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Chapter 3148 uploaded at 7:00 PM as always today, and it ended with Yoo Joonghyuk successfully wading past the ‘Final Fog’ to see the Epilogue to all the stories beyond that white door.
Behind him, the clock ticked past midnight, the bed cold as he only sat still to read Yoo Joonghyuk’s final phase of the story. The room is dimly lit with a light bulb he hadn’t gotten around to replace for weeks, submerged as he is in 1863rd Yoo Joonghyuk’s story.
Kim Dokja looked at his own door. White. Unassuming. Ordinary.
He twisted the doorknob and was greeted with the quiet night sky of September. There were very few stars that he could see. Kim Dokja knew that it’s only due to light pollution, but he wondered if this might be what it would look like in 1863rd’s world after most of the constellations died in the Final Scenario.
‘Tomorrow is the last chapter,’ Kim Dokja recalled tls123’s announcement with a heavy heart.
He couldn’t sleep anyway.
He donned a coat, locked the door, slipped the key inside his pocket and walked in the middle of the night without a destination.
Kim Dokja knew that the buildings in Korea were standing tall and fine, but he was seeing them as trashed beyond belief by giant monsters. He knew that cars were busying the roads, but he saw them as empty and clogged with remains of car crashes. He knew that other pedestrians passing by were probably bar hopping or on their way home, but he imagined them holding swords and knives and spears, their skills at the ready by a hair trigger.
Actually the streets would be empty. Any incarnations still sponsored by constellations were probably just corpses stinking the road because their sponsors decided to oppose Yoo Joonghyuk, and the smarter ones would be in hiding, waiting for the Scenarios to end.
‘When Yoo Joonghyuk comes back to this sight,’ Kim Dokja stopped by a bench in the middle of the river bridge, ‘will he be happy?’
His sister was long dead. His Master. Lee Jihye, Shin Yoosung, Lee Hyunsung, Lee Seolhwa, Kim Namwoon, Han Donghoon. Yoo Joonghyuk walked through the last corridors of the Final Ark as Abyssal Black Flame Dragon fell first, followed by Demon-like Judge of Fire, and the Great Sage, Heaven’s Equal flickered out last.
The bridge was long, with only one lonely wooden bench nailed to mark the halfway journey. Kim Dokja could keep walking to the other side and ruminate more about the fact that Yoo Joonghyuk’s journey will end with him all alone. Or he could return to his house, get a couple hours of sleep, then wake up to spend the day re-reading his novel bit by bit through the tiny little pockets of time he could scourge up from his worklife.
Kim Dokja’s thumb pressed the power button of his phone, and he sat down to read the 1863rd turn again.
⋅˚₊‧ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅
There he was. A man who existed only as texts for a long, long time ever since that day she last saw him in the hospital's emergency ward.
⸢In the distance, Kim Dokja was reading on his phone.⸥
‘He’s not blurry,’ Han Sooyoung noted. ‘I can see him.’
That was the exact same face of Kim Dokja she remembered.
The man who came to her 1863rd regression turn. The man who she wanted to see again. The detestable man with his own brand of ass-kissing. The man who lied really easily. The man who she enjoyed being around, since they could lie about something together and snicker among themselves.
But if she called his name now, he wouldn’t act like that man. He was a Kim Dokja who doesn’t remember Han Sooyoung.
[Your Story is being consumed.]
If she were in her Avatar body, Han Sooyoung wondered if the cells of her body would be chipped bit by bit into tiny little letters that disappear into dust. As it is, she knew that she would simply cease to exist, merging in the vast subconsciousness of the Original come sunrise.
[Your existential Story is in a precarious state.]
The Star Stream’s warning fell along the void where she tends to banish inconsequential memories. Regardless of her actions, she would disappear today. If such is the case, then she would do what she always intended to do thirteen years ago.
Han Sooyoung wondered if he often spends time reading outside in the middle of the night. She wondered if he already tried to get his company to make TWSA into a game. She wondered whether his cooking skill improved from copying her descriptions of Yoo Joonghyuk’s cooking techniques. She wondered…
It’s easy to talk when she borrowed the mouths of characters as a writer, but now, sentences laid out and scattered and re-arranged themselves and scratched again and again in her head as Han Sooyoung wondered how she should even start a conversation.
So there she was, sitting on the same bench next to Kim Dokja at a polite distance, letting the time pass by and stars fall non-stop as ideas appeared and disappeared in her head while pages were swiped up and down on his phone. Here she was, frightened out of her mind knowing she would die from this one conversation, while the man stayed within his small world crafted out of letters and muttered the protagonist’s lines with little awareness. The very words she wrote carefully and in a frenzy yesterday flowed out of his lips. The sentences she poured on the document page like spilling ink haphazardly and the way they were arranged and re-arranged to make an art in the shape of Yoo Joonghyuk, and her sole reader noted every word.
Han Sooyoung’s eyes heated up in the dim light of the night. “You must love that story a lot.”
Like the god she was called by that dokkaebi every night, Han Sooyoung could see the moment she broke into the fictional world Kim Dokja treated as his reality.
⋅˚₊‧ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅
“Ah… ah…” Kim Dokja stuttered, realizing he’d been mumbling aloud unconsciously. He hadn’t really noticed there was another person occupying the bench. His cheeks heated up.
You must love that story a lot.
He dreaded the incoming question. It’s usually a variant of polite ‘what are you reading?’ that Kim Dokja despised. Because the world expected realistic non-fiction or bestseller titles for erudites, and ‘Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse’ would never make it past his throat.
