Sheet 8

Interlude

          The writing is a bit messy. But it’s forward, not like any fairytale writing she has ever encountered. Soo Jung wonders if her re-writing the story would affect any one of its characters entirely. Still it’s rude of her to question the other person’s writing. She should apologize.

He needs a table to flip, or an entire bookshelf. How can she say that about his writing? It’s perfect and the prince was able to get by with that. “Do you have a problem with my writing?”

          “No... I didn’t really mean to put it that way... It’s just that...”

          “What?” He accepts constructive criticism don’t get him wrong, he’s open to any suggestions to improve his book writing skills. He hasn’t a lot of practice though (with the criticism not the writing), he’ll just have to get used to it if he wanted help.

          “This... What you wrote, it doesn’t sound like a fairytale...” The look on the guy’s face (his name was Sung Gyu, right?) is still somehow pissed. “But it gets the characters moving so ummm... I’ll take it from there?”

          “Sorry if I’m not an expert...” He’s still getting used to it.

          “That’s not...” She sighs; she really hates getting into arguments.

          He doesn’t like letting go of an argument. An insult is an insult no matter how nice she has worded it. And regardless of how much remorse (she’s remorseful, right?) she has.

          “The prince hasn’t made any good progress in finding the princess; he doesn’t even have an idea who took her, even with all these running around book jumping and things...”

          “Ya!” Is she not done with the insults yet?

          “What I mean, how do you want this to end?”

          “Like everybody else, with a ‘happily ever after’?” He pauses. “Hey, what do you mean by not making progress? You really have something against my writing?”

          Lee Soo Jung seems to be making it worst; criticizing his work when he’s obviously been doing everything alone. She believes that his intention is to help the prince solve the mystery of the princess’ disappearance and bring her back. She wanted the same, she thinks. Shouldn’t every fairytale end with its own Happily Ever After?

          “Do you want to start over, re-write everything? You can do it your way... Prince Woo Hyun would probably be confused but whatever, who cares about him... What’s your idea?”

          She releases a tired sigh; this conversation is definitely not going nicely. “That’s not really what I meant. I’m sorry if I have somehow offended you. The book jumping was a nice idea... We could make use of it in the future.”

          “Of course it is...”

          “Why is he doing that though? Jumping into random books without a particular destination, alone? Unless of course he’s being chased by someone, is that it?”

          Kim Sung Gyu thinks this over; well it looks cool on paper. He doesn’t really have a particular reason. How does he even explain that? “Well...”

          “Those people who kidnapped the princess would also be after him. That would make sense; the princess might not be their real target. It could be the prince and they’re just using the princess as bait?”

          He hasn’t actually thought about it but whatever she said made sense so he just nods his head. This is definitely progress.

          “Do we even know who actually took Princess Mi Joo? Because if we can figure that out then the rescuing would be easier...” She stops for a while looking at a blank page in the book. “Wait, wouldn’t that be cheating? I’m aware that the authors are the only one who knows who the perpetrators are but here it feels odd knowing all that and subjecting your characters into that kind of suffering when you’re somehow acquainted to them...”

          “You’re thinking about it too much and besides we don’t make the villain. The book provides the conflict. The kidnapping happened as part of the story. The first parts have already been written, not by me. There’s a prompt and a prologue... I just followed through...”

The girl has a puzzled look on her face. Things like these cannot be explained, it’s better to experience it.

“You’ll see once we resume writing the story.”

          “So someone else is writing the story too? Like another person in charge of conflict?

          “Yeah, something like that. Have you thought about what to write yet?”

          She has a thoughtful look on her face. Maybe she already has an idea. He wants this to be over with. He likes Prince Woo Hyun’s company; it just gets a bit tiring. With all those formalities and he’s not particularly fond of the stress that comes along with doing these task. He promised himself that he won’t get involved in these things anymore, but what can he do he can’t let a book be unfinished. He needs to find another adventure story next time; one with less romance or maybe he should just stick to wandering inside children’s books. He recalls hasn’t visited Neverland in a while.

~0~

          Six year old Kim Sung Gyu is bored. There seems to be a lack of kids in this town. He’s not friends with anyone from school. That annoying boy from the bookshop does not count. He makes friends with girls and girls are disgusting creatures.

          You see, his whole family just moved in at his grandmother’s house a few weeks ago, he’s the odd one out. Everybody’s already been friends when he arrived. He hates being alone, more in this big house.

An idea popped up in little Sung Gyu’s head. Since they’ll be staying here for a long time (it could be forever, who knows...), he’d do some exploring. The house is unbelievably huge (to a six year old) it would probably take him years to finish his exploring so he better start now while he’s still young before he becomes a boring adult.

