No Novel Starts Intending to Fail
There is no novel that starts intending to fail.
The reason a writer agonizes and frets so endlessly is simple: he wants the words he has poured onto the page to earn a warm reception, to be read by as many people as possible.
A carefully built tower will not fall. Yet no matter how painstakingly raised, if no one climbs it and no one so much as glances its way, the tower simply stands there—unfallen, unnoticed, and alone.
That hollow ache when a work you have labored over for so long finally fails… It is a pain every creator must be prepared to carry, and yet a pain no creator ever wants to feel again.
“It’s… ambiguous.”
First-day sales of Dangga Pungun were nowhere near a triumph, yet not quite dismal enough to call a failure either. A thoroughly middling result.
I had honestly expected it to fly off the shelves from day one. Looking back, that had been far too optimistic.
Hello, people of the Murim. My pen name is Hopil. Dangga Pungun. Receiving good response in Yichang. Your reactions and recommendations. Converted into repayment of our bookstore’s debts. Always grateful. Martial-Arts-Novel-Lover.
I had even pictured myself featured in the Murim newspaper, the Jeobo, giving a dashing interview. Sadly, that remained a fantasy.
“Hey, Yunho. Don’t look so crushed. We’ll sell every last copy.”
Hwarin watched me with worried eyes as I stared blankly at the stacks of Dangga Pungun, her voice soft with comfort.
“Yeah. I really hope so.”
“So stop fretting and open the shop already.”
“Yes, yes. Right away.”
I answered her with deliberate lightness, determined to look completely unbothered, and unlocked the front door.
“Holy—! Wh-what the hell are you people?!”
The moment the bookstore door swung open, I found myself face-to-face with more than a dozen hollow-eyed men. They were pressed so tightly against the entrance that they looked exactly like a zombie horde waiting to pounce on the first living survivor who showed his face.
“It’s open!”
“We’ve been waiting since before the sun came up!”
“Hic… I waited all night long! Why open so late?!”
The zombie horde—no, the customers—streamed inside the instant the gap appeared, fanning out through the shop with the single-minded hunger of the undead hunting warm flesh.
“Where is it?”
“I don’t see it!”
“I bought it right here yesterday!”
“It’s gone!”
What on earth…?
“Manager! Manager!”
While I stood there gaping like an idiot, one of the men rushed straight at me, voice frantic.
“Scholar Hwang? What in the world is going on?”
Even Scholar Hwang’s face looked gaunt and sleep-deprived. He wore the exact expression of a gamer who has stood shivering in the night wind for hours before a midnight release, completely unaware that the long-awaited title after a ten-year wait is actually a sleep aid in game form.
“……Give it to me.”
“Huh?”
Give him what?
“Dangga Pungun! Volume Two! Hand it over!”
“What do you mean there is no Volume Two? The preview for Volume Two is written right here in plain sight!”
“The novel only just released Volume One.”
I spoke firmly to Scholar Hwang, whose eyes were already darting around the shelves as if I might be hiding the next volume somewhere and lying about it. This wasn’t some urban legend about a two-hundred-won ghost book; how was anyone supposed to have already read a volume that didn’t exist yet?
“This is impossible. This simply cannot be.”
“I clearly saw Volume Two yesterday. I planned to buy Volume One first and then pick up Volume Two if it was good. Are you telling me I spent the entire night waiting for a hallucination? No. Impossible. Absolutely impossible!”
“You finish Volume One and then there’s no Volume Two? W-what kind of cruelty is this? It has to be somewhere!”
“Hubei’s Number One Courtesan said she was waiting for me, so I waited all night!”
The moment the words left my mouth, every customer who had bought Volume One the previous day let out a collective shriek and began tearing through the shelves in a frenzy.
Had every single one of these people really shown up at dawn just to hunt for Volume Two of Dangga Pungun? I had to clamp down hard on the giddy grin that tried to split my face.
“Then when does the next volume come out?”
“Only after every copy of Volume One is sold.”
I smoothed my expression in an instant and answered Scholar Hwang’s desperate question with perfect calm.
“We have to sell hundreds of copies before we can even see the next volume?”
“That’s right.”
At minimum I needed to clear seventy percent of the Volume One stock—no, eighty—before I would risk printing the next one.
“How are we supposed to sell hundreds of books…? No. Wait. This book is absolutely worth that many sales.”
“How long am I supposed to wait until every last copy is gone? Damn you, Hwang-gu, you bastard! I suddenly resent you. Why did you have to show me this book so early?!”
Scholar Hwang and a man who looked like his friend began bickering right there in the aisle. Why were they fighting each other?
“Yesterday you were thanking me for the recommendation and gushing over the content! Now it’s my fault?!”
