Where Do You Get Your Inspiration From?
"Where do you get your inspiration from?"
"Gahhh!" I turned the showerhead away from me.
We'd had the entrance ceremony, and spring breezes were gently rustling through the air, but it was still cold. I couldn't beat the chill in the end and had to turn on the hot water. Sorry, Mom and Dad... They washed with cold water before heading out, but I wasn't at that level yet. Catching a cold from shampooing with cold water would be an even bigger loss...
I figured we needed to move once this month's royalties came in. No matter how I thought about it, this house wasn't it. It was way worse than the orphanage I'd lived in as a kid. Seriously, way worse. It was making me nostalgic for the orphanage, for crying out loud.
You might say it was ridiculous for our house to have worse facilities than an orphanage, but it was possible here. I didn't have the courage to shower, so I just washed my hair and got out of the bathroom.
As soon as I stepped out, a cockroach greeted me.
Skitter skitter!
A cockroach zipping around at insane speed! I grabbed a nearby magazine.
Splat!
I swung with my full force. The cockroach burst right there on the spot. A few showed up every day. Was there no such thing as a world without cockroaches?
When I lived alone, I never saw a single one. Unless you lived in a rundown shack like a beggar, cockroaches couldn't get into a proper house. And high-rises made it even less likely. No matter how fast they skittered, climbing over a building taller than ten stories was too much for them. Sure, urban legends said they came up through the pipes... but it had to be better than our place now.
"Ugh..."
I wrapped the exploded cockroach corpse in tissue and tossed it. The first time I saw one, I'd screamed like Guan Yu from the old stories, but now I was used to it. I didn't even scream anymore. People really are creatures of adaptation. Spot on.
After seeing cockroaches a few times a day, killing them took priority over screaming.
I got dressed and headed out.
The walk to school was just meh. The school was a bit far—maybe I needed a bike. Too far to walk comfortably, too close for the bus. Perfectly awkward distance.
Once at school, I drew stares from the kids around me and let out a deep sigh.
It wasn't bullying or anything. Just envy for the me who'd been on TV. Kids this age loved the idea of being on television. A perfectly natural reaction.
"S-Sora, hi?"
"Hi, Jisu."
"Heh... hehe!"
My desk mate was your typical little girl. Lee Jisu, I think. We'd been paired up.
At this point, classes were packed—forty kids per room, chicken coops basically. And there were nine or ten classes per grade. That's how it was back then. So many kids they were already worrying about how to run schools in the future. Though low birth rates would shatter that worry soon enough.
By the time I was an adult, classes had fewer than twenty kids, and only four or five classes per grade. I knew because I'd asked at my old orphanage. Even after graduating, you could always go back. And since I'd done day labor to make money, I'd drop by with snacks now and then for old times' sake. I'd greet the teachers who'd cared for me and ask the kids about school life.
"Sora, do they give you presents and stuff when you're on TV?"
"Huh? What kind of presents?"
"Uh, well... my sister said they give you snacks and things on those shows!"
"Snacks? Oh, they paid an appearance fee."
"For real?!"
Why was she so curious about everything? My desk mate Jisu bombarded me with questions until class started. I brushed them off gently.
Being in class, the stares weren't normal. Probably because I was the only kid who'd been on TV. If I were a normal child, I'd have shrunk under those looks, but I was different. An adult mind in a kid's body. I had the professional mental fortitude to shrug off attention like this.
I sighed deeply and got ready for class.
Class was boring. Addition and subtraction, English starting with the alphabet. I knew it all. I just wished it'd end soon.
Thinking that made Professor Lee Yeon-ji's grade-skipping talk laughable. Back to middle and high school? I wanted to wrap up life with elementary school. Repeating those school years in middle school... sounded tedious. And high school meant self-study sessions till late. That devilish ritual keeping high schoolers from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fourteen hours at school? I'd done it unknowingly at first, but now? No reason for that.
I imagined Lee Yeon-ji raging if she heard my thoughts. Finish elementary, skip middle and high with qualification exams. Better for my mental health. No need for a fancy university yet. Writing the novels in my head would take a lifetime.
The library in my mind was enormous. Even at one or two books a day, I'd never finish before dying. Not that I could write that fast—my brain wasn't linked to an AI. Physical limits. Typing speed is finite, and mine wasn't superhuman.
As soon as school ended, I headed straight to Songi Media. No stopping home to drop my bag anymore—just straight there. Too much hassle to go home first. No point detouring when I was going anyway. Plus, no parents waiting at home.
I took the bus to Songi Media and walked into the office.
"Hellloooo~"
"Sora, you're here?"
Yoo Min-ah welcomed me. I nodded.
"Yes..."
"Wanna grab lunch then?"
"What about the section chief?"
"He's out for the Song of the Sword publication stuff. He said we should eat without him."
"Oh?"
"C'mon, Sora~ Unnie's starving, my stomach's stuck to my back!"
"Okay..."
I skipped school lunch to come here, so the office staff waited for me. Nice of them.
"What're we eating today?"
"Jajangmyeon sounds good."
"Aigoo! Sora, why do you love jajangmyeon so much? Try something else!"
"This place's jajangmyeon is just calling to me..."
Should I tell her the future wouldn't have decent jajangmyeon spots? If taste were a contest between now and my era, now would win ninety-nine out of a hundred. No wonder I was hooked.
Min-ah didn't argue after that. She pulled out her card.
"Let's go then?"
Any Chinese place nearby guaranteed good food. I wolfed down my bowl and headed back to the office. Then I turned on the computer and started writing, like always.
But Min-ah approached.
"Sora, so how'd you come up with Song of the Sword?"
"Well..."
Couldn't say I copied it from a future work. I stuck to the most reasonable explanation.
"I borrowed a book about Admiral Yi Sun-sin at the library and got inspired. Going to the library on weekends to read is my hobby."
"Really? This one's so good... No one would guess you wrote it. That the Sunlight Painter author did this? Other publishers will drool over it! But it's ours, so too bad for them!"
"Hm..."
I nodded, agreeing with Min-ah. No other writer on Earth could switch styles like me. I knew the styles of tens of thousands of authors.