Became an American Retro Novelist - Chapter 131



Only Noblemtl

131.

There is a saying:

[He who would wear the crown must bear its weight.]

But the weight of the crown was much heavier than I had imagined. It was so heavy that I thought my trapezius muscles would develop.

“Oh my god! Congratulations!”

“Awesome! Awesome!”

“He’s a good student and handsome! He’s the cheerleader captain and goes to prom!”

“What can’t you do?!”

Congratulation poured in from all over, almost exaggeratedly.

I felt a little awkward, realized what it was, and summarized the students’ reactions in one sentence.

‘Everyone seems drunk.’

I understand it well enough.

The school now had a festival-like atmosphere.

Especially for third-year students who were about to graduate and had a prom scheduled, this was even more so. Only a handful of people were really paying attention in class, and during the short break, prom poses were held here and there by passengers trying to catch the last train to the prom.

‘Do you usually do this so publicly?’

They were teenagers with no shame.

Word of the couples who made it big spread far and wide. Most were quickly forgotten, but there were some, like Alexa and me, that children remembered for a long time.

As I was walking after class, remembering this feeling between a slight sense of burden and excitement, I saw someone coming out of the hallway holding a card.

“Ke, kekeke, Kate!”

“Oh, sorry.”

And Kate Moore rejects the offer outright.

I thought something interesting might happen. I felt the steam rising and continued on my way. Then, Kate Moore, who had rejected the boy’s proposal and was walking toward me, flinched and came over to me with her eyes wide open like a beaver who had had a branch snatched away.

She has a bookworm-like style that looks like something drawn in a picture.

The long, checkered skirt reached her ankles and her hair was braided tightly. If we were to recreate Alice from ‘About T’ in a realistic way, it would look like this.

She came up to me and looked around to see if she had something to say, then she quickly blurted out.

“I, I am not.”

“hmm······?”

“Just remember this. I didn’t do it.”

And then it suddenly disappears.

‘what.’

Are you saying that a game where people push each other was popular at school without me knowing?

I let the situation pass with such pointless thoughts, but as I walked to the classroom where I would attend my next class, I easily figured out what Kate had said.

Although it had been some time since Part 2 was completed, one of the hottest topics of conversation among students after Prom was ‘About T’. It was so popular, especially among some of the nerdy girls, that an unofficial fan club was formed within the school.

These are people who, although clumsy, do their best to show their love for their work by transcribing newspaper serials into books and adding illustrations.

I interpreted its popularity this way.

‘Tony is definitely a character type that didn’t exist in the early 1980s.’

Male characters of this era had a strong macho aspect, even if they were created for women.

But Tony was not like that. He treated Alice gently and had a somewhat immature side. Those characteristics seemed refreshing in this day and age.

As they read the two novels over and over again, they began to gradually find similarities between the school in the novels, ‘Hamilton Academy’, and our school, ‘Central City Value High School’. And as they analyzed the rumors floating around among the students mentioned in the novels, they came to the conclusion that ‘SEEN’ was attending this school, and they continued to deduce in order to find him.

With the third part of the novel seemingly certain to come out, it was their own version of nerdiness.

“I guess he’s a third year student?”

“Because Tony and Alice are in the third grade? Isn’t that too weak of a basis?”

“But most of the events are organized and run by third-year students. Judging from the description of Homecoming Day, I wonder if the new writer also participated directly?”

“Then are you from the student council?”

“I asked them! They said absolutely not.”

“Is there a possibility that it is hidden?”

“Ahhh! I want to find it!”

“······.”

It’s right next door.

There is a person whose pen name and name are both ‘Shin’.

······Ah, the pronunciation is different in English. I thought it was too Korean.

‘I wonder if it’s impossible for me, who is always first in the school and often hangs out with my close friends, to even imagine myself writing.’

Anyway, I knew that some kind of rumor was slowly spreading among the female students.

‘Shin’ is a third-year student attending this school.

