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The nine hundred ninety ninth regression was one that Yoo Joonghyuk planned based on his previous regressions, as he always did.

Although, it wasn't as if the previous two regressions, the nine hundred ninety seventh and eighth, were really the worst the starstream had seen of Yoo Joonghyuk. That title would probably be saved for the forty-first from which Yoo Joonghyuk was conscious of the fact he had to deliberately block memories of to stay sane.

No, the problem with the last two regressions wasn't the presence of any memories that were wretched to the point of novelty. The problem was the fact that Yoo Joonghyuk barely retained any memories of them at all.

It was all a haze… it was honestly hard to tell if those regressions had been even markedly different from the ones previous to them, as all of the repeated events seemed to mush together and meld with the centuries of anguish he had already endured.

He hadn't felt anything new. Done anything new. So much so that he would forget his place in the new regression and wander aimlessly thinking of the old until some high level constellation punk got a lucky shot at him.

And then all of a sudden, Yoo Joonghyuk woke up in that familiar train car. The one that no matter what would only last for the first thirty minutes of the scenario.

Almost out of habit, he looked for that boy he had been keeping an eye on. The one who always died.

He stopped when he realized.

999.

That boy had died one thousand times.

Yoo Joonghyuk had lived one thousand times. Been in this train car one thousand times. Failed to save anyone one thousand times. Died one thousand times.

Was he really that useless? Yoo Jonghyuk thought to himself, as he went through the motions of beating Choi Han-gyu to death before he could blow up the car.

Honestly, at this point maybe he should accept that he was just like the boy in this car.

No matter what he did, he was going to die anyway.

If he thought about it like that, then…

Well, what was the best thing that he could accomplish with his own death, knowing that it would come to him no matter what he did?

So in the nine hundred ninety ninth turn, Yoo Joonghyuk took more risks than ever before. He made choices and plans that he never would have before because experience had shown they were the antithesis to his former dogma. That which put his own means of survival above all else.

And little by little, Yoo Joonghyuk began to notice that things could be new again.

In this regression, his companions cared more about him. They respected him more, and opened up about things they never had. As if something in his actions connected to them. Made them think he acted out of love for them since his actions clearly showed no care for himself.

And maybe Yoo Joonghyuk wanted to believe them, too. That he was still capable of that sort of love. That desire for connection.

So he let himself fall into it. He made his decisions based on everyone's survival except for his own.

And his comrades continued to show new sides of themselves. The way Lee Jihye tried not to weep aver the bloody remains of his leg, even though no one had even died yet that regression. How Lee Hyunsung's lips trembled while trying to stop the bleeding where Yoo Joonghyuk's arm used to be. Shin Yoosung's open bawling, as it began to set in on Yoo Joonghyuk that he would never see this version of her's face ever again.

But Yoo Joonghyuk knew whose response to his actions had surprised him the most this regression.

"Joonghyuk. Are you ready?" The voice of a certain archangel was heard near his somehow still intact ears.

Uriel's face was close to his, a tight grip on his arm and waist along with the angelic wing steadied on his back the only support keeping him held upright as the others had followed his instructions in forging through the final battle ahead of them.

"There's no need to watch over me so closely, Uriel." He told her. It was, in fact, something he had been telling this strange angel recurrently ever since she had stepped down from Eden to join their group.

That was one thing he had never expected of the entity he had once known as the Demon-like Judge of Fire. In all the timelines he had been through Uriel had been just that, a silent judge. Reacting positively to his lawful actions in the early scenarios with coins, and expressing disappointment over his more morally dubious actions. Only descending after the destruction of Eden occasionally to cast judgement in person.

But something about this round had moved the archangel to act differently after the destruction of Eden this round.

"No offense, but there's obviously a d**n need for it, Joonghyuk." Uriel casually censored herself, as though the restrictions of Eden were still in place. "You can't see how the others are looking back towards you right now, but they know it too. That it's always times like this that you feel the need to go and take unnecessary risks."

