The Great Storyteller

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Hey everyone,

SootyOwl and ShawnSuh here. We are loving the response you guys are having for the novel and for the work we are doing translating it. We come bearing some news that some of you might not like. As you know, The Great Storyteller is a Korean novel. Under Webnovel and Munpia’s partnership to bring Korean novels to a greater audience, Munpia requested that their novels go premium after 40 chapters in order to protect their copyrights and for their authors’ benefit.

We hope the you guys stick with us as we watch Juho’s future change together, but we understand if you are unable to.

Thank you for your understanding.

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Translated by: ShawnSuh

Edited by: SootyOwl

Chapter 37 – A Dream He’d Been Waiting For

“Maybe I should include less people.”

Staring at the subway station full of people was starting to get boring, so Juho revisited a recent memory. He had visited a zoo recently. It was a small zoo within a park. There had been a stubborn elephant that had refused to show its face to the crowd, and that image existed in the same space as the woman with the guitar.

‘Yeah, an elephant sounds good,’ he thought.

He tried mixing fear with the elephant in his mind. Words like subway, accident, and news passed through his thoughts.

“Crisis, terror.”

‘Terror. There were different types of terror in people’s lives. The intensity of treatment varied depending on how much the person was being affected by their phobia. If a person who lived in a city had a phobia of deserts, treatment was not necessary unless they were planning on immigrating to the Middle East.’

“Maybe I should go with that.”

Juho picked up his pen.

‘Just like everyone, the woman had something she was afraid of. That was none other than elephants. Still, just as it was mentioned earlier, there was no major inconvenience. She had become a corporate worker, and corporate workers wouldn’t typically be forced to be at a zoo. She loved music. As she listened to music like usual, she got on the subway car to work. The weather was pleasant, and she was in a good mood. Her work suited her personality. She had just passed her promotion exam and started dating. Her coworker was too slow to catch up to her and was nowhere near threatening to her career. It had been a succession of peaceful days, and she no longer thought about what she was afraid of.’

Then, Juho added a line, ‘It’s been five years since I stopped playing guitar, but I’m content.’

Everything she had achieved had been the result of her own effort. She considered herself strong. However, the essence of her phobia was waiting at the station – an elephant.

That was the beginning of a development, and Juho didn’t write about how she would respond.

‘Coming to think of it, there had been a time when an elephant had escaped from the zoo. That elephant had walked into a restaurant, and since then, that restaurant’s been running under the name ‘The Elephant House,” he thought. There wasn’t much substance in that thought.

‘Well, at least I won’t get an earful from Mr. Moon this time.’

*

The bell rang at the end of third period, and Juho headed to the science room. Mr. Moon was looking for him.

“Man, you’re in trouble,” Seo Kwang said frivolously.

‘I thought I was going to be OK this time,’ he thought with an awkward smile, standing up from his seat. Maybe he really was in trouble.

When he entered the science room at the end of the hallway, Mr. Moon greeted him with a serious face.

“Juho Woo.”

“Yes, Mr. Moon.”

As he came to realize that he’d never been alone in the science room with Mr. Moon, he noticed his tone.

Since Mr. Moon was sitting where Juho usually sat, he had to sit on Bom’s seat, across from him. Because of the light coming in through the window, Mr. Moon was backlit, so he seemed like a shadow.

He finally opened his mouth and asked, “Did you get a girlfriend recently?”

“Nope,” Juho answered at once. He had no time for relationships. There was barely enough time to write.

Mr. Moon continued as he pulled out Juho’s paper and put it in front of him, “Then how do you explain this?”

On the paper, there was a story of a girl who received a confession from a man. She met her unfortunate demise after running into an alien in the mountains.

On the same paper, Juho had written down the three keywords the day before: Confession, Mount Jiri, and Computers. Those three words had been chosen randomly by Mr. Moon, and there were still remnants of that day on the desk, a ragged box filled with pieces of paper folded into smaller pieces. Again, thanks to his creative method of picking keywords, the words got trickier and trickier.

Juho’s mood and tendencies were getting gradually worse. Perhaps it was because the keywords had no correlation to one another. By the way, the female protagonist had received a confession through her computer from a man who she had never met.

Mr. Moon accused in his shade, “You weren’t this bad.”

“I do believe aliens exist.”

For that reason, he probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear about a person who had died after an encounter with an alien.

Mr. Moon continued as he nodded, “So, is that what you wanted to communicate?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then, what’s this about?”

It was the second time he asked for an explanation, and Juho answered honestly, “I can’t control myself.”

“My, my.”

There was no wavering in Mr. Moon’s voice. It was as if he had been expecting an answer like that. Considering how long he’d been warning Juho to work on the ending of his stories, Mr. Moon’s response made sense. He knew that Juho wasn’t a rebel despite the lack of improvement.

The shadow moved. It seemed like Mr. Moon was reading through the paper again.

“You have a talent.”

Juho didn’t say anything, and Mr. Moon continued, “Do you want to be a novelist?”

Juho remembered the questions asked by countless reporters and journalists in the past. In midst of those questions, no one had asked him what Mr. Moon had just asked. He had already been a novelist then.

“I’m not sure.”

As an author who had been hasty at one point in his life, Juho couldn’t answer Mr. Moon’s question.

As he slightly lowered his head, Mr. Moon started talking again, “I wanted to be a genius writer.”

“Pardon?”

Juho hadn’t expected that. Mr. Moon paid no attention to his confusion and continued, “It’s kind of cool. You don’t do anything, but you’re flowing with ideas. You write those into a book, and everyone loves it. Then, you get to have a confident smile on your face.”

