The Great Storyteller

Translated by: ShawnSuh

Edited by: SootyOwl

“This place’s hardly changed,” Juho said, surrounded by low buildings while looking at a pedestrian walking past him. There weren’t that many people around, and it didn’t seem like there were all that many tourists either. There were hardly any stores open. Meanwhile, Juho stood on a corner of the street, waiting for his ride. Soon, Coin would be there to pick the young author up.

“Are you there?”

“Oh, yes.”

The phone in Juho’s hand was starting to feel quite hot, the same went to the voice that sounded from the receiver.

“Do you have any idea how taken aback I was when I found your hotel room empty?!”

“Well, if you had the common sense to let me know beforehand that you were coming, that wouldn’t have happened.”

“I thought we had already agreed on this! Nonverbally.”

“That’s my first time hearing that.”

As the sound of the director’s loud grumbling sounded from the receiver, Juho moved aside in order to make room for a person unloading his truck. Juho fixed his hat. Nobody was looking at him.

“So, has Coin picked you up yet?” Jenkins asked.

“Nope.”

“You’re going to his house, right? The white villa?”

“Yep,” Juho replied haphazardly while checking the time. It was almost time. He looked at the cars passing by in front of him, which there weren’t that many of.

“Heard you’re guesting on a talk show? Hope you’re ready,” Juho said to the director.

“Don’t you worry. Talking is what I do.”

At that moment, Juho saw a certain car approaching his location. Realizing that it was the car he had been waiting for, Juho walked toward it. As the car stopped right in front of him, Juho hurriedly cut the director off in mid-sentence, saying, “Uh-huh. Right. I gotta go.”

“What? Wait! Hold on…”

As Juho hung up the phone without hesitation, he saw the driver of the car in front of him getting out of the driver’s seat. He looked irritated. It was Coin. Although Juho was seeing him for the first time in two years, Coin seemed to be off to a bad start. First, Juho greeted him.

“How’ve you been?”

“Wait here. I gotta go get some coffee.”

At that, Juho made sense of why the author was in such a bad mood. After staring dazedly at him running toward a coffee shop in a hurry, Juho started loading his bags into Coin’s car. At that moment, Juho spotted a familiar-looking book with a blood-red cover in the trunk.

“What’s this?”

The book hung precariously from the edge of the trunk, as if about to fall off at any given minute. As he pushed the book back into the trunk, Juho opened it cautiously and smiled at what he saw. The pages were filled with notes and underlined sentences. Then, just as he was about to get a closer look at the book, a voice came out of nowhere and startled the young author.

“Excuse me,” a lady said with a peculiar accent. With the truck that had been unloading gone, the view was much more open.

“Yes?”

“Do you know how to get to this place?”

“Ah, I’m sorry. I don’t really know the area myself. You might be better off asking somebody in one of these shops,” Juho said. However, she stood there quietly, blinking awkwardly, as if she hadn’t understood a word of what the young author had said. After looking around, Juho asked, “Where are you from?”

“Spain.”

Nodding, Juho asked, “Could you tell me where you’re headed?”

At that moment, her eyes widened upon hearing her native tongue at an unexpected place. Realizing that the young author spoke Spanish, the rest of her party joined in and explained where they were going, which turned out to be the park Coin had told him about at one point. Although he had never been there himself, Juho knew where it was. Just to make sure, Juho went into a nearby shop and asked in English, “‘Scuse me, is this how you get to the park?”

“Yes. It’ll take you about half an hour, though. You might get there quicker if you take this route instead,” the shop owner replied, correcting the young author. When Juho relayed the same information to the tourists from Spain, they seemed to realize when they had started losing track of where they were going. At which point, looks of confidence appeared on their faces.

“Thank you.”

“Enjoy your trip.”

By the time Juho returned to Coin’s car, Coin was already waiting for him, standing by the driver’s side. He seemed to have had a cup of coffee already, which explained his calmer attitude.

