Became an American Retro Novelist - Chapter 193



Only Noblemtl

193.

On his first day off in a long while, Jiwoo Jang was still in bed in his pajamas from the morning.

The baby pajamas I’m wearing were a gift I received from my mom when I went to the supermarket with her a while ago.

It wasn’t his style as a rocker, but his mom said it was cute and suited him well, and it was so comfortable that he ended up wearing it all the time. It wasn’t just the words, it really fit Jiwoo’s tiny body as if it was made to fit him.

She was sitting up a little higher than she usually was, leaning her back against the headboard, reading Shin’s latest work, ‘Universe of Losers’, in her hand.

The hardcover novel, which was over 300 pages long, was extremely heavy, and as I kept it between my chest and stomach, I began to gradually lose feeling in that area.

“······.”

Then roll around.

I lay on my side and continued reading the book.

After about 20 minutes, the arm on the side where my body was pressed began to feel numb.

Roll over to the other side.

“······.”

As I was doing that, a voice was heard from below.

[Jiwooya~.]

“······.”

[Jiwoo~. Eat lunch~.]

“······Ah. Yes-!”

Jiwoo, who realized belatedly that his name was being called, shouted while holding the book in his hand.

She quickly went downstairs and sat down at the table. When the lady she was meeting for the first time today asked her what she was doing, she smiled awkwardly and answered like this.

“I was reading Shin Oppa’s novel.”

“Oh, that thing called Universa or something?”

“Yes. I think I’ll just keep reading this today.”

“Is it fun?”

It was a question that God always asked whenever he published a work.

As a first-generation Korean immigrant, my mother, who was weak in English, was not good at reading novels written in English. That is why it took her a long time to read and understand her beloved son’s novels, and even then, she often forgot about them halfway because her life was so busy.

That’s why I became closer to the old woman by occasionally explaining to her what the novel about the god who erases is about.

But since he hadn’t finished reading the novel yet, it took him some time to answer, and Jiwoo gave this answer while savoring his lunch.

“It’s something huge.”

“huh······?”

“It’s the biggest story I’ve ever heard.”

A smile spread across his lips.

After finishing the meal with the woman who had a somewhat bewildered expression on her face, Jiwoo returned to his room and began reading a novel.

An incredibly long time has passed since Part 1.

The human population has surpassed 10 trillion, and mankind has expanded into space.

‘Space.’

After lying back down on the bed, Jiwoo crossed his legs and placed a book on top of them as he thought.

‘Hehehe, I heard the current population is 4.8 billion.’

If it had surpassed 10 trillion, it would have been a difference of nearly 2,000 times.

For a moment, my mind went blank as I thought about the numbers that were too large to be reached with my own perception. Thinking back, I had a similar feeling when my teacher explained to me about the size of the universe at school.

Even just looking at the Han family home here in Los Angeles, California, it feels incredibly spacious.

‘Even this is nothing more than a speck of dust compared to the realm of space.’

I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed.

In such a situation, Lucy appears as cracks appear in the North’s control.

It was really interesting and fun to the point where she realized the truth and broke away from the control of the North and joined the resistance.

The story unfolds slowly, with more detailed descriptions and explanations to help readers follow along, and was accepted as requested by editor Simon Carver and accepted by God.

‘Resistance, Space, Mars, Colonies.’

Jiwoo uses his imagination as he reads all sorts of terms and descriptions of future times.

It felt like all the hard work I had put into studying to get into college was being rewarded.

The girl who was once obsessed with black magic has now learned to enjoy novels. After her favorite rock music, she has been reading all kinds of pulp fiction, comic books, board games, etc., and has succeeded in changing her sub-job to a nerd. Now, whenever she goes to a comic book store, the nerds treat her like a princess, so much so that she could be called ‘Princess Jiwoo’ without any shame.

Of course, in all of this, a man named ‘Du●’ had a significant role to play.

‘This is crazy.’

Jiwoo Jang continued reading the novel with sparkling eyes.

Time passed and night came.

As I lay on the bed for so long, I kept changing positions here and there until I ended up slumping like a hamster on a midsummer day. However, I was so immersed in the novel that I didn’t even care about that, and I felt my heart pounding in the scene where Lucy fought as a member of the resistance force.

