Chapter 26 – Best Nation
Best Nation.
A space roughly 20 pyeong in size.
Sliding bookshelves lined the walls, packed densely with comic books, while the central display racks were filled with DVDs.
A middle-aged man flipping through martial arts novels.
A high school student wandering around the comic section.
The bald owner swatting flies buzzing nearby with a fly swatter.
And layered over everything, the unique, slightly musty smell of old books—creating that familiar, comforting atmosphere.
Then—
Ding-ling!
The bell rang as the door opened, and two figures burst inside.
“Oh, you guys are here.”
“Hello, sir!”
It was Oh Seung-heon and Kang Min-hyuk.
The two of them smiled brightly as they approached the owner and asked,
“We’d like to read some today.”
Thud!
Each placed 2,000 won on the counter.
The owner grinned, then pointed with his finger toward the sofa area in the corner.
“Sit over there and read. And don’t be too loud.”
“Yessir!”
The two quickly headed to the bookshelves, pulled out stacks of comics, and carried them over to the sofa.
Oh Seung-heon flipped through pages excitedly.
Meanwhile, Kang Min-hyuk…
‘Shonen classics, shonen classics…’
With a grave expression, he stared down at the pile of comics he’d set in front of himself, tapping his forehead with a finger.
Fullmetal Alchemist, One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Hunter × Hunter.
Including New Chance’s flagship title <Aureka>, and all the major hits that came before it.
The so-called kingly works—the big shonen series that had carried entire magazines.
He quickly skimmed the early chapters of these hits, trying to identify the common patterns and codes.
The problem was…
Reading them didn’t immediately spark any new ideas.
‘I already know the formula for shonen. That’s not why I’m not using it.’
Since it’s for a shonen magazine, the protagonist has to be a male around mid-teens.
He needs some kind of clear deficiency or lack, and a powerful goal to overcome it.
Along the way, he resolves that lack, earns recognition from those around him, gathers companions, and builds fun back-and-forth tiki-taka dynamics—that’s the standard flow.
But the real issue was—
‘I’m not the only one thinking like this.’
This is 2005.
Not the era when webtoons had near-unlimited slots (even back then it wasn’t like anyone could just start serializing…).
Just one spot has opened up—exactly one vacancy after <Aureka> ends.
And now the artists are fighting tooth and nail for that single seat.
Put simply…
‘The Korea Animation High School competition was child’s play compared to this.’
Sure, some of those kids were impressive, but that was competition among third-year middle schoolers.
This, even in 2005, was a real battle against professional, established artists.
And on top of that, the weight of this particular vacancy was exceptionally heavy.
They’re looking for a work to replace <Aureka>—the flagship title that had single-handedly kept New Chance alive.
When word gets out to other artists that there’s an opening this big?
Mad cultivation grandmasters.
Genius late-bloomers raised on spiritual elixirs since childhood.
Secluded-training celestial martial artists.
All kinds of insane, top-tier talents were bound to come crawling out.
And in the middle of that, he shows up with the same old shonen formula and tries to brute-force his way in?
While carrying the huge liability of being a third-year middle schooler with zero serialization experience in the eyes of the company?
‘That’s a low-probability gamble.’
And that wasn’t even the only problem.
‘The bigger issue is that I’ve never actually serialized a long-running series in this genre before.’
His debut work and long-running serialization, <With All My Heart>.
It was an action adventure, so there was some overlap, but back then the protagonist was a late-20s male special agent.
If he tried to recreate that same feeling now, it would stray too far from the sensibility of a shonen magazine.
Anyway, the situation was difficult in every direction.
‘A comic that has my own unique flavor and hook, yet still hits the commercial sweet spot that overlaps with proven codes.’
When he laid out all the given conditions and circumstances, it honestly felt easier for a camel to dance through the eye of a needle.
His head was burning.
‘The pressure… is no joke.’
Until now, whenever he’d faced situations like this, pure excitement and anticipation had surged up.
But this time, it felt like real, tangible pressure.
