Chapter 98 – Second Semester, Beginning
The early morning filled with birdsong.
“Huuu. Finally, school starts again.”
Kang Min-hyuk, carrying a carrier in one hand.
He walked toward the front gate of Korea Animation High.
At last, the long, long vacation had ended…… and he was returning to school after nearly 40 days.
‘I thought I was going to die of boredom.’
During the first semester, he had been constantly chased by manuscripts and assignments, so he had desperately wanted even a little rest.
But once freedom was actually placed in his hands, it didn’t feel all that great.
After Comic Land, all Min-hyuk had done was work on Brave King manuscripts and……
- Urachacha!
- Hey, take it easy.
Play Gun Amplified with Oh Seung-heon.
- Isn’t this worth watching?
- Hm, it’s fun. The art’s good too, and the directing’s solid.
- Right?
Sit in the Best Nation and read comic books.
- Huuuu, when will this end.
- Shut up.
Or just spend time working separately.
At least having gone to Comic Land was a huge blessing.
If even that hadn’t happened, this vacation would have……
‘Thanks, Kim Rok-hee.’
After dropping his carrier off at the dorm, Min-hyuk headed straight to the classroom.
Then.
“Oh, Kang Min-hyuk’s here! Long time no see!”
“Hi.”
The kids had already filled about half the classroom, gathering in small groups and chattering away.
“I went to the beach this time!”
“Ooh, your skin got super tanned? Which beach?”
“Sokcho!”
Everyone seemed completely absorbed in recounting their vacation episodes.
When Min-hyuk went straight to his seat and sat down.
“Hehe, ohayo Min-hyuk-kun. It’s been three weeks.”
Dong-gyo greeted him while pushing up his glasses.
But somehow……
“Dong-gyo, why does your face look like that?”
For someone coming back from vacation, Oh Dong-gyo’s appearance was utterly wretched.
His cheeks were hollowed in, and he looked like he had lost even more weight.
Dong-gyo lifted the corners of his mouth slightly and said.
“Hehe…… I was catching up on all the backlog. I pulled several all-nighters.”
“All-nighters? During vacation? On purpose?”
“I had to digest all the works that piled up because of Comic Land participation……”
“You watched all of them?”
“That’s my [duty]. I burned white-hot. Truly. White-hot……”
Dong-gyo spoke in an exaggerated tone, then slumped forward in a perfect “tomorrow’s me” pose.
Truly…… otaku-like—no, very Dong-gyo.
A complicated emotion crossed Min-hyuk’s face.
‘What was so urgent that you went this far…….’
Of course, having a lot of input was an extremely important quality for a creator and definitely something praiseworthy.
But still, there had to be limits, right? Yet here they were.
And then.
“I went to Japan~”
“Gah, you scared me!”
Suddenly Kim Rok-hee appeared from the side, startling both of them.
And for good reason—her entire body was……
Covered in all kinds of character goods dangling everywhere.
“Hehehe, how is it? Fresh goods straight from the source.”
“Um…… pretty.”
Very otaku-like and nice, yeah.
Min-hyuk gave an awkward smile and nodded.
“Here, thank-you gifts for helping at Comic Land!”
“Ooh……?”
Kim Rok-hee handed one to Min-hyuk and one to Dong-gyo.
To Oh Dong-gyo, she gave a figure of the protagonist from the beautiful girl anime “Rakid Star” that he always had on his lips.
To Kang Min-hyuk, she gave an illustration anthology (a magazine drawn by multiple artists) with the Japanese title boldly printed on the cover.
“Oooooh, this is Kotoha-chan!”
“I’ll enjoy it, Rok-hee. Thanks.”
“Hahaha! You’re very welcome, very welcome!”
Rok-hee bounced over to the side again.
“Yu-ra, you take this too. For Yu-ra, a special super-cute Cinnamon award doll! How is it, cute right?”
This time she handed over a palm-sized doll of a famous character.
“……Not really?”
“That’s so mean! It’s still a gift!”
“Well, thanks.”
Han Yu-ra replied in a completely flat voice with zero emotion and took the doll.
Then Rok-hee naturally perched on the edge of Yu-ra’s desk and continued.
