WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Genius Writer Who Will Never Fall Again ◈
Chapter 2: Coming Back (1)
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Director Jo’s face went blank.
Seong-hun, sitting beside me, gaped.
Their reactions could not have been more stereotypical, and that made me reflect on myself.
‘Apparently, that was as far as the reactions I could imagine went.’
This whole situation was part of a lucid dream.
So everything that happened, every reaction, had to come from something within the range of what I had internalized as a commercial writer.
A little embarrassed, I rose from my seat.
“I’ll be going now. Thank you for your time.”
Even as I bowed and left, the satisfaction was limited.
After all, I was only enjoying myself by doing, in my imagination, what I had failed to do in reality.
It was no more sophisticated than fantasizing about getting revenge on a school bully.
Still, one thing stood out.
This fantasy was remarkably elaborate.
‘Was my spatial awareness always this good?’
I left the office, took the elevator down to the first floor, and stepped outside.
As I walked the streets of the past, everything from that time came back vividly.
‘Where was my place again...?’
Following my memories, I found the rented studio apartment where I had lived then.
Even then, I thought it was all something inside my imagination.
My certainty was so strong that...
‘...But do dreams usually continue into the next day?’
It took that long for me to realize something was seriously wrong.
* * *
At first, I only thought it was strange.
Everything was too vivid. I could not begin to grasp how much I must have regretted that period for it to be recreated so clearly.
When I left the office and went to the bus stop, I remembered exactly which bus to take home.
When I returned, everything in the studio apartment was just as it had been: the wardrobe I thought I barely remembered, the old mattress, the mold-smelling wallpaper, even the furniture.
Naturally, I assumed it was some corrective effect of my brain.
I also believed the passage of time I felt was a kind of perceptual error.
In that state, I spent my time in a daze.
All I did was look back.
When life was ending, it was natural to revisit the past.
‘What did I want to do?’
I had wanted to become an incredible writer.
‘Why?’
I had loved gathering with my family to watch dramas since I was young.
I liked books, so I went to university accordingly, and then...
‘Seong-hun.’
After meeting him, I seriously stepped into this field.
Back then, everything was fun. There was someone who told me I could do it, and I had big dreams.
It felt as though the whole world was mine.
Full of confidence, we made the reckless promise that we would create a work remembered in Korean history.
Then I tasted this industry’s bitterness and broke.
Only I did.
‘Seong-hun was different.’
While I fell apart, Seong-hun kept rising.
He made a name for himself in independent films, seriously learned the commercial side of filmmaking, and eventually built a career as the director of a film that drew ten million admissions.
There had been a time when seeing that had been painful.
It made me feel even more miserable, and I had even resented him for it.
I only realized that resentment was shameful after I got sick.
The moment I faced the man who had refused to give up on me even on the day I hit rock bottom, that resentment became shame.
This was how things ended, but perhaps it was good that I had let go of the inferiority complex that once tormented me so badly.
‘Though it’s all over now, whatever it was.’
I let out a quiet laugh.
I was facing the reality that this moment was only continuing through chemical reactions in my brain.
‘When will it end...?’
I thought I would wake from this dream when I died.
It took a full day to realize that was not the case.
Nothing special happened.
I got hungry at every meal.
At night, I fell asleep and woke to the morning sun.
Then, while lying there staring blankly at the ceiling, I began to feel restless.
And as that continued...
‘...Is this really a dream?’
A chill ran down my spine as the sense of reality only grew stronger.
Only then did I realize it.
This was not the time to sit around dazed like this.
* * *
I crouched in the middle of the room and rubbed my face with both hands.
Even someone who worked in commercial storytelling could not accept something like this all at once. Unless someone was exceptionally stupid or had no grasp of reality, confusion had to come first.
So naturally, I felt as though my head would burst.
Anyone in this situation would have struggled to stay sane.
Still, every time my heart pounded, reality filled me anew.
I could not deny it.
‘Time...’
It had truly rewound.
To just before everything began.
No, to just after the first button that would have been fastened wrong had come undone.
To 2013, when I was still nothing.