A fast-paced plot that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

A description of the vast space of space and the gigantic weapons that humans have created there.

Lucy and members of the resistance force fight against androids created by The Book.

Jiwoo, who was reading the novel while naturally cheering them on, even saw a scene where the resistance forces were knocking down the North.

And at that moment, she realized something.

‘Oh.’

Isn’t this story developing too well?

Anyone who doesn’t have a tolerance for the novels of the author SEEN will be amazed by the sentences’ immersion, development, and the author’s imagination by the time they read this far, but the current Jiwoo Jang has become an excellent nerd.

So there was one fact that I couldn’t help but doubt.

Absolutely, God does not choose this correct development.

I thought about this after reading Part 1, but this novel had a similar ending to ‘Mother’. It basically adopted a heavy atmosphere, so Jiwoo naturally came to this thought.

‘I wonder if this situation itself is more along the North’s intentions.’

Just as Lucy thought.

Unlike Lucy, who was too drunk on the sweetness of victory to even think about it, Jiwoo thought of the possibility of being free from the North’s control for a moment.

To confirm this, the speed at which I read the novel became even faster.

And Jiwoo felt goosebumps when he finally realized that he was right.

‘somehow!’

Jiwoo bit his lips hard after realizing that all of humanity’s resistance up to that point had been meaningless.

Even at that point in time, there was still a huge amount of the novel left.

‘This is crazy. What the hell is going to happen now?!’

I couldn’t take my eyes off the erased letters and continued to get sucked into the ‘Universe of Losers’.

***

July 17, 1985.

Released throughout California, ‘Universe of Losers’ sold out at a phenomenal rate.

It was a given. The first part has sold over 300,000 copies so far, and sales are still accumulating steadily. Given these figures for the period of release, it would not be an exaggeration to say that it is the best novel ever released in California.

‘Even Glenda Hoffman’s novels couldn’t have generated this much of a response.’

Simon Carver thought seriously.

Even Glenda’s novel, which was like a mother to American housewives and comforted their sorrows, would not have sold at this speed.

With this, God has proven himself. After serializing in newspapers and magazines, he is now able to appeal to readers through a single volume.

Simon analyzed the success of this work into two major factors.

The first factor was God’s writing skills.

God was truly a great writer.

Stable sentence structure. Ideas and story planning that are deeply imbued. The ability to accurately understand the needs of readers and develop them in the direction they want, while also being able to boldly bend and tame readers when you think it is necessary.

If Simon had never actually met God face to face, he would have thought of him as a middle-aged writer who had been reading God’s writings and polishing his writings for a long time.

‘Or the author changed his pen name and made a comeback.’

But once I saw the face, I knew it wasn’t that.

Although he absolutely denies it, Simon believes that as a writer, Shin was a true genius.

And the second factor was the novel’s narrative, which was shocking and against its time.

‘Country of Losers’ shocked those who tried to have vague hopes for the future and science and technology.

Even Simon thought so. He thought that people like Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, and Stalin in the Soviet Union were leading humanity to destruction.

But God painted a future that was not like that.

It is they themselves who make mankind unhappy, and advanced science, technology and knowledge.

It was a very fresh and shocking idea, and people were so interested in the future discourse that ‘Country of Losers’ presented that they enjoyed looking for interpretations of this novel.

This was true not only for the public but also for experts.

[A novel that plants the seeds of ‘misfortune’ in our future.]

[Controlled happiness or the misery of hating each other?]

[Reading this novel makes you wonder if the author is from the future.]

[The cool-headed gaze toward the future was a result that had been anticipated since ‘Mother’······.]

‘Country of Losers’ received rave reviews from all sorts of magazines. Everyone praised the author’s imagination and the novel’s structure.

Sometimes, there were criticisms such as, ‘Isn’t this too absurd and exaggerated?’, ‘How far can you doubt humans?’, but it was a story that could have been criticized to that extent if it wanted to.

Since his first work, ‘Mother’, Shin has written only bright novels.

