Became an American Retro Novelist - Chapter 201



Only Noblemtl

201.

“Thank you, author. Those words really comfort me now.”

Julia smiled softly.

A novel is ultimately a collaborative effort between a novelist and an editor.

I didn’t say that just to please Julia, I really meant it. A novelist is a being that is nurtured, and as such, he always needs inspiration from around him.

And I think the best source of inspiration was the editor.

‘Because right now, the person who knows the most about me as a novelist and the novel I’m writing is my editor.’

No, in some novels it might be Kate Moore, but whatever.

“No one would understand if I went somewhere and complained about not being able to write a novel. In fact, Alexa is a great comfort, but the people who can directly help me ‘solve the problem’ are Simon and Julia.”

“Oh my, haven’t you been writing in a way that ‘surprises’ us up until now? Every time we read your work, Simon and I are always surprised and think, ‘There’s a novel this interesting?’”

“The comments you gave me later were a great help. The conversations we shared were also helpful.”

“Well, that’s good. Actually, I was a little worried, although I didn’t show it.”

“What is it?”

“I said that because I was wondering if I could be of any help to the writer’s genius.”

“······Julia, I told you I’m not a genius.”

I answered, feeling a bit embarrassed.

Yes. I am not a genius. Rather, I am more of an extreme hard worker. I thought I was a writer with no particular merits other than the ability to write diligently. Nevertheless, the reason I achieved overwhelming success was because I knew the spirit of the present age and the style of the future.

But since it was something I couldn’t explain to Julia, I had no choice but to deny it every time.

And each time, Julia would respond like this:

“If a writer who takes America by storm at the age of 20 isn’t a genius, then who is?”

“······You make it impossible to refute. Anyway, if it’s not true, then it’s not true.”

I squinted my eyes.

And then something occurred to me.

Having a conversation with someone like this is another source of inspiration.

‘He may look special on the outside, but he’s actually an ordinary protagonist.’

The act of regression itself is special, but what if we think about it without that fact?

“Just a moment.”

“Something just occurred to me.”

I picked up my pen and scribbled down my ideas in front of a smiling Julia.

And in the meantime, somewhere, I felt like her mood had completely relaxed.

‘I wonder if Rebecca was a comfort to you too?’

Julia Chandler, who doesn’t show it but is surprisingly sentimental and has a delicate side.

I remember when I introduced her to John and Rebecca, I realized she was a bit gloomy. What on earth had happened to make her feel better again?

I took notes and asked questions about things that came to mind.

“Are you feeling okay these days?”

“yes?”

“I think it was around the time I introduced you to Rebecca last time? She seemed really dirty for some reason.”

“······.”

“Julia?”

“Oh, no.”

Oh, my.

Why are you like this, you idiot?

Suddenly, her face turned bright red like a carrot. Then, as if she realized it herself, she folded her palm and touched her cheek with the back of her hand, avoiding eye contact.

“······all right?”

“Yes, well. More or less.”

“Ha, I still have a long way to go.”

Sighing lightly, Julia narrowed her eyes and looked at me with resentful eyes.

“Author, please don’t tease me too much.”

“No, when did I ever tease you?”

“Ugh, you’re saying that you knew everything but pretended not to know? It’s so embarrassing······!”

Well, I know how you feel.

I was a minor until this year. And Julia thought of herself as an adult who had to take responsibility for people younger than me, so she had a strong tendency to take care of me, secretly finding me a little cute(?). From the perspective of me, a deceived old man, she tried her best to act like an adult and even paid for coffee herself.

But from that perspective, I was able to figure out what I thought were my shortcomings.

‘Oh my.’

Now I have an excuse to tease you.

“What’s wrong, Leah?”

“Ugh······!”

“You were a wandering knight, right? That’s it.”

“T-T-stop! That’s a character I used to play as!”

“Leah is going to cry.”

Julia Chandler almost faints at my words.

Then we looked at each other for a moment, both of us bursting out laughing.

Somehow I understood why she wanted to continue to be an adult.

