The Great Storyteller

Translated by: ShawnSuh

Edited by: SootyOwl

“Word chain, go! Next member.”

“Huh? Me?”

Although he was caught off guard by Mr. Moon’s sudden shouting, Seo Kwang calmly thought of a word. Juho had been just as confused. For someone who started something in such an abrupt manner, Mr. Moon looked peaceful. With a piece of chalk in his hand, he waited for Seo Kwang’s answer.

“I, injured.”

Then Seo Kwang looked at Juho. While observing Mr. Moon’s expression, Juho continued after Seo Kwang.

“Discretion.”

Then, he looked at Baron, who complained about having to participate and then said, “Non-permanent markers.”

*TL Note: (유성펜 would be a permanent marker, but I’m going with non-permanent for the continuity sake.)*

“OK! We’ll stop there.”

The end of the game was just as sudden as the beginning. Everyone looked at Mr. Moon, waiting for an explanation. Mr. Moon wrote down the three words on the chalkboard and then looked at the club members.

“Starting now, you’re going to write something using these three words.”

“What?!” Sun Hwa complained loudly.

Although the others kept quiet, their expressions weren’t exactly bright either. Even Baron had a surprised look on his face, but as usual, Juho remained composed.

Writing based on a suggested topic was a commonly used format in essay contests. Of course, word chain was a lousy method for coming up with multiple topics. Thanks to Mr. Moon’s creative approach, the result was complete nonsense: injured, discretion, and non-permanent marker.

Mr. Moon didn’t wait for the members to come to their senses. He continued on with his instructions.

“The time limit is thirty minutes. You’ll be writing in prose.”

“Thirty minutes?!” everyone complained about not getting enough time.

Without budging, Mr. Moon explained his reasoning behind that seemingly impossible time limit, “This is training to minimize hesitation in your writing.”

“You mean we’re not working on our writing style?”

“That’s a given. One inevitably becomes a better writer the more he or she writes. The more you write, the better you get. Simple and honest. In other words, whatever the training is, what matters is that you write. I’ve said this before.”

The members nodded. They remembered it from their first day.

“The problem is, writing isn’t that simple. You start getting ambitious. You’re going to want to write well, but you’re not going to know what to write about. Well, maybe it’s a little weird to say ‘you’re going to want to write well.’ I don’t really like the sound of that. You won’t be able to write a single line.”

A story came to completion after countless revisions. In order for revisions to take place, there had to be a draft: the very first completed draft.

Nobody wrote a perfect draft from the get-go. The members had to complete their first draft with the assumption that there would be revisions down the line. It was not an easy task.

“So, thirty minutes. There’s no time to be idle. Just start writing. Don’t worry about fixing things at the moment. You guys are good at procrastinating, right?”

“It is our specialty,” Juho answered.

Even as the students understood Mr. Moon, they complained all the same, “Is there enough time to even think?”

“Don’t even worry about that. I won’t start the timer until you all start writing. That means everyone’s timer will start accordingly. Start writing once you’ve put enough thought into it.”

As he spoke, Mr. Moon brought out four timers from a corner of the room. Now, there was nothing to complain about.

“Now, begin.”

At Mr. Moon’s mark, the members began to brainstorm. For the time being, Juho wrote down the three keywords on the top of his paper: injured, discretion, non-permanent marker.

Everyone had been complaining that thirty minutes wouldn’t be enough time, but Juho thought otherwise. If there wasn’t enough time, then he simply had to write something short.

“What do I do? Injured, injured… Maybe there needs to be some sort of an accident.”

“You just had to pick that word, huh?” Sun Hwa said to Seo Kwang as he frantically repeated the same word to himself.

“I think it’s better than non-permanent marker.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing, Baron.”

As she struggled, Sun Hwa moved her eyes restlessly like she had thought of something. She had thought of a girl who had been stranded. She wanted to write a story about her escape in search of freedom (or discretion).

‘Injured. What if the story takes place in a hospital? The only word left is the ‘non-permanent marker.’ Non-permanent. Non-permanent marker. A girl trapped in a hospital and a non-permanent marker…’

After a brief moment of thought, Sun Hwa started writing as if she had given up thinking any further.

‘I’m sure things will come as I write,’ she thought. Her timer started ticking.

Bom hurried as she watched Sun Hwa. Struggling to come up with an idea, she looked around the room just as Mr. Moon had previously taught. That moment, her eyes stopped at Baron’s sketch book.

‘Drawing, non-permanent marker,’ Bom focused her perspective onto Baron’s drawing and then dug deeper into her thoughts.

The mind was fascinating in the sense that it craved something that the body was incapable of doing. For example, one could feel the urge to go for a run after hurting his leg, or have the urge to draw after hurting his hand.

Although she was concerned about whether she would be able to write everything in time, Bom held her pen and started writing.

“What the, did you all start writing already?”

“You can think all you want.”

“Still, I feel like I’m in a hurry. You’re not exactly in a position to be talking either, you know?”

It was no wonder, considering that Juho hadn’t written anything other than the three keywords. Juho and Seo Kwang were the only two who still hadn’t come up with an idea. Despite that, Juho seemed like he had all the time in the world.

As he rushed Juho, Seo Kwang exclaimed, “Ah!” He had thought of something. He had thought of a story that could thoroughly embrace the three keywords.

“I’ll be going now, my friend.”

“You could’ve waited a little longer.”

After heartlessly abandoning his friend, Seo Kwang started writing down his ideas in a hurry.

‘What would discretion mean to a student? It’d be absence. Not going to school.’