‘Double spy’, ‘Princess quest’, ‘About T’, all three works were fundamentally filled with hope for humanity.

And Simon thought that both he and the writer, who had been laughing and chatting with him since they became close friends, were included in the ‘Losers series’ that was being released now.

‘It’s just a series name I just thought of, but it’s not bad.’

If Part 1 forced readers to choose between happiness and unhappiness, hope and despair, Part 2 was different.

A work that seems to lead humanity to despair until the end, but leaves a lingering sense of hope at the last moment.

‘I felt like I was hearing the author’s thoughts on humanity.’

Simon looked down at the white cover of ‘Universe of Losers’ with a pounding heart, hoping that there would be a response to this novel soon.

***

Even if you buy the same novel, the time it takes to read it all will be different for each person. This is because the time invested in reading the novel and the reading speed are different for each person.

Simon also named the second part of the ‘Losers series’, ‘Universe of losers’.

Everyone read the novel at their own pace, but the point at which they reached was the same for each person.

The first person to read the book in California, where it was released, was God’s best friend, best reader, and designer for Reggie & Bay Toys, Doofy Kingston.

On the day of its release, he took a vacation, went to a bookstore early in the morning to buy the novel for the third time, and spent the whole day reading the voluminous hardcover volume.

And late at night, in his own home, he fell into deep contemplation.

“God, that’s what you meant.”

Happiness and unhappiness, hope and despair.

They all seem to be contrasting, but in fact they are one.

Humans win simply by existing and living.

My heart was pounding.

“Phew.”

A heart that is said to have been ‘restored’ to normal through surgery.

But Doofi still couldn’t believe it. He still remembered the feeling when his heart was tingling and everything in the world was far away when he was young. It was the so-called heart attack, and the fear caused by it dominated and suppressed Doofi until he met his precious friends.

‘Not now, though.’

He smiled broadly as he recalled his surfing moments.

He himself planned to continue to ‘exist’ like that.

A little more time had passed, early in the morning the next day.

“Puhaa······. What is this?”

Bill, the comic book master sitting in his room, couldn’t help but be amazed.

Even though he had to go to work soon, he couldn’t put the novel down and ended up reading it all the way through.

‘Universe of Losers’ is a novel that deals with what it means to be human in a vast world that we cannot perceive in reality today.

Bill felt utterly overwhelmed while reading this novel until the very end.

The feeling of being stuck with a problem that you just can’t seem to find an answer to.

During the dialogue between ‘The Book’ and ‘Lucy’, I felt like a huge ball of string was sinking into my head. But even though I didn’t fully understand it at the end, I accepted it with my heart.

This novel, in other words, is what God wants to convey.

“All of us, just by being alive······.”

Similar to Doofy Kingston, but with a different interpretation of the expression.

The two would probably meet at Kitten’s Comic Book Store sooner or later and do battle.

In this way, the number of people who read the novels one by one and felt the emotions as they immersed themselves in their own aftertaste increased.

Simon Carver’s editing added to the sharp manuscript written by Shin, gave the novel a much softer tone.

‘Universe of Losers’ made many people think about human existence.

And Remy Martin also started reading the book and finished it in three days.

It was around lunchtime when I arrived at work.

“Zenzang, is this all there was to it?”

The reason I speak of him in a deliberately disparaging way is because I want to deny that he really enjoyed reading this novel, and that he was starting to take an interest in the medium of novels itself.

“What are humans, blah blah blah. In the end, it’s about being alive being the best.”

As he was slicing down the novel for a while, a phrase suddenly came to mind.

A word I heard from God on the phone the other day.

Being human has meaning.

“······.”

That suddenly occurred to him, and Remy remained silent for a while before making a phone call.

I’ve heard the general story about the distribution of Part 1.

‘They’re called Noir Publishing.’

They are said to be the most up-and-coming publisher in the genre right now, so they should also match their standards.

Thump thump. Thump thump.

The dial tone went off and the person on the other end picked up the phone.

Even Remy Martin, the president of a recently rising newspaper company, is someone he has to bow down to.

A publisher with tremendous history and power, founded in 1925.

[Yes, it’s Random House.]

There is no other place like this.