I was worried that Blue Dragon might have a sudden craving for more because he ate all of his food for the day and kept begging for more, but fortunately, it was only temporary. By the afternoon, I was relieved that he was back as usual. He could have days where he is hungrier than usual because he’s a growing boy. I used to be like that when I was younger too.
Tonight, I have a meeting with my ‘Bookmark’ friends. When I was in college, it was a club meeting where we discussed reading and reviewed what we wrote. Some close friends from there are meeting once every three or four months even after graduation, and they contacted me saying they couldn’t go because of a cold before, but they seemed to be able to go because their condition improved.
I sat down to write a little before the meeting. The laptop I worried was broken from Blue Dragon spilling coffee on it was fine, maybe it felt refreshed by the coffee shower that it felt like I wrote better. I think the overall structure and settings are fine, but the words didn’t come out naturally, so I worried about that before.
The story that I continued to struggle over and over finished smoothly as if a blockage had been opened. I was so excited that the characters Even the characters that I thought was boring felt alive and progressed in the story smoothly. I was so into it that time flew by.
“Oop! I will be late for the bookmark meeting. I’ll end it here for today.”
When I read it over before saving the manuscript, it was good. I’ve only been written for a day, but the volume is substantial, and in the two years I’ve been in a slump, I’ve never written something I liked as much as I did. The cold has completely healed, and today is a day for something to happen.
“Baek-ho, Blue Dragon, your brother is going out, so take a good care of the house. Blue Dragon, don’t cause any problems.”
“Nyao”
“Piyao”
They answer my questions very well. Our Baek-ho, as always, is an exemplary cat with no problems, but Blue Dragon’s sparkling eyes with playfulness doesn’t put me at ease.
It’s hasn’t been long since it was a little baby who couldn’t even walk, but as soon he starts walking around, he becomes more of a troublemaker. It is so cute to see him jump and roll and play without getting tired, then collapse for a moment and fall asleep as he is.
After looking around the room again to see if there was anything dangerous or anything that the blue dragon could use to make another problem.
Bookmark gatherings are usually held at ‘Pepperoni’, an oven-dried pizza restaurant in Donggyo-dong. One of my former classmates, Munsu, is running it with his brother, so when we first started, we decided to hold a meeting there to raise sales, so we usually make an appointment here.
I said, “I want to increase sales,” but it probably didn’t help that much. Munsu older brother, Junsu hyung, is also a member of the bookmark club, and he’s very kind, so he’ll give you a lot of food on the house when his younger sibling’s friends come.
“Oh, it’s cold. Am I a little late?”
“Oh, Myung-hoon is here. You said you had a cold is it okay for you to come here? The weather is cold.”
“Yuri, you came early, it’s okay now, I slept well yesterday and I’m fine.”
“Yo! Bro!”
Seeing my friend reaching out to me with exaggerated movements, I sighed and fist bumped him.
This friend is strong. He is Ah-in’s older brother who came to play last time, and he grew up together since childhood because he is a neighbor and I’m close with his parents. If you look at the photos in my mother’s album, there is Hae-in sitting with a bib next to me, lying down with a pacifier. To my dismay, this guy has a birthday three months earlier than me.
Ah-in is pretty, but Hae-in also looks as tall as a model. She’s above average but her brother is on a celebrity status for his looks. But the trap is that if he open his mouth, he just sounds like an idiot.
“Bro! Are you saying you’re raising a baby? Ah-in came to see her and said she was pretty and was drooling.”
“Oh my, did Myung-hoon adopt a kitten? Baek-ho’s younger brother?”
“I want to see it too. Ain only showed her mom the picture and didn’t show it to me, saying it was a secret.”
Kang Hae-in you talk too much!
“Hey, come all the way here and talk about what kind of cat you have. Does raising a dog or a cat produce rice or porridge? It smells, and you have to clean up the poop, and there’s a lot of work. Let’s go ahead and toast.”
It’s the first time I’m thankful for Kyung-suk, who turns the topic with a frown. He hates animals. But I can understand his feelings. My pets are cute and family-friendly to me and not to others. Some people have an aversion to dogs and cats.
That’s why I don’t talk about cats in the first place. Of course, we talk happily only when we meet people who like animals, but there may be people who hate animals like Kyung-suk, and there are many people who don’t care if they don’t.
Bookmark Friends generally like animals, and there are two friends who have dogs, and a friend who has a cat and a friend who keeps a tropical fish.
“Here you go, here’s the pizza. The pepperoni special that pepperoni is proud of, and the jalapeno pasta is here, right?”
“Hello Junsu hyung.”
“Yeah, it’s been a while, Myung-hoon. Is your sister doing well too?”
“Yes. She’s doing well.”
“Tell her to stop by sometime, because we are developing a new menu that your noona will like. Are you writing well?”
“Yes, I am working hard.”
“Write consistently. There aren’t many kids among us who keep writing, so I hope you do well by working hard.”
There are only a few people who continue to write among the classmates who had a passion for writing when they were students. Making a living by writing was not as easy as I thought, so I usually gave up and looked for another way. Even Junsu and Munsu, who run this pizza restaurant right now, had considerable writing skills when they were students, but eventually switched to the restaurant business.
It’s harder to find time to write while having a full-time job. Among the friends gathered today, Yuri goes to a publishing house and writes her own articles after work.
In the case of the men, it is said, ‘Will you make a living by writing, how will you feed your wife and children, can you call such an unstable job a job? The pressure of the adults around me is no joke.
Fortunately, the first writing sold quite well and my sister was a strong supporter, so I was still holding on, but as the slump got longer, I was thinking a lot about whether I should give up and look for a job.
“Didn’t you have a hard time because you couldn’t finish the writing last time? How are you now?”
“Uh, it’s been hard for a while, but now I feel like I’ve got the hang of it. I want to try a little harder.”
“What story are you writing now?”
“I think it would be better to write what I know well. It’s a fantasy, but there’s a cat with hidden power.”