Became an American Retro Novelist - Chapter 139

139.

Just before the graduation ceremony started.

The number of people gathered in the field was much larger than expected.

The audience was almost full. There were parents, people around the graduates, people who were just watching because it was a local event, and even first and second year juniors who stopped by on their way home after school. It was a huge crowd.

Now, the real event was about to begin with the graduating students entering.

Ten student representatives who have been active both inside and outside of school for three years will go up on stage, and the rest of the students will sit on chairs below the stage.

Since I was scheduled to be in charge of the graduation tour, I was naturally scheduled to stand at the front when the student representative entered. In other words, I would be the first to enter in front of a large crowd.

I chuckled.

‘Not bad.’

Then, Malcolm, who had been passing by laughing and chatting, spoke to me with a puzzled look on his face.

“Hey, God. Your knees are a mess.”

“Huh?”

As I lowered my gaze to those words, my knees were trembling.

Yeah, I was pretending on the inside, but my body was being honest.

No matter how many experiences I had in my past life, I was a teacher and a writer, not a speaker. After deep reflection, I presented my world to the world and persuaded people’s reason and emotions, but it was done non-face-to-face through the medium of writing.

Although it was a long explanation, the message was simple.

I was shaking like crazy.

‘I’m going crazy.’

Seeing my body’s reaction, I suddenly remembered the tension that had filled me.

Kate looked at me with a bewildered expression as I took a deep breath with the aforementioned expression.

“If you don’t think it can be done now, then hand it over to me.”

“Should I? Do you want to do it instead?”

“······.”

Kate, looking at the bustling field, shrugged her shoulders and quietly walked back.

“······There are too many.”

“······.”

And the rest of the student representatives who were near me also looked at us as if we were dumbfounded.

I also asked Malcolm, who was standing next to me.

“Malcolm? You want to?”

“Oh, come on. No matter how much I say that, I don’t think that’s right.”

Everyone looked just as nervous as I did.

One of the student representatives looked at me and shouted.

“God, don’t worry! You’ve always been good with words!”

“What? He didn’t say anything at all?”

There was a moment of mixed reactions. Then they burst out laughing.

My reaction made these guys relax, but they were comfortable with what I was going to do.

On the other hand, Alexa, who knows my circumstances well, reacted like this.

“Don’t worry, God. It’ll be okay.”

Doopi, who had left the line and come to me, also gave me a thumbs up.

“Everything will be okay. You always have been.”

My friends’ unwavering faith actually became a burden.

“Graduates!”

Just then, Mrs. Benaway, who was in charge of the event, approached us.

“The event will start soon! Is everyone ready?”

[Yeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaahhhh-!!]

The graduates’ loud shouts continued.

And then Malcolm, who was next to me, came over and put his arm around my shoulder with his big body.

“Let’s go! God! Let the ‘Freak’ inside you come out!!”

It was a chant chanted by American football teams before going out to play.

“······okay.”

I lightly patted his cheek and soon looked at the field with a determined expression.

‘I’m not a football player, though.’

Anyway, the task at hand was clear.

A huge amplifier began to play grand, orchestral graduation music.

Following Mrs. Benaway’s ‘Go’ sign, I slowly walked forward. The student council juniors who had come out to help with the event showed me the way, and following their instructions, I went up on stage, separated from the regular students.

Under the clear sky, many people gathered.

I sat on the chair prepared on the stage and felt my heart pounding.

And when the event actually started, rather than feeling nervous, I felt a sense of regret and liberation at the same time.

Is it because I’m reminded of the fact that this is truly the end?

It was a truly fulfilling high school life.

‘Yeah, I tried hard one way or another.’

It couldn’t be considered perfect.

I had a lot of friends like Alexa, but I didn’t get along with everyone. Especially in the first grade, I barely talked to the kids. Then, as I became close with Alexa and Doofy, I gradually became close to the other kids.

Still, I always studied hard and succeeded in getting the results I wanted. And now I was planning to go to college and study.

It was all during my high school years in this life that I ‘chose’.

[The 13th Central City Value High School Graduation Ceremony will now begin.]

Mrs. Benaway stood at the microphone and conducted the commencement ceremony, which began with the playing of the national anthem and the presentation of awards to student representatives.

Starting with Alexa, who won the national championship as captain of the cheerleading club, each student representative received an award for their hard work, and I received an award as the student who achieved the highest grades and set an example for others.

