Novelist Running Through Time - Chapter 56

TL: KSD

The water in the lake is black. My reflection on the surface was also black. I reached out to the black me and tried to grasp that hand. I felt the desire to be pulled into this black world and to silently sink to the bottom.

When I was young, I fell into water.

With all the will to live, I flailed, but soon lost strength and took a deep breath under the water. Instead of air, a damp and heavy liquid freely entered my chest.

I remember the pain I felt then. Having breathed only light air all my life, it was the first time I realized water could be this heavy.

But now, air felt heavier than water.

The air in the funeral home was laden with despair. It was so suffocating that I wanted to quietly sink beneath the surface and disappear from this world.

But it was too late to die. There were too many things in this world holding me back. Memories, family, connections, assets, regrets, delusional obsessions…..

So, I couldn’t jump into the black lake, and just stared endlessly at my reflection on the surface.

I don’t know when that yellow monkey became so old. The image I remembered of myself had disappeared, replaced by a strange, decrepit old man in a black suit.

Fortunately, an unnamed bird bathed in the lake. The water rippled, and the repulsive old man’s reflection vanished. On the rippling surface of the lake, I saw my younger self.

As a child, I believed that eternal love didn’t exist. A child who grew up unloved only knows the world they live in.

But she pulled me out of that world. We loved like something out of a fairy tale. I came to believe in eternal love, in unchanging love.

That belief shattered meaninglessly in the irreversible flow of time.

People become more vile as they age, and their appearances become more pitiful. Love was a slowly wearing gear, and the moment that gear started to miss, we were finished.

I’ve thought a lot since then.

Does eternal love exist? Is there anything that doesn’t change? Is loving someone about possessing them or giving oneself to them? Is love closer to lust or friendship? Is love noble or vulgar? What exactly was the love between us, and for what reason did it disappear?

I think she must have thought the same. We were so similar, after all, becoming more alike as we lived through the years.

After we separated, I wanted to ask her what thoughts she had lived with. Having lived together for decades and apart for over a decade, I wanted to see how she had changed.

We were spiteful in our middle age, tearing each other down with nothing but our pride left. But as old people waiting to die, couldn’t we forgive each other? I harbored that thought secretly.

But it was impossible.

I was at the funeral home, and she was in the coffin.

It was suicide. The reason is unknown. She left no will.

But the children gathered at the funeral looked at me with eyes that saw a murderer.

Feeling like my skin was being peeled off under their gaze, I approached the coffin.

And I placed my slightly trembling hand on the hard wooden box.

Of course, even at this moment, my thoughts are the same.

I believe it was the right decision to buy that house. Even though we ultimately lost a great fortune, we lived happily in that house for decades. So, calling me narrow-minded for lamenting the lost money is wrong.

I believe it was the right decision to slap my daughter then. A middle schooler shouldn’t be having sex with her boyfriend. Now, she have three kids between him, but as a father, it was my duty to guide my daughter on a safe path. So, you were wrong to insult me for giving my daughter trauma with my Eastern way of thinking.

So please, recognize me. Rise abruptly from that coffin, embrace me saying it was all your fault. Then, I too will forgive you. And we’ll tell our children again. That we’re getting back together. Then those kids will laugh incredulously. We’ll watch our grandchildren’s antics while treating them to a delicious dinner, mocking that sight.

So please……

Ah.

Even at this moment, I long for unchanging love.

EP 5-A Love Story

“There are things that change over time: the flesh, the inner self, and love. This novel dissects a human being to see how they change over time… No. ‘Dissection’? It’s not a butcher shop. That’s too grotesque.”

“Humans head towards death, love heads towards eternity. This novel is the lonely and desperate journey of a person in search of unchanging love. Does unchanging love exist? Does eternal love exist? The author has answered us… No, that sounds too much like a review.”

“Within the unstoppable flow of time, existence gradually fades. A human bearing worn love yearns for love that never changes. This novel throws the love one being has for another into the flow of time, dissects it, and gazes at eternity with a cool stare… This is good.”

A recommendation is a piece of writing commonly found on the back cover of a book.

It’s to recommend how good the book is.