Yoo Joonghyuk thought that he heard it in her voice, then.

That lilt in Uriel's voice that suggested she was talking to an old friend, even though the span of time in which he had met this version of her was infinitesimal in comparison to the life he had already lived before her, and perhaps compared to the life of a constellation as well.

Maybe Uriel, too, had lived through this all before. A war where she was called upon to support a comrade close to death.

Perhaps she also knew what it was like to be too helpless to save someone important.

Yoo Joonghyuk should be sorry that she would have to go through it again.

He could already feel it. No matter how close Uriel and her sword stayed by his side, Yoo Joonghyuk could feel his death coming to him.

It was because the outer world covenant wasn't an outside threat. It was something that was inside of him. A hole that came from the very center of him. Almost as if there were no outer world god involved, and Yoo Joonghyuk had really only done this to himself.

When everything was fading, and he could recognize her voice as one of the ones desperately calling out to him, Yoo Joonghyuk thought that he should apologize to her.

Instead, he died with a smile on his face.

.

.

.

The one thousandth regression was one that Yoo Joonghyuk planned based on his previous regressions, as he always did.

When he woke up on the train car again, he wasn't smiling as he had been when he died.

It was because he knew that he wouldn't let the events that let him get so far in the last regression repeat.

He couldn't live like that.

Suicidal idiot that he still was, he couldn't let the same thing happen to his precious memories of those friends in the nine hundred ninety ninth that had happened to every other memory he had of them from all those other regressions. Let them repeat until the point of oblivion. He couldn't do it. He just couldn't, even if it would be the right thing to do, even though it could save their lives, Yoo Joonghyuk just wasn't strong enough.

And he hated himself, for that weakness.

That was when Yoo Joonghyuk decided that he had to die, sitting there in that subway car before the scenarios started.

No matter what it took, killing every constellation in the starstream, losing distorted versions of old comrades, finding and wringing out his sponsor's neck…

Yoo Joonghyuk had to survive long enough to stand in front of that wall once more.

And join all of his once treasured memories in the deepest oblivion of death.

From then on, the only times he saw that Demon-like Judge of Fire descended from Eden was when she was sent with the express purpose to kill him in a way that didn't matter.

The only thing new he learned about her thereafter was how her corpse looked with a sword through the middle.

That was, until he met her as an outer god.

Secretive Plotter had wondered if it would please an angel like Uriel to know that he had prayed for the first time in that moment.

Prayed against all odds that her firey sword really could pierce through his curse of life and see him to his end.

But some dumb guy saved him that day.

And now, in the present, Yoo Joonghyuk was watching the kid version of that guy pick the green bits out of the omelette he had made him.

He had been trying to remember from the timelines where he had kids how he had tricked them into eating their vegetables, but like most of the times he tried to recall those deep memories of his, something in his brain had gotten caught up in that pesky number 999's time.

It was probably because his current company made those times hard to forget.

"Aaaaah I'm going to be late!" Uriel ran into the kitchen in a flash of blonde curls, going for the bread in the fridge as if she was going to run out of the house with toast in her mouth like a schoolgirl from one of her animes. "Joonghyuk do you know where Jihye is?"

"She already left." Yoo Joonghyuk reported, as he batted her hands off the bread and gave her a fork for the small omelette he had already put on the table for her. "Her first class this semester is in an early slot."

Even though he had told that girl to schedule her classes with the university early if she wanted good times…

"Shi-" Uriel seemed to remember there was no system to filter out her swears as she spared a glance toward Dokja before correcting herself. "Shoot. I mean shoot." She started speaking between bites as she scarfed down the omelette "I think that [munch] girl borrowed the shoes I was [chew] going to wear to my interview [gulp] without asking…"

"Does it really matter what shoes you wear?" Yoo Joonghyuk commented as he used his chopsticks to start placing Dokja's vegetables back into his omelette. "A former constellation is going to look strange submitting her manhwa manuscript to an editor for review no matter what."