Then, starting with me, each student lined up on the stage, shook hands with several teachers, and received their diplomas.

After the ceremony was over and everyone took their seats on the stage, the new student body president went up to the stage and began his congratulatory speech.

[Congratulations on your graduation.]

Although I only recited what was written in the manuscript, I was somehow touched.

I glanced over and saw Alexa sitting right next to me smiling at me.

When we met eyes with Doopi, who was sitting in a group of regular students, I gave him a thumbs up.

And beyond the students, among the crowd, I could see a few people who had come all the way here for me.

I felt heat flowing through my hands.

‘I’m finally starting to feel a little more relaxed.’

As the graduation ceremony actually began, a part of myself that I had not been aware of before began to surface.

I thought ‘nervousness’ was a physical reaction that came from self-doubt. And I had been doubting myself until just now. It was natural, since I had never spoken in front of so many people before.

But through that tension, a certain emotion slowly rose to my mind.

I had a fulfilling high school life.

At the same time, I was a writer.

From ‘Mother’ to ‘About T: prom’ which ended today, I have serialized a total of four works, and each of them received great responses from the public. The ‘wealth’ I gained through this quickly solved the problem of poverty that had plagued me throughout my childhood in my previous life, and helped me choose a better life.

I thought.

‘What kind of person am I in this 1980s?’

It was replaced like this.

‘What should I write about in this 1980s?’

I wanted to make many people cry and laugh, and I wanted to express both my negative and positive emotions in a processed form.

And when I recalled that determination, strangely enough, my mouth started to twitch.

The world around me disappeared and only ‘I’ remained. I couldn’t bear it even though I thought I would definitely regret it.

‘I guess I’ll kick off the blanket later.’

Shin, a high school student, was about to disappear from here and move on to become an adult by becoming a college student.

That’s why I wanted to proudly reveal the fact that I am ‘SEEN’ and take responsibility for that identity. It may be over-self-consciousness, but if there was anyone who was curious about my identity, it was right for me to reveal it.

Aside from the benefits I could gain from being a writer, I realized once again that the fact that I am a writer has a special meaning to me.

It was about time I came to that conclusion.

[Next, there will be a speech by a representative of the graduating class.]

I slowly got up from my seat and walked to the podium on the stage.

“Cheer up, senior.”

The student council president smiled faintly, bowed briefly, and left the podium.

I went up to the stage and spoke into the microphone.

Phew-.

A small gasp echoed through the amplifier and into the football stadium.

Thousands of people gathered here are listening to my voice.

The first thing I said to them was······.

“I hated the world.”

It began with the author’s memoirs of a time long gone by when he returned to the past.

······Mrs. Benaway’s expression, which had been smiling brightly, seemed to harden slightly.

Era, I don’t know.

***

Shin Han, who took the podium as a graduating class representative.

He was always ranked first throughout high school, was loved by all his teachers, and was scheduled to attend Stanford after graduation. His first words were:

[I hated the world.]

When they heard that, the crowd became quiet for a moment.

Many people felt embarrassed and held their breath.

If we recall that the graduating students’ report usually begins with something like, “We graduated under the blue sky and each went out into society,” it was very strange. No, it was almost bizarre.

But those who knew about him listened silently and seriously.

[I had a constant feeling of suffocation in my chest. The world didn’t care about people like me.]

Shin Han pauses for a moment as he continues his slow speech and looks around the room.

His eyes, relatively small compared to those of white or black people, scanned many people.

[Actually, that’s natural. I didn’t try to do anything. I just went with the flow and tried to avoid the unpleasantness that was given to me as much as possible, thinking that I had no choice but to do it. At some point, I hid inside my shell, closed my heart, and lived my life doing only what I had to do.]

God spoke his mind without reservation.

Even Mrs. Benaway, who was momentarily flustered, could not help but concentrate more and more on the investigation.

[That was extremely painful and hard. I didn’t want to look at anyone straight in order to avoid getting hurt, but I also didn’t want to reveal myself as I was. Sometimes, in order to protect my fragile self and endure the frustration, I would put up thorns and overreact. And then I would dig deeper.]

God laughed as he thought about himself at that time.

That was the case in the early days when I was writing ‘Mother’.

But that too was not meaningless.