But among the 500 or so people, no one has been able to figure out who the new person is, and they just keep going around and around. It seems like it has become an interesting topic of conversation among quite a few students, like a mystery content.

‘So that’s what Kate said.’

I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to reveal it briefly just before graduation.

A sense of belonging or solidarity has sometimes been a great strength to writers. There are readers who are interested in the book and buy it just because they are from the same school or region.

If you leave school with your identity clearly revealed before graduation, you can minimize the risk of your name and face being revealed, while still retaining some of the benefits of a sense of belonging and solidarity.

‘There is one problem that needs to be solved before that, though.’

The question was how to deal with the media franchise issue of this novel, ‘About T’.

***

In fact, the first thing I did when I came home after taking the college entrance exam was to contact Julia. I wanted to hear about the deal for the television drama adaptation of ‘About T’.

We made an appointment to meet the next day, and I headed to the Los Angeles Times right after school. Since I had something confidential to say, I decided to meet at the office.

‘Judging by the excited voice, it seems like nothing bad happened.’

I was a little intrigued, but actually, I was also worried.

While I was traveling to take the second entrance exam, I thought about many things during my spare time, but I still couldn’t make up my mind.

‘Is it because this transaction partner, LBS, is on a completely different scale than before?’

The studios and channels that produced local radio were also large in their own right, but they were nothing compared to this.

The problem arose from the difference in input capital.

From radio dramas, comics, toys, and even setting books, all previous media franchises and ‘television dramas’ had different production costs.

In other words, it meant that the influence of the capital-providing side was growing stronger.

The story I wrote is displayed on the television screen, where the influence of the medium called writing cannot be greatly exerted.

It was certainly a very happy thing for the author. But what if the result of that process ignores the original work and leaves a deeper impression on the public?

‘I already have that experience.’

‘Dead Man’s Heaven’.

That work, which was my greatest hit in my previous life, was completely transformed under the power and logic of huge capital.

Because of that, I made a huge amount of money, but I felt ashamed. Every time people went crazy about my novel (or the drama based on it) and praised me, my ego would crumble and only despair would remain.

‘Because it wasn’t my work.’

To begin with, the original work wasn’t even a novel that I wrote to contain myself and confront the world.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that I think that writing without considering commerciality is the right answer. It’s just that the ‘Dead Man’s Heaven’ I wrote didn’t have any color of my existence at all.

Even the work was changed and manipulated by big capital to suit its taste······and the public went wild about it.

At first, I was satisfied with the large sum of money, but I gradually lost my confidence and had no choice but to become discouraged.

‘It’s different now, though.’

What I think is most important right now is the balance between ‘me’ and ‘money.’

In other words, it could be said to be a balance between authorship and commercialism.

Balancing the two has always been a challenge for writers, but I think I’ve done a good job so far. From “Mother” to “About T,” I’ve tried to make the novel as light as possible, but I’ve never taken the effort to express it lightly.

Still, memories of my past life lingered in my mind, and I was worried that even if my work did well, it might be trampled by the tyranny of big capital.

‘Maybe not, though.’

Should I say that the past that I haven’t been able to shake off is vaguely holding me back from taking on the new path that lies before me?

It was with that somewhat cautious mind that I met Julia at the Rotham office.

And I’ve been hearing this from the beginning.

“They said they wanted to air it on Fridays at 7 p.m., during prime time. When I told them about my concerns, they said they would actively reflect the writer’s opinions in selecting actors and writing the script. I was impressed by how actively they were trying to sign the contract.”

“······What on earth did you say when you got there?”

I asked, feeling my mind wandering.

What kind of Julia magic did she use to make them come out so humble?

Julia’s answer was quite surprising.

“Looking at the situation, it seemed like the author was completely absorbed in the work, so I scratched it gently.”

“No, it’s just a regular teenage romance.”

Add a teaspoon or so of mystery flavor to it.

As I tilted my head in bewilderment, Julia added a word.

