Became an American Retro Novelist - Chapter 153



Only Noblemtl

153.

Stanford University required 180 credits to graduate.

The credit earning options varied greatly, and the school described it as “Stanford offers a diverse academic experience.”

······And the problem was that the focus of the experience was purely on the eyes of the university’s higher-ups.

They seemed to want the students to study all the time except when they were sleeping.

That was the average for the university.

Stanford, no, there weren’t many students who graduated within the regular 4-year period(?) at the university. If there were such a person, he would be called a nerd even in this university, which could be said to be a place where only nerds gather. You could say he was the king of nerds.

In order to complete 180 credits in four years, you had to take 15 classes per semester. This meant you had to spend most of your college years immersed in studying, which was virtually impossible. And to make up for this shortcoming, Stanford created a system of seasonal semesters and external credits.

But even with such a system, graduating in four years was truly difficult at Stanford.

I, too, wasn’t thinking about graduating in four years.

‘Studying is good, but I want to enjoy my current life to the fullest.’

Because I want to incorporate the experiences and emotions I gain in that way into the novel I will write.

After my return, as I continued to live as a novelist, I gradually began to figure out who I was and what kind of novels I wrote.

I was a boy who was hurt by the wall of racism, and at the same time, I was an adult who had the skills as a writer to figure out many aspects of life and act accordingly.

Above all, I have memories of experiencing both the past and the future.

The writing I write has the potential to be either extremely sophisticated for today’s era, or, on the contrary, completely incomprehensible and ahead of its time.

And I have always tried to write the best work I can, walking a tightrope between marketability and my consciousness as a writer.

While ‘Mother’, which contained the color of being Korean, and ‘Princess Quest’, which featured a female protagonist, focused on my ego as a writer, ‘Double Spy’ and ‘About T’ placed more emphasis on marketability.

And I thought that from now on, the science fiction novels I will write could focus a little more on my consciousness as a writer.

A form of writing that astonishes the public with so-called ‘daring imagination’ rather than a novel that is easy for anyone to read.

I started to imagine from the common ground between the clearly separated past and future.

Regardless of the era, humans have been social animals.

It was an absolutely unavoidable fate as long as humans lived in society. The problem was that ‘something social’ ultimately originated from an illusion. If a person did not meet the standards set by society, which were no different from illusions, he or she would become a loser and feel unhappy.

‘The future is much worse.’

I thought it was because humans were connected to too many ‘networks’.

Although SNS was cited as a representative candidate before the idea, even those who did not place much value on it were obsessed with some kind of illusory concept in their own community and rejected those who did not understand it as narrow-minded. Of course, they included themselves among those ‘narrow-minded people’, but they consoled themselves by thinking that they were better off knowing the truth.

And in this process, humans lose the will to think for themselves.

Through SNS, people become obsessed with certain personalities or ideas presented by famous people, and try to fit themselves into those standards. If they cannot do so, they feel inferior and anxious.

Humans are increasingly becoming accustomed to information through the Internet rather than thinking for themselves, and are living by fitting it into the frame of their consciousness.

It was only after I returned to the past that I realized that they were all illusions.

‘I was like that in my past life too.’

I was hurt by past novels that featured Asians as cowardly villains, but I still made a fortune by making zombie apocalypse movies starring cowboy-style white guys that I could never relate to, just to fit the needs of the market.

Now that I think about it, that was ultimately my problem.

‘It’s all my fault. It’s my fault.’

I thought of a line that would come out of some hardcore religious book.

If you don’t like it, then just don’t use it.

But at that time, I had no choice. I couldn’t overcome the illusions that came from the flow of the times, so I tried to succeed by writing to fit in with them, and despite that, I ended up suffering from that success.

I felt like there was something contradictory about myself.

Another thought occurred to me.

‘······What on earth do I want to write?’

A story featuring an Asian protagonist like me?

Or maybe a piece filled with memories from your childhood?

Or is it just a jackpot if you just make money?

In addition to that, do you want popularity and recognition, in other words, fame and authority?

As the pen name ‘SEEN’ suggests, am I the kind of person who has to be greedy and greedy to feel satisfied?