That’s because it’s me, ‘Shin’. And based on that, the boy became ‘SEEN’ and wrote a novel.

[Just as Malcolm here played football and Kate devoted herself to broadcasting, I also tried very hard to release my emotions. But even in the midst of all that, there were friends who reached out to me. The first of them was Alexa Flair.]

Looking back leisurely, God smiled at Alexa.

Suddenly, Alexa remembered her first meeting with him and smiled brightly with slightly teary eyes.

[Cheerleader Queen, the friend everyone at school wants to be friends with. I think Alexa is the only person in this world who can face the world without any purpose. Like the people around her, I naturally tried to protect her soft and delicate heart.]

And God looked at a friend sitting below the stage.

[Dupe Kingston. He was my best friend in school. He always will be. He was a man who expressed himself in a different way than I did. I admire him and have always been a great inspiration to me. I still remember the first time I went to his house. There was R2-D2 standing in the yard and I started to be myself for the first time. And from that point on, everything got better. As we all do in our own time.]

Each one made a nest in his own place.

I filled the branches inside it with people, and I filled the branches inside it with things.

Even if they weren’t aware of it, God thought that everyone gathered here had had such moments.

Malcolm nodded.

‘It was a great time.’

Football, friendship with friends, love with Jamie.

All of those things came together to make him who he is today.

Bill at the comic book store nodded.

‘Fred and Friends, Superman made me strong.’

Everyone has lived like that.

God also became truly aware of it.

He came back to the 1980s and realized that he had shaken off many things and truly changed.

I felt grateful to this world for helping me break out of my shell, and I continued writing the novel.

I wanted to give back to the world.

[······Yes. I realized the hell inside me, and I also realized that there is a heaven. The moment I realized that all of that exists inside me, and that I can decide what I will accept, my life entered a little more of a ‘good mood’. And the novels I write have also moved in that direction. Well, ‘good mood’ is what my ‘reporter’ Simon Carver said.]

‘huh?’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Reporter in charge?’

‘You wrote a novel?’

People who didn’t know the situation tilted their heads.

Students below the stage, parents standing in the audience, and second-year students watching.

Everyone gathered here looked puzzled as they listened to the god’s words that seemed to dance around freely. But the god didn’t care, and the sincerity that came from his attitude kept the people focused.

Shin took a deep breath and continued his story.

[The novel written based on that realization was ‘Double Spy’.]

For a moment even the murmur disappeared.

It would be more appropriate to say that the air was frozen.

[If ‘Mother’ was the novel that exposed my dark emotions before, ‘Double Spy’ that I wrote with so much love from you all can be seen as a slightly more cheerful novel. After that, ‘Princess Quest’ was about my friends and I, and after that, ‘About T’ was a kind of homage to my school days······ I have written by revealing my world, and I think I have come this far because many people have read it.]

Even in such a situation, God calmly spoke his true feelings.

Everyone was unable to confirm or deny the absurd truth that came out of nowhere.

Shin smiled lightly as he felt the atmosphere in the room. He was going to explain that part properly later anyway. For now, he just wanted to say whatever he wanted as a high school student who was about to graduate.

[Novels were like that to me. They were a tool to fight against the harsh world. At the same time, they were more like a desperate struggle to get to know the individual I was. S, E, E, N. I came up with these pen names with the hope that someone would see me as a person and that someone would say that they had read this person’s novels.]

But that was the story of that time.

Recently, Shin thought that he was using the pen name ‘SEEN’ in a different sense.

A writer who has lived once in the distant future, returns, and writes about what he felt about the 1980s from a different perspective than others.

That’s why he calls himself ‘SEEN’.

The god looked around the audience, feeling an overwhelming emotion welling up in his chest.

[The reason I’m telling you this story is because after ‘About T’ was serialized, rumors started to spread among the students that ‘SEEN’ was attending this school. And to answer that question······ Yes.]

I am SEEN.

A sprawling American football field.

The graduation ceremony of Central City Value High School unfolds there.

As everyone stood there dumbfounded, the nerd guys at Kitten’s Comic Book Store couldn’t help but shout:

[SEEN! SEEN! SEEN! SEEN! SEEN! SEEN! SEEN! SEEN!]

In front of him, God smiled awkwardly.

‘This wasn’t the intended direction, though.’

But I thought it helped set the mood for now.

End