After dwelling on that fact for a long time, a hollow laugh escaped me.
“Hah!”
My palms were soaked with sweat.
The moment I realized time had truly rewound, one thought lodged firmly in my mind.
‘Can I start over? From the beginning? Avoid those bastards?’
There had always been one reason for my failures.
Whenever I was about to prove myself, those things that barely qualified as human had blocked my way through sheer brutality.
But if I had come back to the past?
‘I can avoid them. No, I can use them.’
It meant I could become someone who led my own life, instead of someone who was only tossed around by them.
The moment I understood, the sensations in my body became clearer than ever.
It felt as though the illness that had clawed at my heart until the end of my life had vanished completely.
It was as though hope, already trampled into nothing, had caught fire again.
Too many adjectives came to mind when I tried to express that elation. Putting it into words felt more disordered than anything else.
The emotion that surged through me spread to my head and awakened my reason in an instant.
‘Then what do I do first?’
Let’s think.
At this time, I had just graduated from university. I was an unemployed job seeker preparing to submit manuscripts.
With Seong-hun’s help, I had gotten in touch with that poisonous toad.
‘I screwed it up spectacularly.’
After that, I had gone silent.
Even Seong-hun, good-natured as he was, was still human.
‘Sorry. It must have put him in a difficult position.’
Of course, I had acted without restraint because I thought it was a dream, but that did not change the fact that I had done it.
Fortunately, Seong-hun’s background was not so weak that this would seriously hurt him.
There would be some conflict, but it would be manageable.
Even that would disappear when the poisonous toad’s scandal broke next year.
But Seong-hun had not come back from the future.
‘I left my phone there, so he probably had no way to contact me. The reason he didn’t come looking for me first... was because he had to clean up the mess.’
Whatever happened, once Seong-hun had handled things, he would come find me.
Of course, he would not greet me with a smile.
But would he be the kind of person to explode and berate me?
‘No, not that either.’
We had known each other for nearly fifteen years.
After becoming an adult, I had seen him more often than my own family.
‘He’ll ask me why. I have an opening.’
The answer was actually quite obvious.
It might sound like I was praising myself, but let me state one simple fact.
There was a reason Seong-hun, who had wanted for nothing in life, cherished me so much.
There was a reason I had been able to aim for a comeback for over ten years, even while the industry called me a plague-bringer.
‘I just have to show him with my writing.’
It was not empty confidence.
This was an industry that would sell its soul to the devil for a hit.
In that industry, Han Jae-kyung had always been the most terrible evil and the sweetest lure.
Wasn’t it simple?
Instead of showing him the hole-ridden writing of twenty-five-year-old Han Jae-kyung, I only needed to show him the writing of the future Han Jae-kyung, who wrote scripts that even people who treated me like a plague-bringer could not help but approve.
There was no reason I could not do something I had already done once.
No, I could do it even better now.
I headed to the desk in the corner of the room.
I pressed the power button on the ancient laptop, which took three minutes just to turn on.
Was something wrong with the pleasure center in my brain?
Such intense elation washed over me that the thought briefly crossed my mind.
‘I can do it. I can do it. From the beginning...!’
I knew the future.
I knew the people of the future.
I would never collapse in the same way again.
I would claim every honor that should have been mine.
And if I was taking my first step toward that...
‘My masterpiece.’
When the laptop finally turned on, I opened Word and typed in the title.
[Sword Pact, One Lord]
A series that recorded a 19 percent rating in its first week.
A series everyone said was projected to reach 50 percent by its finale.
Maybe it could have gone even higher.
My most terrible memory, a series whose broadcast had to end because its leading actress died by suicide.
And yet, the brightest fragment of my life.
I brought that story into the world once more.
* * *
Park Seong-hun was a good person by anyone’s standards.
He had been born into an environment where he lacked for nothing. No, into an environment anyone would envy. More than anything, he had received so much love that he was never stingy about giving it to others.
Still, even Seong-hun had moments when he got angry.
The meeting between Jae-kyung and Director Jo three days ago was one of them.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Hey! Han Jae-kyung! I know you’re in there, so open the door!!!”