Tight pantsuit. Dirty blonde hair tied up neatly. Heavy makeup.

From my perspective, Julia was ‘only’ 31 years old, but even now, I’m sure she’s still suffering from some kind of pressure from this society.

But then again, what is the reason for maintaining that kind of confidence?

It suddenly occurred to me that I still don’t know much about this editor.

Julia, who had taken a quick sip of coffee, spoke first.

“······There’s that typewriter the author has.”

“Hard-boiled nine thousand?”

“Yes, you saw it written there: ‘RT Chandler.’”

“Did you see it?”

I tilted my head at the sudden change of topic.

And Julia said this, something she had been hiding all this time.

“That’s true, Raymond Chandler wrote it.”

“yes?”

That’s ridiculous.

Raymond Chandler.

The father of Philip Marlowe, a legendary mystery novelist and one who shares the image of a detective with Holmes.

His name was unfamiliar to anyone who wrote or read genre fiction. So when I first got the typewriter, I actually chuckled and thought, “Isn’t that Raymond Chandler’s typewriter?”

But the timing wasn’t right.

“Oh, by the time Hard-Boiled Nine Thousand came out, Raymond Chandler was dead, right?”

“Yes, but what if this is the case? What if ‘that’ Hardboiled Nine Thousand is a custom model made by cutting and pasting the plate from the ‘Royal Manual Lighter’ used by Raymond Chandler?”

“··················huh?”

“If you look closely, you can see that the material is different. It’s very subtle. And that’s something I got from my grandfather when I was in college.”

“Oh, no. Raymond Chandler didn’t have any children, did he?”

“Raymond Chandler wasn’t my ‘real grandfather.’ I was the granddaughter of a half-brother. And after Raymond Chandler died, he left us a small inheritance….”

Julia keeps talking nonsense.

And then the ‘confession’ that quietly follows.

I couldn’t help but listen, lost in thought.

***

Julia’s grandfather worked as a day laborer all his life.

And after retirement, he was always soaking in alcohol.

Julia, who was young, would spend time reading books next to him, and her grandfather, who never lost his senses even when he drank alcohol, would always ask him this question.

[Is the book interesting?]

To that I replied, ‘Yes!’

Then a long speech followed.

[I wanted to be an artist too. But life wouldn’t let me go.]

Julia would sit quietly by her grandfather’s side and listen to his lament, which was repeated over and over again.

My grandfather, who would talk about how difficult his life was and how difficult the times were while giving birth to and raising his children, always ended up talking about his half-brother.

Raymond Chandler.

[I lived in Los Angeles, so how could I have the decency to go see it? Thinking back now, it really was fate. I wanted to write a novel, but I couldn’t. That guy became a peerless novelist.]

The grandfather laughs heartily as he says that.

As Julia grew older, she began to learn more about what had happened between the two.

Their father, Maurice Chandler, worked for the railroad but was a serious alcoholic. He left home without doing a proper job, leaving young Raymond and his wife, Florence, to settle in another area and start a new family. The child he had was Julia’s grandfather.

As he grew older, my grandfather naturally learned of his half-brother from his father. He heard that he had returned from England and settled in Los Angeles, but he could not bring himself to meet him. It was because he was sure he would hate his father.

“It was an irony of fate.”

Julia smiled bitterly as she recalled the distant past.

After learning that her grandfather’s half-brother was a famous novelist named Raymond Chandler, Julia went straight to the bookstore and started reading his novels. And naturally, she fell deeply into his world of works. She stayed up all night reading the Philip Marlowe series several times.

And I thought I’d like to meet Raymond Chandler in person.

“I didn’t know it then. Raymond Chandler was already dead, and my grandfather had spent his whole life regretting not being able to meet him even if he wanted to. ······I wonder if I had been born a little earlier, I could have given them both a chance.”

Raymond Chandler is already deceased.

Her grandfather followed in Julia’s footsteps as she entered her teens.

A story of two people that ended in an unfinished state.