"Give me a break." Uriel frowned. "It's not my fault that your world somehow made the mistake of making creative skills look more appealing on a resume than demon slaying skills."

Yoo Joonghyuk thought that there was truth to her observation, as he watched Uriel ruffle the hair of the pouting Dokja, before putting her clean plate in the sink for him to deal with later.

Everything about this world was new to Uriel. One could see it plainly in the very way she moved, unused to not carrying wings everywhere she went and walking ever so lightly on the earth wherever she went. Whether it was because she knew what it was to fly or because her shoulders had never felt so light before, Yoo Joonghyuk couldn't be sure.

"Good luck." He called, as Uriel walked out into the fray ahead of him, donning combat boots instead of the professional heel she seemed to have misplaced.

"Thanks Joonghyuk!" She replied, seemingly not compelled to look back to check on him as she walked out the door.

Yoo Joonghyuk had this certain feeling, then. A feeling that he often saw himself having in this new life of his, with these old friends of his.

Even though he thoroughly knew these people already, that fact made it all the more exciting to watch them grow into their roles in this world. Become the people that he never got to see them be.

"It's that look in your eye."

Yoo Joonghyuk almost startled, as he remembered he was being watched.

He turned to find young Dokja looking him with a gaze that seemed to see beyond his stoic expression.

"My father never looked at anyone like the way you looked at her just now, Hyung." He said, in that small, knowing voice of his, before a shyness seemed to come over him, and he looked down at his plate.

"That's why nine hundred ninety nine was always my favorite." He admitted, in a little voice

The emotion that Yoo Joonghyuk felt then was a rare one, but not entirely new.

A mixture of pride and bashfulness that only his own children had ever raised out of him, a glow that seemed to start from his chest and go on to cover his cheeks.

Perhaps an erstwhile familiarity with that feeling was the only thing that allowed him to save himself from smiling, as he tried very hard to tell Dokja sternly to eat his vegetables.

And when Uriel came home that evening to announce that her manuscript had gotten picked up… well, it wasn't hard to admit that Yoo Joonghyuk too was now living through a life that he never had before.

The fields of asphodel were a cornerstone of the Underworld's landscape according to greek myth. Or, at least, according to the cursory web browser search he has performed upon reading that phrase in Ways of Survival for the first time.

That chapter came out when he was around eighteen years old. It was easy to remember, because in January he would be legally old enough to visit his mother in prison without the consent of his relatives, and he was thinking about it at the time that Hades had put his hand on Yoo Joonghyuk's shoulder, and called him 'son' as they looked over the Underworld kingdom together.

Kim Dokja idly wondered if Yoo Joonghyuk would gain the favor of the underworld in this regression, too. He hadn't in the original third regression, but at this point who could say what ideas the crazy bastard would get into his head...

Regardless, finding the answer to such questions wasn't why Kim Dokja had traveled to the Underworld today.

Nor was it why he was halted in his tracks, stood still in the middle of the fields of asphodel at that very moment.

Kim Dokja had stopped not because something written in Ways of Survival, but by something that deviated from that very text.

In the novel, the fields of asphodel were described as crowded with faceless, unremarkable souls that blended into a general misery of having once been alive.

Yoo Joonghyuk had seen every face as generic, and unrecognizable, as if the souls were so lost in death that even their physical forms were forgotten.

But Kim Dokja swore that he recognized this young girl standing next to him in the crowd.

She was about the same age as he had been when he read that chapter about the Underworld. Eighteen. An oversized school uniform. Bruises from hand prints splayed across her neck.

Then, Kim Dokja saw the emblem on her uniform was the exact same as Lee Jihye's. And in that instant, he knew who this girl was.

This was Na Bori, the girl who always died in the first ten minutes of the scenario.

And she was looking right back at him.

"Do you know me, sir?" She asked him a question that she wouldn't know the answer to no matter how he responded.