“Kind of arrogant, isn’t it?” Juho spoke his mind.

“Well, I wanted to be that arrogant bastard. I had talent too.”

He seemed like he was reminiscing about the past as he acknowledged his own talent.

“Then, what made you become a teacher?”

“I needed to make money,” he answered bluntly, without a moment of hesitation. It was very Mr. Moon-like.

Juho rephrased his question, “So, why couldn’t you become a writer?”

Mr. Moon answered with a bitter smile, “Because I didn’t have ‘It.'”

‘What didn’t he have?’

“What’s this ‘it’ you didn’t have?”

“Leg strength.”

That had been an unexpected answer, and Juho was confused. ‘Did he have weak legs?’ he wondered.

“A novelist is a special occupation.”

“In what sense?”

“All you do is pick up your pen, but you still need endurance. Physical labor is at the core of making a living as a novelist.”

It wasn’t something he would say typically, yet he was very sure of it. ‘Physical labor’ was a word that was quite distant from a word like ‘genius.’

“Is there a person you think of when you hear the word ‘genius writer?'”

Countless names raced through Juho’s mind, but none of them fit the description of being a genius. He knew how much struggle and anguish went into writing a single sentence.

“Nope.”

Mr. Moon nodded.

“Yes, of course. There is no such a thing. What value does a god-given talent have before physical labor? I gave up because it was way too tiring.”

Juho smiled. He was able to relate to Mr. Moon. Writing was not an easy task. An author fell into a pit of shame on multiple occasions throughout the day. He felt ashamed and embarrassed about his writing. Yet, he had to face it. He edited and revised constantly. He dug through the depth of his being and came to face all the junk that was at the bottom. Although the junk started to contaminate the well, he didn’t stop.

This process spanned anywhere from months to a lifetime.

“It’s like a marathon.”

No matter how strong their lungs were, a runner was bound to grow tired. At some point, they would fall. In that moment, talent wasn’t what kept them going. It was their leg strength that supported them. It helped them fight through the exhaustion. That strength came from the heart.

“Then, what’d be an appropriate name to call authors who have the leg strength?”

‘Genius’ alone wasn’t big enough to embrace all of those authors, so Juho asked Mr. Moon. He had failed and walked away from the path he had been on. Yet, he was smiling. He had lived on. That wasn’t the only path there was to life after all, and he had started running again on a different path.

Somethings were more visible from the distance. If anybody knew, Mr. Moon would know something about this. He would know what was at the end of the path he had left behind.

He answered with a genuine smile, “A great storyteller.”

A gentle breeze rushed into the room. Juho took a deep breath and felt the breeze in his lungs.

“At the end of the day, there is no such thing as a genius writer. I was dreaming of something that never existed in this world.”

“It’s your freedom to dream.”

A dream allowed one to embrace things that didn’t exist in the world. That was why people dreamed carelessly and envied.

Juho reminisced about the past filled with anxiety. The word ‘genius’ had disappeared in a moment. It had hid itself like a candle in the wind. It was such a fragile word.

Soon, Mr. Moon was no longer in the shadow. His full figure had become visible again.

“What I’m trying to say is that the talent that you possess is not as useful as you think.”

Juho sat quietly with a smile, and Mr. Moon asked again, “Do you want to be a novelist?”

Juho didn’t answer immediately. He looked at his feet and then the ceiling. ‘A novelist. The great storyteller.’

“Yes.”

With a satisfied smile, Mr. Moon said, “If that’s what your heart desires, then so be it”

At the familiar remark, Juho couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Mr. Moon couldn’t achieve his dreams. He had failed and walked away. In a person like that, Juho had found a dream that he’d been waiting for all along.

Things were different from how they used to be. He no longer wanted to be an ordinary writer. Though it sounded slightly childish and exaggerated, he wanted to be ‘great,’ the great storyteller.

“Then start with your endurance, at least to the level where you can write without huffing and puffing after sprinting for a few seconds.”

“Yes, Mr. Moon.”

Juho took Mr. Moon’s advice to heart. As he thought of an exercise plan, Mr. Moon started talking while looking at Juho’s paper, “Boy, kids nowadays are such good writers. Did you go to the same private institute as Yun Woo or something?”

“I’ve never gone to a private institute.”

“Then, you’re not Yun Woo himself or anything like that, right?”

Juho quietly laughed off his unexpected remark.

‘That’s not funny Mr.Moon.’

*

After meeting with Mr.Moon, he realized what he had been lacking in himself. It was endurance that could keep him on his feet when something or somebody tried to bring him down. It would allow him to move forward on his own. He needed endurance when he wrote.

The next day, he woke up at dawn and rubbed his heavy eyes as he got out of bed. After washing his face in the bathroom, he felt a little more awake.

When he went out to the living room, his mother was there. She must have woken up with the sound of running water.

“Why are you up so early?”

“I wanted to go out for a run.”

“At this hour?”

“Yeah, I wanted to work on my endurance.”

“OK, be careful.”

His mother seemed somewhat surprised by his answer, but without saying much, she went back to bed. He put on his running shoes and went outside. He stretched as he looked up at the dark sky before the sunrise. In order to avoid muscle aches, he made sure not to make any quick or sudden movements.

Once he reached the park, he started running. There were no cars or bicycles. There weren’t many obstacles, so it was safe for him to focus on running without paying too much attention to his surroundings. The park itself was quite big, and most of all, he liked that there were very many trees.

“Ready, set, go.”

Chapter 37 – A Dream He’d Been Waiting For; The End