulled out two characters of type and made a stamp, pressing the pen name onto the book covers.
The two characters I took out.
Another name for myself.
Barbarian: Ho.
Brush: Pil.
“Hopil.”
Black-haired barbarian.
An outsider who transmigrated into another world.
No matter what I say, no matter what I write, this fact will never change.
Then I will use it as my pen name.
Yes. From now on I am the outcast writer of a martial arts visual novel.