May tomorrow be more than just another name for today

Children of the Days, Eduardo Galeano

“Boss?” Sungkwan sticks his head through the open door. “Woohyun-ssi is here to see you.”

His feet start to tingle. Exhaling slowly, Sunggyu waves his secretary away. “I’ve got a meeting. Send him to Irae.”

“I’ve told him, for the last 20 minutes, he won’t listen,” Seungkwan whines, looking haggard. His secretary is an efficient and smart man, so of course he had tried to get rid of Woohyun. But you don’t simply get rid of Nam Woohyun. Everyone knows that well.  

He frowns. “Throw him out.”

“I can’t, he said he’s coming in whether I let him or not.”

Groaning, he pushes his fingertips into his temple. Nam Woohyun is the most self-centred, privileged man he has ever met. It doesn’t give him great pleasure to think about him like this, but it is plain truth. That man has no boundaries, and more importantly, that man is his problem.

Before he can say or do anything else, the man himself materializes, shoving Seungkwan out of his way, with a big smile on his face. He is wearing a black turtleneck T-shirt and black jeans with a long brown overcoat on top. His hair is freshly blow-dried and even though he is not wearing the subtle foundation and powder he sometimes has on, his chiselled face looks like he could be a movie star, without the glamour.

“I have a meeting,” Sunggyu tries to shut him down but the man looks completely unbothered. Almost floating through the office, he makes himself comfortable on the velvet two-seater on the other side of the room, patting the seat beside him.

“No, honestly, Woohyun, I can’t do this right now. I have a meeting, it’s important.”

“I’m so bored,” the author says dramatically, leaning back against the sofa, putting his legs up onto the small coffee table in front of him. Sunggyu feels the pulses on either side of his forehead throb like crazy. At least his boots aren’t dirty.

If this was any other writer, Sunggyu would have gotten severe, and maybe even scolded them, depending on how junior they are. But Nam Woohyun never responds to that kind of energy. Having worked with him for the last 10 years, he knows how the man functions. “How are you bored when you have so much writing to do? You do realise you only have 3 weeks to turn in your manuscript?”

“I sent Irae noona the first 3 chapters,” he replies cheerfully.

“Yes, I know. She said at best only one chapter’s worth is salvageable.” Honestly, Irae had said that none of it would make the cut but he can’t say that out loud. Woohyun doesn’t respond to any type of criticism and telling him that what he’s written so far belongs in the bins would only cause him to lose all motivation to write.

“I worked hard on those,” the author says glumly, puffing out his cheeks.

Irae is one of their oldest and best editors – if she can’t save something, it means it’s too far gone.

He breathes in and out, trying to control his temper.

Nam Woohyun’s debut novel was a flop that lost Sunggyu almost all his savings. He had to put up his house to get a loan to publish his next novel, which sold a million copies, earning him the title of the youngest author to do that in South Korea. Since then, everything he has written has sold like hot cakes, bringing him fame, fortune, and an insufferable amount of entitlement.

It has benefitted him too, of course. Sunggyu was able to grow his one-room publishing company to 3 office floors of a very expensive property in Seoul. They currently have 11 authors signed to them, some of them the best in their respective genres. As his publisher, Sunggyu is grateful for Woohyun’s success. But as someone who has to deal with him on a regular basis, he would have liked for him to retain some of his humility.

Watching the clock impatiently, Sunggyu says, “Woohyun, Irae is getting more and more frustrated by your lack of…interest.”

She has been dealing with Woohyun for almost as long as he has, watching his head grow bigger and bigger, reaching the end of her tether. As the days went by, she lost more and more control over the author and right now, the only person he remotely listens to is Sunggyu.

The man is a genius, but when he is in a slump, there is no end to how low he can sink before he makes a miracle return with a bestseller. They’ve been through this before, but his slump has never carried on for this long. That, paired with the fact that Woohyun doesn’t even seem to want to get out of this deep ditch, has them all worried.

Woohyun sneers. “I have a process, Irae noona is always trying to get me to do things at a moment’s notice.”

That is absolutely not true but he presses his lips together to stop him from saying that. They have been trying to get him to write the sequel to his last bestseller for 13 months now, without any luck. The patience of everyone involved is wearing thin. Sunggyu never imagined he would have to be so involved with a seasoned novelist but it just isn’t fair on Irae to have to deal with him on her own.

Besides, more often than not, he has to intervene, when it comes to Nam Woohyun.

“She’s worked with you for such a long time. Don’t you think you should do this for her?”

Woohyun is the kind of person who should have been on screen, a larger-than-life character with overflowing charisma and the right amount of superstar arrogance. Too bad he is a damn fine writer too - when he is in the mood.

Instead of answering, he pats the seat next to him again, this time the action more demanding.

Breathing out gently through his mouth, he gets out of his seat and plops down next to the author, swatting his legs off the coffee table.

“It’s been bothering you, right?” Woohyun chuckles mischievously, then lies down on the sofa, resting his head in Sunggyu’s lap.

The overfamiliarity just makes him shudder. It doesn’t matter that he’s known him for years and years now; he’s been acting like this since he’d known him for 5 minutes.

“If you knew that, why did you-” he swallows the last few words, knowing it was no use picking a fight.

“I have no inspiration. I’m dry,” the younger complains, looking up at his face, blinking petulantly.

“That’s not what everyone else says,” he mutters under his breath, looking away.

“What do you mean?” Woohyun’s voice is sharp.

Writers are free spirits, sure. But Woohyun’s inspiration does seem to reside at the bottom of a bottle. Many authors he has known has had drinking problems but there is just something about Woohyun’s drinking habit that he can’t get comfortable with.

Fixing the man with a stern gaze, he says, “You made a scene again, at the bar.”

“Argh.” His face contorts. “I didn’t ask to be followed around by the stupid paparazzi.”

So he says, but the truth is, Woohyun craves attention. His books are a work of art, but his fan following is not limited to the text. Visually appealing with a dashing smile and the right kind of boyfriend manner at book signings have given him a kind of knockoff celebrity status. Thus, second-rate paparazzi have a field day with his artistic freedom, but he’s not shy either.

“All I need,” he says, trying to fix Sunggyu’s bangs, “is a muse.”

Repressing the groan, he says through gritted teeth, “You can have any muse you want, take your pick. You were never shy in the past.”

The curse of having paparazzi follow him around is that anyone he takes home gets photographed. The number of different people he has been photographed with has become somewhat of an issue. Not to the author, though; he never minded the tabloid stories or the netizen blogs gasping and gawking at the pictures. Sunggyu has never seen him in a serious relationship – there is no way he would settle down. Maybe he is a bird that can’t be caged, he thinks, a painful lump forming in his throat.

“No,” he whines, his fingers now playing with Sunggyu’s shirt collar as his glance drops from his face to his neck. “I need a proper muse.”

Sunggyu has to bat his hands away. “What are you doing here then? Why aren’t you at a nightclub or bar?” he asks, trying his best to hide the annoyance in his voice. “For God’s sake Woohyun, go get yourself a muse, do whatever you have to do, and then ing finish the novel!”

The author doesn’t make his lifestyle a secret, but Sunggyu never found it