“Come on Jinki, I need the script by Monday!” 

Jinki growls at the woman in front of him. She’s tapping her finger impatiently on his table. 

“And don’t forget that you have a book signing tomorrow and one again on Friday and that you have a meeting with the proof reader on Thursday along with a meeting with the graphic designer for the front page of this one. Do you even have a title for it yet?” 

Jinki glares at the woman and stands from the table.

“Where are you going?” she asks, her finger stops tapping the wood as she glares at his back. Jinki can feel the annoyance fill the room, but his frustration is far greater than his publisher’s right now. 

“I’m leaving so I can write.”

With those words he leaves her alone in the large office. 

Jinki used to like his job. When he was a teenager he would have given everything to become what he has become today but it doesn’t come without a prize. Ever since his first hit novel 5 years ago, he has been working hard to write the sequels and interacting with his readers to promote his image. Jinki can’t count the books he has written his signature in so far and he can’t remember all the things he has rehearsed and said in interviews.

What inspires you? How do you create your characters? Any good ideas on how to plan a story?

Jinki can’t count the workshops for young writers he has been on, he can’t remember the stories he has read as the judge on amateur writing contests. 

And despite all the things Jinki has achieved, there is nothing he wants to do more than throw his computer out of the window, burn all the rewritten pages, rip all the edited notes and the destroy the career other people would kill to have. 

It’s 3 AM, his eyes are burning and he’s going insane. The blue artificial light from his computer is the only light in the large living room and Jinki is still stuck in the middle of his latest romance novel. Staring at the blank pages is stupid, though. It doesn’t help him write and the words are still there, still stuck with the frustration of giving without ever getting.

He slams his fist into the table, the cup of tea spilling over, unfortunately not hitting his computer and destroying it. The hot liquid drips off the edge of the table, onto his socketed feet and Jinki feels the slight burn through the fabric as it becomes wet and the heat reaches his skin. He feels numb while the words of his publisher repeats in his mind. 

“Jinki! You should’ve slept!” his publisher hisses from beside him before she turns to the line of excited young adults with their copy of his latest romance novel.

“Hello!” she says with a fake smile and a sweet voice, very unlike the voice she speaks to him in.

Jinki just stares at the young people, the ones he writes about when he writes his books; the ones that looks sweetly at one another, clearly in love; the ones who cast shy glances towards him, shy to be in his company. He observes the ones who distances themselves from the crowd as if it embarrasses them to be here and the ones that tries not to look jealously at the couples. He notices it all and that's why his characters are popular. He observes and makes mental notes and remembers the small things and that’s what made him popular to begin with, that’s what got the public’s attention.

That is why he is Lee Jinki and that is why he sits in front of a line of young people wanting to get his signature on the book he has written. 

“I love your book so much! Rose is so easy to relate to,” a girl says and sighs dreamily when she hands over her book. Jinki takes it with a smile, opens it to the front page and looks at her with his charming smile that usually blinds people. 

“I’m happy to hear,” he says in a sweet voice. “What’s your name?” 

The girl blushes slightly and mumbles her name out loud. Minseo. She points towards a boy further away that rests against a wall.

“That’s my younger brother Minho. He acts like it’s the worst when I say he resembles Jonathan,” she says and references the jealous second lead. Jinki laughs heartily for her sake and tells her to take good care of her brother instead of mocking him. Minseo just shrugs and thanks him once again. Jinki lets his gaze over the pair of siblings once they leave the book signing before he turns to the next girl in line and signs her book as well.

It’s the insanity that shows up again at midnight, the craving of something Jinki was never meant to have, the longing after something he was never meant to get. He stares at the web browser, searches his name again and again and finds nothing. There are no discussions, no guesses. No nothing. There is just him, a lonely author, searching his name on the internet and all he finds is professional praise and nothing. Jinki slams his computer closed and breaks the screen in the process. It’s good all the same.

“You what?!” his publisher spits when Jinki tells her he wants to take a break. “Nonsense! You’re finishing this book before we talk about breaks. How far are you anyway? Oh, he’s here! Jinki, meet Kim Kibum, graphic designer and the artist to create the front page of your next book. I think he has some ideas already, let’s go talk. You can approve or disapprove of them.” 

She pushes Jinki into the meeting room and then sends the other man a smile before she makes a gesture that invites him inside the room as well. Jinki takes his place at the end of the table and starts picking at the skin on his fingers. He has a loose cuticle and it’s annoying him. He doesn’t listen to Kim Kibum as the other man relays his ideas.

