7
7. Contract Offer
I could only stare blankly for a long while at what Emma had said.
“.....They want to sign a contract with me?”
“Yes. They said they want to sign a contract with you. What are you going to do, Writer?”
“Uh..... Um. Ah.....”
I was so flustered that I couldn’t get the words out properly.
‘There’s..... obviously nothing bad about signing a contract, right?’
After all, I had originally written it just because I was bored, and if I could make even a little money from it, that
wouldn’t be bad either.
“But what publishing company is it?”
“They said it’s Rodin House.”
“.....Where’s that?”
I didn’t even know every Korean web novel publisher. How would I know an overseas publishing company?
I had been too busy trying to make a living in Korea to pay attention to anything else.
“I looked into it. They say it’s a major publishing company in America.”
“Do they publish physical books?”
“Yes! They also publish children’s literature, so apparently they’re really famous.”
“Well. If it’s a famous place, I guess I can trust them with it.”
No matter what country you went to, you always had to be careful about publishing scams.
That was why writers wanted to work with well-known, reputable publishers.
“Give them my phone number.”
“Yes! Got it!”
I had no idea why Emma seemed happier about it than I was.
“Ah. More importantly, are you going to film a video today?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
The talk about the contract didn’t last very long.
I had to film the video that I was going to upload to MuTube that evening.
---
Four months ago, I had started uploading Vlogs to MuTube.
Right after creating a channel called “A Korean City Guy Visiting the Countryside in Canada,” I started uploading one
video a day.
At first, the videos didn’t become very popular.
‘I wasn’t looking for popularity anyway.’
I hadn’t uploaded the videos because I wanted to become popular. I was simply uploading them like a diary.
I filmed for about an hour a day, then roughly edited the footage and uploaded it.
It was more fun than I expected.
‘But..... I never knew I had a talent for it.’
Sometimes I edited videos of us eating dinner, or interesting conversations we had.
There wasn’t really any fixed format to the videos.
Sometimes I uploaded things other than dinner videos, and sometimes I simply uploaded scenes of us drinking while
looking at the natural surroundings.
The lengths were all different too. Some videos were only three minutes long.
‘It was only difficult at first.’
Now I could upload videos with ease.
“What are we eating today?”
“I bought some jjajang ramen from Costco yesterday. Want to eat that?”
“Sounds good. What about green onion oil?”
“Of course we have to make that.”
“Beef?”
“No, let’s use samgyeopsal.”
We went to the backyard, where Jeongmin lit a fire while I placed a large iron plate resembling a cauldron lid over it.
We hadn’t bought the lid.
We had simply made it ourselves from a sheet of metal that had been lying around nearby.
“Did you buy the samgyeopsal yesterday too?”
“Yeah. I did. I’ll go get it.”
I went inside to get the green onions, cooking oil, samgyeopsal, and jjajang ramen.
“I’ll help too.”
Emma, who had been reading a book inside the house, seemed to have calmed down from her excitement and started speaking
casually to me again.
“Then carry the oil and samgyeopsal.”
“You’re going to make a physically weak girl carry heavy things? You carry them!”
In the end, I gave Emma the green onions and jjajang ramen while I carried all the heavy things myself.
When I spread the ingredients out on the backyard table, Emma looked at them with an exhausted expression.
“You pigs! Stop stuffing your faces!”
It was already well known throughout the village that we ate a lot, so I let it go in one ear and out the other.
“Don’t you think Emma is slowly awakening her S side?”
“You think she’d become like that at such a young age? She’s probably just saying what she sees.”
“.....Isn’t that even worse?”
Well, we did eat a lot.
“Emma’s mellowed out quite a bit too.”
We had become close because of books, and we had also grown closer through writing.
Even so, she hadn’t been very proactive about things like this in the past, but now she was taking the initiative
herself.
“Emma. You’re eating before you leave, right?”
“Is there anything for me?”
“We can just boil one more.”
“What’s the difference between ten and eleven?”
“Hmm.....”
I really thought there was something wrong with a child already making such a look of contempt.
But what could I do?
There was no way to change how she had already become.
“Shall we start?”
“Okay. Turning on the camera?”
“Yeah.”
I was no longer filming with my phone but with an actual camera.
Since the views were gradually increasing and I had more than a thousand subscribers, I thought it would be better to
film with a camera, so I bought one.
“The camera’s on.”
“Okay. Let’s cook.”
I placed the samgyeopsal onto the metal plate, which looked like a heated cauldron lid.
Sizzleeeee!
The plate was already sufficiently heated, so the moment the meat touched it, a delicious aroma filled the air.
“Damn..... If we just grilled this with kimchi and ate it with soju, it’d be perfect.”
“You can barely hold your liquor, yet you talk like that..... Do you remember what happened the last time you drank?”
“Oh. You mean when I slept with the horses? Or when there was a raccoon wandering around my room?”
“.....You’re slowly becoming a lunatic.”
I didn’t particularly like alcohol.
I couldn’t say I enjoyed the feeling of being drunk.
On top of that, because of the hangover, I couldn’t write for an entire day, and strangely enough, I couldn’t
concentrate on writing on the day I drank either.
So I had stopped drinking, but strangely, after coming to Canada, alcohol had started tasting good.
‘I did get drunk and cause all sorts of trouble though.....’
There had been times when I woke up to find a horse licking me, and I had even brought home a raccoon once.
“How scared do you think that raccoon was?”
“I was scared too.”
When I woke up in my room, a raccoon was curled up and sleeping in the corner.
I had no memory of bringing it home while drunk, but when our eyes met, I was terrified.