For the first time, the weight of what was at stake was pressing down on him hard.
This failure wouldn’t just mean a slight delay in pro debut…
‘If I can’t secure the serialization, Hong Mi-seon’s body will literally be ground to dust.’
Having watched Hong Mi-seon’s bull-headed stubbornness her entire life, he knew it all too well.
The only way to stop her was to somehow secure that serialization spot—no matter what.
‘Ugh… I thought maybe reading books would spark something.’
That’s why he had come to the comic café as a breakthrough—hoping that immersing himself in classic shonen works would help.
But as expected… it wasn’t nearly enough.
In comics and web novels, characters always seem to get sudden lightning-bolt ideas after reading a few books…
‘Yeah, that’s the unrealistic part.’
He wasn’t some comic or web novel protagonist. There was no way reading a few volumes would magically solve all his problems.
After returning to the past, everything had gone so smoothly that he must have gotten cocky—his liver must have swollen up or something.
“Huuuuh… It’s not easy. Really not easy.”
While he was pressing hard on his temples, lost in thought—
“Hey, hey, you two—take these.”
“Hm?”
At the voice coming from in front, Min-hyuk looked up.
The owner was grinning as he held out two hot bars toward them.
“Uh…”
For a second, Min-hyuk blinked in confusion—what’s this?—before the owner shook them lightly and said,
“Min-hyuk, I heard you won the grand prize in that comic competition? This is just the uncle congratulating you.”
Ah… Of course it’s that guy’s doing again.
Min-hyuk narrowed his eyes and glared, only for Seung-heon to flash a satisfied grin.
“Thank you.”
What else could he do? When someone gives you a gift, you might as well enjoy it.
But right as Min-hyuk was chewing and swallowing the hot bar—
The owner glanced at the stack of comics on the table, stroked his chin, and asked,
“Are you guys studying these or something?”
“Huh? How did you know?”
“How else? These comics… you’ve read them tons of times already. When you’re only looking at the first volumes like this, anyone can tell something’s up.”
At that moment, Oh Seung-heon piped up again.
“This guy’s submitting a work to New Chance. Things aren’t going well, so we came here to read some comics and get ideas.”
“Oh, really?”
“Seung-heon, please just shut up for once. Shut up.”
“Why? It’s good if the uncle knows too. Who knows—he might even give you an idea.”
“……”
Come on, as if it’s that easy.
A flood of retorts rose in his throat, but Min-hyuk swallowed them down.
The owner stroked his chin again and asked,
“New Chance, huh… So you’re trying to draw something like <Aureka>?”
“Yeah, roughly. <Aureka> is ending soon, so they’re looking for something to fill that spot.”
“Hoooooo—<Aureka> is ending? Damn, that place must be on fire right now. Haha!”
The owner burst into hearty laughter as if he found it thrilling, then noticed Seung-heon and Min-hyuk staring blankly at him and finally stopped.
“Ahem, anyway… Yeah, that’s definitely not going to be easy. There won’t just be one or two people gunning for it. To stand out, you’re going to need something extraordinary. So you came here to get inspiration by looking at other works… right?”
Well… he had thought about it a few times even as a kid.
The owner of Best Nation was, how should he put it…
‘Suspiciously well-informed about the comic industry.’
He definitely remembered experiences like this in his previous life.
–You want to be a comic artist? Give it up, kid. Convincing your parents isn’t easy. And these days the comic book market is collapsing left and right—publishers are going bankrupt one after another.
–How do you know all that, sir?
–How else? When you run a comic café, you hear a lot of inside stories whether you want to or not.
Well, it’s natural for a comic café owner to be interested in comics, but…
There was an oddly detailed edge to the way he spoke.
Anyway, that wasn’t the important part right now.
Min-hyuk nodded and said,
“Yeah, that’s right. The hard part is finding the intersection between something broadly appealing and something that stands out enough to beat the other artists…”
“Hmm… I see. So that’s how it is.”
