Became an American Retro Novelist - Chapter 166



Only Noblemtl

166.

‘About T: College’ was a work that I seriously considered until the very end, whether or not I should write it.

The reason was simple.

‘I didn’t want to write any more just because the series was making money.’

Naturally, as the visualization went well, the revenue from ‘About T’ was bound to skyrocket. ‘About T’ had been famous in California from the beginning, but now it was going further and proposals for publication in a book were even coming in from other states.

Plus, the Los Angeles Times was asking a whopping $600 per episode for “About T: College.” In other words, the writer had doubled the industry’s maximum pay.

······From then on, I started to worry a little.

‘Hmm~. I can’t stop writing because of my greed. There are so many people whose livelihoods depend on this work. Rather than being stubborn and not writing, wouldn’t it be better for me to continue writing for them?’

Of course, it was a joke.

No matter what, I didn’t want to suffer by serializing a novel that wasn’t fun to write. In the first place, wasn’t that why I started to hate writing novels in my previous life? I didn’t want to repeat the same mistake like an idiot, so I tried to focus only on the essentials.

Do I want to write more of this novel?

Is there more to be written in this novel?

The previous official trilogy of ‘About T’, ‘Viewfinder’, ‘Homecoming’, and ‘Prom’ were my reflections on my high school days. And the works that followed were closer to the process of expanding the worldview and showing the parts that had to be left out while telling the story of Tony and Alice.

While I was writing that side story, I graduated from high school and became a college student.

Tony and Alice also graduated and became college students.

And I thought of a story I wanted to write about through the subject of ‘college students.’

A story about two people who struggle due to the changes in their lives as they enter college.

A new type of sitcom where each person fights in their own life while still thinking of each other.

‘I want to try it once.’

Suddenly, that thought occurred to me and when I came to my senses, I was writing the first scene of the piece.

Since they were characters I had been using for such a long time, they were two people who were as familiar to me as myself. I didn’t really think deeply about the plot, but the first half progressed naturally.

In fact, in a way, it was natural. The hardships these two people went through were similar to what I thought when I saw college students.

The life of a college student, who must run on the rails laid out in front of him like an iron horse without any time to stop and think.

While the vague anxiety that if they stop they will inevitably be eliminated from this endless competition looms, if they dig a little deeper they will find that the anxiety is groundless, but many people cannot let it go and continue to run forward without looking back.

‘Not everyone will be like that though.’

Certainly, there are many people who find the attitude of studying and self-discipline fun in itself, or who use it as a tool to build self-esteem toward their goals.

But many people I saw were suffering from similar anxiety to a greater or lesser extent.

So I got inspired and started writing novels.

Among them, ‘Country of Losers’ shows my own insight by metaphorically expressing the competition caused by vague anxiety in the form of science fiction and dystopia, whereas ‘About T: College’ reveals it in a more direct form and intentionally excludes heavy insight so that readers can enjoy it easily.

‘Because it’s a genre novel.’

It shows the hardships of life in the most understandable form of drama, and provides readers with vicarious emotional satisfaction through the process of resolving them.

That was enough.

I just gave a brief respite and energy to the readers who were running vigorously on their own rails. What to do with it from now on was up to each individual.

You can continue to power forward on the rails.

Or maybe you’re inspired by the content of the novel to do something different.

‘I’m also curious to see how my college friends will react.’

I was determined not to dig up that part too blatantly.

***

Stanford University’s dormitories close all entrances at 2 a.m.

“······.”

John Smith, who returned just in time, walked around the empty lobby, where the central lights were all turned off, taking care not to make any noise.

He was still slightly drunk, so he kept bumping into things here and there in an S-shape before coming to his senses again, and he sighed as he climbed the creaking stairs.

“Phew.”

The feeling of the aroma of the beer inside coming out of your mouth.

A feeling of warmth in the body.

It had been two semesters since he entered college, and John Smith was doing pretty well during that time.

First of all, the Stanford environment that was right in front of me suited me very well.

He grew up in a family where he could read any book he wanted without any shortage since childhood, and thanks to that, he had many similar people around him, so he grew up with an unusually lively personality for a young man who ‘writes’.

