The Fake - 2
A world without copyright.
Even the author of Don Quixote, a book now hailed as an immortal classic, was said to have been hounded by bootleg copies and unauthorized spin-offs — copyright trouble had been the bane of writers and publishers since time immemorial.
"Where on earth did you get this?"
I took the Dangga Pungun Im Hayeon handed me and skimmed its pages. A novel sharing nothing but the title — for it wasn't even a derivative work. It was the very Dangga Pungun I sold at Daseogak, reprinted by another bookstore word for word.
"One of the shop boys was reading it, so absorbed he'd forgotten where he was. I heard the news about author Hopil, too."
"Let's go down."
Down on the first floor stood a young shop boy, plainly at a loss for what to do with himself.
"Boss! I only opened the book during a spare moment — I swear I wasn't trying to slack off…!"
The boy stammered out excuses that couldn't have fooled a child, like a kid whose mother had just discovered the folder of "rare bird photos" hidden on his computer.
"I'm not here to scold you. Where did you get this Dangga Pungun?"
"One of the bookstores was making a huge fuss about how they'd brought in an author named Hopil. There was such a crowd that I figured it had to be a good read, so I bought one to try."
"Could the author Hopil really have gone over to another bookstore?"
Im Hayeon asked me, her voice uneasy.
"Which bookstore was selling it?"
In this world, a bookstore sponsored an author and claimed his publishing rights in return — that was the merchant's code. Which meant the only place I could claim the rights to Dangga Pungun was Yichang.
For all I knew, at this very moment Dangga Pungun was rolling off the presses in some city or other, and there was nothing I could do about it. But this was Wuhan — the Mangeum Lord's own domain.
What kind of bold fool would dare sell Dangga Pungun without permission?
And while impersonating Hopil, no less.
"The sign definitely said Mangeum."
The shop boy seemed to be dredging the memory up from the depths, and before long he told us where the book had come from.
Mangeum? Mangeum Bookstore?
"Gilsan, you little—! You've finally crossed the line!!"
"How could anyone do that?!"
"Tell me about it! All I charged was the franchise fee, the Giosugu pigeon-rental fee, the staffing fee, supply costs, an advertising fee, and miscellaneous expenses — that's all!"
I had guaranteed his profits so the Mangeum Lord's trial would pass without a hitch. And that still wasn't enough for him, so he broke the merchant's code? If he felt that way, why had he ever agreed to go into business at all?
Im Hayeon and I, making no effort to hide our fury, marched straight for Gilsan's establishment.
"Gilsaaaaaan!"
I flung open the door to Gilsan's office hard enough to send a man flying.
"I was just on my way to see you. Good timing."
The nerve of this punk, playing it so cool. Gilsan rose from his seat wearing the perfectly calm face of a man who had known I was coming.
"I helped you out of the goodness of my heart! And you're the one who crossed the line!"
As of today, this establishment was closed for business. I'd be confiscating those Giosugu pigeons on the spot, thank you very much.
"You're here about Dangga Pungun, aren't you? That wasn't me."
"Huh?"
In Gilsan's hand dangled a copy of Dangga Pungun published by another bookstore.
"I may be a loafer, but I'm a loafer from a bookstore family. I'm not rotten enough to trample the merchant's code."
"Virtuous as all that, a fair number of things have still been catching my eye."
The things I'd lived through myself, plus the reports I'd heard through the Haomen, hardly numbered one or two. Where did he get off lying?
"Th-that's not it! I would never do anything to get on my grandfather's bad side!"
At the look of disbelief I sent him, Gilsan — evidently with a guilty conscience — protested awkwardly.
Right. That motive suited him far better than any talk of the merchant's code.
"The rumor that a bookstore with Mangeum slapped on its sign is selling Dangga Pungun has spread far and wide. If it isn't you, then who?"
Not Gilsan? Then who in the world?
"It was my cousin. Heo Song."
The culprit's name slipped out of Gilsan's mouth.
"Your cousin — as in the Mangeum Lord's own grandson?"
"That's the one. A while back he hung up the name Mangeum and opened a bookstore. Seems he wanted to bask in Mangeum Bookstore's glory — and he actually has the gall to argue that since he never wrote the words 'Mangeum Bookstore,' he's in the clear."
Gilsan ground his teeth and swore that if the man weren't his own cousin, he'd have sent him a formal duel challenge long ago.
"So this Heo Song started selling Dangga Pungun as his entry in the succession trial — and brought in a fake Hopil to boot?"
Like one of those fried-chicken joints trading on a luxury brand's name. No — this was a knockoff trademark in the very same industry. Even worse.
Impersonating an author AND pirating a trademark. Did he plan to make his entire fortune off counterfeits?
"So it really was a fake Hopil. Come with me. I'll arrange the introduction myself."