          He decided to start at the attic. He heard there’s a lot of interesting things his grandmother has hid in there. He might be able to find a dragon or two. Or maybe dinosaurs would be hiding in the attic.

          To his disappointment, the attic is pristine. There isn’t a speck of dust anywhere. Kim Sung Gyu finds it weird, the attic that he has seen in movies are all full of dirt, covered in spider webs. Now he believes his grandmother is eccentric.

          The entire attic wall is covered with books; mostly old, really ancient looking ones. A few of them doesn’t have labels. There’s a display case of odd looking things on the far left, upon closer inspection Sung Gyu can tell they are music boxes.  There’s his Mother’s favourite ballerina. Curious if they actually work, he chose one that looks similar to the bookshelves in the attic. He pulled a stool towards the display case, tip-toeing to get that one particular music box.

          Music box in hand, Sung Gyu sat on a stool staring at the bookshelf doors. Now that he has seen it up close. It actually looks like that one shelf they have in their old house that his grandmother won’t have anyone touch. He fiddled with the music box knob, at first he thought it was broken, opening the miniature doors, an eerie yet familiar tune started playing. He remembers her mother playing the same tune on the violin during her free time. He used to sit in front of the music room, ears on the door quietly listening while his mother play.

          A few minutes later, he got bored of just staring at the music box. He returned the stool to its original place. There’s a lone book on a pedestal that looks non-descript, he wonders what’s so important about the book that it has to be separated from the rest.

Young Kim Sung Gyu was notorious for being perpetually curious and not listening to instructions. There’s definitely a big off limits sign that’s written on the foot rag right next to the stand where the nondescript book is, Sung Gyu ignores it. He wants to read what’s inside that book.

He grabs the edge of the book making it fall off its pedestal. At a glance the book appears to be empty, all of a sudden words began to materialize into the pages. Little Sung Gyu is not yet good with his alphabet to be able to understand what’s being written in the book, but he’s seriously fascinated. Finally he found magic. He was just looking as words appear on the pages when a rabbit popped out of a page. Delighted, he grabbed the bunny and the next thing he knew he’s an uphill. The rabbit escaped from his grasp hopped away towards a huge tree. He could clearly see a girl looking at the ground where the rabbit has jumped into.

“Alice?” he whispers into the wind.

He was woken up from what seems like a dream by his mother, a look of panic written on her face. His grandmother is also there, looking oddly pleased. He is aware that he’s done something terrible, but why is his grandmother smiling like that?

“Well done, my little Gyu... I knew you’d take after me...”

~0~

          Lee Soo Jung is still sifting through the book. She’s taken a separate notepad to jot down notes in. She’s pretty useful, Sung Gyu thinks, useful for someone who can’t appreciate his unique writing. He has survived and finished several stories using his own imagination so it’s weird when someone just outright tells him that he writes differently. Who wants ordinary anyway? There are a lot of those out there. And besides his is a special case. It’s not like he’s selling this novel to anyone.

          He wonders when they’ll be able to finish this story. It usually takes him a few months to do so. Maybe it would be faster this time since there’s the two of them. Its summer vacation so there would be a lot of time to meet like this. But wait, she’s not from here, right?

          “How long are you staying?”

          “Huh?”

          “How long are you staying with your Aunt...”

          “Hmmm, until summer vacation ends... Roughly about two weeks, well ten days if you deduct the past few days I’ve been here...”

          “Ten days?!”

          “Ah yeah, why?”

          “This won’t do, we better start writing... We don’t have enough time. What are you writing? What do you have now? Ah, whatever... that’ll do...”

Two weeks is not long enough, no ten days is really such a short time to do this. He has gotten kind of attached to the prince and all those extravagant princely things but the entire kingdom has suffered enough. He did promise to give them a happy ending.

          “Wait, wait... I need to ask you something. Do you remember the two guys that were with the prince’s welcoming party? Were you the one who wrote about them?”

          “Who? Oh Seong Yeol and Ho Won? No, they already exist in the book when I came in to it. They’re part of Prince Woo Hyun’s royal entourage or something. Why?”

          “I find them suspicious. They didn’t like that I was there when they found out I wasn’t a local...”

          “I kind of feel them though... You’re a total stranger. The princess was kidnapped. It’s hard to trust outsiders. They’re suspicious of me still regardless if I’ve made it clear that I was there to help.”

          “Well, that would make sense.” Lee Soo Jung closes her notepad and put her pen away. “I think I have enough here to be able to continue on what you’ve left off...”

          “Really? Let’s go then...”

          “N-n-now?”

          Kim Sung Gyu smiled at her. “Of course we’re going now...”