Fortunately, the raccoon eventually disappeared back into nature, and I swore that I wouldn’t drink again.
That resolution was shattered two days later when I woke up in the arms of a horse.
“Where do you even find things like that when you’re drunk?”
“.....Maybe I have a druid nature.”
As we talked, the samgyeopsal began turning brown.
“Damn..... Smells good. Hey. Did you finish preparing the green onions?”
“Of course.”
The oil naturally released by the samgyeopsal wasn’t enough, so I added some cooking oil.
Once the oil began bubbling, I placed the shredded green onions on top.
Sizzleeeee!
As the oil from the samgyeopsal mixed with the green onions, a savory and umami-rich aroma began spreading in every
direction.
‘There isn’t much oil, so I’ll have to stir it around a little.’
I was planning to add water and boil everything one more time, so I had deliberately used less oil.
“It should be about ready. Bring some water.”
“Hey. Can we boil ten packs at once?”
“We can boil five and then do another batch. Or we could boil one more somewhere else and add it later.”
“Let’s boil it after we eat. We have plenty of samgyeopsal.”
Maybe because we had bought a large amount of samgyeopsal cheaply at the supermarket, unlike in Korea, I didn’t have to
worry about running out of meat.
Bubble, bubble, bubble.
Once the water began boiling, I added the noodles and jjajang seasoning powder.
Since the iron plate was so wide, the water evaporated quickly, so there was no need to drain it.
Thick..... Thick.....
“Hey. Should we add some cheddar cheese to make it thicker?”
“Just sprinkle some red pepper powder. That’s enough.”
Emma liked spicy food too, so she had gotten pretty good at eating spicy ramen.
“Let’s eat now. Emma! Reading in the dark will hurt your eyes, so stop and come eat!”
At those words, Emma, who had been reading in the dark, closed her book and came over to us.
“Is it done?”
“Yeah. Let’s eat.”
“Give me a fork.”
“I knew you’d say that, so I already prepared one.”
We placed small chairs around the iron plate so we could eat the food directly from it.
It was hot because it was summer, but there was something strangely satisfying about eating hot food while sweating.
“It is hot.....”
I wiped away the sweat dripping down my face as I thought about the beer that came to mind.
Gulp.
I instinctively swallowed, but since Emma was there, I decided to hold back and put some ramen into my bowl.
“Wow. Is this noodles or rice cake?”
“Jjajang ramen always turns out like this when you boil it for too long.”
The noodles had become chewy like rice cakes, but I couldn’t ignore the sweet and savory aroma of jjajang rising from
them.
“Then, let’s eat.”
I lifted the noodles once toward the camera.
Once the zoom was properly focused, I nodded once and put the noodles straight into my mouth.
Slurp!
The noodles had become thick and sticky, but that was simply because of how dense they had become.
They still had plenty of bounce to them.
“It’s delicious!”
The distinctive sweet and savory aroma of jjajang spread through my mouth, while the strong fragrance of green onions
brushing past my nose further enhanced the umami.
Just as the aroma of the green onions began to fade, the rich meaty flavor of the samgyeopsal came in with a powerful
counterattack.
“Samgyeopsal and chunjang actually go surprisingly well together, don’t they?”
“Hey. Is there any seasoning that doesn’t go well with samgyeopsal?”
“True. I guess you’re right.”
The hidden star of this dish was none other than the samgyeopsal.
I had deliberately fried it until it was coated with oil, and that turned out to be the best choice for this dish.
The jjajang sauce seeped thickly into the crispy, coated surface, bringing out even more umami.
The rich flavor of the samgyeopsal combined with the green onions was practically pure bliss.
“Emma, is it good?”
“It tastes good..... but it feels like the kind of food that’ll make me gain weight if I eat too much.”
“At your age, gaining a little weight doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t want to become fat like Shinyong.”
“......I’m not that fat.”
Anyway, I was glad Emma seemed to like it too.
“It’s a shame we don’t have kimchi.”
“Chonggak kimchi would be perfect.”
“Damn..... You know your stuff.”
We hurriedly ate the food.
Chew, chew.
As I chewed the ramen, I suddenly raised my eyes and looked at the sky.
Countless stars filled the sky, so numerous that they almost obscured the darkness itself.
“.....This is nice.”
I liked this moment.
Maybe that was why I had been unable to leave until now.
Everything I was breathing in at this moment was so beautiful and mesmerizing that I could even forget all the hard
labor I had gone through that morning.
It felt like this was the first time since I was a child that each passing day had felt this enjoyable.
“Here. You can’t have beer, but you can drink this, right?”
“Oh. Thanks.”
I brought the ginger ale Jeongmin handed me straight to my mouth.
Gulp..... Gulp.....
“Ah.....! At first it felt strange, but now I don’t think I can live without this!”
At first, the ginger flavor mixed with the carbonation had felt strange, but now I felt like I couldn’t live without it.
They sold it in Korea too, but it wasn’t nearly as cheap as it was in Canada.
Ringgggggg~♪
Just as we were eating without a care, my phone suddenly rang.
“Is it Mom?”
Since we were filming, I couldn’t stay on the phone for long.
But when I looked at my phone, an unfamiliar number was displayed.
‘More importantly, this number.....’
Looking at the number, I realized it was from Canada or America, not Korea.
I couldn’t ignore the phone that kept ringing, so I answered.
“Hello. I’m actually a little busy right now.....”
“Hello. This is Rodin House. Is now a good time to talk?”
“......!”
The publishing company Emma had mentioned earlier had contacted me.