Novelist Running Through Time

TL: KSD

Film is a visual art.

That is the dictionary definition.

Kim Byul preferred a more literary expression.

Film is the art of light.

EP 9 – Sound

The classroom is dark.

It’s not lighting that makes the classroom dark. It’s the sound of monsters imitating humans while wearing school uniforms, the desires of youth beaten and lost by the teacher’s stick, the grotesque scene of the weakest of their kind pecked to death like chicks packed in a box. These things settle in the air of the classroom like mist.

That is the darkness I feel.

They welcome the night that comes once a day. But we live in an eternal night.

The appearance of that night is free.

Woo-ju brought me to the school rooftop at night, telling me he would show it to me.

A blind person holding another blind person’s hand as they walk up the stairs.

The rusty door opens, the cold winter wind brushes my cheek, and we step onto the rooftop where nothing can be seen.

「Look up.」

「Are you crazy? What am I supposed to see?」

One blind person telling another blind person to look up at the starry sky.

I wanted to mock him, but instead, laughter came back to me.

「Imagine it.」

From the start, I didn’t like Woo-ju.

A strange transfer student who appeared out of nowhere one day.

The teacher telling us to be friends because we’re both visually impaired.

‘Those things’ biting at us, saying birds of a feather flock together.

Everything about this guy and everything surrounding him bothered me.

Even though he couldn’t see, he would approach ‘those things’ and chatter away, smiling foolishly even when he heard them talking behind his back. Clinging to me asking me to teach him echolocation…

He chattered all day, making me forcibly aware of where he was. He wandered around the school with ‘those things’, arm in arm, without a cane, without fear.

This guy…

He lives as if he could see.

「I’ve never seen anything before. This scenery has always been natural to me since birth.」

The happiness of my childhood was a curse to me.

A time when I had loving parents and light I could see.

The everyday life before the monster that came in through the front door one day devoured me whole.

Thrown into darkness, I suffer, longing for and longing again for the time when I forever held the light. How cruel is a past that never returns? Especially if it was a shining light…

However.

A being who had never once seen light said this:

「I feel sorry for people who can see.」

「Stop saying nonsense.」

「They live in a world where everything is already determined. How boring is that world?」

「What?」

「To us, winter wind is blue. That blue isn’t the blue that others talk about, it’s the blue we imagine. Oh, right. You know what blue is, don’t you?」

I don’t understand.

Is this how Woo-ju felt when I taught him echolocation?

But unlike me, who scolded him for not getting it, Woo-ju gently took my hand and slowly led me into a world of imagination.

「Forget the world you saw when you were young.」

「I can’t.」

「Forget all of that, and see the world with your own eyes. You see the world through sound, don’t you? It’ll be easy.」

The light of my childhood was everything to me. Even if I don’t remember what my parents looked like, even though their faces now look like monsters to me, it was the only shining time in my life. Thrown into darkness, I was wounded, I lost, and I was tainted. I was cursed to eternally long for the light while condemning the darkness.

Could I escape from that fate?

That brief hesitation led me into a world of contemplation.

Now, I no longer see the world through sound.

I watch the void ripple through the eyes of my heart.

Woo-ju guided me beyond the infinite void.

「Let’s start with the night sky. It’s a perfect palette! Paint the sky however you want.」

「No. The night is black. It has to be black…」

「Then what about the stars? What do the stars look like?」

What did stars look like?

I can’t remember.

However, stars are things that float in the sky. They sparkle, they are colorful, they are something good.

Just like what my parents handed to me during my childhood…

「…Balloons?」

Then.

An infinite number of balloons brushed past the starry sky, filling it completely.

「Ah.」

Round, colorful, the stars my parents once placed in my hands flowed through the sky.

Riding the winter wind, they floated gently. They flowed along the edge of the Milky Way.

Woo-ju reached out toward the Milky Way and grabbed hold of the stars.