"One copy of Dangga Pungun per customer!"
"Out of my way! I'm buying first!"
"So this book is as entertaining as they say, eh?"
"A friend of mine in Yichang praised it until his mouth ran dry!"
I'd told myself that my book selling well beyond Yichang was simply a thing beyond my control. But watching other people fatten themselves on a book I wrote, a book that was supposed to pass through my own hands… my stomach twisted.
"Well, if it isn't the illustrious Jeon Gilsan."
While I stood gaping at my own book transformed into someone else's, a young man with a face that resembled Gilsan — and resembled it meanly — came strolling toward us.
"Heo Song!"
"Came to see how well business is booming? However well your delivery food sells, nothing will outsell the Dangga Pungun at my Mangeum Seogo."
"You've got gall, helping yourself to the Mangeum Bookstore name!"
What a heartwarming picture of cousinly love. Watching the two of them square off, I couldn't decide whether we were standing in front of a bookstore or in some back alley.
"Ha! It's Mangeum Seogo, not Mangeum Bookstore. Palling around with black-haired barbarian scum has you nitpicking every last thing."
The knockoff bookseller called Heo Song flung his sneer at both Gilsan and me.
"Barbarian? Hahaha!"
"What's so funny?"
"A good day to you. I am Kang Yunho, of Daseogak."
I offered the bewildered counterfeit a perfectly courteous bow.
"Wha—?! Kang Yunho of Daseogak — the Kang Yunho from Yichang?!"
A flicker of panic crossed Heo Song's face.
"How nicely the DaseogakDangga Pungun is selling here in Wuhan."
Selling Dangga Pungun without permission, was he? I laid deliberate weight on the word Daseogak.
Heo Song studied me for a moment, rearranged his expression, and opened his mouth again wearing the same sneer as before.
"That's Mangeum Seogo's Dangga Pungun, not Daseogak's. Don't tell me a Yichang hick means to invoke the merchant's code against a bookstore outside his own city? Shameless, for a barbarian."
This fellow had slipped into talking down to me quite naturally.
Grating as it was, he wasn't wrong. My claim extended exactly as far as Yichang's city limits. If Dangga Pungun was being printed in another city, I had no rights to invoke.
"I can't claim the code outside Yichang. But in Wuhan, I rather think I can."
Did he really think his grandfather would let this slide? And yet my words didn't so much as ripple his expression.
He was up to something.
"Isn't Daseogak my grandfather's property now?"
The little weasel had struck at Daseogak's weakest point.
"Daseogak has not yet passed into the Mangeum Hall's hands. Its operation remains entirely in mine."
"One speaks of a ship's owner, not its captain. The only reason you hold the keys to Daseogak is my grandfather's goodwill — nothing more."
Who did Daseogak belong to, at this very moment?
I had accepted the Mangeum Lord's trial. Which meant ownership of Daseogak leaned less toward me and more toward my creditor, the Mangeum Lord.
"I trust the Lord himself will see it my way."
"When rights are murky, a just cause is all a man needs. We took in the author Hopil when he had nowhere left to go — surely Grandfather will approve of that much."
So this Hopil they'd "taken in" — who the hell was he? I never even received the full-course treatment from these people.
I had the shape of it now.
Dangga Pungun was a novel whose success in Yichang was already proven. To excuse himself before his grandfather and scrape through the succession trial, Heo Song had gone out and "recruited" Hopil.
In that case, all I had to do was shatter that precious justification.
"Let me see author Hopil's face. We were in touch just days ago — I can't believe he'd slip off to Mangeum Seogo without so much as a word."
I'd expose the fraud right then and there.
"Ahem. The author Hopil prefers not to receive visitors."
I caught a flash of discomposure cross Heo Song's face.
"I happen to be Hopil's closest friend and confidant."
He'd apparently borrowed a line I liked to use on customers — though that was not the sort of line one used on a bosom friend.
"So it was you who wounded his heart. And exhaustion piled on top has laid him low."
A lie. Heo Song's voice climbed higher. The man couldn't manage his own expression. He was dodging any meeting between me and "Hopil."
"What nonsense is this? You speak as though there were some reason you cannot show me the author Hopil."
I shot Gilsan a look, requesting support.
"What have you got to hide, that you won't show us the author Hopil?!"
"Ha! I prepared for exactly that. Wait right there — I'll show you ironclad proof!"
Proof that he had the author Hopil in his keeping?
No such thing could exist in this world.
Heo Song ducked into the store, seized something, and came back out to us.
"Behold!"
"Wha—?!"
"Gah!"
"What the—?!"
The thing Heo Song had produced. Proof that Hopil was with Mangeum Seogo. Its true identity was—
I am Hopil…
"To think I would be felled by an 'I am Hopil…'"
I had no choice but to retreat to my office first.