Because of that, if there was a drinking party, I would often join in.

Not only that. The conversations we had while going there were also very much to my taste. Perhaps because of the creative writing environment, most of the topics that came out of the students’ mouths while drinking beer were about books they had read or writing methods.

John felt that this environment was perfect for him.

‘The story that came out today was also enjoyable.’

He went up to the third floor with a big smile.

No. 303.

Before entering the room, he wanted to get rid of some of the smell of alcohol before going in, so John Smith opened the window and leaned against it while feeling the cold air coming in. He didn’t want to bother his roommate, Shin, with the smell of alcohol.

‘What a great friend you are.’

It was John’s honest impression.

As we spent time together, I got to know him as a truly incredible hard worker.

Should I say that I basically don’t miss any of the daily details?

He was also very focused during class, and unlike John, he didn’t really go out much, but spent most of his time writing or thinking in his dorm.

If someone saw him, they might say he looked like a monk, but to John, it felt like ‘leisure.’ And yet, whenever he saw him doing his work diligently and getting along well with others, John also felt greatly inspired.

The same was true of that novel.

‘About T’.

At the drinking party today, a senior student suddenly said this. Has there ever been a time when a genre novel serialized in a newspaper became such a hot topic at Stanford University?

Then another senior student said, gulping down his beer. The ‘writer’ who wrote that story came to Stanford and became a hot topic for no reason. ‘About T’ itself is just an ordinary genre novel.

Another upperclassman who heard that tilted his head and answered.

Suddenly, the conversation from back then came back vividly to my mind.

[What’s the problem?]

[It’s not a problem, but I’m saying that the lifting is too much.]

[In what respect?]

[Everyone is talking about it as if it were some great masterpiece.]

[What a masterpiece! People love it and it was even made into a drama!]

[What does that matter? When I saw it, the work seemed too one-dimensional.]

[Isn’t it better than your favorite Kusunagi Vine’s ‘Plum’?]

[······Hey, watch your mouth.]

[Right? John. No one knows about it because it didn’t sell well. The value of art lies in its ability to benefit people. In that sense, isn’t ‘About T’ much better?]

[This kind of ●●.]

······There was a somewhat tense atmosphere, but anyway, ‘About T’ was the main topic of conversation at the drinking party today.

The story of two college-age boys and girls, Tony and Alice, certainly has many fans. Since then, the topic has spread like a wave sweeping across a sandy beach, and there has been a heated debate for a while about what value the novel has in the current American literary market.

And John wanted to give an answer to that.

‘Does it really have to be valuable? Do we really have to decide on that?’

But God himself probably doesn’t even care.

He shrugged and entered room 303, thinking the smell had dissipated somewhat.

Then, the god sitting at the desk inside raised his head.

He was holding a fountain pen in his hand, as if he was writing something. The room was completely dark, and only the dim light from the stand that the school provided as a basic option flickered in the room, and John tilted his head.

“······Huh?”

“Are you coming in now?”

“It’s so late at night, why aren’t you sleeping yet?”

Shin narrowed his eyes at John’s question and pointed out the same thing.

“It’s so late at night, why are you back now?”

“Ah, hahaha.”

“Go to sleep. You have class tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you for your kind words, but that’s not possible.”

John shrugged, took off his coat, hung it on a hanger, and went to sit at his desk behind the god. The drunkenness he had tried so hard to shake off began to creep up on him again, but he still couldn’t rest comfortably.

“There is homework left.”

“You can do it tomorrow.”

“No. If you keep putting it off like that, there’s no end to it.”

John took a deep breath and tried to come to his senses. Then he remembered something and looked back.

“What were you doing?”

“I wrote a novel.”

“’About T’? Working this late? Wow, that’s amazing.”

“It’s nothing. I do it because I like it.”

“Someone said that when a hobby becomes a job, it becomes hard. Isn’t that true?”

“well.”

The god put the pen down from his hand and looked back.

John pulled out his chair and looked back.

Late at night, conversations began to swirl between the roommates.

“I feel a strong sense of responsibility, but I never really thought it was difficult.”

“Hoo.”

“How about you?”

“huh?”

