Translated by: ShawnSuh Edited by: SootyOwl Juho walked on the sidewalk surrounded . Cars zoomed past on one side while people walked busily on the other . There were hardly any trees . Walking on the streets like that resulted in all sorts of encounters . Pieces of gum, saliva, dog stools, trash, dead insects, leaves and, sometimes, even pieces of raw meat . Of course, those werent the only things found on the streets . From time to time, there was a ring or money that pedestrians had dropped . Juho had come out to find those very things . He had come out to think of a gift for the protagonist of his new novel . Though he had said that he didnt want anything in particular, giving gifts was up to the giver . Juho thought about what the protagonist might like and remembered that, in their last encounter, they came to learn that they had a lot in common . Though the protagonist took offense to being compared to Juho, he too was sensitive to language . There were enormous plateaus and high mountains in the world he came from . Every region was divided by a clear boundary, and they had different cultures and languages . Language . As a gift for him, Juho wanted to create a world where there was diversity of language . Now, he was out on a walk in search for clues and ideas for those languages . Sounds of wind, cars, and people . Keeping his ears open, Juho kept walking . Careful . Easy . Move, please . Ugh, this things heavy! A group of people moving a heavy object came into Juhos view . A large moving truck . Boxes . Wrapped up furniture . It was apparent that somebody was moving . A large wardrobe stood with its mouth wide open . The mother-of-pearl inlays showed their age . Juho was impressed by its appearance, which was both detailed and beautiful . Sadly, it was being thrown out . What are you doin? With a cigarette in her mouth, a woman wearing shorts and a sleeveless s.h.i.+rt was looking in Juhos direction . Judging from the way she was dressed, she seemed to be from the neighborhood . Perhaps, she was a neighbor of the family who was moving out . Her appearance had a striking resemblance to the mother in The Sound of Wailing . Because the novel wasnt all that far from the reality, there had to be people who looked similar . Juho answered her question honestly, Im watching . What is there to watch? A bunch of things . People moving things, or the wardrobe right there . Youre a weird one . Well, whatever floats your boat, said the woman, taking a deep drag off her cigarette . Juho redirected his attention to the furniture that was being thrown out . Smaller things were consolidated into a box . Toys, bowls, a vase, screws, bells, and an arrow . Juho picked up the arrow . Though it was covered in rust, it still looked like an arrow . Why did they have an arrow? What do these people do? Juho wondered . The pile of trash was proving to be much more fun than it looked . An arrow? said the woman . She must have been bored smoking on her own . Because he didnt mind the company, Juho willingly answered, Yep . Thats an arrow . The arrow looked like it would snap in half at any given opportunity . It was clear that it hadnt been taken good care of . Juho examined it and wondered, What kind of language would a race who used arrows regularly speak? It would be a language that resembled a sharp, pointy arrow . Why do you think those people had an arrow? Maybe they wanted to go hunting, said the woman half-heartedly, taking another drag of her cigarette . Juho played along . On horseback? Probably? With a dog too, maybe . They might have worn clothes made of leather . Maybe theyre from somewhere cold . They each shared their respective image of what a hunter looked like . Though she may have been killing time idly, Juho was in the middle of a creative process . What kind of language do you think those people would speak? Language? What kind of question is that? she asked, her forehead scrunching into a scowl . She seemed to be having trouble understanding him . Despite the look on her face however, she gave an answer, Probably not too different from the one we speak . Why is that? Juho asked . A race who carried arrows for hunting, rode on horses, wore leather clothing and… Well, whether its hunting or any other job out there, its all done by humans . Languages are essentially the same at the end of the day . There are hundreds of different languages around the world . Is that so? What about letters that look like arrows? Juho took the opportunity to ask . Breathing out a cloud of smoke, she tilted her head, I guess itd look fine . Again, a half-hearted answer . Her demeanor made it apparent that she had lost interest . Juho smiled at her blunt att.i.tude . Ill go with that then . Are you working on something? Like writing? Though having asked herself, she gave no time for Juho to answer and said, Well, break a leg kid . She asked no further questions and smoked her cigarette in silence . The furniture was moving from one place to another . Once she finished smoking, she tossed the cigarette b.u.t.t on the ground and put it out . With that, she walked away . Take care, Juho said . With her hands in her pocket, she looked back briefly and went on her way . After picking up her cigarette b.u.t.t from the ground and tossing it into a trashcan, Juho brushed his hand against the wardrobe once and went on his way . --- Number 18, read the text out loud for us . Yes, maam . Number 18 stumbled her way through the text . Her p.r.o.nunciation made it apparent that she didnt speak the language regularly . Juho lowered his head and looked at his textbook . The alphabet was written down - a western set of letters . Staring at it intently, he listed the languages he had learned up to that point . Greek, Medieval English, Old English, Latin, Old Scandinavian, Gothic, Medieval Welsh, Finnish, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Lombardic, Russian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Hu, j.a.panese, etc . Listening to number 18, Juho moved his hand busily . He had had an idea for what the characters in the novel should look like . He had found a clue during his encounter with the woman smoking her cigarette . Text had its origin in paintings . Ancient humans left records of their cultures in paintings . Painting had always been visual . Like an arrow, it always had a target . Baron often sketched the club members . Paintings had limits when it came to describing what was being seen . The world grew more and more complex from its inception, and inevitably, the number of things that couldnt be explained with paintings grew . Humans learned to speak in different ways . Indirectly, sarcastically, exaggeratedly, and many more . The desire of wanting to express unseen emotions has lead to the evolution of the written language . The language Juho was about to create for his novel would be the same way . It had changed over time, just as any language had . For the time being, he divided languages into two separate categories: one western and the other eastern . He thought about the hieroglyphs commonly seen in artifacts of various ancient civilizations . Made after shapes of their subject, Chinese characters were one of the more typical hieroglyph . Straight lines, curved, dots, and again, straight lines again . It was still closer to being a drawing than a letter . The shape of a character evolved over time to make it easier to write and closer to its sound rather than meaning . In order to replicate that, Juho felt the need to remove the preexisting nature of a language . A bow snapped in half while an arrow was left with only its head . The language in Juhos mind began to take more shape, becoming gradually sharper . Over time, it evolved into shapes that could be easily written with a writing tool as basic as a tree branch . In some sense, the characters resembled spears, swords, and bows . Taking those letters, Juho divided them and distributed them to various races . Spear-like characters for the race that used spears as its primary choice of weapon, sword-like characters for those who used swords, bow-like characters for those who used bows, etc . Weapons became worn out over time and throughout their use . In a similar manner, a language developed or devolved depending on culture and lifestyle . A weapon was not necessary for those who werent hunters . The only time it would be used in a way that was remotely close its intended purpose was in the kitchen . That wasnt bad . It was a natural change that came with the choices made . As time pa.s.sed, hieroglyphs began to fade into history while phonograms came into existence . Juho sped up the evolution of language in his world . The characters took on shapes that were even simpler and spread throughout the world by mouth . Certain languages became more widely used than others . The empty s.p.a.ce in the textbook filled up with a language no one had ever seen before . He focused on the eastern languages . Of course, the first example that came to mind was Chinese . Despite being hieroglyphic in nature, it had survived the test of time . While every other civilization adopted a new language that focused on sound, the Chinese were standing strong against that worldwide evolution, and it was one of the most widely spoken languages to that very day . There was a sound of wave breaking in the distance . Number 18 read from her textbook out loud . A language that remained unchanged throughout the course of time . That was what Juho wanted to make for the protagonist and his world . Juho began to draw his ideas on his textbook . Straight lines, curves, and dots . There was something special about that language . The characters were bunched up tightly, making it difficult to snap in half like a bow . Juho contemplated on how he could go about making it distinguishable . It was difficult to write, and the characters left very little room for simplification . He found himself having two choices . Either the race had to endure the inconvenience of writing or create another written language that was based on the preexisting characters . Regions under the influence of the eastern language would choose to take either directions, leading to the birth of various other languages . Unfortunately, those languages tended to be exceedingly complex and were often outlasted by other simpler languages . Though beautiful and delicate, they eventually became lost and forgotten . Taking those characteristics, Juho decided to make the language nearly impossible to interpret . The role of arranging and translating that language would belong to the protagonist . Because a language had its time in history, another one had to be used . Using a language from another region would be incredibly undignifying . The ruler commanded his people to create a language of their own . This would be the beginning of the story . Having run out of s.p.a.ce, Juho turned the page of his textbook and continued scribbling . A new language . West and East . Flipping words and their shapes back and forth, he came up with languages to be spoken by the people in various regions . Those who lived in between regions would often learn both languages . Certain languages would be praised whereas others would be neglected and looked down on . Having rolled the idea around in his head, Juho tried to bring the languages into his mouth in order to think of the p.r.o.nunciation of their words . Savoring it in his mouth slowly, he thought of phonetics that were both fluid and difficult to understand . He jotted them down next to the characters he had created on the textbook . Some sounding thin and sharp, some thick and dull . As the language began to take shape, the lifestyle of the people also began to take shape . From the way they dressed, and what they ate, Juho began to understand their culture . It was exhilarating . While examining the language he had created, he remembered the being he had been forgetting about . G.o.d . There was a G.o.d who had hid himself in the high mountains . He wanted to create a separate language for Him . Searching for elements that would make up the language spoken by G.o.d, Juho revisited the memory of his recent walk on the street . Gum, stools, pieces of meat, ring, money, wall, people, cars, noise, leaves, furniture . Nothing was useful . Juho began to move his pen subconsciously, writing G.o.d, G.o.d, G.o.d, in Hangul . G.o.d? Its a word . A character . Phonogram . Various smaller elements came together, becoming one . Juho recognized the Creator immediately . He had learned to write Hangul before any other language, and he had been well-acquainted of its beauty and magnificence . Filling his textbook in black ink, he gathered all the source materials he would need to create the ideal world for his novel .