Chapter 85 – Agrippa (2) ###
Translated by: ShawnSuh
Edited by: SootyOwl
Having taken the figure to a corner, Juho plunked himself down on the floor. With his chin resting on his hand, he began to think. Confused, the club members watched Juho quietly and then each found themselves a spot. In the not-so-spacious room, the members scattered throughout, each glaring at their figure intently. Baron was sketching quietly from his seat at the moment.
"Salt..."
"Sugar..."
People murmured quietly. One would think that they were part of the Cooking Club. Seo Kwang flicked his finger on the figure's head. 'Thud.'
"Mr. Agrippa, please say something," he muttered.
"Keep it down, will ya?" Sun Hwa said.
"You're the loudest one in the room. Stop looking for salt."
Having been looking for sugar, Bom clenched her lips in embarrassment. They wanted an eye-opening discovery, something that would shock the world, flip it upside down.
According to Mr. Moon's analogies, they were attempting to cook steak.
Juho turned his attention to his figure. There wasn't a need for anything impressive. All it took was to come in contact with one single emotion. That was more than enough to start.
Soon, salt and sugar turned into impulsivity and curiosity. 'What kind of truth was this figure harboring?'
When he thought of the plaster busts, the first thing that came to mind was Pygmalion. He was an artist who fell in love with a sculpture he had sculpted himself.
'Should I try going in this direction? Or...' Juho thought as he examined the outer appearance of the Agrippa bust.
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It was heavy and rigid, but it had no shape below the chest. Juho gave it an imaginary pair of hands and feet. The figure grew in size. Juho stood up, following the figure as it grew taller.
No blood flowed underneath its ivory skin. Juho imagined it having blood. The heart started beating as it pumped out blood, transferring oxygen throughout the body. Agrippa started to breathe, and Juho put his hand underneath its nose. He felt air coming out of it, carrying body heat. A warmth spread throughout its cold, lifeless skin.
As it breathed, it gained the ability to move. Juho watched Agrippa as it walked around the science room, touching and feeling various objects, occasionally breaking them. It doubted objects that it had never seen before while being wary of people it had never met. It became angry quickly, but on the other hand, it became happy just as easily. Juho quietly observed its behavior. He had been solely responsible for granting Agrippa such attributes. In real life, Agrippa was no more than a plaster figure. It couldn't move or be wary of people. As Juho took away its hands and feet as well as its blood and emotions, Agrippa quickly shrunk in size. Sitting on the floor, Juho was back to where he had started. He tried feeling Agrippa's head.
'Rigid. Cold,' he thought. 'What else can I take away from it? What else can I get rid of from this cold, rigid plaster figure? Is there a way to describe that as freedom?'
Time kept ticking as Juho immersed himself in thought. Soon, the club members started to reach their limits. Each of their concentration started to fail.
Sun Hwa made a noise as she twisted her body. Bom sighed while Seo Kwang moaned mysteriously. Baron was sketching Agrippa in his sketchbook.
In the end, Sun Hwa was the first to explode, "I don't get it!"
"Shut up."
She paid no attention to Seo Kwang.
"What's so new about this? New perspective? Creation? What is all that? I can't think of anything. Have I been this stupid all along? I have good grades though!"
Seo Kwang pushed away the figure with his feet, joining in on Sun Hwa's ranting, "Mr. Moon must have a story that involves a plaster figure. This happened at the essay contest too! Does he have a thing for plaster figures!?"
Juho quietly agreed. There had to be a story.
"I don't know where to start," said Bom with a timid voice. Seo Kwang and Sun Hwa were both in situations similar to hers. Creation. New perspective. It all sounded too difficult. Bom quietly called for Juho, "Were you able to think of anything?"
"A little bit."
"What??" Sun Hwa asked fiercely.
After a brief time thinking, he decided to give her a hint, "Try not to complicate it."
With that, he picked up the figure from the floor. The coldness pierced through his hands. 'Feelings that come from the outside. That's what I need to focus on.'
"To start with, it's hard to be creative. Start slow, one step at a time."
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"How do you do that?" Seo Kwang asked.
"Just... however you feel like it?"
Everyone sighed out loud.
"You. Mr. Moon. Not helpful," said Sun Hwa.
"That's a little harsh," Juho said with a chuckle. In order to escape the accusation of being ambiguous like Mr. Moon, he approached Baron with the figure still in his hands. All eyes were on him.
"Can I borrow your pencil?"
Without saying much, Baron handed the pencil he was using over. With gratitude, Juho pointed the pencil in his hand at Agrippa.
"For example..."
After drawing on its face for a brief moment, he turned Agrippa around and showed it to the rest of the club members. On its once pale, lifeless face, there was hair sticking out of his nose.
