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### Chapter 1: I'm Not Going to Write Novels Anymore
Beep. Beep.
A loud alarm rang through the tiny ten-square-meter goshiwon room that didn't even have a window. It was 6:00 p.m. on
December 31st.
It was also the sound telling me to give up.
I turned off the alarm and casually tossed my phone onto the desk.
To be honest, I'd already known.
The winners of the New Year's Literary Contest would have been contacted a week ago.
Even so, the reason I'd kept holding onto my phone until now was lingering hope.
Or maybe just foolishness.
I had decided this would be my last attempt.
Thinking it would be the last, I submitted every novel I'd written over the past six years. National newspapers,
regional newspapers—I sent them all.
Not a single place contacted me.
I thought I'd written well this time.
I thought the revised drafts had become much better too.
"Ha..."
I'd started down this path after setting myself a deadline.
Thirty.
At first, it was meant to motivate me. I was determined to debut before turning thirty and become a bestselling
novelist.
After failing over and over again, that deadline had become nothing but anxiety.
I couldn't keep living like this forever.
Using the excuse that I needed to focus on writing, I'd drifted from one part-time job to another while growing older
inside a tiny goshiwon room.
I hated my life.
Maybe I'd wanted to give up long before this.
No... maybe I should have.
After dragging my life along for so many years, all I had left was a reality as tattered as an old rag.
978,720 won.
That was the balance in my bank account.
It was time to start working again.
But doing what?
I'd dropped out of college and only taken jobs that wasted as little time and energy as possible.
Convenience store work, for example.
I'd always believed I'd make money with my novels someday.
Should I go back to working at a convenience store?
No.
Tomorrow, I'd be thirty.
It was time to do what I had to do instead of what I wanted to do.
I couldn't keep living like this.
I decided to clean the room first.
Empty instant noodle cups and crushed energy drink cans were scattered across the desk.
Green soju bottles were neatly piled on the floor.
Ever since submitting my contest manuscripts, I hadn't gone outside once.
Despite that, I hadn't cleaned the room even once either.
Anxiety, lethargy, and impatience had consumed me, leaving me drinking every day.
I stood up.
After gathering the trash and throwing it away, I wiped down the floor and desk with wet tissues.
It didn't take long.
The room was tiny to begin with.
A ten-square-meter goshiwon room.
I'd once thought it was the perfect place to write because if I rolled over once from the bed, I'd already be at the
desk.
Pushing away those hazy memories, I sat down on the bed.
Then I carefully opened the desk drawer.
As though I were opening a treasure chest.
The space where a desktop computer should have been was packed with stacks of paper.
These were the children I'd given birth to over the course of six years.
Practice pieces.
First drafts of short stories.
Revised manuscripts I'd rewritten countless times.
Even full-length novels.
"I guess I have to throw them all away."
It felt lonely.
Once, this tower of paper had been my pride.
Proof that I hadn't wasted my time.
A symbol of how sincere I was about telling stories.
But at some point, looking at those stacks only filled me with anger.
They were the result of effort that had never been rewarded.
It felt as though someone was pointing at me, telling me I'd wasted years of my life.
Now...
All I felt was sorry.
Why did these manuscripts...
These stories...
Have to remain abandoned in this dark, cramped room?
It was all because their owner was incompetent.
I picked up the manuscript lying on top.
"Everyone Only Stops by the Convenience Store for a While"
It was the very first short story I'd written while working the night shift at a convenience store.
Back then, I didn't even own a laptop.
I'd written everything by hand on A4 paper.
Whenever my night shift ended, I'd go straight to the community center, type it into a computer, and save it to my
email.
This was that original draft.
The one I'd written with my own hands.
Looking at the uneven handwriting filled me with strange emotions.
Back when I'd first dreamed of becoming a novelist, I hadn't even known literary debuts existed.
I simply wrote stories.
It was fun.
Back then, even working through the entire night never made me sleepy or tired.
I'd never even felt like I was working in the first place.
Even when my hand cramped from holding the pen...
It didn't hurt.
I was only frustrated that I couldn't write down the overflowing stories in my head fast enough.
I didn't even know what literature was.
To be honest...
I still wasn't sure I did.
I knew nothing about writing theory, plot structure, or character building.
But writing novels had been enjoyable.
Of course...
That was all in the past.
I kept writing.
I studied because I wanted to become better.
Naturally, I learned about literary debuts and started preparing for them.
That's when everything became strange.
Writing novels became painful.
I accumulated knowledge about literature and fiction.
I bought a laptop, so I no longer had to handwrite dozens of pages.
Living on discarded food and instant noodles, I saved enough money to quit my job.
I stopped going to work and devoted myself entirely to writing.
Yet novels only became harder and harder.
Maybe...
That was when I should have quit.
I hadn't even dropped out of college yet.
I continued reading my first work.
Since I'd written it while working at the convenience store, it was fairly autobiographical.
Conflicts with troublesome customers I'd actually encountered.
A romance with a regular female customer.
Well, the romance part was fiction.
