Big Life
Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Chapter 8 – There Is A Reaction
-Pat!
“Araghh, f***! This shit again!”
“Meow . ”
Rika who was eating her cat feed meowed in surprise as she heard the profanity .
In front of the computer, Jaegun buried his face onto his two hands . The screen was now of a blue color, filled with error messages .
“It’s hasn’t been long since I fixed it and now it’s acting up again . ”
He was complaining, but it was a computer that he had been using for a long time . He owned it since his college days, so it has been in use for about 7 years already .
“Damn it . At least I sent my project in before it busted . ”
He had sent the third martial arts novel of the series to the publisher . He was about to write the fourth one before it crashed . It wasn’t the worst situation to be in, but he was in the dark on trying to write from now on .
“Is it time for me to buy a new PC?”
He thought it wasn’t a bad idea to buy a new computer now .
He still had about 1,500,000 Won left from his contract payment . He gave 300,000 Won to his dad and even after buying Rika’s cat food, and the living necessities left him this much .
‘No . Not yet . I can’t relax . ’
Jaegun shook the thought out . He knew that money always seemed aplenty, but it always had a tendency to flow off .
The rent and the utility bills would take him under 1,000,000 Won . Without even thinking about the next month, was he going to buy an expensive computer? This was the mindset of someone who wanted to live for one day and die .
‘I should just go to a PC bang . I could cut my rent for a month and use it there . ’
His head was filled with ideas for his novels . He had to write new these things down or else he thought that his mind might burst . Jaegun suddenly kicked his chair and shot up .
At that moment .
“Right! I have that!”
He glanced towards the corner of the room . The old and tattered laptop was in sight; however, there shouldn’t be a big problem if he just used it to write .
‘It even has ‘Word’ . It works fine, so why not use that?”’
He put his broken computer below his desk and replaced it with Seo Gunwoo’s laptop . As he connected the power cord to the laptop and turned it on, it made a BEEP sound and the booting started . .
‘You are, indeed, older than my 7 year old computer . ’
-Winnnnnggg!
A phone call from the editor-in-chief came .
Jaegun double-clicked on Word from the desktop as he picked up the phone .
“Yes?”
“Yes, hello . How did you write 3 books in a day? Did you already write these?”
“Haha, no . That’s not it . The story just came to me . ”
It wasn’t a lie . After he obtained the new memories, his writing has changed .
It wasn’t his choice, but everything changed . It gave him motivation and new thoughts . He could tell from his writing .
“Wow . Then this seriously wasn’t written before and was written in a week?”
She was really surprised .
Jaegun’s normal speed was about 1 book per one month .
“I skimmed it and book 3 was good too . There isn’t much to change there as well . Good work, Mr . Ha . ”
“No . The compliments should go to you for checking my work . ”
“Hahaha, no . But there’s a surprising piece of news . ”
“Surprising?”
“You should hold onto your phone . ”
With those words, Jaegun tightened his grip on the phone .
“What is it? Is it something bad?”
“It should be good . After all, there’s no writer that doesn’t like their books being copied”
“… . ?”
Jaegun couldn’t believe his ears .
My writing? Being lengthened in copy?
Jaegun couldn’t believe his ears . Across the phone, the editor was laughing .
“Are you listening? Mr . Ha? Mr . Ha?”
The editor asked even though she knew that he was listening .
Jaegun stood up and walked around until finally he sat down on to his chair .
“Yes . Yes . I’m here . I’m here . ”
“The reception of your books was amazing . The stores loved it . Therefore, we decided to print 1000 of them . ”
“What? How-how many? 1000?”
Jaegun’s legs shook as he listened to her, completely flabbergasted .
With the development of the internet and e-books, regular books were in distress . It was amazing that the book even got lengthed . It was impossible for that to be in the thousands .
“Are-are you joking somehow? Or are you pulling my leg?”
Jaegun knew that she wasn’t, but he had to ask . His two eyes were still in disarray .
“Do you really think I would joke with something like this? Congratulations, Mr . Ha . It was your perseverance coming through . You’ll soon be making money and your living will be much better . ”
Jaegun signed a contract with each book at 8% .
A single book costs 8 dollars, so he got about 640 Won . For 1000 books, it was 640,000 Won . There was the 3 . 3 % tax to worry about, but he could still make a flat profit .
Contrary to the flabbergasted Jaegun who was unable to respond, the editor continued her cheerful talk .
“Then, keep on working . I’ll be waiting for your next episode . Don’t overdo yourself either . Ah, and let’s have lunch together some time . ”
“Yes . Yes . Thank you . Thank you . Really, thank you . ”
He headed straight for the fridge . He took out cold water and started gulping it down .
His chest was bursting . He needed to vent this feeling with someone, but Jaein and Jongjin were working right now .
So Jaegun picked up Rika and shouted, ”Did you hear that? I’m getting more books! And 1000 of them too!”
“Meow . ”
“It’s now 3000 releases for one book! That’s about 1,900,000 Won for a book . This is crazy! Really! To think I could get about 2,000,000 Won for one book! Do you think this makes sense?”
“Meow . Meow . ”
This was probably nothing to successful writers, but to Jaegun, who received almost nothing for 5 years, it was a success like nothing ever before .
“Yeah! To continue this feeling, I want to write book 4 . I’ll write book 4 in a week as well! Just you wait, by the next month, I’ll be freaking rich and I’ll buy you a cat tower or whatever that is!”
With immense happiness, Jaegun set off on writing on Se Gunwoo’s laptop . He knew the general outline of book 4 . He just needed to calmly write it down .
-Tap! Tap . Tappp! Taptap!
On the monitor screen, words were flying on the page .
‘Now here, the main needs to get hit . And then he needs to retreat quietly… Hmm?”
While he was typing, Jaegun had a mysterious feeling .
‘Something feels weird . ’
Usually when he was typing, the mind went faster than his typing . However, today, it was the opposite . It felt like his typing was faster than his mind .
‘Wait-wait-wait, what? What is this?’
He looked at the clock; only an hour had passed since he started . Yet, the document he was writing on read over 20 pages .
‘What? Is the file wrong? How much did I write?”
Jaegun suprisedly looked at the document information tab . Then, he took a heavy breath; his mind went numb . He lost his sense of feeling; as if he was free falling .
-Letters: 10798
‘Whaaat? I wrote about 10 thousand letters in an hour?’
Jaegun’s typing speed was not slow, it was about the same as the average writer . Yet, even in a good condition, his fastest was about 3500 . To write at this rate, he needed to spend about at least 2 hours and a half .
‘This isn’t only about a good condition?’
This wasn’t writing or revising an old book . It was making a new one from scratch, and it was 10 thousand characters for one hour, he couldn’t believe it . It was out of human reach . His mind felt the numbness and shock again .
‘If I can write like this, I would be able to write about 1 book per day . ’
The book he was writing was about 140,000 letters . Therefore, if he could write at the same speed, he could write a book in 14 hours .
‘Let’s do it . ’