“Oh, they also set a condition.”

“What are the conditions?”

In response to my question, Julia continued her explanation.

California Pictures, a production company under LBS, seemed to want me to continue serializing the work. They said they didn’t mind taking a hiatus like the one they had now, but they wanted me to continue serializing the work and introduce as many characters as possible until the drama version came out.

“What do you think?”

“Well. ······um.”

I thought about it seriously.

As a writer who can be considered a kind of individual business owner, in order to compete with large capital, one’s own name value and the power of the work itself had to be strong. However, all of these factors are ultimately relative, so generally, there was some kind of mind game going on while proceeding with the contract.

‘Like when I met Remy Martin.’

But now California Pictures seems to have no intention of doing that.

He appeared completely humble and wanted to somehow acquire the rights to dramatize the work.

“What exactly did they say about the work?”

“I love both Tony and Alice. He almost likened Tony to a unicorn, saying how a handsome quarterback boy with such a unique appearance can be so delicate. And Alice, the nerdy school girl, is also a refreshing character because she’s not the type of female character that’s been portrayed in media so much.”

After hearing that, I finally understood.

‘It’s true that neither of them are common types of characters at this point in time.’

And that combination too.

The quarterback of the football club, arguably the most popular team in school, and the nerdy girl that no one cares about.

······No, well. If you just change the gender, it’s a very familiar combination to me, but it seems that readers and broadcasting station officials of this era don’t think so.

In fact, it had to be that way.

American schools were a microcosm of American society, and naturally, strict segregation was established according to existing ideas.

It’s very American to come together whenever there’s a big event or something, but anyway, each person lives in their own place with their own clique, and sometimes bullying occurs and sometimes cooperation occurs.

But the main characters of this novel got along with each other regardless of such aspects.

Could it be because the environment in which I, the writer, grew up or the situations I encountered were not like that?

‘Huh?’

Then suddenly a thought popped into my head.

This novel made me want to write more.

***

This was the part I was most worried about.

‘Do I have more to show after the trilogy with ‘About T’?’

Actually, I really liked the proposals from LBS and California Pictures.

I felt like they respected my story, and I understood why. They appreciated the teen sensibility of ‘About T’, as well as the elements you don’t find in typical dramas of this era: two people with different cliches coming together.

After leaving Julia to continue the conversation and returning home, I locked myself in my room and continued to ponder the thoughts that had come to me during the meeting.

And finally, I managed to come up with some sort of answer.

‘I wasn’t planning on writing it if there was nothing to write about.’

It made me want to write more of this novel.

Tony and Alice. I wanted to show the football club quarterback and the nerdy school librarian, and the many students who go to school with them.

‘Basically, it’s about Tony and Alice as the main characters.’

What if we expanded on this teenager’s story by showing the stories of other characters who become entangled with them?

What if we reflected the atmosphere of Central City Value High School, which is currently in a completely festive mood, and showed how they each change as they approach graduation?

‘Just as my relationships with my friends and many others changed as we approached graduation.’

I wanted to give the cheerleaders, who were only shown as bullies to Alice, a chance and a punishment at the same time. I wanted to show them regretting their actions and being forgiven at the same time, and to make them feel regret for their high school days that will never come back.

‘Just like I am now.’

To be honest, I thought my second year of high school was quite satisfying.

Nevertheless, I felt regretful inside, because I knew all too well that this time would never come back again without some miraculous help.

I am proud to say that I had truly fulfilling days thanks to that miracle, but those days were so dazzling that no matter how well I thought I had lived them, I still feel like they were not enough.

‘So, I have to do my best during the remaining time so that I don’t have any regrets.’

Thinking about the main theme of this work, which will continue after the third part of the series, ‘About T: Prom’, I suddenly looked at the clothes hanging next to the mirror.

A tuxedo with smooth, flowing lines.

And on the display case next to it, there were prom tickets and a white corsage ready to be given to her partner.

End

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