And as if he were going back to where he came from, he floated away on a balloon, soaring toward the infinite universe.

「How about now? Can you see the world?」

* * *

Film is the art of light.

And Kim Byul saw the light.

Light isn’t simply a means to express ‘brightness’.

Film was originally the art of black and white. There was no color in black-and-white films. There is a history where everything had to be expressed only through lightness and darkness.

Thus, the pioneers of the past studied how to handle light. Like Prometheus, who brought fire to the world, they wanted to grasp and control fire in their hands.

At the end of their great trial and error, countless techniques were established.

And the brilliance of a descendant who inherited that secret knowledge shone through.

“Ah…”

Complexity means confusion. Confusion means excess. That excess comes from the overwhelming amount of information packed into a single frame.

But in the eyes of a skilled filmmaker who can interpret all that information, the complexity shines like the radiant light of a prism.

The light casting a shadow on the side of the protagonist’s face is coming from the right. The natural order of light, which should come from above, is twisted by the side key lighting. The flickering shadows on the face indicate the protagonist’s despair.

The hero always enters from the left and heads to the right. Good is on the left and evil is on the right. But the protagonist always moves to the left, meaning they are running away from the task given to them.

What is that task? It is life.

What is life? It is survival.

The protagonist, who swore to survive the monsters, is running away from life. Perhaps that’s because the path toward life is the righteous one, no matter how painful it may be.

Thus, light always comes from the right. This foreshadows that one day, the protagonist must stop running and head to the right.

But salvation came from the darkest place.

To the left, to the left, to the left.

To the most fundamental place she came from.

At the end of that journey of return, in the deepest darkness, the protagonist finally emerges from the shadows.

The night sky glows more brightly than the artificially lit classroom.

The constellation of infinite balloons flowing along the Milky Way.

The image of the protagonist awakening from her shell, guided by the mysterious and unfamiliar transfer student, reminiscent of Damien.

A golden bird rises from the ashes.

Feeling the gust stirred by its flapping wings shaking her heart, Kim Byul woke up from the world inside the movie.

“Ah…”

Kim Byul felt like she had become the little child who used to sit in front of the TV, absorbed in movies with a dumb expression and mouth agape, despite her parents’ nagging that it would ruin her eyesight.

The film she saw back then was directed by So Tae-woong, and the film she just watched now was also directed by So Tae-woong.

So Tae-woong, the film director who had led Kim Byul down the path of acting.

The master of cinematic art who had brought so many stars of the silver screen to life stood right before her.

And in the very center of the art he crafted, Kim Byul found herself.

At last, Kim Byul felt like she had achieved her dream.

“Aaah…”

A single tear rolled down Kim Byul’s cheek.

For Kim Byul, the profession of being a celebrity or an actor was closer to a daily routine that could hardly be called a dream.

Reality isn’t something to achieve, but something to endure.

She thought it was too long a journey to suddenly feel the satisfaction of becoming an actor-

“Hah…”

Kim Byul sighed, releasing the emotions that had built up inside her.

And naturally, she wiped away her tears with the corner of the blanket that Moon In was covering himself with, as she reflected on the film.

“I’m glad I became an actor.”

Even though Kim Byul had cried while watching a rough, incomplete edit of the film rather than the final version, her reaction didn’t seem particularly strange.

The greatness of cinematic art is that it reveals itself even to those who don’t fully understand it.

The angle of the lighting is not an element that ‘symbolizes’ a certain feeling.

It simply ‘gives’ that feeling.

That’s why it’s magic.

Because of this, even those who didn’t know anything about filmmaking still felt emotions similar to Kim Byul, albeit to varying degrees.

The more sensitive ones cried like Kim Byul did, and even those less sensitive didn’t find it strange to see others crying.

Amid these various reactions, So Tae-woong quietly smiled.

“How is it? Are you still worried about where the film is headed?”

“No, not at all!”