Naturally, getting a recommendation from a well-known author is harder than picking stars from the sky.

You can return from space with stars, but you can’t get a recommendation if the author refuses.

However, after reading ‘Love Story’ in the United States, Gu Hak-jun passionately wooed the author for the right to write a recommendation for ‘Love Story’, enough to make other novelists who were turned down cry tears of blood.

And even after returning home, Gu Hak-jun paced around the living room, pondering over what recommendation to write.

Finally, having written a recommendation that didn’t seem too bad, Gu Hak-jun asked Gu Yubin.

“Yubin, what do you think of this recommendation?”

However, Gu Yubin, who was sitting on the sofa, smiled awkwardly and returned to her room.

“Wait… I need rest in my room.”

“Oh, okay.”

Click. The smile disappeared from Gu Yubin’s face as she closed her room door.

In this moment, when no one else was looking, her face revealed her true feelings.

Her neatly arranged long hair became disheveled like a ghost’s, and her face, previously adorned with a gentle smile, contorted hideously.

Feelings of inferiority, defeat, resignation, grievance, and shock swirled around messily.

Gu Yubin’s clenched fists trembled.

‘I’ve lost…’

The weight of the talents we bear is different.

Gu Yubin closely observed and analyzed the talent of Moon.

The result was disastrous.

Gu Yubin came to think of Moon as an author far superior to herself in every aspect.

The weight of concerns is different, the weight of the talents we bear is different, the quality of the language we wield is different.

Writing raw, unseen things with genius intuition,

Weaving plots and subplots like warp and weft to create a beautiful spiderweb with sophisticated reason,

All of it was done by an author superior to me.

I have completely lost to that boy as a novelist.

That’s what she thought.

“How could…”

Muttering to herself, Gu Yubin stared at ‘Love Story’. It seemed as if dark shadows were swirling within the book.

That darkness is called inferiority.

The feeling she always had when she looked at her father was now flowing from the book of a boy much younger than her.

While Gu Yubin showed darkness through knife fights and seas of blood, Moon showed a deeper darkness by completely dismantling and destroying a human’s love.

While Gu Yubin showed solitude through people trapped in a cabin on a snowy mountain, Moon showed a deeper solitude through the contemplation of a single wrinkled old man.

While Gu Yubin was showing happiness through love that exists on the borderline of literature and obscenity, Moon In-seop showed a deeper happiness through a fleeting light in someone’s eyes.

Just a boy, yet an author.

Yes, the most terrifying thing is this.

How can one write such words without having learned anything?

Just by being born with talent, can one easily trample on someone else’s efforts?

Why wasn’t I born with talent?

Why didn’t I inherit my father’s talent…

Gu Yubin thought this as she threw herself onto her bed.

And she tore at her hair under the covers.

Meanwhile,

In the next room, Gu Yu-na was feeling different emotions while reading the same book.

The manuscript that Moon In-seop got by poking his parents’ sides with his finger, thanks to poking the sides of mom and dad, had already transformed into a hardcover book through the printing press.

Every time Gu Yu-na turned a page of that book, it seemed as though light was flowing out.

She read the book as if enchanted, staring at that light. That light was what she had seen in another time.

The name of that light is ‘dream’.

* * *

“Wow, shit…”

“How can I not watch this…”

In the office of Baekhak Entertainment’s Publishing Management Department.

Lim Yang-wook and Baek Seol also fell for ‘that scene’.

As soon as a beautiful love story ended,

Decades passed,

And the scene where that beautiful love is thoroughly dismantled,

Caused as much pain to the viewer as the beauty they felt in the first part.

Lim Yang-wook muttered without realizing,

“Cruel bastard…”

Lim Yang-wook felt that Moon In-seop was a very meticulous author. He had completely dismantled all the love shown in the first part in the second part.

In a fairy-tale mise-en-scène shown by the two, for the first time, they fought in front of their children.

In the place where the two of them have their most beautiful memories, for the first time, they said things to each other that should never have been said.

The biggest reason they loved each other became, after decades, the biggest reason they hated each other.

Lim Yang-wook thought these scenes felt more cruel than physically dismantling a person alive. Because it was not the body being destroyed, but the soul.