Nose hair. Seo Kwang gave Juho a dumbfounded look.
"What?! Are you kidding me?"
"You can't be serious."
Everyone seemed disappointed, but Juho paid no attention to their expressions.
"Just like that, my Agrippa now has luscious nose hairs, unlike yours."
In those seemingly trivial words, there was something that the club members couldn't catch. Something different from the others. Juho had obtained it easily, but he didn't stop there. He raised his hands high, drawing everyone's attention. On his hands, was the only Agrippa figure with nose hair in the room. It didn't look very stable.
'What else can I take away from it? What else can I get rid of from this cold, rigid plaster figure?' With those thoughts, he threw the figure down at the floor.
With a loud noise and faint sense of pleasure in Juho's mind, the Agrippa bust shattered into pieces. Someone screamed. Now, Agrippa had lost his shape. Juho had taken away its shape, freeing it from its confinement. "What should we call it now?" Juho asked himself as he picked up the Agrippa pieces. "Debris? Shattered figure? Trash? Agrippa?" Nobody answered.
"You scared me!" Sun Hwa said annoyingly. Bom was covering her mouth. Baron stared at Juho from afar quietly. Nobody was hurt because Juho had made sure to throw it in a safe direction.
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"What the heck is this about?"
"What? What's so wrong about it?"
Sun Hwa was at loss for words. He was right. Nothing was wrong. She simply couldn't think of it. She hadn't had the courage to throw Agrippa at the floor. A slight sense of bitterness rushed over her. 'Why can't I be as brave as him?' Then, she remembered what Mr. Moon had said earlier. 'You won't get much from just sitting there and looking around.' She had finally understood what he had meant. She had been much more timid than she had realized. 'I'm so mad...!' she thought, clenching her teeth.
At that moment, she's had another thought, 'What about my Agrippa?' Her figure was standing where she had left it, staring in the direction of the shattered figure. 'I wonder what it's thinking. Maybe it's jealous since that's the only figure that broke out of its mold.'
"I see now."
The shattering sound pierced Sun Hwa's ears. The impact outside had kickstarted a chain of thoughts in her mind. Sensation moved feelings, and those feelings that shook loose belonged to Sun Hwa. Once she gave its empty face an emotion, she eventually came to believe it to be real.
Seo Kwang and Bom seemed to have caught on as well. They started examining their figures with serious expressions on their faces. They were working hard to find their own Agrippas. As Juho watched them with a satisfied smile, his eyes met the shattered pieces of his Agrippa. Then, he quietly made his way to his class to get a broom and a dustpan.
Upon seeing the figure in pieces in the dustpan, Mr. Moon smiled with satisfaction. He had had a good reason for buying them with his own money.
—
'Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.'
Waking up, Juho checked the time. It was 8:00 a.m.
Lately, he hadn't been writing much outside of the Literature Club, which was different from usual, when he wrote into the night regardless of where he was. The change was somewhat unfamiliar. He felt sluggish and thirsty. Although there was a cup of water on the desk, it was out of his reach.
Instead of sitting up, he stayed on his bed, staring at the ceiling. After some time, it almost felt like it was spinning.
As time went by, more and more people evaluated 'The Sound of Wailing.' Juho had been reading the reviews as much as he could. Each person had read the book with their respective point of view, interpreting accordingly.
"I'm noticing more depth in his writing."
"His book got darker."
"I wonder if something happened to the author?"
The critics took 'The Sound of Wailing' apart and analyzed it from different angles. Some were rather plausible whereas others weren't.
Juho blinked, and the ceiling stopped spinning.
Overall, the book was well-received, and there were more positive reviews than negative ones. Juho felt relieved as he thought about his past works. They were deep-seeded memories. The most commonly used word to describe his book then had been 'bubble.'
Bubble.
It meant that it lacked substance. The readers had been disappointed and had started to associate him with 'bubble.' As a person who had been content with the simple pleasure of being called a genius, it had been more than enough to tear his world apart. As he reminisced, Juho felt a strange sense of betrayal boiling up from within. Just like that, Yun Woo had met his downfall in the past.
Now, there was a sense of relief in place of that sense of betrayal. 'What am I feeling relieved about? The present that's different from the past? All the compliments?' Juho felt confused. At times, emotions were a pain in the neck. They sprung up without warning, like a waterfall that flowed in reverse. They weren't reasonable and they weren't the most flattering either. There was no way to know where they would be stored. The biggest issue was that Juho himself was entertained by them, so he couldn't ignore them completely. If anything, he wanted to draw them closer. He wanted to dip his hand in the stream of water that flowed up to the sky.