Through a process of denial, apology, testimony, confession, and self-criticism, the staff came together once again, united in purpose.

The scheming of the factionalist Kim Byul, who had led a collective rebellion, had been crushed by the revered director’s miraculous artistic guidance. Now, the film production team had nothing but victory, and more victory, ahead of them.

Kim Byul, though awkwardly, smiled sincerely at the same time.

“Ha, haha… I’m sorry!”

The film was not yet complete.

There were still many lines left for her to act out.

For the first time in a long while, she felt more anticipation than fatigue from that fact.

* * *

For some, art is life, but for others, art is business.

Lim Yang-wook was gradually leaning toward the latter.

How long had it been since he last watched a movie or read a book?

He couldn’t remember.

A publisher who doesn’t engage in any cultural activities… It seems he really hit rock bottom.

“Ugh…”

But it can’t be helped. With overtime work every day, when would he have time to read books?

Besides, Lim Yang-wook wasn’t even in the business of publishing books anymore, but managing authors.

The Publishing Management Department, which had moved its office from Baekhak Publishing to Baekhak Entertainment, had finished a brief adjustment period and was now operating in full force.

There were no more villains lurking in the background to drag them down, no employees suddenly distressed by homesickness, and no chronic budget shortages.

Everything was in place.

So now, if they failed, it would be 100% due to a lack of competence.

Lim Yang-wook was living his company life under the weight of that pressure.

“What did CEO Seo Woon-pil say?”

“He said it’s still too early to tell.”

“That won’t do… Let him know I’ll visit him personally to discuss it.”

Lim Yang-wook’s main task was no longer managing Moon In.

The Publishing Management Department had fully transitioned from being a one-man team revolving around Moon In to a full-scale management business overseeing dozens of authors.

They now managed the rights to hundreds of works written by these authors, promoted media adaptations, arranged TV appearances and lectures for the authors, and handled countless tasks not listed in any manual.

From now on, Lim Yang-wook was treading into new territory he hadn’t experienced before.

He had leveled up from a middle manager to just a manager.

In terms of web novels, it felt like a regressor living longer than their original life…

The “strongest returnee” Lim Yang-wook uttered a line that someone experiencing such overwhelming uncertainty might say.

“…Status window!”

Of course, nothing appeared.

Feeling awkward, Lim Yang-wook scratched his head, but then Kim Ga-ryung, who was passing by, mimicked him.

“Status window!”

“Stop with the nonsense.”

But suddenly, Kim Ga-ryung’s eyes opened wide with a flash.

“Ah!”

Lim Yang-wook instinctively jumped in surprise.

“What? What’s wrong?”

Kim Ga-ryung hurriedly looked away, trying to change the subject.

“N-n-nothing.”

Still, he tapped the air with his hand as if he were seeing something.

What’s this? Could it be that this guy can actually see it?

Lim Yang-wook was confused for about two seconds before noticing Kim Ga-ryung’s smirk. That’s when he realized it was just a prank.

“…Get lost.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kim Ga-ryung disappeared.

Lim Yang-wook, feeling a sense of self-loathing for having been tricked even for a second by such a ridiculous joke, rubbed his smooth head in frustration.

“Sigh…”

There really isn’t a single person he can trust.

Even if he wanted to rely on the CEO, the CEO was relying solely on him, so who else could he turn to?

Honestly, it’s legendary how, even after going through all this effort running the department, it still brings in less money than what Moon In brought in from Japan last season.

Ah, right.

Moon In…

“Ah, In-seop…”

Half-tearful, Lim Yang-wook glanced at the movie poster stuck on the office cabinet.

It was a simple and static design, with Kim Byul wearing black sunglasses, zombies in school uniforms, an astronaut holding a balloon, and a witch in a doctor’s coat, all arranged together.

Staring at the poster, Lim Yang-wook let out a sorrowful lament.

“I thought I could at least trust you…”

*****

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