“What were doing?”

“Somebody was asking for directions.”

“You hardly know the area.”

“It just so happened that they were headed to one of the few places I knew around here.”

“I guess it’s not too out of ordinary. There aren’t that many things to see or do around here.”

“I even went into a shop nearby to make sure I was showing them the right direction,” Juho added, confident that the information he had given the tourists was accurate. At that moment, just as he was about to catch up with Coin, he heard somebody asking in Spanish, “Was that Yun Woo?”

It was coming from the same tourists who had asked Juho for directions to the park. They were starting to slow down.

“Get in,” Coin said, holding the steering wheel. Juho got into the car.

“‘Scuse me?”

“Yes?” Juho replied, and the tourists started walking toward him. At which point, Coin started the car without hesitation. At the sudden roar of the engine, the tourists hesitated, and Coin took the opportunity to escape the scene. Looking at them in the mirror, Juho asked, “What’s the hurry?”

“There’s no hurry. I just didn’t feel like dealing with them,” Coin replied.

“That’s not a way to treat your readers.”

“Well, that’s just too bad. I have way too many readers out there. There’s no way I can interact with them one at a time.”

Coin seemed to be set on not letting anybody get in the way of his day. Instead of speaking any further about it, Juho looked out the window at the scenery rushing past. Soon, a cornfield appeared. Seeing it for the first time in years, Juho couldn’t be more pleased.

“This places looks exactly the same as last time.”

At that, Coin snorted and replied, “None of that corn was there when you visited last time.”

All the corn Juho had seen during his last visit was long gone. Looking out the window quietly, Juho asked, “Do you think the corn would say the same about me?” and reached for the blood-red book in the back seat. Coin followed the young author’s hand with his eyes, almost as if glaring at it.

“This cover makes the book stand out like a sore thumb,” Juho said, and Coin sneered.

“How as it?” the young author asked.

“Have you read mine?” Coin asked back. Looking at the book in his hands for a brief moment, Juho played along with him.

“I have.”

The book in Juho’s hands looked slightly different from the translated version that he owned. Meanwhile, Coin sped up.

“Intimidating, wasn’t it? Seeing somebody better than you.”

“No way.”

“I saw it,” Coin said in a low voice, barely audible over the surrounding noise. Juho closed the window in order to listen to Coin.

“I saw the anxiety in your writing. You might have looked like you were on a two-year hiatus, but we both know that there’s a beast living deep within us. There was no way that you could’ve written in peace. Even authors tend to get excited when working on subjects like flesh and blood.”

“A beast, huh? A bit much, don’t you think?” Juho asked, flipping the book around.

“You lost this one. Admit it.”

Coin pressed even harder on the gas pedal. There was nothing getting in their way. Remembering Coin’s book, Juho said, “The future. The birth of new humans. A blank slate history where everything is in its original state.”

That was the description of the world Coin had showcased through his new novel. It was in a world like that that the two brothers were born.

“A world untainted by murder.”

Like the rest of humanity, the brothers didn’t understand the concept of murder.

“I stayed up nights reading. Over and over.”

Coin’s world was different from Juho’s, where death was a regular occurrence. It was astounding and impressive. Juho had been so lost in the book that he had almost forgotten to breathe. Finding himself in a good mood, Juho looked at Coin. His Adam’s apple was moving up and down.

“I did notice something, though. I got a feeling that you were quite anxious during the two years I was gone.”

At that moment, the car jerked, slowing down all of a sudden. At which point, Juho raised a corner of his mouth.

“Anxiety comes from certainty. The moment you believe that pain is caused by cancer, the moment you believe that a person is a burglar, the moment you believe that this world is coming to an end, that’s when anxiety starts to creep in, robbing one of hope, causing them to fight a cancer that might not even be there, running away from somebody who might not even be a burglar, praying to God in desperation,” Juho said.

“Get to the point.”

