Big Life

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 . ’