"Do you even know who you are?" He asked back, almost reflexively. After all, the shades of Asphodel were always described as having walked through the river Lethe, forgetting everything about themselves in the process.

This girl, however, tilted her head to the side, as if considering his question intelligently.

"My memory of myself is defined by the form I took here." She told him eventually.

"When I look down at these bruise marks on my neck, I feel sadness, and how scared I was." The girl's hands went up to her collar, as if going to defend her neck from future assailants. "But I also feel a little something like love, and like pride."

Kim Dokja could now recognize in her gesture not only an instinct to protect herself, but also a need to cherish and carefully hold this mark that served as her only memory.

"I Just don't know why. I can't remember her, I-" Something flashed in Na Bori's eyes, as if she was trying desperately to hold onto something. "Her, I-."

And then in an instant it was gone, and that mild melancholy once more came to reclaim her features.

"I don't remember anything." She told him. "That is why the only thing I know for certain is that I am in hell."

Kim Dokja frowned at that remark. "You know this is the Underworld, not the Demon Realm, right?

"It doesn't make a difference." As the girl spoke, Kim Dokja saw that her eyes started to go past him, as if she couldn't even recognize a person in front of her anymore, or remember why they were speaking. "Because that is what it means to die."

She looked back down at her neck.

"You don't make a difference, anymore." The girl said. "You can no longer do anything else for the ones you love. And you can't even remember that you loved them."

With that final word, the ghost's hands fell from her neck, and she looked down at her feet. As if speaking to him hadn't even been worth the effort of trying to remember herself.

Kim Dokja found it hard not to be disturbed by her final words, but his feelings about it were easy to settle down into something milder.

This sort of injustice in death... It didn't originate from this world alone. It existed before everything changed into the world of Ways of Survival. It was natural, and would continue to happen. Getting too bogged down in the details would only slow his progress.

That's right, Kim Dokja told himself these things as he continued through his long trek through the fields of asphodel, no longer stopping to look at shades, even if he thought he recognized them.

After all, he had a mission here in the Underworld, and plans for the future, that hinged upon not heeding that young ghost's words of warning.

"Hey, don't think I didn't see that, Sangah." Han Sooyoung sneered at the woman who had just blatantly dropped something into the shopping basked when she thought Sooyoung wasn't looking.

"I'm not sure what you mean." Yoo Sangah smiled over her shoulder in that annoying way of hers, like she was trying to sell Han Sooyoung some fresh cider on the side of a road.

She had done it very smoothly, too. Holding the item behind her back and casually dropping it in while seemingly walking in a direct path to the shelf of candies she was now pretending to look at. Han Sooyoung probably wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't felt the slight thump in the basket she was holding, and if it weren't Yoo Sangah she was with, for that matter.

Han Sooyoung managed to grumble about this for a bit, as she fished around in the bag to pull out whatever Sangah had dropped in there.

"Nicotine gum?" Han Sooyoung was a little bewildered by what she found in her hand. "Why would they sell this at a candy store?"

"I don't know," Yoo Sangah shrugged as if just making conversation, "Where'd you find it?"

"Tch. I obviously don't know because you-" Han Sooyoung looked up to give Yoo Sangah a scornful look, too late to realize that the woman had come a lot closer to her while they spoke.

"Hmm." Han Sooyoung almost felt the vibration of Sangah's hum, as the woman leaned in close, head tilted downward slightly as if she were reading the label of the gum packet Sooyoung held in her hand.

Her light brown bangs shaded her eyes from view, and Han Sooyoung had to remind herself that Sangah's shampoo was grossly floral and not like nice smelling flowers as she spoke.

"Oh, Sooyoung, this one says that it's dentist approved." She looked up, brown eyes a shade richer than her hair peeking up at Sooyoung who was caught between wanting to pretend she wasn't looking and the desire to stare her down while she talked bullshit. "Are you trying to take better care of your teeth these days?"