Because that letter had contained something that would have forced even me to fall back.
I bowed my head over the desk and clutched it in both hands.
"You're certain author Hopil didn't really leave?"
Gilsan fixed me with a look of deep suspicion, as though the whole affair were my fault.
"I can't even blame the author Hopil. Every single time Daseogak runs into trouble, you have him write an 'I am Hopil…' — anyone would swear the habit off eventually."
"No…"
I wrote that.
"Even I've heard the infamous reputation of those 'I am Hopil…' letters. Haven't you overused them a bit?"
"He has. Every time there's trouble, the shop gets locked down and there's a demonstration — fine for you as the bookstore's owner, but for author Hopil, who has to sell the books, it's loss, plain and simple."
"And on top of that, the letter said he grew furious over your running vicious sales tricks with Dangga Pungun. It certainly explains his going over to another bookstore."
"Your vicious sales tricks were apparently infamous enough to reach other cities. If you two weren't truly the best of friends, he'd have cut ties ages ago. Or… don't tell me this is where you finally sever ties."
"Impossible. It's a fake, without a doubt."
That friend and I were as close as close could be. A friend who knew every last shred of my cringe-worthy history.
"If you say so…"
Im Hayeon, why did even you have to say it with such unconvinced eyes?
"Confirm that the Hopil is a fake, and tell me. That Heo Song fellow is already being talked about at Mangeum Bookstore. Once it's certain he brought in a fake author, I'll crush him properly — as the son of Mangeum Bookstore."
Gilsan spoke like a hyena circling prey too formidable to pounce on alone.
"As the Mangeum Lord's grandson, you mean."
His scheme to knock one rival successor out of the running was written all over him. Painfully obvious.
"Just a pleasant bonus. I'm off."
Gilsan smirked and strode out of the office.
A fake Hopil. My reputation as an author was my very life. Whoever he was, how dare he try to walk off with my name?
What was I to do? In an ideal world, this would be the moment the Mangeum Lord stepped in and thrashed his grandson black and blue.
"Resolve this matter yourself — or present yourself at my mansion, dressed in your finest."
The Mangeum Lord, having evidently caught wind of the news as well, had sent word to me.
"That damned old codger."
I could already picture the Mangeum Lord's face, chortling over the news this very moment.
He'd found a young lady of the Zhuge Clan, had he? Which must mean: attend the marriage meeting, and the problem would be made to disappear.
"I'll go and take a look."
Im Hayeon had been leaning against the wall, watching me for a long moment, before she spoke with the air of someone who had just made up her mind.
"Go where, exactly?"
"You said Gilsan will crush him once it's confirmed a fake. I'm going to check whether the author Hopil truly exists — and if he does, to find out who he is."
"Can you manage it?"
"Who do you take me for? Leave the window open. I'll be right back."
"I'm counting on you."
"Although… what if it really is the true author Hopil… No, never mind. I'll be right back."
Thank you. If you ever want an autograph, I'll sign plenty for you later. Swallowing back the words rising in my throat, I sent Im Hayeon off.
It would be a blessing if Hayeon uncovered the truth — but what was I to do if she came back empty-handed?
I could not reveal my identity.
This was a city beyond Yichang's reach, where my publishing rights carried no guarantee. Even if I declared who I was, whether anyone would believe me was another question — and I'd walk away with nothing to show for it but the free sabotage of one scumbag's business venture.
More than that, the damage from being unmasked as a barbarian author would be far greater still.
I had no intention of sitting on my hands, but if the author truly was being hidden, there was no way to prove it either way.
After all, the first person hiding an author here was me.
"You startled me! When did you get back?"
Lost in thought, I raised my head — and there stood Im Hayeon.
That was fast. But why did her face look so grim?
"…Just now. I think the author Hopil may have been kidnapped."
Im Hayeon delivered her report wearing a look that found nothing about any of it agreeable.
"What do you mean?"
"The security was airtight. But it wasn't arranged to guard against intruders — the whole deployment was set up to watch the person inside the room and keep them from slipping away."
"Author Hopil was kidnapped?"
Wasn't he supposed to be a fake? The riddle only deepened. I'm standing right here — so just who on earth are you?
"Manager Kang Yunho."
Clack. With the sound of the door sliding shut and locking, Im Hayeon called out to me — still lost in the riddle — in a voice gone low and quiet.
"Hm? Why did you lock the door?"
Manager Kang Yunho, was it. That was what Im Hayeon called me when she was in a foul mood. Was it because I'd put her to work in the dead of night?
"…I have something to ask you."
Im Hayeon's face was dark. Had something terrible happened?
"Ask away."
"…The author Hopil — was she, by any chance, a woman?"