Chapter Text
Kim Rok Soo—no, Cale Henituse—lay stiffly in an unfamiliar bed, staring at the canopy above him as though it might offer an explanation.
It didn’t.
Silk sheets clung to his fingers. His body felt wrong—lighter, younger, sturdier in places that had long since learned how to ache. This wasn’t a dream; Kim Rok Soo had learned the hard way what dreams felt like.
This was real.
That realization sent a cold panic twisting through his gut.
He had survived assassins, monsters, collapsing buildings, and the slow suffocating grief of watching the people he loved die in front of him—and yet nothing had prepared him for opening his eyes in someone else’s body.
No god, devil, or cosmic entity had asked for his permission.
He had simply gone to sleep… and woken up as Cale Henituse.
“I didn’t even die,” he whispered.
That terrified him the most.
The holographic phone flickered into existence without his conscious call, hovering just above his palm like it always did.
Years ago—before this, before any of this—when Lee Soo Hyuk and Choi Jung Soo had died protecting him, grief had torn something open inside his soul.
That was when [Message] appeared.
Not a gift from the heavens.
Not a blessing.
Just a thread that refused to be cut.
He had never questioned why it followed him through worlds. But this had brought him comfort every time he sees it, even though the user interface was iMessage, but hey. Beggars can't be choosers he supposed.
DING!
He conjured the holographic phone once more when he had heard of the familiar notification sound.
Cale could only fondly sigh at them. It was nice to know that despite the distance—despite death itself—there was still affection between them.
The feeling was… grounding.
He let his head sink back into the pillows, crimson hair spreading out beneath him like spilled wine. The panic that had gripped him earlier hadn’t vanished, but it had dulled, filed down into something manageable. A tight knot instead of a choking grip.
They were still there.
Even if the world had changed, even if his body wasn’t his own, even if everything familiar had been stripped away without warning—
Lee Soo Hyuk and Choi Jung Soo still answered his messages.
Cale lifted a hand, staring at it as if seeing it for the first time. Pale fingers, long and unscarred, nails neat and untouched by callouses earned through years of survival. This body hadn’t known the recoil of a gun, the bite of a blade held too long, the ache of exhaustion after clearing dungeons back-to-back.
This body belonged to someone else.
OG Cale, he thought, recalling Jung Soo’s message. Even though Jung Soo had used a slang, he could very well understand it. Original Cale Henituse. He made a deal with the God of Death. Regression, then transmigration. Meaning, something had went wrong with the previous timeline, and that idiot God was basically putting him here as a part of their deal.
“So I really am just… filling in,” he murmured. A substitute. A replacement. A solution to a problem he hadn’t created.
The thought should have made him angry.
Instead, it made him tired.
A soft vibration rippled through his consciousness—not a notification, but the faint reassurance that [Message] was still there, quietly existing, like a heartbeat. It didn’t demand attention. It simply reminded him he wasn’t alone.
“…Thank you,” he said, not sure who he was thanking.
Fate, maybe.
Or the part of himself that had refused to let go, even after death.
His gaze drifted toward the window. Beyond it lay a world he only knew through words on a page—a story filled with tragedy, sacrifice, and far too many people who didn’t get happy endings.
Birth of a Hero.
Once, it had just been a novel.
Now, it was his reality.
“And I don’t even get an instruction manual,” Cale muttered dryly. “Was the novel even supposed to be the instruction manual? It was somewhat shitty.”
Somewhere beyond life and death, Soo Hyuk was probably rolling his eyes, while Jung Soo was gearing up for round two with a god.
The thought pulled a quiet huff of laughter from his chest.
For now, panicking wouldn’t change anything. Screaming wouldn’t send him home. And collapsing under the weight of “why me” had never been his style to begin with.
He’d survived worse.
He’d survive this too.
Cale closed his eyes, letting exhaustion finally seep into his bones—not the bone-deep fatigue of battle, but the fragile, trembling kind that came after shock.
“Just… give me a little time,” he whispered. “I’ll figure it out.”
The world didn’t answer.
But his phone buzzed faintly, warm and familiar, and that was enough.