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There once was a lonely sunfish who floated along the sea. He drifted alongside the current, following it wherever it led. Unfortunately, following the current led him to his death rather easily, frustrating the hand of “god” (the player) each and every single time.
Despite the player’s best efforts to guide the lonely (death-seeking) sunfish, he died easily as if the most gentle brush the wrong way would set him on death’s course.
Floated into a pile of garbage? Death.
Ate too big a meal? Death.
Befriended a puppy and it died? Death and shame on you for letting an innocent puppy die you vile creature.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the sunfish made friends to lessen the burdens of sadness it felt each time it revived, but in doing so he suffered the curse of them never remembering their past lives, and he became burdened with the memories of not just his deaths, but also theirs.
Perhaps the sunfish should have thought about this, but he was the lonely sunfish for a reason, and they always say making friends decreases the hurt, right?
Well, the sunfish learned the hard way of the burdens of friendshiphood and how being hurt by the deaths of one’s friends is a heavy burden to bear, and seeing them dying hundreds of times in various new and creative ways that only the sunfish could remember obviously did a number on his psyche.
Perhaps the sunfish should have befriended a mental health professional. Sadly, the sunfish did not foresee his future mental burdens, and probably couldn’t find one even if he wanted since he was so stuck in trying to move forward and progress through the story.
Anyways, the sunfish tried hard each and every life it lived to make it to the end, but failed because reasons that are too long to be listed. And so it lived through 1863 lives…
At one of the computers, Kim Dokja grinned to himself as he typed. He may not be a writer, but he could write randomly if he felt like it. He wasn’t Han Sooyoung who could write popular webnovels, but he could write to amuse himself. Ultimately, he could never show this to anyone, but he was bored and wanted to do something new since he more or less was under house arrest for the foreseeable future, and he was currently up to date on all of his webnovels.
Never let a man be bored lest he come up with the most weird ideas to entertain himself.
So focused was Kim Dokja on his parody writing that he failed to notice the footsteps of one Yoo Joonghyuk who wandered into his room wondering why he was cackling to himself.
To Yoo Joonghyuk’s surprise, Kim Dokja, the webnovel addict and Han Sooyoung’s editor, was writing something on a word document.
Thankfully Kim Dokja’s danger sense wasn’t completely gone after so long, and he had the foreboding feeling of a threat, and immediately alt-tabbed to a different screen.
He turned just in time to see Yoo Joonghyuk stare at the screen and back to him in silent question.
“Joonghyuk-ah! Surprised to see you. As you can see I’m working on editing” Kim Dokja quickly explained himself to the man, confident he hadn’t seen him alt-tab to a different document.
Yoo Joonghyuk hummed in greeting, his eyes scanning through the visible word document to see what about it was so funny that he could hear Kim Dokja laughing about it from his room down the hall.
Going through the lines, he saw the section that did seem humorous, and was in the midst of being edited given how the cursor was blinking in the midst of the text. Having found the source of Kim Dokja’s laughter, Yoo Joonghyuk left the room telling him to be more quiet while editing.
When Kim Dokja saw him completely leave the room, did he deem it safe to return to his current amusement. Aware he had to lessen the noise, he tried to keep a straight face as he wrote, but soon enough he had a full-blown grin on his face once more as he finished the piece that should never see the light of day.
Anyways, the sunfish tried hard each and every life it lived to make it to the end, but failed because reasons that are too long to be listed. And so it lived through 1863 lives…
The lonely sunfish was alone once more on its 1864th life as it started from the beginning, hoping that this life would be the last…
When he finally finished, Kim Dokja stretched idly and scrolled back to the beginning to read what he wrote before he began editing, when he had the abrupt feeling of murderous energy coming from behind him.
His instincts were telling him to make a run for it, but he looked behind him anyway since he had stared death in the face so many times, but came back to tell the tale (only after he died each of those times).
As he had half-expected, he came face to face with a livid Yoo Joonghyuk who used his heightened eyesight to catch a glimpse of the document that Kim Dokja had been working on, and it seemed what he had read had pissed him off greatly.
Kim Dokja, knowing he was doomed, tried to reduce his sentence.
“Joonghyuk-ah, it’s not about you per se, it just happens to be about a poor, lonely sunfish. Writing is about using information around you, so I took some inspiration. This is about the sunfish from that one game that you have to keep alive, but I added some backstory to it to make it more sad why the player has to keep it alive…” he babbled, hoping to reduce some of Yoo Joonghyuk’s anger.
“Kim Dokja.”
“Yes Joonghyuk-ah?” Kim Dokja was hoping he wouldn’t face the man’s wrath.
“You’re dead.”
Kim Dokja booked for the exit and ran as fast as he could, but he knew that it was a futile effort what with him still recovering from his coma and Yoo Joonghyuk regularly training his body.
Yoo Joonghyuk was kind enough to give him a head start in consideration for his body’s condition.
“Arrrgghh! Ow! Joonghyuk-ah!”
Kim Dokja had made a worthy attempt.
If Yoo Joonghyuk had been more patient, he could have read the ending that Kim Dokja wrote. If he had, then perhaps he wouldn’t have chased after the poor man in a fit of anger and smacked him on the head in retaliation.
The lonely sunfish was alone once more on its 1864th life as it started from the beginning, hoping that this life would be the last.
In the beginning, the lonely sunfish knew how the story would go, but to his surprise, he found an entirely different story once he reached the bridge.
The cause for such a change was due to one lonely squid, who also wanted to see the end of the story with the sunfish, who he had admired for over 10 years for never giving up, despite losing his life over and over and lost his friends over and over again.
Though the lonely sunfish and the lonely squid did not realize it in the beginning, they would find the ending to the story that they had desired for so long, and would no longer be a lonely sunfish nor a lonely squid, but a sunfish and squid with friends they held ever so dear that they brought to see the end of the story.
The End.