“Isn’t it just a pain in the neck that those who see the beast within us are guaranteed to be set free?”

Being well aware of what the young author was about to say next, Coin clicked his tongue internally.

“I saw the same thing in your writing. The anxiety.”

“Damn it,” Coin let out, looking at the book in Juho’s hands. The young author’s book had been astounding and impressive. Breathtakingly so. The book had been filled to the brim with sin, which had left a bad taste in his mouth.

“It felt like I had blood on my hands,” Coin said with a hardened expression on his face. “There’s always been a sense of moderation in your writing. But not this time.”

Then, Coin raised his voice all of a sudden and Juho pulled back.

“You purposely made it so that there were no corpses lying around in the castle. There are wars and massacres surrounding the people just outside the walls, but those who grew up behind the walls had never seen a dead body in their whole lives. To them, there was not a single thing wrong with their world. It was peaceful. There was no war. Violinist was the only character who understood that reality.”

It was quite unlucky to be granted the ability to see things that no one else could.

“Do you know what you offered your readers? A world so wretched that it drove the Hundred-Eyed Tribe extinct, making them bleed to death from their eyes. That’s what you gave your readers. There’s not one speck of hope. You can tell that the end is near, and you can just feel it in the air. Everyone deserves to die there. In the end, a written language came about that only humans couldn’t read.”

That was when Traitor appeared. With it, Violinist had to change the course of the future of mankind. They had to deliver the news of imminent danger, change mankind’s hearts and values. That was the only way to survive.

“If the two were to save mankind, they didn’t have a choice but to come face to face with the greatest sin of the very beings they were trying to save.”

Violinist and Traitor had had no choice but to face the atrocities outside the safety of the castle walls. In order to raise awareness to the reality to those living behind the walls, the two had to understand the real state their world was in. Readers had to connect with the two and go through their pain together. Whenever the flags would blow in the wind, Violinist would be reminded of the perilous reality he was living, that there was a chance that he wouldn’t make it back alive, and that his body would be nowhere to be found.

“It’s a downright dreadful story and your anxiety only brings that out more,” Coin said and asked, “You knew that, didn’t you?”

At that, Juho rubbed his forehead and replied, “What can I say? I had an unbearable itch on my foot.”

“Your foot?”

“I had a blister on my foot, and it popped while I was writing.”

It had been a blister from the combat boots, which weren’t made for comfort. Because they were made for combat, they tended to be heavy and rigid, which made them hard to wear, let alone walk for an extended period of time, damaging the very part of the body they were made to protect. Juho recalled having to change socks dozens of times, using a softer innersole, and making sure the laces were tightly tied so that his feet wouldn’t rub against the walls of the boots. Unfortunately, those things had done little to alleviate the young author’s pain. Violinist was trying to free his people from pain and constraint similar to being in combat boots for hours on end.

At that point, Juho became curious about what Violinist would think of the life of the two brothers in Coin’s novel.

“Your story wasn’t exactly the happiest either,” Juho said. As the car changed direction, Juho brought up Coin’s novel, “Murder happens eventually.”

“There’s no way around it. The story takes place in a world before the very first murder in the history of mankind. It was bound to happen. The older brother kills the younger brother.”

“I stared at the last page of the novel for a good while.”

“That wasn’t the most important part of the book,” Coin said. What he had emphasized in his novel had been the time before the first murder had occurred.

“I know, but I couldn’t help myself.”

“You’re one to talk. You killed Traitor.”

“The story takes place in the past. Everybody dies in the end.”

One was a story of redemption from sin, and the other a story of those headed toward sin. Although they seemed to be the polar opposite of each other, the two stories were strangely similar but different at the same time. The two authors had written according to the directions they had each decided to take. At that moment, Coin’s white villa came into view in the distance. It seemed quite peaceful.

“Guess it’s a draw this time.”

As the car came to a halt, Juho got out of it and set his foot on the ground.