One day, while living with the existence of ‘Philip Marlowe’ and keeping that fact in her heart, Julia discovers an old typewriter in the basement of her house. It was the ‘Royal Manual Writer’ that Raymond Chandler himself used.

Julia repaired and used it herself, and when it finally broke down completely, she had it replaced with Raymond Chandler’s signature on the then-new Hard-Boiled Nine Thousand model.

“So, it would be something like ‘Hard-Boiled Nine Thousand – Raymond Chandler Edition’?”

“But why don’t you take that precious item······?”

“······When I quit my job, I was a bit angry.”

As Simon said, history repeats itself.

After that, I felt a bit awkward going back to the office, and since it was a heavy object, I asked Simon to store it separately and plan to return it later.

But then, all of a sudden, Simon came to me and said that he had found an amazing new writer, and asked if it would be okay if he didn’t use him right away, but let him use him until he needed to. So, I agreed to help him, thinking that if he had a writer that his junior, who he got along well with, would praise, it would be a good idea to help him.

A god who blinks his eyes at the interesting story that continues.

And he asked carefully.

“Then how did you end up becoming an editor?”

“Getting to know Raymond’s life.”

Raymond Chandler had an unhappy last year.

His alcoholism relapsed after his older wife died, and he suffered a series of painful events, including attempted suicide and seizures, before dying when Julia was five years old.

When Julia learned of this, she thought of her grandfather.

My grandfather certainly drank heavily, almost to the point of addiction, but he never got drunk or became addicted to alcohol to the point of a certain level.

Both of them probably inherited their father’s alcoholism habit, but what is the difference between the two?

And Julia had her own answer to that.

“My grandfather told me that I drink moderately because of you.”

“I guess you were very loved.”

“Yes. My grandfather, my mother, and my father all loved me very much. Oh, and my parents still live in my hometown of Georgia. They’re native Atlantans.”

Atlanta, Georgia, was the southernmost point of the United States. It was quite a distance from Los Angeles, California, in the west, so Shin naturally assumed that Julia’s reason for coming here had something to do with Raymond Chandler.

“Raymond probably had no one to rely on but his wife.”

“······.”

“So from then on, I dreamed of becoming an editor. I tried writing novels, but it didn’t seem to fit my aptitude. Then, when I got a job at Torrance New Media, I realized that being a writer meant going through the pain of creation and fighting off pigs like Remy Martin at the same time.”

She was so passionate that she brought her personal typewriter to work instead of using the typewriter provided for office use.

But ultimately, Julia failed at Torrance New Media.

And even after moving to the Los Angeles Times, she continued to push through failures and try to give writers their due in her own way.

“I’m not as easygoing as Simon, so I’m not the type to comfort writers, but I’m still trying my best. ······I’ve been feeling a bit depressed lately. I feel like there’s a limit to what I can do.”

“What happened?”

“As I said, I have no comment on that.”

Julia answered, looking at God with meaningful eyes.

If I were to tell the truth about the reason I was powerless, that the novel of God was so great that I was intimidated by the fact that it had the power to change a son of a bitch like Remy Martin, then even as a god listening, I wouldn’t know whether to take it as praise or insult.

But thanks to God, I managed to escape from my lethargy.

“As Rebecca got used to this work and wrote good manuscripts, my mood improved. I think being an editor is a good fit for me. And since the writer just said something nice to me… I’m completely fine now.”

“It feels like a broken clock is right twice by chance.”

Shin scratched his cheek lightly as if he was embarrassed. Anyone who thought he had done nothing and then suddenly heard someone thanking him for helping them would be embarrassed.

Julia, who thought he was being playful as usual, snickered and changed the subject.

“Then I will say something similar again, author.”

“······yes.”

“Please continue to take good care of me. And please use ‘Hard-boiled Nine Thousand – Raymond Chandler Edition’ well.”

“······.”

“Author?”

“············.”

“What’s going on?”

“There, that.”

God hesitated for a while and then finally said this.

“That’s broken.”

“······Shit.”

Julia swore as if she was about to pull out her pistol like Philip Marlowe.