"Tch. Obviously not." Han Sooyoung had fallen into the option of staring Yoo Sangah down, but wasn't sure if it was having the right effect. "You're the one who put this in my bag, after all."

Pointlessly, she might add. It wasn't as though Han Sooyoung had been smoking a lot, recently. And whenever she was feeling her addiction, she'd usually curb her urges with the very lemon candies she was here to buy today.

Besides, there was no point in these dental gums. Her teeth had always looked like shit. Her lateral incisors were unnaturally small in a way that not even braces could fix in her youth, making her canines appear too long and sharp in comparison.

"Oh, that's a shame." Yoo Sangah brushed right past Han Sooyoung's accusation, looking put out in that fake kicked puppy sort of way she did. "I bet Seolhwa-ssi would say that's one of the health markers women in middle age should look out for most."

"Hey what's that supposed to-!" Han Sooyoung felt her metaphorical hackles raise in a way that was almost obligatory when dealing with this woman's teasing, but Yoo Sangah suddenly straightened up, that close face of hers suddenly looking down at the shorter Han Sooyoung instead of up at her.

"I've always thought those sharp little teeth of yours gave you a really cool look." She said in a low tone. "I'd miss them you had to get dentures."

Then she smiled in a way that wasn't a sales pitch. A devilish way that implied things, and which Han Sooyoung knew was just for her.

And then she just turned around, going back to look at the store's inventory.

"Do think the kids would like some of these?" She asked, picking out something new from the shelf as if that were what the two of them had been talking about all along.

Han Sooyoung felt something hot in her heart, just then. Something like... frustration. Yeah, that had to be it. Frustration.

She felt frustrated because she... she didn't understand how Yoo Sangah could say something like that and then keep casually going on as if she hadn't.

"Of course they'll like it." Han Sooyoung found herself following Sangah's lead, loathe as she would be to admit it. "It's all just sugar to them."

"That's not true!" Yoo Sangah naturally countered her statement. "Don't you remember when we brought home those scorpion lollipops? I thought he would like it, but Gilyoung was so upset... And for that matter-"

As Yoo Sangah continued to speak about the kids that lived with them in that big house of theirs, Han Sooyoung, for some deranged reason, put the gum back in the basket instead of back on the shelves.

Maybe she should try out those whitening strip teeth things one of these days... Gah, wait! No! What was she even thinking???

Tch... Why did that Yoo Sangah always seem to get under her skin?

"Black Flame Ahjumma!" An annoying voice could be heard from somewhere behind. "I need you to teach me how to beat up someone bigger than me!"

"Why would I do that." Han Sooyoung made the mistake of grumbling at the unreasonableness of the little brat's demand instead of just leaving to clear the scenario she was heading off to.

"Well, I obviously already beat Gilyoung all the time, so I'm already good at beating people shorter than me." The kid bragged despite only having a few inches on her supposed rival. "Now I just need to know how to take care of people bigger than me."

"But why would I help you." Again, Sooyoung made the mistake of engaging. Wasn't it that Sangah's job to look after these brats? One of the only things the two of them had agreed on was that Han Sooyoung would most likely be a bad influence.

"Well, you're probably the smallest adult I know, so obviously you know how to fight people bigger than you."

[The constellation 'Abyssal Black Flame Dragon' demands that this worm pay for her slander against his incarnation!]

Han Sooyoung ignored this system message like it was an itch on her right arm.

"I am not." She shot down Shin Yoosung's statement herself. "Did you already forget about all those small people in the sixth and seventh scenario?"

"Well when you were a small person too you were still the shortest so-"

"I'm not going to train you, dammit!" Han Sooyoung gave up trying to reason with this brat, storming off in the direction of the scenario. "Just go back to Sangah before she gets on my case about-"

Han Sooyoung was stopped in her tracks as a sudden impact around her leg almost made her trip over.

"Hey, what are you-" Han Sooyoung hopped around, trying to turn and grimace at the thing now attached to her leg.