“It’s your fault no matter how you look at it.”
“Shut up and buy one yourself. The faster they sell, the sooner we get the next volume!”
Scholar Hwang snatched a copy of Dangga Pungun off the display table and shoved it into his friend’s hands.
“Fine. I was going to buy one anyway.”
The friend paid for it on the spot.
“Manager, I’ll take another one as well.”
“Scholar Hwang, you already purchased a copy yesterday.”
“Ahem. Well, about that…”
Scholar Hwang awkwardly avoided my eyes and trailed off. His friend grinned wickedly and supplied the missing explanation.
“This bastard Hwang-gu had his lamp burning late into the night. This morning I found him with sunken cheeks and a book so sticky the pages wouldn’t turn. You should have seen the pure panic on his face, Manager. What an absolute idiot. Heh heh heh.”
Ah. So that was it.
“You little—!”
Scholar Hwang, looking more flustered than I had ever seen him, roared at his friend.
“Were you trying to get Dangga Pungun pregnant?”
“Just you wait, you—! Manager, one more Volume One. No—give me three!”
“So you can impregnate all three?”
“One for preservation, one for reading, and one for missionary work!”
“Three of Sichuan’s Greatest Beauties are going to get pregnant today, then.”
“You—!”
I fought desperately not to laugh as Scholar Hwang’s face turned the color of a ripe tomato, and rang up four copies for him.
“If only I had never read it! A life without Volume Two of Dangga Pungun…!”
“Urgh! This is no time for despair! We have to recommend Dangga Pungun to everyone we know if we ever want to meet Hubei’s Number One Courtesan again!”
“Exactly. The more people we tell, the sooner Volume Two arrives. We must secure the next volume!”
“I’m buying another copy right now!”
“I will see Hubei’s Number One Courtesan with my own eyes! Give me one too!”
The morning customers each bought additional copies of Dangga Pungun, swearing solemn oaths of praise and word-of-mouth promotion as they left. Thanks to them, I sold as many books in the first hour after opening as I had the entire previous day.
“The response really is that good…”
After the unexpected typhoon of customers finally subsided and the shop grew quiet again, I stared blankly at the noticeably thinner stacks of Dangga Pungun.
This was success.
This time, it was real success.
See? I could do it after all. The direction had just been a little off before. A person really could succeed with writing in the Central Plains. I really could raise my Fame points.
All the long road that had brought me here flashed through my mind at once, and my chest tightened painfully. I turned my back so no one would see my face and pressed a hand against the wall.
“Yunho? Are you okay?”
Hwarin’s worried voice came from behind me, but I kept my eyes on the wall and raised one hand to stop her.
Just a moment. Only a moment.
The road ahead was still long, and this was only the first step.
Once word of mouth for Dangga Pungun began to spread, sales climbed steadily higher. As a result, the number of customers asking for Volume Two grew from morning onward.
“Has Dangga Pungun come out today?”
“No.”
“Tomorrow, then?”
“No.”
“You keep saying no, no—don’t you know how to say yes?”
“Yes? No.”
“Haaah. Why won’t that damn Volume One stock ever go down? Look how many people are buying it!”
Well, that was because I kept printing more.
“Is this the right time to start shouting at him? Manager, is there at least a release date? If Dangga Pungun were coming out in a week, I feel like I could start being happy starting today!”
“I’m afraid happiness will have to wait a while longer.”
I felt bad for the waiting readers, but when the tide comes in you row. The books were selling faster than I could print them, so eventually the stock would vanish—someday.
“Damn it. I’m going upstairs for tea.”
“I’ll join you. I hear there’s a whole group on the second floor that does nothing but talk about Dangga Pungun these days!”
“Please pay the admission fee when you go up.”
I collected the second-floor entrance fees myself and headed up with them to start work.
In one corner of Daseogak’s second floor, Scholar Hwang, his friend, and several other men who had already become regulars were already settled around a conversation table.
“I thought Dangga Pungun would just be another dull tale of some Murim fellow. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.”
“I expected something boring too, but the fight scenes had me gripping the pages. I would believe it if someone told me a person from the Sichuan Dang Clan wrote it.”
“And that’s not even the half of it. In most books a Murim man kills the villain and the story just… ends, blandly. But this one? He takes the woman! And that woman is… kuh! Sichuan’s Greatest Beauty! Sichuan’s Greatest Beauty!”
“When a man is ready to risk his life fighting for her, how could Sichuan’s Greatest Beauty not fall for him? If I were a woman I’d have fallen for Dang Jeong myself.”
“That scene where the flower no man had ever been able to pluck offers herself to the protagonist with her own hands… This Zhang guy has never been that excited in his entire life.”