Will this suffering end only when I, like Erisithon in Greek mythology, indulge in greed and devour myself in an unquenchable hunger?

‘No, that’s not true.’

But I didn’t deny this feeling.

I wanted to make more money and do what I wanted with it.

Still, I tried not to get hung up on it. I tried to be content with the present, where I could go back from the future to the past, correct my regrets, and live the life I wanted.

And actually, that’s partly because I know to some extent what will happen in the future.

‘Because I feel a little less anxious.’

When I think about how I differ from my past life when I was obsessed with success and my current life when I try not to be, I finally understand why those living in the future are caught up in social illusions.

Because I’m anxious.

As individuals come to understand, the network of human beings expands exponentially, and each individual tries to display his or her success on that network, while secretly labeling anyone who fails to reach that level as a loser.

Even in some cultural circles, even if they have achieved that level of success, they are criticized for being so open about it, for having a questionable process, or for having a good background or just being lucky.

‘Well, what do you want me to do?’

The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it became and I had to laugh.

A star who has been criticized by hundreds of thousands or millions of people commits suicide, and even that is used as a joke by the public and the media. They either commemorate him in order not to be a loser, or on the contrary, insult him with harsh language in order to be intoxicated with their own uniqueness.

I ultimately thought that all these distortions came from human behavior confronting certain social conventions.

And as the struggle deepened and became more complex, it became more difficult to overcome the process, and within that structure, people could not help but gradually lose their sense of self and become unhappy.

After much deliberation, I concluded that ‘dystopian’ is a genre that depicts the current state of affairs in an extreme way and raises a sense of alarm.

In a world where extreme imperialism and totalitarianism are rampant, and furthermore, where all systems are intertwined, the writer had to depict the ‘gloomiest social world’, so he had to have keen insight into the world and be able to cast the imagination derived from it into interesting forms.

‘But the idea of ​​the dystopia I’m trying to write about comes from the future.’

Since the concept of the ‘Internet’ was not particularly developed at the time, I felt that I needed to understand some aspects of what was currently happening in the world in order to help people understand the dystopia I was going to write about.

So how does this sliver of an illusion called ‘social’ function in our time?

‘That’s why I’m going to use Kate’s case as an example. In fact, even what I figured out could very well be my own misjudgment, so on-site reporting is absolutely necessary.’

The Kate Moore I saw was someone obsessed with the ‘illusion’ presented by society.

Oh, but that doesn’t mean I thought that such illusions were evils that should be completely eliminated from society. Humans are beings who grow by being presented with social conventions and by opposing them.

Yet the reason I described it as an ‘illusion’ is because I believe that the will of each individual human being, when properly formed, is greater than that.

But from the way she liked ‘About T’ and the way she said ‘I thought things would change when I got to college’, I read that she was feeling a sense of emptiness somewhere as she was absorbed in illusions.

‘It can’t be helped.’

I’ve been through that too, and it took me a really long time to erase it.

Yes, it was so difficult to overcome that it took me one lifetime to come back.

That is why I decided to observe Kate in such a situation in the present age and use that as a starting point for the novel I will write in the future.

What kind of illusions are people living in the 80s obsessed with? How is it different from the future?

Because the process of actually seeing it with your own eyes will increase the perfection of this novel.

‘That sounds fun.’

***

Fall semester of first year.

I took exams in ten subjects, excluding the one I was auditing.

Among them, the main major classes were related to writing and its theory, and the former subjects were replaced with assignments, and the latter were memorization tests.

The other classes were Introduction to Playwriting, German, and Cultural History. In any case, since they were all helpful for the act of ‘writing,’ I studied each of them as much as I needed, and as a result, I didn’t feel particularly stuck in any of the assignments or exams.

‘I didn’t really have the intention of doing it perfectly.’

Is it because I spent my entire life as a student and teacher, studying and teaching, and even then, returning to the past and devoting myself to studying for the entire three years of high school, that I became accustomed to the act of ‘studying’?

My body had learned how to study at maximum efficiency, no matter how moderately I did it. And that technique didn’t avoid reports or tests.

So, the week after the midterms were over, the test scores for each class were released.