It was a novel, after all.
Smiling to myself, I kept reading.
The memories of getting angry while working...
And the happiness I'd felt while writing...
They all came rushing back exactly as they had been.
Looking at it now, it was clumsy.
There were even sentences that probably should never have appeared in a novel.
But I didn't care.
Who decided those things in the first place?
At the end of the manuscript was a sentence containing my dream.
"I'll tell my stories to people all over the world."
Without realizing it, I chuckled.
Was it because I'd already decided to give up?
Unlike before, when I'd obsessively searched for flaws every time I lost a contest, I was actually enjoying myself.
Come to think of it...
Back then, I hadn't cared about literary debuts at all.
When I wrote this story, I didn't even know such a system existed.
I simply wanted other people to hear my stories.
While wondering how to share them with more people, I eventually discovered that becoming an officially published
novelist was the answer.
So I prepared for it.
Somewhere along the way...
My goal and my method had become reversed.
"Well... I guess it doesn't matter anymore."
I wanted to read the rest of my works too.
But I stopped myself.
I was enjoying them far more than I'd expected.
My heart, which I'd thought had long gone cold, was beating again.
If I kept reading...
I felt like I'd regret giving up.
"I should stop."
"I'm not going to write novels anymore."
The moment I firmly declared my surrender...
Everything went black.
.
.
.
Huh?
At first, I thought I'd fainted.
But my mind was perfectly clear.
That was the real problem.
I couldn't see anything.
I tried moving my hand to find my phone, but I couldn't feel my body at all.
Something was wrong.
Terribly wrong.
Fear washed over me.
The hospital.
I had to get to a hospital.
I wonder how much the bill will cost...
Ironically, just before I fell into a panic, thoughts of money calmed me down.
How pathetic.
Even at a moment like this, I had to worry about hospital expenses.
The absurdity of my situation actually drove away my fear.
Maybe...
It wouldn't matter if I just broke down like this.
As I drifted through those self-mocking thoughts, my vision returned.
But I couldn't hide my confusion.
This wasn't my goshiwon room.
Instead...
It was somewhere just as familiar.
A convenience store.
The exact convenience store where I'd worked the night shift when I was twenty-four.
And behind the register stood twenty-four-year-old me, wearing the store vest.
Customers came and went.
My vision remained centered on that younger version of myself.
I still couldn't feel my body.
It wasn't uncomfortable.
It just felt too strange to get used to.
"I'm a regular here during the daytime, okay? I even eat with the manager here, alright? I've already paid!"
While I struggled to understand the situation, trouble erupted at the register.
A nasty-looking old woman had brought a basket overflowing with alcohol and snacks, then stubbornly refused to pay for a
shopping bag.
The younger me kept a blank expression and refused to give her one.
Eventually, the troublesome customer abandoned the basket, declared she wasn't buying anything, and stormed out.
I really was stubborn back then.
I could've just given her the bag.
Realizing there was nothing I could do, I gave up trying to interfere.
Instead, I watched my twenty-four-year-old self.
It was strangely nice to see him again.
Though seeing that stubborn expression also left me speechless.
Did I really make faces like that?
"Ha..."
The younger me let out a quiet sigh, picked up the basket, and began putting everything back.
The dried snacks and chips returned to their shelves.
The four cans of beer went back into the refrigerator.
Naturally, my vision followed him.
When he finished organizing everything and turned his head, a luxury hotel came into view outside the window.
At that moment...
His thoughts flowed directly into my mind.
"I once heard that hotel has rooms that cost nearly two million won per night."
"Here I am fighting people over fifty won..."
"Meanwhile, someone else spends more on a single night's stay than I earn in a month."
The younger me returned to the register with slumped shoulders.
My vision remained fixed on him, but I could no longer watch comfortably.
Something was wrong.
First of all...
This wasn't simply my past.
The convenience store where I'd worked had been surrounded by motels.
There had never been a luxury hotel like that.
And those thoughts...
They were painfully familiar.
They were lines I'd personally written by hand in "Everyone Only Stops by the Convenience Store for a While."
Then...
This wasn't my past.
Was I inside my own novel?
Unfortunately, there was no one to answer my confused question.
After some time, the convenience store door opened again.
A woman walked in with a face flushed bright red from alcohol.
She had a cute appearance, monolid eyes, and the kind of smiling eyes I'd always imagined.
Exactly the appearance I'd pictured while writing.
She was even wearing the same clothes.
Her beige turtleneck knit sweater was slightly thick, yet it still revealed the curves of her figure.
Below that, she wore tight dark-blue jeans.
The woman placed four cans of beer on the counter.
"Could I see your ID, please?"
I thought.
"Could I see your ID, please?"
The younger me said.
"Do I look that young?"
The woman replied with a sweet smile.
Once again...
It was a line I knew all too well.
The story continued.
It was far longer than the short story I'd written.
Every setting I'd only briefly described had fully come to life.
Some parts had been adapted...
But there was no doubt anymore.
This was the world of the story I had created.