"Please!" Shin Yoosung's expression was suddenly visible, as she held fast to Han Sooyoung's leg, face showing a determination falling closer to desperation that was almost scary to see on the face of a kid. "Don't leave... please."

And it was the power of those words that arrested Han Sooyoung in her place that day, not the feeble grip of this little kid.

It was because she was a writer, that she could imagine a story in those words. The story of a little girl who couldn't help from being left behind, over and over again.

Han Sooyoung had to stop. She had to let this little girl, who was once only a character on a page she had read out of spite, tell her how the story would go, and how Han Sooyoung would help her to the ending.

That was all a writer was good for, after all.

"When Dokja Ahjussi comes back." These were the next words that Shin Yoosung said. Words that it seemed like the young girl had to believe were concrete and immobile. Words that couldn't leave her.

They were similar to words that Han Sooyoung, too, had thought in the past. Words that came up even now when she was making her plans for the scenarios.

When Kim Dokja comes back.

"I need to be strong enough to stop him from leaving again." As Shin Yoosung told her this, Han Sooyoung noticed that the little kid whose arms wrapped around her leg did not cry, even though her eyes were red. As though she knew that she had nothing to mourn yet. "Even if I have to do it by force."

And when years later Han Sooyoung watched that same little kid, now a young teenager, use a punch that she taught her to keep Kim Dokja from getting out of his hospital bed, she feels something in her heart akin to a mentor's pride.

Han Su-Yeong staggered and walked closer to Kim Dok-Ja. Several passersby brushing past her looked back in suspicion.

Kim Dok-Ja was now walking down the subway’s steps.

Kim Dok-Ja, with earphones stuck in his ears and reading something on his phone while walking downstairs.

She knew what he was currently reading.

“—!!”

She barely managed to shout, but her voice still didn’t come out. So, she desperately chased after him.

Because of the story you wrote, author-nim, I was able to survive until now. Han Su-Yeong was also able to survive while reading the sole reader’s words.

She managed to write the next part of Yu Jung-Hyeok’s life through them.

She was able to endure her boring and stuffy teen years, the days she never wanted to go back to, thanks to those words.

This train is bound for… She spotted Kim Dok-Ja standing on the platform, waiting for the next train to arrive. A person hiding within the small world crafted out of letters to protect himself was standing right there.

Kim Dok-Ja, who didn’t know anything about the apocalypse about to happen.

Kim Dok-Ja, who’d get to live on the expansive world of the ‘Ways of Survival’.

Kim Dok-Ja, who’d get to meet the protagonist he so longed to become.

Kim Dok-Ja, who’d become the ‘Demon King of Salvation’.

Kim Dok-Ja, who’d sacrifice himself multiple times for the sake of his companions, and as a result, came to the 1863rd turn and met her.

Kim Dok-Ja, who was destined to become the ‘Most Ancient Dream’, the price he paid for loving a certain story too much.

[Your mental state is crumbling!]

[The main body’s ego is regaining its control.]

[Your Fable is being extinguished.]

Her legs grew heavy, and her arms didn’t want to move anymore. Her body was gradually becoming not hers.

Even then, Han Su-Yeong wanted to tell him.

⸢To tell him that he was definitely not at fault for this story being born. And to tell him that the things he was about to experience were not his sins.⸥

Because, her past 13 years existed solely to say those words to him.

⸢To say that, though you have grown up while reading this story, there’s no need for you to become it.⸥

She barely managed to muster up her strength, her arm coiling in on itself and preparing for her one last willful action.

[Your ego will convert into the ‘subconsciousness’.]

As she set her weak, pre-scenario body into that final decisive movement...

The twenty six year old Han Su-yeong who knew nothing of the soon to come apocalypse, woke up thrusting her fist forward into the face of some guy on the subway.

She would've thought she was still dreaming, if it hadn't been for the feeling of his soft cheek slamming against the hard bone of his teeth under the force of her balled up hand.