Jinki pulls at the cuticle until he pulls too hard and his finger starts bleeding. He’s staring at the blood, almost mesmerised by the sight, almost inspired to write. Jinki’s publisher is the one that interrupts Kim Kibum to address Jinki and his bleeding finger instead.

“Will you take this seriously?” she asks and presses a paper towel hard against his finger. Jinki doesn’t feel the pain, fascinated with the way the blood stains the white paper. 

“I’m sorry,” he says and gets up from his seat. He takes one look at the design that’s on display. “It looks good. You’ll have to excuse me.” 

And then he leaves the room.

Jinki stares at the no longer blank page in a new word document. It has nothing to do with the romance novel he’s writing and he shouldn’t really have bothered with writing it considering how tight his schedule is but Jinki doesn’t care because this is art. This is the best thing he has ever written, the description of the blood seductive and the physical pain irresistible. He should’ve become a crime writer instead of romance. But romance had been easy when he started. Romance had been easy until he had been removed from his life, his dreams and his world. Jinki lets his finger caress the cracked screen and smiles wickedly. 

His publisher is not happy when she finds him on Friday before his book signing. Jinki doesn’t care. He tells her about his change of plans and she whips him over the head with a bundle of papers.

“Nobody wants to read crime novels, Jinki. You’re a YA author, stop daydreaming. You’re good at what you do. Give me that new novel everybody is waiting for instead of writing descriptions of blood.” 

Jinki ignores her and turns to the first in line. It’s a young girl with a younger boy by her side. The girl smiles to what Jinki assumes is her younger brother.

“Hand him the book, Jonghyun,” she says and the young boy looks towards the ground, his cheeks an embarrassed red. She looks at Jinki and giggles a little. “I’m sorry. My brother read your book and he wants to get your signature. He’s very much in love with Rose.” 

Jonghyun, the young boy, frowns and whines at his sister. The girl just laughs. 

“I’m not in love with Rose,” he mumbles when he hands Jinki the book shyly. 

Jinki sends him a smile and addresses the book to Kim Jonghyun and when he hands it back, he winks.

“It’s okay if you’re in love with Asher too.”

Jonghyun blushes tomato-red and crushes his book against his chest before he hurries off, his sister following him with a laugh.

It catches his eyes when he passes. It shines like a diamond, right in his periphery, begging for his attention. When Jinki lifts it from the trash can and removes the banana peel he recognises it as his own novel. It’s stained with coffee and smells a little of vomit but Jinki still turns it in his hands. He can feel the anger rise in him, the hard work that has gone to waste, thrown away like it belongs in the garbage. He opens the front page and looks at his smeared hand writing where something has spilled onto the book. The pages are torn a little but it doesn’t look like it has been enjoyed. It just look destroyed, utterly ruined.

To Minseo it says. I hope you enjoy and you meet your one and only like Rose. Jinki wrecks his mind to find Minseo; he goes through the catalogue of young readers he has seen in the past days, links names he hardly remembers to faces that are slightly blurred by his memory. He continues until he finds the memory of a girl and a her younger brother leaning against the wall.

I love your book! his memory says. I love it so much! I love your book! So easy to relate to. I love it!

Jinki stares at the copy he has signed less than a week ago and how it has become nothing but mere trash. Love is just as strong a word as hate but Jinki hates his readers in this moment. 

Jinki doesn’t really plan on doing anything. The whiskey burns his oesophagus and heats his body as he sits in his large couch and downs the golden liquor. The only thing on his mind is his book that was left in a trash can, abandoned to rot amongst the rest of the trash of this world. Jinki never considered himself worthy of the fame but he’s not that bad. Dammit, he’s not that bad of an author.

He empties the glass and throws it against the wall where it breaks into a million crystal pieces on the floor. 

The night is insane and the weather is cold and Jinki shouldn’t be standing in front of a villa he has never seen before. He’s in a part of Seoul he has never been and he doesn’t really know how he got here. He’s drunk but he couldn’t care less as he fumbles with his pockets and turns them inside out. His hair sticks out in  a mess and he’s standing underneath the streetlights, observing the sleeping house. 

“So, I was thinking…” someone says and Jinki turns around to look at Kim Kibum, the graphic designer. He has a headache and a cold and it’s all his own fault for staying up so late, getting drunk, observing sleeping houses. He still hasn’t finished the manuscript for his publisher and he doesn’t want to deal with the fox-like designer that wants to know if he wants roses or bluebells on the cover.