“And the final cloud-and-rain scene… who knew Sichuan’s Greatest Beauty would do that with her breasts? And with a chest so magnificent it could take a man completely—vivid enough that it felt like the author had the real thing right in front of him while he wrote.”
Dear readers… a young lady just walked past with a very sour expression on her face.
I was enjoying the feeling of reading live reader comments, but it would be nice if they remembered that Daseogak also has female customers. I should space the conversation seats farther apart, or maybe get some sound-absorbing partitions.
“Haaah. I want Volume Two so badly.”
“Honestly, the reason I come to Daseogak every day is just to check how many copies of Dangga Pungun are left.”
“Oh? You as well? We’re getting along so well I feel I’ve found a true zhiyin. Today’s coffee is on me. Manager—two iced Americanos!”
It was getting hard to keep my shoulders from floating up toward the ceiling. Thanks to Dangga Pungun, business at Daseogak was booming harder than ever, and I bustled about serving everyone.
During a quieter stretch of the afternoon I opened the door to the printing room.
“Hwarin, how’s it going?”
I called to her as she worked alone, diligently printing books. Seeing her handle my novel all by herself made me feel guilty.
She had volunteered to do the printing during the day because of her face, but guilt was still guilt.
“Do your own work. Why are you here?”
She stopped the press and shot me a look.
“Eat lunch first. You must be starving.”
I held up the simple snacks I had brought.
“Gimme. Ah—shit.”
The hand she reached out with was covered in black ink.
Why hide it behind her back like that? She couldn’t even eat like that. And ink didn’t wash off easily, so going to clean up first would be a hassle.
“Want me to feed you?”
“Wh-what? What’s with the sudden nonsense?”
“What nonsense? Don’t be weird about it. They’re just bite-sized—I’ll pop them in your mouth.”
“……Fine.”
Why close your eyes? Looking faintly embarrassed, Hwarin tilted her chin up.
“Open.”
“Aaaah.”
I placed the snacks into her mouth one by one, and she chewed them with small, careful motions. It felt like a mother bird feeding a baby chick. No—something a little more… charged than that.
“This is kind of embarrassing.”
I finally couldn’t hold it in and said it out loud. Come to think of it, this was the sort of thing couples did.
“Shit. I’m embarrassed too, you know?”
Hwarin’s eyes flashed as she snapped right back.
“Then you should’ve said so.”
“You’re the one who offered to feed me.”
With her face still flushed, she thumped her fists lightly against my chest.
“That’s true. Hahaha.”
I scratched the back of my head, feeling awkward, and tried to laugh the embarrassment away.
“Heh. You’re ridiculous, honestly.”
“How’s the printing going?”
I deliberately changed the subject by glancing at the growing stacks of Dangga Pungun.
“I’m working hard, but the type keeps cracking or wearing down. If we print through today, we probably won’t be able to print anything else until the new type arrives.”
“I figured as much.”
Movable-type printing had structural problems. Lead-alloy type was soft to begin with, and the press applied direct pressure, so breakage and wear were inevitable.
Stereotype printing existed in the Central Plains and solved those issues, but in this world it was still advanced technology and poorly distributed. Even in a developed Hubei city like Yichang, no one owned a stereotype press. Once I made enough money, maybe I should open my own print shop.
“Sorry, but keep at it until the end of today.”
“This is the only way I can help you. Don’t apologize.”
Hwarin looked at me with a faintly bitter smile.
“You don’t have to think like that. Want me to keep feeding you the rest?”
I asked with a teasing grin.
“Bullshit! Go grab the gloves by the entrance and get back to work.”
Still faintly red, she shoved me toward the door.
“O-okay, okay. I’ll bring them and leave.”
If she needed gloves she could have said so earlier. Why keep quiet? I handed her the gloves and returned to the front of the shop.
What if the stock ran out faster than the new type could arrive?
The worry barely had time to form before customers coming to buy Dangga Pungun suddenly dropped off a cliff.
“What happened?”
Had we finally hit the end of the demand curve? But the disappearance felt far too abrupt. Popularity didn’t just evaporate in a single afternoon.
There had to be a reason.
“So this is the Dangga Pungun that’s popular in Yichang these days? Hyung-nim, should we grab a copy too?”
“Nah. No point buying it here.”
What was that supposed to mean?
“Excuse me, sir. Could you explain what you just said?”
I stepped closer to confirm what I had overheard.
“Ahaha. It’s not that I’m not buying a book—I just mean specifically Dangga Pungun.”
“That’s exactly why I’m asking.”
“Well… the bookstore nearby is selling Dangga Pungun for a lot cheaper than you are. No offense, but if it’s cheaper over there, why would anyone buy it here?”
Other bookstores were selling the novel I wrote?