“Anyway, Yu-ra…… when does your magazine serialization start?”
“This week’s Tuesday, it’ll come out.”
“Oooooh! You’re finally a pro artist now! I’m tearing up…… It feels like just yesterday our Yu-ra was a little kid, and now she’s already a full-fledged pro artist.”
Rok-hee pretended to cry while patting Han Yu-ra’s shoulder, but Yu-ra just shook her head slowly.
Min-hyuk let out a small laugh as he thought.
‘Debut is coming up soon.’
Melton: Chronicles of the Demon World.
The story of a protagonist who was once a hero but was reborn as the child of a high-ranking demon.
A mix of childcare healing elements and fantasy.
It seemed the work was finally launching.
Somehow, hearing that even Han Yu-ra was debuting made him feel……
‘A little relieved. Knowing someone else is debuting too, not just me.’
A strange sense of camaraderie welled up in Min-hyuk.
While they were still buzzing with the lingering excitement of summer vacation and making a racket.
Slide.
“Hey kids…… hellooo.”
The door opened, and their homeroom teacher Choi Jung-an staggered in.
Her face was filled with quite—no, a tremendous amount of despair.
“Ah, hello teacher.”
“Your expression…… why is it like that?”
“Vacation…… is over…… ha, ha…… hahaha. With preparing my own work and all these things piling up, my mind…… no, this isn’t the time for me to be saying this.”
Half-asleep, half-awake, rambling incoherently.
It seemed she was experiencing severe post-vacation syndrome.
“Anyway, please take good care of me in the second semester too. Let’s…… listen hard in class, kids.”
“Yessssss!”
After finishing morning attendance like that, classes began again.
They alternated between practical sessions and general subjects.
“Kuuuugh, school curry after so long. It’s got its own unique taste, you know.”
“Yeah, it actually tastes pretty good with kimchi.”
“Right? See?”
They ate lunch, then had more classes.
After spending the day in a daze and eating dinner.
“Drawing time, huh…….”
“This somehow doesn’t feel welcoming even after so long.”
As always, the kids sat in the lounge with depressed expressions, slumping like they had clinical depression.
If they didn’t know what was coming, maybe it would be different.
“I’m scared of the flood of assignments ahead.”
“Damn it…… why is character design already an assignment on the first dayyyyy.”
Everyone was grumbling because they all knew a second semester as brutal as the first was waiting for them.
Of course.
‘I’ll focus on manuscripts here and pump out volume.’
“Huuu…… maybe I should start designing goods for the next Comic Land in advance?’
‘I’m going to turn all the inspiration I got from watching during vacation into works! I’m going to create a character as addictively charming as Kotoha-chan!’
Well, not everyone seemed to hate drawing time, at least.
Ding-dong-daeng-dong!
With the bell signaling the start.
“Ughhh, let’s gooo.”
“Damn itttt.”
The kids drooped their shoulders and shuffled into the drawing room like zombies.
Min-hyuk also sat at his corner seat, took out the necessary materials from his bag, and neatly arranged them on the desk.
But once the setup was complete.
The corners of Min-hyuk’s mouth curved up slightly.
‘Feels good.’
This air, this atmosphere, this smell.
Working at home wasn’t bad, but this environment definitely made concentration snap into place.
Rustle!
Min-hyuk immediately opened his sketchbook and wrote a single sentence on the blank page.
What Min-hyuk was going to work on this time……
‘First, let’s outline the mid-to-late synopsis and get started.’
Was none other than building the framework for the middle and latter half progression of Brave King.
The current released volume of Brave King was around the middle of volume 4.
And the ending point Min-hyuk had in mind for Brave King……
‘Volume 7.’
That number had been set from the very moment he planned the work.
Given the nature of a death game story, characters would keep dropping out here and there, reducing momentum and making it hard to sustain the story indefinitely.
And honestly, he had chosen this material partly ‘because of that’ as well.
Because.
‘The era of webtoons is coming soon.’
Of course, Brave King was already a sufficiently successful comic.
It had shown that there was still hope in the declining Korean print comic market, and the two-way rivalry with Yang Jae-han had created significant buzz.
But that was limited to the niche audience who still loved print comics.