“I don’t care. I don’t care about the cover and you can do whatever you want.” 

Jinki glares at the man as he passes him and lifts his tea to his lips, just to burn his tongue on the boiling water.

Jinki needs sleep. Jinki needs clarity. Jinki really needs sleep but his mind is keeping him awake, his doubts, his fear and his annoyance driving him crazy. He has been searching the book forums, just to find that a new writer, one of those he might have advised in the past, just wrote their hit novel as well, becoming wildly popular. Jinki wants that too. He wants to find results of his works as well. He turns around in his bed, the darkness creating visions he doesn’t want yet they seem so appealing, almost too appealing. Jinki is insane. Jinki is sleep deprived. 

“Who’s Lee Jinki?” a voice asks. “Oh! The young adult author. No, I didn’t read his works. I’ve heard they’re good, though. I couldn’t find much feedback on them ever since he wrote Mystery Lover so I didn’t think he published more. Haha, no, you must be crazy.” 

They laugh and Jinki breaks the pencil in his hand with strength he doesn’t know he possesses. There it is. Nobody knows him, nobody cares about him. His publisher lies to him, his readers lie to him. Everybody lies to him. Jinki is not good. He shouldn’t be where he is. Whatever it was the world saw in Mystery Lover was not enough to take him here, it was not enough to bring him what he wants the most - feedback. He leaves the broken pencil on the table as he gets up and leaves the café with a sigh. 

The flames against the sky, the smoke clouding everything else. There are people screaming and sirens howling in the night sky as the fire fighters do their best to combat the fire.

Jinki leaves the chaos and goes back home. He sits in front of his computer and he writes. The words flow as he lets the experience onto paper, as he lets his characters react the way the family had when they’d noticed their youngest son missing, his screaming drowning in the flames. Dead. They’re all dead inside. What Jinki has lost, other’s must lose too.

So he writes and he writes and when Monday comes and he hands in the manuscript to a crime novel called Burn Baby, Burn, his publisher almost cries while she scolds him for rewriting everything they had planned. Jinki stands by his manuscript, though. 

One would have thought that a YA author turned crime author wouldn’t have had a chance, but the public loves Burn Baby, Burn. They love it so much that Jinki sits up day and night and wonders what to do next. The feedback rises for a month before it all dies down again and the nights once again become insanity and loneliness and an unhealthy longing, an obsession with the only thing he can’t have.

So Jinki drinks whiskey and leaves in the night air to find people that can cure him, that can possibly satisfy his longing, but there’s nobody there. The clubs are loud and dirty and the young people are dancing with only one intention. Jinki has with a young boy that night, he isn’t even sure whether or not the other is of legal age, but he doesn’t care. Jinki doesn’t care about anything. 

“Guess who I ed last night,” a young tall man says to a girl and she shrugs and lights up her cigarette before she inhales. The boy reaches out towards the lit cigarette and takes it from the girl. “That young adult author that wrote … hum, whatever it was, really. I never read that but still. Who would’ve guessed he was gay?” 

He laughs out loud and the girl steals her cigarette back.

“You’re such a , Taemin. How many famous people have you ed by now?” she asks and Taemin starts counting on his fingers before he gives up.

Jinki listens in on their conversation, fire burning in his veins. Taemin had been a mindless that had been unsatisfying and yet he has become another notch in a bedpost, another semi-famous person to add to a collection. He’s still someone who people don’t remember, someone nobody cares enough about. He stands in the shadows of the club, waiting for the boy to emerge again. Jinki can’t recognise himself but this helps, this works.

When the boy says goodbye to the girl, Jinki follows him. He follows the young boy down the narrow streets and past the river. He speeds up when the street lights become farther apart and in a moment of insanity he wraps his hands around the boy’s neck and presses. He can feel his hands press into fabric and constrict airways. He barely feels the blows he’s given, too occupied with the feeling of slowly taking away what was taken from him. When Jinki lets go the boy falls to the ground, forgotten and alone. Jinki leaves him and goes back home.

Two weeks later he hands in the manuscript to his second crime novel Null and Void.  

Null and Void is everything Jinki wants it to become. His publisher is overjoyed, forgetting her previous misery now that he’s once again earning big money with his books and now that he’s finally writing again. It takes a month before it wears off again but Jinki is too far gone by now.

