Chapter 1: The Notebook

I paid for my drinks and stood up from my seat.

“Business was great today, take care.”

“Goodbye now.”

I turned away as I received the parting words from the lady running the street stall. I had been lost in thought while drinking alone for a change, and before I knew it, it was past 9 PM. As I stepped outside, the chill bit into my skin.

“Whew. It’s cold.”

It wasn’t quite cold enough for my breath to mist yet, but the evenings were certainly chilly. The summer heat that felt like it would kill me had drifted away, and autumn was approaching. Whew. There was no one waiting for me at home anyway. A fifty-year-old penniless divorcee. Looking back at myself, it was a pathetic life. What on earth had I been doing all these years until I reached this age? I just let time flow by as it pleased, and when I suddenly looked back, I found myself in this state. No matter how much I thought about it, it was just pathetic. And yet, even in the midst of this, the alcohol tasted sweet. I chuckled at the absurdity of it and kept walking, until something caught my eye. A massive building stood tall alone among the structures of the glittering city. It was the conglomerate building said to be the tallest in Korea.

“Man, that thing is damn high.”

Even as I said that, the corners of my mouth were curling upward. Because a ridiculous memory of a dream I once had came to mind.

‘I’m going to become a popular manga artist. And then I’ll build the biggest building in Korea and become so rich that even the tycoons will envy me!’

Childhood. It was something I said out of habit back then, when I feared nothing and the world looked easy. If that version of me saw the way I am now, what would he think?

‘I end up a bottom-feeder like that? Really? What kind of bullsh*t is that! I’d rather die than live like that.’

He probably would have said something like that. I believed I had a talent for drawing comics in my own way, and I had actually entered the path of a manga artist when a manuscript I sent to a publisher was selected. But eventually, the IMF crisis hit, rental shops proliferated, and comic books stopped selling. I believed that becoming a manga artist would make me filthy rich, but as the days went by, I only grew poorer. I even married a woman I met during my days of drawing comics, but due to personality differences, lack of ability, and various other reasons, it ended in divorce. Once I passed my mid-thirties, I eventually quit comics and started working in a factory. Then, a world where webtoons flourished arrived. They sold quite well abroad, and webtoon authors were popular enough to appear frequently on TV. It’s a world where many have become financially wealthy to the point that photos boasting of their riches are frequently posted on the internet. So, even at a late age, I started drawing comics again while working at the factory. However, the comics and webtoons I started again were not that easy.

-I’m sorry, but it’s hard for these kinds of comics to work these days. They don’t fit the needs of young people at all. -Low views are a natural result. Your comic is the kind of content that would have worked in the 80s or 90s. -The art is tacky, the story is cliché. An author buried in the past. -I feel like even I could draw at this level. -There’s still an old fogey drawing comics with this kind of material. LOL.

I stayed up night after night drawing those comics, but the reaction was nothing but cold. It was the same even when I scrapped everything and drew new works. Now, I was just a fifty-year-old man who lacked the passion and physical strength I once had. Dreams come true? A dream was just a dream. At least for me. And a moment later, a hollow laugh escaped me.

Gosh, really. I had a drink, so why am I getting so serious? It’s a rare Friday night, should I go have one more drink somewhere? That was what I was thinking while walking along the roadside sidewalk. But just then. With a vrooming sound, something fell in front of me with a thud.

“Whoa! Scared me!”

It fell from a passing one-ton truck, and looking closely, it was a notebook. It must have been a truck carrying scrap paper. Thinking that, I tried to just pass by, but my eyes went back to the notebook instinctively. I blinked for a moment, looking down at it, then picked it up. The edges were all worn and tattered, and it was a pale green notebook that looked like brown tape had been stuck to the spine. Just looking at it, it was clearly an incredibly old notebook. The cover said 1975, and below that, it just said Park Yi-chang, with nothing else written.

“Is it an old credit ledger?”

I thought it might be the kind of notebook you occasionally see in small, old restaurants. I couldn’t tell if Park Yi-chang was the name of the person who wrote it or the person who owed the credit. Anyway, if it was ’75, was I five years old then? It was a time of which I only had the faintest afterimages. People must have been living diligently back then too. Thinking that, I turned the page, and it was filled with writing. Since it was night and dark, and I had presbyopia lately, I couldn’t see well. I thought about throwing it away again, but since I had already picked it up, throwing it back seemed a bit wrong. I’ll just throw it away at home.

After arriving home, I tossed the notebook onto the floor and slumped onto the bed with my staggering body. Then, while lying down, I struggled to shrug off my outer coat and rolled over. I should wash up before sleeping, though. As I limply got up from the bed to go to the bathroom, the notebook on the floor caught my eye again. Strangely, the notebook kept weighing on my mind. I picked it up again and sat on the edge of the bed. I took out the magnifying glasses near the bed. The bulging lenses. D*mn, to think I’ve reached the age where I have to wear these. It was an item I didn’t want to use if I could help it, but I was curious about the contents, so I had no choice but to wear them. I opened the notebook and read the first page. Even though it was scribbled, there was no problem reading it at all. The first diary entry was February 15, 1975.

[Today is the exciting first day at the studio.]

Huh? A studio? I hurriedly read the next part.

[The start of the life I’ve dreamed of, so I can’t even sleep tonight. So right now in the bathroom…]

As I read on, I realized that this “studio” was a manga artist’s studio. And the writer was recording his first day as a pupil at that studio in his diary.

“Wow, what a coincidence.”

It felt somewhat familiar, so I found myself absorbed in the contents of the diary without realizing it. However, after the first day, the contents of the diary gradually turned gloomy. It was because the hardships began from the second day of life as a pupil. Working with almost no sleep was one thing, but the biggest problem seemed to be the mental suffering caused by the scary seniors. In particular, a 24-year-old named Shim Kyung-chul, who was third in the studio hierarchy, was said to be especially vicious. Because of his kind appearance on the first day, the shock was great as it was completely unexpected. Well, that’s social life—you have to experience it to know that first impressions are useless. Anyway, as the days went by, there were entries about this guy Shim Kyung-chul’s bullying getting worse, along with mentions of nosebleeds breaking out almost every day due to the workload. Reading it, it was amazing that he stayed there despite receiving no salary at all, just living while getting fed. Wow, I guess people worked under manga artists without getting paid in those days. Anyway, the more I read, the more I could feel the writer’s heart, to the point where my own heart ached. He worried a lot about his parents, younger sister, and older sister in the countryside. There were also many entries saying that as a middle school dropout, he had nothing else he could do besides drawing, so he couldn’t quit. Desperate stories about how every day was so painful and like hell. This person must have had a really hard time. As I was thinking that, my vision blurred.

“Ah, seriously. Eye gunk.”

I rubbed my eyes, wondering if it was because of eye gunk. And because of the surging drowsiness, I let out a huge yawn.

“Ah, I want to see a bit more…”

Even as I said that, I opened my mouth wide with a yawn. And unable to overcome the drowsiness, I fell asleep before I knew it.