Into the Manuscript (1)
Five years of office life ended in vain.
Because the wholesaler they mainly did business with went bankrupt, the small history-specialized publishing company—with only four employees—was left floundering with a handful of worthless promissory notes.
They'd barely been surviving as it was, since books didn't sell. The boss finally decided to close the company for good.
Today was their last company dinner.
"Our editor, Kim Jungjin, you've worked hard all this time."
"Not at all, sir."
"You've taken care of every dirty job yourself."
Because if he left here, there was nowhere else to go.
Because he couldn't afford to lose even a month's salary.
Being called an editor might sound respectable, but in truth, it was closer to being the author's errand boy.
It was a job far removed from how it was portrayed in the media. There was no grand authority to change the theme or direction of a work.
Sometimes he'd spend hours on the phone or sending pleading emails to an author just to remove one annotation or delete three foreign-language citations.
Thanks to that, he'd mastered the art of smiling while cursing inside. Even now, he wanted to smack this little old man across from him, but he was holding it in—he still needed his severance pay.
"If anything, I learned a lot thanks to you, sir."
"The authors always praised you too. Said you were meticulous."
"I didn't do anything special, but… thank you for saying that."
"And so humble, too."
The same boss who once sneered to his face—calling him rigid and inflexible whenever work didn't go perfectly—was now full of kind words. That was his drinking habit: affectionate only after a few shots.
Whatever. It's over now.
The TV in the bar was blaring something about nuclear rearmament. At times like this, he couldn't care less if the world ended.
The heavy drinking session broke up only after several bottles of soju.
It was late at night, but the suffocating feeling in his chest wouldn't go away.
Jungjin started walking aimlessly from the company in Gangbuk all the way home—to the rooftop room in Sadang-dong, where he'd lived for years.
It was an old, uncomfortable place, a property the landlord was just holding onto while waiting for redevelopment, which was why the rent was dirt cheap.
Even so, he'd recently been told he'd have to move out soon—the redevelopment was finally happening.
Once I leave there… where will I even go?
He'd come to Seoul alone as an adult.
He'd grown up wandering fishing villages until high school.
Determined to escape the countryside, he'd applied to one of the least popular liberal arts majors. It felt like he'd used up all his life's luck just getting into college.
After that, it was just work, school, work again.
Five years ago, when a typhoon hit, he paid for his mother's hospital bills after she injured her head fixing things at the fish farm.
She spent years bedridden before quietly passing away. The cost of those years was a crushing burden for a young man already weighed down by student loans.
His father had died when Jungjin was three, working on an overseas cargo ship. His younger brother drowned in a reservoir as a child.
Nothing good had ever lasted in his life.
Lost in all sorts of thoughts, he realized the streets were getting emptier. By the time he climbed up the pedestrian lane on Dongjak Bridge, dawn was already near.
Across the river lay the southern part of the city—a dense forest of apartment buildings. The sight made his own roofless existence feel bitterly small.
He didn't know how much time passed after that.
Bzzz— bzzz—
The phone vibrated in his pocket, as if telling him to stop spacing out.
It was a notification from his work email account.
Who's sending mail past two in the morning?
[RE: RE: RE: RE: Submitted Manuscript]
Hello, Editor Kim Jungjin.
This is Musai.
Thank you for your positive response to my previous request. I'm truly grateful that you've agreed to continue participating in revising the manuscript. I'll make sure to return the favor.
The current manuscript I'm working on will be the "final draft" of The Prince of the Kingdom of Albion. It's my life's goal to complete this story in its perfect form.
With your help, I'm confident we can finally do justice to Part 2 as well.
Thank you.
It was an unexpected reply from a manuscript submitter. Jungjin sobered up instantly as he read it.
"Wait… when did I ever say I'd help?"
.
.
.
Kim Jungjin had first received an email from an author named Musai the previous Friday.
As the company's closure drew near, work had only increased—he'd been working overtime every day.
He'd been completely drained, juggling translation license terminations and designer payment settlements all at once, when that email arrived.
[You have a new message. (1)]
[Subject: Submitted Manuscript.]
Attachment: .hwp
Printing out the submitted manuscript had been a moment of impulse. The boss had always been stingy even about printing paper.
If I had my way, I'd smash the printer and wreck the whole office… but yeah, right.
As a petty act of sabotage, he stuffed the printed manuscript into his bag and went straight home.
The weekend was busy.
He looked up how to apply for unemployment benefits and browsed job sites. He even opened his self-introduction file, though his heart wasn't in it.
A history major. Sorry for being a liberal arts graduate.
Thirty-two years old, with an unimpressive education and a mediocre career.
When he cracked open a can of beer and stared at the resume template on his screen, his thoughts wandered. After finishing the beer, he pulled the printed manuscript out of his bag.
(by Musai).
What is this, fantasy? Even the author's name sounds like a nickname.
How did someone like that even find their small, outdated publishing house—a company that didn't publish novels? Maybe they'd sent it to the wrong place.
Having been toughened by years of persistent submissions from middle-aged fantasy enthusiasts, Jungjin was able to start reading it with a light heart.
Surprisingly, the writing itself was quite good—so good, in fact, that he spent the entire day finishing it.
But it wasn't complete.
This is where Part 1 ends? After writing six thousand manuscript pages?
There was a postscript at the end, handwritten as if the author had drafted it on paper first and then transcribed it into a word processor. It said the manuscript had been "copied by hand" and rewritten eight times.
Eight times? That's some dedication.
Usually, when a manuscript didn't match their genre or fell below standard, the company didn't even bother sending rejection emails. But this author's sincerity was too hard to ignore.
After finishing the manuscript, Jungjin sent the author a reply. The response came quickly, and they exchanged a few messages in which he offered some advice.
Of course, since he wasn't an editor for fiction manuscripts, he'd kindly suggested that the author try submitting to other publishers that handled novels—companies like Golden* or Ja* or Mo*.
I thought that was the end of it.
He never expected such an absurd reply to come back—especially not at three in the morning. That's what he got for being soft-hearted.
Does this author not realize they've been rejected?
The last line of his email—"I hope we meet someday. Wishing you steady writing."—might not have looked like a rejection at first glance… but who in their right mind would take that as an offer to collaborate?
Whatever. Not my problem.
He closed the mail app and slipped his phone back into his pocket. At that moment, something like text flickered before his eyes.
[―Transmission received successfully.]
"What the hell… Am I seeing things now?"
Jungjin shook his head hard. A sharp gust blew from the river, snapping him out of his daze. He was about to continue across the bridge when it happened.
Every streetlight on Dongjak Bridge went out at once. The few apartment buildings across the river that still had lights flickering also fell into complete darkness.
"Huh?"
He hadn't moved, yet his body felt as if it was tilting over the railing. The dark water below swelled as if it possessed a will of its own.
He hated water. Bad things always happened near it. What kind of idiot walks across the Han River at night? He really must've been drunk.
Anyone watching would think I'm about to jump.
He didn't want to be tomorrow's headline: "Man Commits Suicide After Losing Job."
Startled, Jungjin tried to back away from the railing—but he couldn't. A heavy, dragging force clung to him, like the pull of the river itself.
In an instant, his body was swept into the dark current.