The night has overtaken him completely and he can’t write without the inspiration, without taking from the world what is taken from him every time he’s forgotten, every time he’s left alone in the dust, in the trash can like he belongs with the garbage. Jinki wants to remove everything on his way, wants to become the most successful of all. Jinki is hellbent on his path now and there is nothing that stands in his way.

“Mr. Lee, can I ask something?” Kim Kibum asks and Jinki lifts his eyebrow as he pours boiling water into his cup of tea. The water turns a golden brown, it looks a little like whiskey if it wasn’t because of the small leaves floating around and the steam rising towards the ceiling. 

“No,” he says. Kim Kibum sighs and stands against the counter, preventing Jinki from leaving. Jinki throws the tea bag into the trash can like people throw his books there and looks at the other man. 

“I really need to understand where you get your inspiration from so I can follow you in the covers I make for your books,” he says. Jinki doesn’t think it’s any of his business where he gets his inspiration. Instead he takes a step around Kibum and gently tilts his cup of tea so the water spills onto Kibum’s arm and burns him. 

“Oh my, I’m so sorry!” Jinki says when Kibum yells at the burn and as he leaves the office kitchen, Jinki smirks to himself. Nosy people get burnt. 

“Can you believe I read that?” a boy says to another boy. It’s a starry night and the moon is illuminating the playground they’re on. The other boy snorts and shakes his head.

“No, not really Jjong,” he says and leans against the other boy’s shoulder. Their hands are linked, secrets in the night.

Jinki observes them and knows they’re talking about him. He knows it because they’re mocking him, mocking his works. They’re laughing like it’s the funniest thing in the world. Jinki steps closer to them, the sand cracking under his feet but neither of the two boys notice, too caught up in their own love. Jinki waits under the slide, observes them while they continue their banter and their hidden displays of affection.

It isn’t until they kiss that he sneaks up on them. With a knife in hand, blinded by hatred and success, he slices one of their necks. The other boy soon notices something is wrong in their kiss as the dying boy coughs up blood. The hot liquid spills from the wound on his neck and when the other one looks up and gets eye contact with Jinki, Jinki sends him a smile, tilts his head, lifts the gun and shoots.

Pull the Trigger wins the literature award. 

Kim Kibum doesn’t stop bothering him and Jinki doesn’t stop his murders. How he hasn’t gotten caught yet is beyond his understanding but he enjoys the momentary fame he gets every time he publishes a new crime story.

Author of the Year, Bestselling Crime Author.

Author Lee Jinki - a journey from young love to thrilling crimes. 

They’re only temporary fixes, however. All his awards and the times his name are mentioned are only there briefly before he remembers the books in the trash can, the mocking laughter and the sneers. He remembers it all and he can’t deal, can’t accept it. Jinki is not that bad. He sees young authors rise up and die out again. He watches them bow to the pressure and Jinki rises above them all because his insanity needs nothing but motivation, needs nothing but a memory to continue on. 

He corners Kibum in the meeting room one evening after a discussion on the new website. Jinki hasn’t been a part of the discussion but that’s not important. What is important, however, is that Kibum has started to ignore him, has started to avoid Jinki. He has heard Kibum talk fondly of other authors, joke with the newcomers and he doesn’t like it. Jinki wants that. Jinki wants the recognition. Kibum looks up, eyes looking directly through Jinki. Jinki stares back at him.

“My inspiration,” he starts but Kibum interrupts him.

“I know. I know what you do, how you write.” 

Jinki doesn’t blink but just continues to stare at the other man. The mirror he sees in Kibum’s eyes are reflecting his own insanity back at him. He can see it and how it affects him, see how wild the look in his own eyes is. There, in front of Kibum, stands a man who has left his humanity behind long ago in an attempt to stay remembered, in an attempt to gain recognition. Jinki smirks and lifts an eyebrow. There, in front of Kibum, stands a man that has finally reached success. 

“I’ve saved the best for you,” he says. Kibum coughs and starts shivering. He looks up in fear and Jinki just lifts the cup of tea to his lips. When Kibum’s eyes widen, his body is already shutting down. Jinki walks closer and sinks down beside him as Kibum falls against the floor and does his best to breathe and call for help. 

“A shame the burn wasn’t enough to teach you a lesson.”

Jinki rises to his feet as Kibum’s eyes close and when he leaves the room, he lifts the cup of tea to his lips. Jinki has the world. 

Guess Who is his last book.