Seong-hun’s voice, as he pounded on the door of the studio apartment, was extremely rough.
He was the only son of an actress who had defined an era.
He had inherited his famous mother’s striking appearance, but right now, he looked like a demon out for blood.
Naturally, he had good reason.
“Do you have any idea what you did?! Huh?! I’ve been running myself ragged cleaning up your mess! I even bowed my head for you!”
Han Jae-kyung.
A junior from university he had cherished so much that people said he took Jae-kyung everywhere with him.
Jae-kyung’s social skills were so poor that it seemed as though they had been thrown in a trash can. Yet despite being born with every disadvantage others could think of, Jae-kyung had bewitched everyone around them with that one gift for writing.
A monster of talent.
When Jae-kyung finally said they wanted to debut as a drama writer, Seong-hun had read the script and become certain.
This would work.
With the right director, this could become the show of the season.
Seong-hun had an eye for aesthetics and a sense for the commercial side of things.
At least, when the instincts inherited from his mother ran this strongly, he had never been wrong.
So he gave Jae-kyung his full support.
Jae-kyung was the shining lifeline that could make his dream of creating a work remembered in Korean history come true. Before they could work together, Seong-hun had planned to use every connection at his disposal to make Jae-kyung a star writer.
And then.
That opportunity.
“Come outtttt!”
Bam! Bam! Bam!
The meeting had gone well, only for Jae-kyung to refuse the offer right there.
And it was not even a polite refusal. It was simply, “No, I don’t want to.”
How hard had Seong-hun worked to clean that up?
Even after all this, one wrong move could leave Jae-kyung finished in the industry.
He had to drag Jae-kyung before Director Jo and make them bow their head.
That was why Seong-hun was here.
‘If I let this bastard get away with it, I’m not human! You dog bastard! You dog bastard!’
If words did not work, he would beat some sense into Jae-kyung!
That was what he had resolved to do.
Click!
“Why are you yelling and bothering the neighbors?”
“Why? Whyyyyyy???”
“Just come in. Stop yelling outside.”
The sight of Jae-kyung standing there so calmly made Seong-hun’s blood boil.
Even so, affection was affection.
The moment Seong-hun saw Jae-kyung properly, he flinched.
“...Did you eat? Did you sleep? What happened to you?”
“I didn’t eat or sleep. There was a reason.”
“Wh-what was it? Did something happen at home...?”
“It’s not that. Just come in.”
Jae-kyung looked terribly haggard.
Their features had always been sharp, but the shadows beneath their eyes looked darker today, and their cheeks seemed more hollow.
Was there a health problem?
Was that why Jae-kyung had no choice but to storm out of the meeting?
His imagination was running wild.
“I’m sorry I left like that that day. I was... really out of it.”
“No, what happened...?”
“Read this. It’s what I wrote during that time.”
Jae-kyung handed him a stack of printed pages.
Judging by the format, it was writing.
“...You locked yourself in and wrote this? After causing all that trouble?”
“You’ll understand once you read it.”
He was so dumbfounded that he could not even laugh.
For a moment, it felt as though something snapped inside his head, but he held back.
Jae-kyung’s poor social skills were nothing new, but something else felt strange.
Seong-hun’s expression grew serious.
‘They’re this confident?’
Jae-kyung was cautious.
Regardless of their writing ability, Jae-kyung was not the kind of person to become prematurely confident about their own work.
More than anything, Jae-kyung seemed different today.
More mature than the Jae-kyung he knew.
No, dried-out was a more fitting word.
Seong-hun had always had a soft spot for Jae-kyung.
Like many who had grown up in material comfort, Seong-hun prized the irreplaceable talent of others above all else.
Caught between unfamiliarity and unease, Seong-hun postponed venting his anger.
He decided that, whatever happened, he should read the manuscript first.
Then he turned over the first page, bearing the title [Sword Pact, One Lord], and began to read.
“...Huh?”
Seong-hun’s eyes slowly widened.
Given his earlier vow that he would not be human if he let Jae-kyung off, Seong-hun now stood clearly on the verge of becoming a dog bastard.
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