In the end, he wanted to translate that cool, refreshing sensation into writing.Chapter 86 – A Long-Awaited Encounter (1) ###
Translated by: ShawnSuh
Edited by: SootyOwl
Juho felt refreshed just from the thought of dipping his hand into the water. Perhaps, he'd gotten used to being thirsty.
Sitting up on the bed, he reached his hand out toward the desk, groping for something. He felt a book on his hand with a torn cover. Stroking the cover, he opened the book. He read, slowly, one sentence after another. However, he closed the book before he had even finished reading the first page. He couldn't bear to read it anymore. Though it was the result of dozens of revisions and edits, he didn't even want to touch it.
In order to bring himself out of that uncomfortable place in his head, Juho put the book down and turned on his computer to access the online bookstore. On the side, there was a list ranking bestsellers '1. The Sound of Wailing.' When he clicked it, an even bigger image appeared on the screen along with his name, "Yun Woo." He thought of the reviews he had read recently.
'I read it because it's by Yun Woo."
'I ordered it as soon as I saw the name 'Yun Woo.'"
'I bought it because it's written by 'Yun Woo.'"
Yun Woo.
Juho stared at that word quietly. Of course, there was a part of him that wanted people to read his book as much as possible. His name had always been an advantage, so there wasn't anything to complain about. On the other hand, he wondered if the results would have been the same if his name hadn't been displayed. In that case, the name "Yun Woo" would eventually be reduced to nothing more than a bubble. What if it had already? Wouldn't that mean that nothing had changed after all?
'I need to stop.'
Those thoughts weren't helpful, so Juho drove out every single thought that was occupying his mind.
The thoughts were driven out of his head migrated onto his palms. He knew what that signal meant. He was familiar with it, having experienced it several times in the past. Now, there was no choice but to write.
Setting aside his book browsing, Juho picked up a pen that had been rolling around on his desk. He reached for a piece of paper that was within reach. There was no plot or structure to what he wrote. No characters. No background. He was driven only by his desires, filling the emptiness with his pen. There wasn't anything unhealthy about what he was doing. Because it was meant to be written and read by him and himself alone, there was no guilt.
Aside from a quick piece of toast for lunch, Juho spent hours writing. When his hand started to give out from the pain, he put down the pen and moved on to typing. Having written to his heart's content, he looked at the time. It was 4:00 a.m.
"My hand hurts."
Feeling his hand throbbing painfully, he went to sleep
*
Yun Seo was preparing a meal for a special guest. She was cooking twice as much food as usual, and before she knew it, it was almost time for the guest's arrival.
She called for her two pupils as she walked out of the kitchen, "Joon Soo, Geun Woo?"
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"Yes, Mrs. Baek," Joon Soo answered quickly, neatly dressed.
By contrast, Geun Woo ran out to the living room, "Mrs. Baek, do you think this is good enough?"
"Haha! It's not like you're meeting the president you know," said Yun Seo, smiling.
"Well, it's just as special! It's Mr. Lim we're talking about! I really want to look presentable."
"You wouldn't have had to be in such a hurry if you were just a bit more organized."
"You're asking too much, Mrs. Baek."
Having listened to the conversation, Joon Soo said as he looked at the clock, "He should be here any minute now."
"Yes, any minute now. He's never late."
"He's always on time. I don't know how he does it. He's incredible."
Geun Woo took deep breaths in an attempt to calm his nerves. He had been spending a significant amount of time, since that morning, desperate for a compliment. Though not as apparent as Geun Woo, Joon Soo, too, had been constantly checking himself in the mirror. Yun Seo smiled. The name "Hyun Do Lim" had always had an entertaining effect on the younger authors.
Although he had never called them out on the way they dressed, her pupils always greeted him with excitement and anticipation. They seemed rather nervous about meeting a veteran author who also happened to be among the legends. Yun Seo was proud of her pupils' for the way they treated her friend and fellow author, Hyun Do.
'Ding, Dong.' As the doorbell rang, Joon Soo and Geun Woo quickly tensed up. Light-footed, Yun Seo walked toward the door. A handsome gentleman stepped in. Finally, the face Joon Soo and Geun Woo had been desperately waiting to see.
"Hey, you," greeted Yun Seo with an innocent smile. The gentleman greeted her as he looked at her with a lukewarm expression.
"Hi."
It was a clear sounding voice, low and gentle. Behind Yun Seo, Joon Soo was occupied with keeping Geun Woo calm. In order to introduce them, Yun Seo moved aside.
"Welcome! My pupils have been waiting eagerly."
"I believe I got here on time."
"Oh, don't be coy now. You're not shy, are you?"
"Are you planning on leaving me standing here?"
As they conversed comfortably, Joon Soo and Geun Woo waited anxiously to greet him and barely managed to say, "Hello." Hyun Do looked at them with calm eyes.