And he worried.

Was the boy, burdened with too much tension, in a hurry to meet people’s expectations by creating a masterpiece?

And in such a situation, had he made the biggest mistake possible, not distinguishing between ‘darkness’ and ‘artistry’?

Eventually, Lim Yang-wook’s doubts were cleared up at the moment he reached the third part.

The boy who longed for eternal love, unchanging love, became a youth, a middle-aged man, and then an old man.

The love of his youth, the hate, all washed away in time,

The one he loved and hated the most in the world had left.

Thus, the old man left alone quietly endures time.

In a cabin by the lake where his wife is buried.

Longing for unchanging love.

And finally, that time came for him too.

* * *

When I collapsed in the cabin and slowly lost consciousness, I felt death approaching my side.

It was a mistake.

I woke up in a hospital. My estranged children were surrounding me.

And I was in a state where I could neither speak nor gesture. The road to death was longer, more tenacious, and more painful than I thought.

I felt someone insert a catheter to drain my urine. The nurse treated me, who couldn’t move, like a corpse with disdain. I could understand, as I was also disgusted by the smell of feces coming from my own anus.

My whole body itched. Itchy, but I couldn’t scratch. Because my body wouldn’t move.

I wondered if there could be a pain worse than this itchiness, feeling almost insane.

And there was indeed a pain worse than that.

Just when the itchiness began to slowly fade, I felt the sensations in my body disappearing from the extremities inwards.

Death was slowly approaching.

I screamed.

In my mind, I screamed, thrashed my limbs in all directions, struggled desperately.

By this time, I had completely lost my mind, hardly remembering what I was thinking.

I was just a mass of flesh, struggling against the fear of death, dependent on someone else to manage my bodily functions.

Eventually, all itchiness stopped, and even my five senses disappeared.

But I did not die.

It was my misconception to think that I would die once all sensations in my body disappeared.

Only then did I come to my senses. For the first time since I was born into this world, I felt like I existed only as a spirit, not in a physical form.

I was a soul floating in darkness. Not an old, decrepit body, but only reason existed. I floated in the darkness, thinking in the purest form of a human being.

Can eternal love exist?

Even if someone says they will love me forever, can I discern whether it is the truth?

People cannot see into the hearts of others.

Even if I receive a promise of eternal love, what I truly obtain is just the voice whispering that promise.

Then, is it inherently impossible for one being to truly receive another being’s heart?

So, where does the love I’ve longed for my entire life exist? Does anything unchanging exist in this world? Where is the most pure love that can withstand the trials of time?

I don’t remember how long I spent thinking about love.

As a pure intellect, for the first time, I was free from time.

Of course, I knew I was nearing death. But I didn’t know when it would come.

Like a malfunctioning machine turning off without warning, I would blink out at any moment.

Then, I wouldn’t feel that death. So, to me, that death is meaningless.

Like love.

Then one day, I felt my clear mind being dragged back into a decrepit body.

I wanted to resist, but slowly I began to feel the sensations of my body again.

The damp air of the hospital room, the painful numbness in my limbs, the tingling of my spine wrecked by decades of labor, and the struggle to even breathe with my pulmonary system.

Having been purely a spirit until recently, I had to vividly feel the pain of this body.

I couldn’t understand why God would give me such a trial. Why wouldn’t He pity this soul that was unloved until the end?

Why does life torture me until the very last moment? Why won’t it cut this miserable lifeline?

Then, I realized there was a gentle hand shaking my body awake.

When my vision returned, I saw a young-faced child who had woken me. The child resembled my younger self.

And behind him, a son and two daughters. And six grandchildren born to them, all surrounding me with tears in their eyes.

In my children’s faces, I saw the face of the person I loved the most. The children resembled both me and her.

In that moment, I discovered the love I had longed for all my life.

It existed within me.

Life, emotions, the heart, all belong to oneself. No being can fully receive another’s heart. The only heart a human can possess is their own.

And I, without a doubt, love them infinitely.

That love will never change, and I fully possess that love.

Ah.

There was something unchanging.

It was within me.

I gathered all the remaining strength in my body to convey my love to them.

That was my last will.

*****

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