Han Sooyoung knew. She felt the same at least that much, so she didn’t say anything like that. As she took in how she just destroyed his bubble of joy with his protagonist, Han Sooyoung finally picked out the sentences she wanted to say to bring back that little, inconsequential happiness. “What will you do when the story ends?”
Kim Dokja froze still, confused beyond words, and slightly wondered if mind readers were a real thing.
In the darkness, Han Sooyoung made a tiny smile on her pale face. “I… have a story that will end soon. My… readers expect it to be a lot longer, but I can’t,” she explained. “You strike me as a reader who cares for your story. I just wondered… as an author.”
For a little bit of time, Kim Dokja remained quiet. In this genre of realism, he hasn’t grown into the effortless eloquence and bastardry witticism she had known him for in the apocalyptic fantasy they had met the first time.
But when faced with any choice, Kim Dokja would always pick the Dokja’s way. He looked at this woman, an author who would end her own protagonist’s world.
– Are you… going to release another chapter tomorrow?
– Yes. A new chapter will be published tomorrow.
Tonight would be the last time he would hear from tls123 too.
She was a stranger who happened to cross paths with him. But… if the one in front of him was tls123, if it was his author who asked him that question… “I would read the story again,” Kim Dokja answered. He looked at the figure covered in the shadows of the night, unable to re-imagine it into the person that might be tls123 as he had no imagination of him. But if it’s him, if it’s the author asking him, that would be Kim Dokja’s honest answer.
He could do no less for Yoo Joonghyuk.
“You would?”
“Everyday.”
“Even if the story is unbearably long?”
“My story has more than 3,000 chapters.”
“They’ll miss you so much,” Han Sooyoung said, holding back from choking with how blurry her eyes just became. “Your author. I bet they’ll miss seeing your username in the comments.”
She laughed, loudly with unwarranted relief, even as the Star Stream constantly screamed out the deadline of her existence, because whether the story would commence or not tonight, Kim Dokja would continue to stay alive.
This is him.
When the Original would gain the [Avatar] skill and create her, ‘1863 Han Sooyoung’ would meet the Kim Dokja who had a Han Sooyoung of his own in the alternate timeline. But for now, he was not that Kim Dokja. This is her Kim Dokja.
“It’ll be sunrise soon,” Han Sooyoung said.
[Your mental state is crumbling!]
“I should go,” she said to her reader, even though it was the last thing she wanted.
‘When the Scenarios start,’ Han Sooyoung started to stand up and leave. ‘Will you even be happy?’
“Ah, I have to prepare to work too,” Kim Dokja moved the corner of his lips to pass off as a polite smile. “Goodbye, Author-nim.”
When he turned around, Han Sooyoung imagined a back covered with her white coat disappearing back to the “3rd” world-line. She hadn’t reached out.
She did this time.
And her hand met with an invisible wall.
And Han Sooyoung saw—
His personality had worn out after going through regression three times. The current Yoo Joonghyuk would never hesitate for the sake of his purpose. It wasn't good to provoke him here.
"What if I don't want to?” Kim Dokja said.
That’s—
Yoo Joonghyuk slowly opened his mouth, but Kim Dokja’s words were faster. "Ah, right. It would be better if you let me use the bathroom!”
– Of course, you aren't a good person. You are the unscrupulous person who kidnapped my sister.
"Kim Dokja! Are you going to just watch? Didn't you say you would catch him?"
“Ah, I meant I would deal the final blow."
"You bastard!”
“The name of our nebula is Kim Dokja's Company—"
"There isn't a name yet. In addition, we will gain the supporters now."
Kim Dokja wanted to say something nice but Yoo Joonghyuk opened his mouth first. "The messages were sent by this person.”
These are…
“Eat dirt, Yoo Joonghyuk.”
“...”
“Wha—hey! Why’d you go and actually eat dirt?? Open your mouth!”
Kim Dokja opened Ricardo’s lips, "Hyung." Immediately, Yoo Joonghyuk's expression crumpled into something unsightly. “Hey, it’s not like I want to call you that!”
This had to be some kind of a dream. To think, he was learning how to make dumplings from a dumpling while walking on the Dumpling Road.
[Constellation, 'Demon King of Salvation' is throwing a temper tantrum in the Constellation 'Secretive Plotter's' direction.]
Yup, Kim Dokja just needed to annoy him.
⸢"Yoo Joonghyuk, sit."⸥
"You son of a…"
⸢This isn't the time to think about that, you idiot!⸥
Yoo Joonghyuk then powerfully threw Kim Dokja forward, but also stepped onto his back, and they began scything past the storm as if he was surfing the waves. When they exited the worldview, Kim Dokja yelled, "I told you not to throw me!”
This bastard must've found stepping on his back rather unsanitary, because he began lightly dusting his combat boots.
‘These two morons…’ Han Sooyoung’s lips trembled, seeing what would be the future of her reader and the protagonist.
[It i s a sho rt while . B ut they w ill be happ y.]
[Your Story is being extinguished.]
Her tear-streaked face went unnoticed by her reader walking forward without looking back.
The past 13 years of her life existed solely to tell him these words.
⸢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.⸥
"----”
She couldn’t say anything more to her reader. But she could still leave a message to her Original.
⸢Go save ‘your’ Kim Dokja.⸥
⸢"I believe in 'you' of the 3rd turn."⸥
[Your ego will convert into the 'subconsciousness'.]