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HELIO SCANS
[Translator - Hestia]
[Proofreader - Kaya]
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Chapter 17: The Old Snake
The period spanning the late 2010s into the early 2020s was a time of upheaval for the publishing industry.
The rise of internet-based books and the explosion of e-books marked a rapid shift, and with new content industries cropping up left and right, alarm bells began ringing for the traditional paper book market.
Even Japan—a country often dubbed a ‘nation of readers,’ where people were still seen reading physical books on trains—couldn’t resist the tide of the times.
And so, chaos swept through Japan’s publishing world.
In that era of transformation—
“Hello! I’m Jung Junhyuk, I just joined the company. I look forward to working with you all!”
Jung Junhyuk took his first step into the world of publishing.
“Ah… welcome. To hell.”
“…?”
It didn’t take Junhyuk long to understand exactly what they meant by that.
＊ ＊ ＊
The Age of Upheaval brought a hell of a lot with it.
“Jung-kun! Get to that meeting!”
“A meeting with an author?”
“Nope. It’s about coordinating the anime merch line.”
“Uh—shouldn’t team leads be handling external meetings? I’m only in my first year…”
“And?”
“......”
Whatever systems had once been in place crumbled like a sandcastle at high tide.
The slow decline of print books had been creeping in for years—but at some point, it just accelerated. Like a freight train, it closed the distance all at once.
To make things worse, the long-running series in Jump were all wrapping up one by one.
People started saying ‘the era of Jump is over.’
Of course, neither the editorial department nor the publishing houses could afford to sit on their hands.
They scrambled to stabilize the situation using every method available.
Foreign licensing deals. Streaming platform partnerships. Negotiations with Amazon’s Kindle service. A digital Jump platform.
All the experimental projects they’d shelved were suddenly greenlit and thrown straight into execution—no prep, just go.
And, naturally, disaster followed.
They were doing things for the first time, so new problems erupted left and right. The editorial department descended into full-on panic mode.
But the regular workload didn’t stop.
These new crises piled on top of the existing ones, and everyone started looking for someone—anyone—they could offload work onto.
Someone with just enough experience to handle it, but not enough seniority to refuse.
A reliable junior.
A scrappy little tiger. (Or more accurately, a convenient sucker.)
“Jung-kun! Cover this meeting for me!”
“Jung-kun! This one too!”
“Hey, I'm moving—can you handle a real estate meeting for me?”
“???”
And just like that, Jung Junhyuk got saddled with ‘every’ annoying external errand.
He stopped being an editor. He’d become a full-blown salesman.
In under two years, he somehow found himself in meetings with industry big shots—and at other times, getting harassed by eccentric authors.
Dealing with people nonstop, Junhyuk’s faith in humanity eroded day by day.
“Too many humans… I need a finger snap… just one Thanos snap…”
If there was one silver lining, it was this—
Junhyuk picked up the skills to juggle all that chaos ‘way’ faster than expected.
But of course, that came with its own curse.
“Oh? You’re good at this? Cool. Here’s more.”
He kept getting more dumped on him, just because he was good at it.
And then, as if the universe wasn’t finished beating him up yet—
“We’ve got a COVID-20 case in the company. The rest of you on business trips will need to cover their workload.”
The pandemic hit.
And so, Jung Junhyuk…
“HAHAHAHAHAHA! YOU GOTTA BE FU—AAAHHHHHHH!”
…snapped. Briefly, but spectacularly.
The only saving grace? ‘Everyone’ had gone a little insane by then.
“Editing is murder.”
“My body is made of contracts.”
“I’m gonna be the Editing King!”
Junhyuk became one of the crazy ones too—just… your average, moderately broken human in a sea of maniacs.
Thankfully, all his effort ‘was’ recognized. It became the foundation for his lightning-fast promotion.
But even so…
“Sooo… wanna try that again sometime?”
“Shut the fuck up, you piece of shit.”
It became an experience he ‘never’ wanted to repeat.
＊ ＊ ＊
Thanks to past experience, Jung Junhyuk was able to look at Chairman Moriyama Takashi with a more objective eye.
From what Junhyuk had seen, people in high positions generally fell into one of a few types—
The overtly domineering kind who crushed others with their title, the polite but poisonous type, and the flashy show-offs who were, underneath it all, the most calculating.
Moriyama Takashi appeared to fall into that second category.
And through a few rounds of Q&A, Junhyuk began to pick up on the chairman’s real agenda.
Namely, that Moriyama cared less about finishing ‘D Note’ than he did about talking to Junhyuk himself.
“Oh ho, I was wrong about that, wasn’t I? Then, Writer Jung, what do ‘you’ think is the single most important thing a work needs to become a hit?”
Chairman Moriyama still wore a warm smile as he asked the question.
No matter the type, all high-ranking people shared one core trait—
They hate wasting time.
Sure, no one likes wasting time—but for people like Moriyama, 'wasting time' means something else entirely.
The higher you go, the more money and manpower you command.
One meal—one single meeting—can involve billions of won in deals, sometimes even hundreds of billions.
To them, time literally is money.
So why would someone like that, who already brought up business, now waste time entertaining back-and-forth with a lowly writer?
It was exactly this kind of detail that made Junhyuk realize—
Moriyama wasn’t here to push for the completion of ‘D Note.’
He had no real intention of interfering.
It was more gut instinct than logical deduction, a feeling born of experience.
But the same went for Moriyama.
To get to where he was—and to stay there—he’d seen more than his share of people.
And in that arena, Junhyuk couldn’t compete.
Which is why Moriyama, too, could read Junhyuk like a book.
‘Is it just curiosity? Or is he after something more…?’