'What the hell? Why am I doing this?'

Han Su-yeong most likely would have asked herself these things if she had any more time to think before her punch had landed.

She got her answer, though. Despite never asking her question, that reason she was looking for became clear as the man staggered off his balance.

He made a futile attempt to right himself before being knocked to the ground. The phone that he had been holding so close to his face clattering screen-side up onto the concrete of the subway floor.

That was when she saw it.

She only had to read a snippet of the words on that phone screen to come up with an explanation for her own actions at that very moment.

[There are three ways to survive in a ruined world. Now, I have forgotten a few, but one thing is certain. The fact that you who are reading this now will survive.

-Three ways to survive in a ruined world

Author’s words: Thank you so much for reading ‘Ways of Survival’ up to here. I will come back to you with an epilogue!]

'Ways of Survival.' 'Three ways to survive in a ruined world.'

...

Yes, there was no doubt that this guy sat on the subway floor rubbing at his cheek deserved it.

Some latent evil of the world must be working to Han Su-yeong's advantage, because none of the commuter passing by spared her a second glance as she sorted out her own motives. They simply dodged around her and the man she had assaulted moments ago.

If Han Su-yeong had to write some train of thought into their actions, she might imagine these negligent bystanders saw something like an overly dramatic lover's spat. Something personal that they ought not get involved in.

Were it not for the pervasiveness of such a cliche recurrent in physical altercations between men and women, maybe they would see it for what it was. A question of honor between authors.

Because Han Su-yeong was certain that was who this man was. An author who was so shitty that he had created an alt to try and hype up his terrible novel.

That was right... It was years ago now, but Han Su-yeong remembered that unsubstantiated accusation of plagiarism on her first published webnovel, SSSSS-grade Infinite Regressor.

This shitty guy had made an alt account that was so obvious... it was something 'Dok-ja,' like he wasn't even trying to pretend he didn't make it just to pretend to 'read' his own webnovel...

If that didn't prove it, then it was also clear from the comments that he had left on every single chapter. When she was reading them, Han Su-yeong had known that if she were such a bad author that she would have to have just one reader, the words that he wrote represented that perfect amount of reader to author engagement that she would have desired.

But that sort of relationship... it was unrealistic. Han Su-yeong had been an author for something like 13 years now, and she had never had such a relationship in her entire career.

So it was obvious that a reader like that could only be written by an author with those same desires that she held.

And then he even had the nerve to wander out of his self contained fantasy, accusing her superior work of plagiarizing his shitty one just to draw in more views and commenters.

So of course he had a lot of nerve to be rereading his own damn author's note right where she could see hi-

"Can I help you?"

Han Su-yeong felt all of the hot air she had been blowing herself up with to justify her current situation deflate upon hearing that voice of his.

The man she'd injured looked up at her with hollow black eyes. Eyes that perhaps had only seemed bright while being illuminated by a screen.

His voice was mild, too. As if getting punched in the face were something that was merely tiresome to him, instead of something to stir anger or indignity. The reactions that Han Su-yeong had been mentally preparing herself to butt heads with.

Nothing about his reaction seemed to ask Han Su-yeong for her motives. There was no race to find an explanation behind those hollow eyes. No bit lip, straining to come up with a turn of phrase to become an appropriately biting retort.

This guy wasn't an author.

...

Hey...

Why had she punched this guy again?

"Sorry." Han Su-yeong found herself saying, as her body deflated, extended arm going back to her side. "From the behind, you looked like my shitty ex."

She let herself fall into the cliche.

"Ah. I see."

Han Su-yeong hated the guy's expression, just then.

It was one that said, 'Well isn't that just my luck?'

But she couldn't help but watch, as this unlucky guy stood up and picked up his phone, brushing it off instead of himself, as if it were more precious to him than his own body.

And when that Dok-ja turned around, Han Su-yeong only saw his back for a second, before the sight of him was once more swallowed up by the uncaring world of the subway station crowd.