“Is the task you are trying to do now a ‘work’ or a ‘hobby’ to you? Which is closer to it?”

“······.”

The moment he heard that question, John was left speechless.

It was because he realized, as if his lungs were being stabbed, that he was doing his homework as if it were ‘work’. The problem with that was that, in his head, he perceived it more as a ‘hobby’.

John felt very fortunate to have come to this school and has been striving to receive more teaching and learning.

But before I knew it, the process began to feel like work.

No, to be exact, it was somewhere between work and hobby, or conversely, it was neither. His clever mind could not deny that fact. However, since he had asked God about something earlier, he did not like his attitude of treating the assignment as work.

Realizing that fact, he smiled in vain, feeling as if he had been hit in the head with a hammer, and John looked at God with longing eyes.

‘He really is an amazing guy.’

One of the upperclassmen said the novel was nothing, but John thought differently.

The writers of ‘About T: College’ and ‘Shin’ resonated deeply with him.

“Whew, I guess I’ll have to do my homework tomorrow.”

He changed his mind, got up from the desk, and went into bed without any trouble.

God smiled as he watched him make a sound like his grandfather, saying, “Oh my, good.”

***

One weekend, when the serialization of ‘About T: College’ was going smoothly.

At the urging of my roommate, John Smith, I went off campus to buy the necessities for dorm life.

And since I was already out, I decided to stop by a bookstore, buy some books, and have dinner.

‘They do sell daily necessities inside the school, though.’

As for that side, since they mainly sell cost-effective products like the military, many students, including me, tend to buy and use quality daily necessities outside of school. From laundry detergents to razors, creams, and basic cosmetics.

In my previous life, I never cared about such things, especially things like ‘basic makeup’, but now that I know what kind of terrible things would happen if I neglected it(?) as I got older, I tried to take care of it thoroughly. At the very least, I made sure to apply skin toner, lotion, and sunscreen.

Of course, John Smith found my behavior strange.

“······Shall we go to the cosmetics store?”

“Oh, I ran out of lotion.”

“Apply lotion too?!”

“Yeah. If you don’t want to age prematurely, you should start applying now.”

“It’s strange. In my neighborhood, even the Asian women in their 50s all look like they’re in their 20s.”

“Oh, what.”

In that area, there were clear racial differences.

“But there’s also a saying that you don’t know your clothes are getting wet in a drizzle.”

“Hmm······.”

Luckily, the guy didn’t really complain about the fact that a man went to a cosmetics store like a ‘regular American guy’.

It was quite surprising to think that in the 80s in America, where macho culture was extremely distorted, if a man wore basic cosmetics, they would almost kill him and shout, “Gay!”

But eventually, when these people get older, they will cry out that they did not take care of themselves early.

A cosmetics store located downtown.

John and I walked in with great pride.

But the people inside were ‘all’ women, and their eyes widened when they saw me and John. It must have been the first time they saw a man in there. I thought I was coveting the forbidden area because of the look of shock in their eyes, but I tried to act confident anyway.

“Is it a natural human desire to want to look young?”

When I suddenly asked a philosophical question, John Smith answered naturally.

“Maybe so. Youth is considered a symbol of health, and if those who look young and healthy have more chances to reproduce and have survived to this day, then I think that perception is imprinted in our genes.”

“Oh, so does that mean that we, who were born with that chain still in effect, are descendants of the people who looked the ‘healthiest’ among them? What do you think about that?”

“There’s no disagreement. If you compare the average appearance of people 500 years ago with the average appearance of people today, wouldn’t people today look much younger?”

That’s the story of going back and forth in front of the cosmetics counter.

I was so absorbed in the story that I suddenly realized that there was no one around me.

“······.”

“······.”

I saw the women who heard our story momentarily step back in embarrassment.

We’re not weird people. We’re just ordinary people who write.

······No, is that strange?

As I was thinking about buying what I had to buy quickly and leaving the store, I noticed a suspicious face inside the store.

A woman who is just as, if not more, unsuited to this place as I am.

It was none other than Kate Moore. And our eyes met.

‘Oh no, I can’t even run away.’

······But for some reason, your eyes look softer today. Is it because I’m feeling down?

End

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