Either way, the chairman wanted this conversation.
Which meant there was only one thing Junhyuk had to do—
‘Run my mouth like it’s my job.’
Make this conversation worth his time.
“If you ask me, the most important thing for a work to succeed… is name recognition that hits the casual crowd.”
“Name recognition that hits the casual crowd?”
Moriyama reacted with visible interest.
“Take novels, for example. Even if you’ve never heard of one, the moment people find out it won a Nobel Prize, sales shoot through the roof.”
It was a basic, universally acknowledged fact.
“Nothing about the book itself changed—but once the Nobel label sticks, people suddenly pay attention and buy it. Why? Because now it’s ‘famous.’”
“To go big, the key isn’t a hardcore niche following. You need recognition that hooks even casual passersby. Like someone who’s at the bookstore for something else sees the sign—‘Winner of the Nobel Prize’—and thinks, ‘maybe I’ll try this one out.’ That kind of impulse.”
What he said next reflected the basics of a marketing strategy that, at the time, hadn’t quite arrived yet.
“So, does that mean winning a prestigious award is the most important thing? Personally, I don’t think so.”
“Then how do you get a work to become ‘famous’?”
“Make it famous ‘because’ it’s famous. That’s the strategy.”
“And how do you pull that off?”
“For example—Weekly Shōnen Jump. When a completely unknown rookie gets their work published in a magazine that famous, the title gets instant exposure. Why? Because it’s where everyone’s looking. Consistent visibility is all it takes to get readers’ attention.”
Junhyuk paused to catch his breath before continuing.
“But as I’m sure you’ve noticed, magazine sales are slowly declining. Of course, even with losses, the magazines still serve their purpose as advertisements for the print volumes—that’s fine. But now that online communities and social media are on the rise, I think we’ll start seeing better returns from consistent digital exposure. Online events too—it all needs to move in that direction.”
By the standards of ‘his’ time, this would’ve already been considered outdated advice.
But in the late 2000s, when the internet was still getting its footing and events were overwhelmingly offline, this kind of thinking was ahead of its time.
And Junhyuk’s forward-thinking remarks—
“Interesting.”
—were more than enough to pique the interest of a chairman trying to keep pace with the times.
“Chairman, your meal is ready. Shall I serve it now?”
“Please do.”
As the waiter brought out the course meal, their discussion naturally wound down, giving way to casual small talk until the end of the meeting.
＊ ＊ ＊
“Haaah...”
“Thank you for all your hard work.”
“You really worked hard… seriously…”
As I sank into the taxi seat with a heavy sigh, Matsuda and the editor-in-chief offered words of appreciation.
Matsuda’s hand, patting me lightly on the shoulder, was still trembling—like he hadn’t fully come down from the tension yet.
“You two worked hard as well. Honestly, I’m wondering if I might’ve overstepped a little with you both sitting right there.”
“Not at all. If anything, I think the chairman used the ‘D Note’ as an excuse to meet with you.”
“…Huh?”
Matsuda tilted his head, a question mark practically floating over his face.
It seemed the editor-in-chief had caught on—that the chairman wasn’t all that interested in the ‘D Note’ finale after all.
“Thinking about it now, my current visa and even the school the publishing company arranged for me… those were probably the chairman’s doing too, weren’t they?”
“It’s just speculation, but it seems highly likely.”
No wonder everything had gone suspiciously smooth.
Back when I first got hired, the paperwork alone was enough to make you want to scream—the kinds of things you’d have to submit just to prove you existed.
And yet, in this era where immigration processes are even ‘more’ convoluted, I barely had to do a thing.
At first, I wondered if the lack of documentation was just because there were fewer ways to verify things. Or maybe the editorial department handled it behind the scenes.
But now, looking back, it was probably that old man pulling strings.
“Haaah…”
How did I end up getting the attention of ‘that’ geezer…
Even though I’d only met him briefly, I could tell—that man never reveals what he’s really thinking.
“Seriously…”
＊ ＊ ＊
“He was a sly little snake.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
The chairman murmured as he gazed out the window, where the lights of the night flickered past. His personal secretary, who was driving, responded with a question.
“It is a compliment. Calling him smart doesn’t quite cut it. He wasn’t childish, he had sharp instincts, confidence, talent—he could’ve succeeded in anything, not just manga.”
“Is that why, when his serialization was decided, you went so far as to give special instructions for him to be accommodated?”
“Heh. What do you take me for, a fortune teller? I’d never even seen his face at that point. How could I have known?”
“Then…?”
“It was just a coincidence. He just happened to catch my eye, that’s all.”
The chairman, seated in the backseat, gently ran his hand over a copy of Weekly Shōnen Jump resting beside him.
Maybe it was because that magazine had been the place where his own corporate life had first begun.
Even after all these years, that publication still meant more to him than any other under Shueisha’s name.
“By the way… what do you think? Do you really believe those internet forums and social media platforms—so trendy among the youth now—will actually become that influential?”
“Internet communities and social media still skew toward younger demographics. The online market may be growing, but I don’t think it’s ready to have a direct impact just yet...”
The chairman cracked the window slightly, letting the breeze brush against his face.
“Well, I’m an old man who’s already stepped back from the front lines. It’s up to the company president now.”
His mind wandered back to Jung Junhyuk, the young man he’d met at dinner.
“Those eyes of his… It’s like he’s not just drawing manga. It’s like he’s envisioning something much bigger.”
A hawk folding its wings, quietly waiting for the moment to soar.
The chairman closed his eyes, imagining just how far—and how high—that hawk might someday fly.
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HELIO SCANS
[Translator - Hestia]
[Proofreader - Kaya]
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