"You look healthy."
"Yes, sir. I've been doing well," said Joon Soo with stiff shoulders.
With a smile, Hyun Do added, "You can relax."
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"Yes, sir."
Despite his answer, his shoulders remained rigid. Having been frivolous up to a moment ago, Geun Woo also stood quietly. As his eyes met with Hyun Do's, Hyun Do took the initiative to greet him, "You look nice. I like it."
A bright smile spread on Geun Woo's face. He had been desperately waiting for a compliment from Hyun Do. Yun Seo was impressed by Hyun Do's ability to identify and say what the other person wanted to hear.
"Thank you!" Geun Woo said, smiling ear to ear.
"You must be hungry! I made your favorite," said Yun Seo.
"Hmmm," Hyun Do let out a mysterious moan. It wasn't apparent whether he was upset or excited. "I'm guessing you made way too much food?"
"Nothing makes you sadder than not having enough to eat."
"You're just too generous."
Hyun do walked quietly toward the kitchen, his black and silver hair completely still. Joon Soo and Geun Woo followed.
There was a plethora of food on the table, but that day, the table was especially more colorful.
As Yun Seo watched the food go into Hyun Do's mouth, she asked excitedly, "Well? How is it? It's been a while since you've had it, right?" She seemed happy to see her friend again.
"It's good," he answered briefly, sitting with his back straight. Sitting with open shoulders gave one a confident appearance. There was a reason her pupils paid so much attention to their postures whenever Hyun Do was over. "This has got to be a lot of work."
"It's fun. I wouldn't be able to do it if it was just work."
"Don't over do it. We're not young anymore."
"Oh, don't you worry about me. I still have plenty of strength. Hanging out with the youngins must have helped."
Hyun Do chuckled. Looking in his direction, Yun Seo finally brought up the subject that she had been looking to mention, "Yun Woo came by the other day."
His hand stopped in its tracks. Yun Seo smiled innocently and said, "Oh my, could it be that our infamous Mr. Lim made a wrong guess?"
Hyun Do smiled without saying much. Having listened quietly, Joon Soo and Geun Woo wore a confused faces. A few moments later, Geun Woo asked quietly, "Did Juho do something?"
Yun Seo explained willingly, "Our Mr. Lim here had said before that Yun Woo would have some trouble writing his next book."
"Huh? But he didn't seem like he was struggling at all when he was here, and his books are selling like..."
His voice grew timid as Joon Soo glanced in his direction. With a still expression, Hyun Do added, "I was shocked. It hasn't even been a year, and yet..."
"He was an interesting one," said Yun Seo, studying Hyun Do's expression. Although he hadn't said it explicitly, she felt that he had an interest in Yun Woo. "Aren't you curious?"
"A little bit."
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"Would you like to know more about him?"
"If you want."
Yun Seo contemplated making Hyun Do more desperate, but instead, she decided to be direct, "He was young, first of all."
"I know his age," said Hyun Do, calmly.
"But mature on the other hand," said Yun Seo, thinking back to the day she first met him. There had been no tension in the way he'd treated her. "Whenever I looked at him, it felt almost like time had moved slower around him. That kid knew how to be peaceful. It was apparent in his smile."
"Hm."
"He has a good appetite. Not picky at all."
"He knew how to read Chinese poems, too," added Joon Soo.
"Is that so?"
"Yes. We talked about Li Taibo together."
Geun Woo chimed in, "His ears were open too. You've always told us, Mrs. Baek – to be aware of what we hear in our surroundings. If anything, he's a tad bit too comfortable around adults. Oh, and he wasn't very good with spicy food."
Before they knew it, they were offering up information to Hyun Do. Without saying much, he listened quietly.
"He's also somewhat similar to my husband."
At Yun Seo's words, Hyun Do's eyebrow rose slightly, "Having two of that kind in this world is a disaster."
"What's wrong with my husband?"
"He was all over the place. It was contagious, too."
"I thought it was attractive."
"You just have terrible taste." With those words, Hyun Do took a moment to think. "Juho Woo, was it? His real name?"
"Yep. Juho Woo."
"Do you think you can arrange a meeting?"
Between her two pupils screaming silently, Yun Seo too had a surprised look on her face.
"Oh, my! Really? This is so unlike you. What's gotten into you?"
"I've been meaning to for some time now. I got to read his new book ahead of most people because of a request from the publishing company," he said. Unlike the others around him, he was calm.
"And then??"
"I became curious."
"About what?"
He stayed silent for a brief time. With a slight sense of jealousy, Joon Soo and Geun Woo listened intently to the conversation.
Finally, Hyun Do's lips parted slowly and he said, "About him. I want to know how he's able to portray such raw emotions."