“Please don’t worry too much about it. If I just keep thinking, the answer will probably—”
“Wait a second.”
“Hm?”
Tap tap tap!
The owner almost half-jogged across the café toward the far corner.
He stood on tiptoe to pull a single volume from a high shelf, then walked back over, glancing around cautiously.
Finally, he carefully held out the book he had been cradling to his chest and said,
“Don’t tell anyone I showed you this… but give it a read.”
“Ooh!”
“…….”
Seung-heon’s eyes widened into perfect circles, while Min-hyuk’s narrowed into slits.
The reason was the bold red text stamped clearly in the upper right corner of the book.
[Not permitted for viewers under 19]
“…Are we really allowed to read this, sir?”
“It’s for the sake of your work, for your work. Right, Min-hyuk?”
In a society where a comic café owner was handing 19+ material to minors…
Korea in 2005 was truly something else.
A time when romance was still alive and well.
Anyway.
‘GETZ, huh…’
Min-hyuk knew this 19+ comic very well.
In fact, he quite liked it.
GETZ.
A pathetic high school protagonist gets dragged into a mysterious black room containing an unidentified orb. To survive, he fights aliens, earns points, and buys weapons with them.
Violence, sex, game elements, and battle royale all rolled into one—an absolute dopamine explosion of a comic.
It never received high praise for its themes or artistic merit.
‘But damn, the sheer entertainment value was insane.’
He almost felt regretful that he had only discovered it after becoming an adult.
“Read it quick. Come on.”
Urged by the owner, Min-hyuk rapidly flipped through the early chapters of GETZ.
‘Why is he pushing me so hard…?’
Page by page.
He turned them quickly.
In the beginning of chapter 1, the protagonist—bored with his mundane life—tries to save a high school girl about to get hit by a bus, only to die himself… and gets sucked into the black room called ‘GETZ.’
Then, in his first encounter with an alien…
A cocky human gets his head blown apart and dies.
“So? The premise is pretty fresh, right? I’m not telling you to copy it outright… but that code, or rather, that vibe—if you blend it into a shonen comic, it could work really well.”
‘This uncle has some serious foresight.’
Min-hyuk stroked his chin and nodded slowly.
Sure enough, comics that carried this kind of code later became massive hits.
‘Tower climbing stories, constellation stories, hunter stories… that’s exactly this vibe.’
Especially in the case of web novel adaptations turned into Manhwa.
The way they tightly ramp up tension with the death of an early side character, then layer on game-like elements so the reader feels the fun immediately.
Min-hyuk licked his lips.
‘Right now… this kind of format isn’t that common yet, is it?’
At that moment, the owner—who had been watching—curled the corner of his mouth upward and said,
“How is it? That early part. Pretty fresh and good, right? I’m not saying do it exactly the same, but that atmosphere, that feeling—if you can infuse it into a shonen comic, I think it’ll turn out really nice.”
“Ah…”
Honestly, he felt like he’d been stabbed right in the gut.
In 2024, this method and material were so overused that he hadn’t even considered it.
Of course, he had no intention of copying the trending stuff of his previous era outright…
‘But still, this is a huge hint.’
Crunch! Gulp!
Min-hyuk finished swallowing the last bite of the hot bar, then stood up from his seat.
“Sir, I’m heading out now. I think I need to get to work.”
“Huh? Suddenly?”
Meanwhile, Seung-heon—who had been staring blankly at the comic (specifically, it seemed, at a particularly spicy page)—blinked in confusion.
“The hint you gave me, sir… it really helped a lot.”
“Really? Then if it goes well, don’t forget about the uncle later, okay?”
The owner grinned as he spoke.
“Of course. I won’t.”
“Hey, wait! Waaaait!”
With a thumbs-up, Min-hyuk strode straight out of the comic café.
Once the two of them were gone…
“Huuuh… those were the days.”
Chasing the dream of becoming a comic artist…
As he watched them leave, a thick mix of smile and bitterness settled across the owner’s face.