The thought alone made his heart beat, but Seo Kwang didn’t stop there. There were still two other keywords.

‘So this guy writes a letter home on his way out. He uses a non-permanent marker of course. Then, should I make this about a teenage runaway? If I were to make him injured, a car accident probably makes the most sense.’

Although he wasn’t sure if he was capable of handling such a story, Seo Kwang kept on writing, remembering Mr. Moon’s wise words.

‘I can always change things later. I trust you, my future self,’ he thought.

“Everyone’s working hard,” Juho murmured. At the sight all the members lost in writing, Juho slowly picked up his pen. Injured, discretion, non-permanent marker.

It was his first time writing with a group of people. Juho was getting excited. He concentrated and then pinpointed the thoughts that were signaling him in his mind.

In a brief moment, he began to fill up his page.

‘One day, my parents told me a story of my grandfather, who had passed away before I was born. He was brave and, at the same time, wise.

‘I wanted to meet him, but it was impossible to bring back the dead. So, I gave up.

‘I learned to talk and write. As I read, I learned that there were many types people that exist in a book. The good, the bad, the smart, the foolish, the successful, the unfortunate, the healthy, the sick, young, old, and then those who are alive, and those who are dead.

‘I started writing. It was about my grandfather. He transcended time and space and then overcame death to meet me.

‘Nothing was in my way. Having regards for others was not necessary. I had realized that. Writing is a discretion. It is an immense freedom that ignores various theories and rules. In that case, wouldn’t it be possible to share that freedom with another person?

‘I stopped what I was writing and went outside.’

‘Outside,’ thought Juho. ‘What’s out there?’

He reached into the depths of his heart and dipped his hand into his stream of inspiration. Juho knew he’d find what he was looking for in there. He had to write appropriately. It wasn’t going to be long from the start, so the story couldn’t have too much depth. It would be foolish to tackle it in a hurry.

Finally, Juho found what he was looking for. He had to pull it out onto the surface now.

“Hey.”

He thought for a moment. He had lost it.

“Hey, hey.”

‘That was disappointing.’ Juho looked up and saw Sun Hwa. He set aside his dazedness and answered her with a smile, “Hey, you called?”

“Did you say snakes have 400 ribs before?” she asked.

“Ah, yes. Apparently, they have more than 400.”

“I see. Thank you. You may proceed.”

After a brief moment of gratitude, Sun Hwa went back to writing, and Juho thought absent-mindedly, ‘There must be a snake in her story, a snake with more than 400 ribs.’

He turned his eyes to his paper again. The page was filled with the words he had written up to that point. Although he had just written them, they felt foreign for some reason. It was like looking at food that had gone bad. One was bound to get sick if he ate it.

Seeing that Juho had suddenly stopped, Seo Kwang asked, “What’s the matter? Is something wrong with your paper?”

“No. There is no problem.”

There was no problem with the paper. Then, Juho heard a conversation between Bom and Sun Hwa.

“I’m stuck here. How do include non-permanent marker?”

“Hm, I’m not sure either. Well, the story is taking place in a hospital, so what if you make a doctor or a nurse use it?”

“That sounds good.”

They were discussing how they could get around their writer’s block. Mr. Moon did not intervene by any means. His intention was to let each writer take ownership of what they were writing. Sun Hwa had decided on a psychiatric hospital as the setting of her story.

The comic she had been reading up until recently also took place in a psychiatric hospital. Then, she asked Juho for an outside opinion, and he answered with a question, “What do think about using it as a secret code?”

“A secret code?”

“Yeah. You’re writing about an escape, right? You don’t always have to treat non-permanent marker as an object. For example, let’s say there’s a code necessary to escape, and the word non-permanent marker is part of it.”

It wouldn’t be odd to have a secret code or two in a story about an escape.

“That’s kind of cool.”

“That’s a great idea!”

Bom and Seo Kwang answered in sequence. ‘Since when had he been listening?’

Sun Hwa’s face brightened up as she frivolously complimented Juho, “You’re my muse!”

“I really appreciate that.”

He waved his hand at her exaggerated expression. The writing writes itself. If Sun Hwa hadn’t interrupted him, Juho wouldn’t have had that inspiration. Sun Hwa had been the one who had asked for an outside opinion.

Besides, no matter how great the story was, translating it into a compelling writing was a different story.

‘They’ll do well. They know what they’re doing,’ thought Juho.

He slowly moved his pen. As he wrote, Juho noticed that he wasn’t feeling the same as he did a moment prior. In other words, there wasn’t motivation.

There were sounds of pens hitting the surface of the desk. The clock was ticking away. There was a distant shouting from the schoolyard. No matter how hard he tried, Juho couldn’t focus.

“Haha!”

In the end, Juho wrapped up his story with the protagonist being injured after tripping on a non-permanent marker.

After collecting the finished drafts, Mr.Moon left the room. The entire club knew that he had gone to the staffroom. Being a teacher was much more than taking care of his or her students.

Juho was the only person who had finished his story within the given time limit, while the other three had barely finished their story after begging for extensions.

After it was over, it had taken more than two hours for Mr. Moon to collect all of the completed drafts. Seeing how he wasn’t forcefully collecting the papers, he must have been aware that most of the members wouldn’t be able to finish in time. The thirty-minute time limit had been a form of device to allow the club members to write continuously and without hesitation.

Seo Kwang complained, “Thirty minutes was really pushing it.”

“I thought it was plenty of time.”

“Shut up. Let’s see how well you did.”

Knowing his product all too well, Juho said no more and shrugged his shoulders.

<Injured, Discretion, Non-permanent marker> The End.