In this market, Min-hyuk’s comic didn’t reach the general public.
Unless someone actively bought and read comics with money, most people didn’t even know Brave King existed.
Average sales per volume of Brave King: 50,000 copies.
It could be called an enormous number……
‘But compared to the traffic webtoons can generate, it’s a very small number.’
In the future Korea of webtoons, a single chapter could easily hit hundreds of thousands of views, and hit works would surpass a million.
In other words, in the future, Korean comics—webtoons—would transcend being mere ‘subculture’ and firmly establish themselves as one of the mainstream cultural mediums.
Of course, Min-hyuk also loved and cherished print comics.
It was print comics that had first sparked his dream of becoming a comic artist.
But……
He had no intention of dying together with print comics.
The title of greatest comic artist couldn’t bloom inside a coffin.
In the end, the conclusion was simple.
‘I’ll ride the wave before it’s too late.’
For that very reason, Brave King could not be allowed to drag on too long.
It was beautiful to leave the stage while the applause was still ringing.
While the passion and longing contained in the pen name ‘David’ still burned brightly, he would board the sailboat called webtoons and row with all his might.
So that the boat, carrying everyone’s hopes, would grow bigger and bigger until it could sail out into the open sea.
And for that to happen.
‘I have to perfectly conclude Brave King.’
So that readers would yearn for the name ‘David.’
So that they would think, ‘If it’s the platform and medium this person chooses, there must be a reason.’
That was why he was now racking his brain to build the story all the way to the end.
Fortunately, while preparing the Comic Land booth, he had already secured excellent fuel to carry him to the conclusion.
Min-hyuk smiled faintly and wrote another word.
‘Coup-ler’s narrative.’
The host character of Brave King, the Dalmatian beastman Coup-ler.
In death-game stories, he was the clichéd archetype—usually shallow in characterization and occasionally used only for a twist.
But Min-hyuk had decided to give this character a proper narrative.
A structure where the worldview of the work penetrated through, and the narrative of Coup-ler and the children participating in the in-story death game converged at the end to wrap everything up.
The idea he had while drawing the doujinshi for Comic Land had continued to develop and brought him this far.
Now, if he gathered all these materials, sharpened and polished them, and wove them into one……
The railroad tracks that would let this work run all the way to the end would be complete.
‘Alright. Let’s do this.’
Scribble scribble.
Min-hyuk wrote down the flow of the upcoming story.
In which episode, which character would move with what desire and purpose.
Who would die.
How the directing would be handled.
He kept laying out everything that came to mind, making it more and more concrete.
‘The final scene will be Seol Rok-hee, who survived the death game, losing her memories. And then she discovers the record of one person in the messenger she logged into.’
Thump! Thump!
His heart raced.
It was exhilarating.
He could vividly picture in his mind how magnificent it would be when this came to life as a manuscript from the tips of his fingers.
How long had he been concentrating like that?
“Min-hyuk-kun.”
“…….”
“Min-hyuuuk-kuuun!”
“Huh? Yeah?”
Someone roughly shook his shoulder, and Min-hyuk startled, turning his head to the side.
It was Oh Dong-gyo.
“It’s break time—aren’t you going to rest? I’ll buy you something, how about heading to the lounge?”
“Ah, yeah. Let’s go.”
Had he been too focused to hear?
Naturally covering his sketchbook with his hand, Min-hyuk stood up.
A short while later, inside the lounge.
“Huuu, working after such a long time really isn’t easy. Right, Min-hyuk-kun?”
“Ah, well…… my hand does feel a bit stiff still.”
While the kids chatted away, Min-hyuk and Dong-gyo stood holding canned drinks, idly talking.
‘Gotta rest a bit at times like this.’
Maybe because he had been using his brain nonstop.
His head throbbed and felt hot.
Well, this kind of sensation now felt like a badge of honor to Min-hyuk.
‘Still, at this rate…… I should be able to get at least a rough first draft done today.’
While he was taking a short break to cool his head.
“Traitor.”
“Hm?”
A voice came from behind.
When he turned his head……
“You’re a traitor, Kang Min-hyuk.”
For some reason, Han Yu-ra was standing there staring straight at him with what looked like an angry face.