I got near perfect scores of +A in almost all subjects, and when my classmates found out about this, they looked at me with uncomfortable eyes and muttered something.

“What? I thought you were only good at writing, but you’re good at studying too?”

“God is unfair······.”

“You told me clearly that you didn’t study, but it was all a lie!”

The last one to speak was John Smith.

I opened my mouth cautiously, feeling a nightmare(?) of being bullied by my friends while playing ‘Princess Quest’ come to mind for some reason.

“Hey, guys?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“what’s the matter?!”

“I can hear everything.”

“······.”

“······.”

“Wow, my god! This is seriously the best!”

“Wow! You’re so handsome!”

It has nothing to do with being handsome.

Still, we all became close friends while going to school together.

Even the grumbling that I had marked several high scores and then complained openly was just a light-hearted joke that we could come out with once the initial awkwardness had died down.

But there were some more serious ones among them.

It was Rebecca Wong.

“god.”

“Oh, yeah. Rebecca.”

“How on earth did you study so well on the test?”

She asks as if she is really curious.

I had no choice but to answer like this.

“······You just need to listen carefully in class, review, and understand the concepts well.”

Naturally, there was a huge backlash.

“Wow! This is too much!”

“Yeah! I’ll say that too!”

“Tell me how you did so well on the test!”

“You went to college twice?!”

Oh my, how did you know?

I couldn’t help but act awkwardly, having been hit with an unexpected punchline.

Anyway, I safely passed the hurdle called the midterm exam.

Just after I thought that was all well and good, I headed to the clubhouse building to attend the community service club activities as I had told Kate the last time.

The clubs that students can apply for, establish, and operate on campus are largely categorized into outdoor activity clubs and indoor activity clubs. Among them, the social service club falls into the outdoor activity category.

Students who joined this club went out to do volunteer work once a week to help the socially vulnerable. And I was the first to participate in this club activity as a field trip student.

Kate, who was waiting outside the cafe outside the clubhouse, said this about the social service club.

“I’ll just add a line to my resume when I apply for a job later.”

“······Holy moly.”

“why?”

“No, you said you were helping the socially vulnerable.”

“That’s right. That way, you can add a line to your resume.”

“No, don’t you usually say that the act of helping itself has meaning?”

“······.”

“······.”

“Oh, you said you were going to use it in a novel?”

This kid is increasingly not hiding his feelings in front of me these days.

It’s not good to act too ‘socially’, but it’s also not always good to show off your true feelings without hiding them.

As with all things in life, balance is the most important thing, I thought, and asked Kate with an awkward face.

“So you joined this club purely because of your extracurricular activities?”

“No, I enjoy helping people.”

“······Interview, interview.”

“You’re not going to use this as is in the novel, are you?”

“Of course. If the writer simply publishes the interview content, it would be an essay, not a novel.”

Kate seemed a little relieved by my words and continued speaking without hesitation.

“Well, most people think so, or they just came for the purpose of meeting people.”

“Hoo.”

This part hasn’t changed, whether in the future or the past.

The only thing that has changed is the method. In the future, people would expose themselves on social media or dating apps like Tinder to find romantic partners, but now it is more natural to pursue natural encounters like this.

‘In the end, does that mean human desires are similar?’

And the media and networks have evolved in ways that further stimulate it.

Kate said with narrowed eyes as I smiled, feeling my thoughts gradually coming into focus.

“Don’t laugh. It makes me feel bad.”

“They say Alexa is handsome.”

“Whew, Alexa dating someone like you? I can’t understand.”

After letting out a sigh, Kate gave one last warning.

“This conversation between you and me will be a secret when we get there. It’s fine to follow me around and report on things, but please make sure you don’t interfere with my social activities.”

“Keep that in mind, teacher.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Kate stood up, straightened her clothes, took a deep breath, and headed toward the clubhouse.

I followed her into a row of rooms labeled ‘Community Service Club.’

“Oh, Kate.”

“Come in.”

About ten men and women gathered around greeted each other······.

“Hello. How have you all been?”

In response, Kate Moore greeted him with a truly ‘perfect’ smile.

It seemed like people in the future would only show their perfect selves on Instagram.

End

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