Chapter Text
Fire was everywhere. Heat tore against his skin as flames climbed into the night sky, swallowing everything in violent shades of red and orange. People shouted while alarms blared from every direction, and flames crackled beneath the deafening roar of aircraft engines powering up.
Hands grabbed, dragging him toward the cabin no matter how hard he fought. Keeping him alive, saving him, but he didn’t care. Jeongguk didn’t care.“LET GO!” His voice cracked raw as he struggled against them with everything he had. “LET ME GO! MAJOR KIM IS STILL IN THERE!”
He twisted violently, clawing at the arms restraining him. “HYUNG! HYUNG’S STILL IN THERE! WAIT—WAIT!”
But they only held on tighter.
“Get him inside!”
“Close the hatch!”
“We have to go, now!”
“No—NO!!”
He was shoved into the aircraft, dragged farther away from the burning base while the fire reflected wildly against the metal walls. Then the hatch slammed shut.
The first explosion hit, shaking the entire aircraft violently as the engines roared louder. Jeongguk threw himself at the closed door once, twice, again hard enough to hurt.
“HYUNG! HYUNG!!”
The aircraft lifted off.
“NO! NO!!”
The second explosion came. A blinding burst of white-orange light swallowed everything below them. The windows rattled from the shockwave, metal groaning around them as the aircraft climbed higher into the sky.
Jeongguk froze. His eyes stayed locked on the burning ruins beneath them. There, in the middle of the fire, someone was still standing. Parts of his uniform burned, flames spreading across torn fabric, but he didn’t move. Around him, the base collapsed piece by piece, swallowed by smoke and destruction, yet he stood there as if none of it mattered anymore.
Then he looked up, and somehow, through all the fire and smoke, his eyes found Jeongguk.
For one terrible second, the world fell completely silent, leaving only the sight of him standing in the middle of the flames.
He didn’t say anything. He only looked at Jeongguk with the same steady gaze he always had. A small smile appeared on his face, gentle and familiar, the one Jeongguk saw whenever he returned injured, whenever he heard “good job”, whenever Major Kim told him everything would be okay.
Major Kim lifted one hand.
Jeongguk stopped breathing.
The third explosion came.
“HYUNG!!!”
And light swallowed everything.
Drip. Drip.
One drop, then another. Seokjin looked up, only then realizing he’d been crying.
The tablet resting on his lap glowed faintly, Major Kim’s final scene still frozen on the screen. Even now, Jeongguk’s desperate voice lingered in his head as the explosions swallowed everything in light and fire.
His chest tightened. A short, hollow laugh escaped him, almost embarrassed by how emotional he’d gotten over a fictional character.
At first, Seokjin had never planned on reading the novel at all, even though everyone on the forums seemed obsessed with it.
Romance had never really been his thing, and he’d had absolutely no idea what “omegaverse” even meant. Still, the tags caught his attention, interstellar, military, sci-fi. Those, at least, sounded interesting. Then one of his friends mentioned that one of the characters shared his exact name, Kim Seokjin, and insisted it wasn’t “just another romance novel”.
So, he gave in and read it.
Against all expectations, he ended up loving it.
Beyond the Stars was an interstellar sci-fi novel that followed the journey of an S-Class omega named Jeon Jeongguk on his rise to becoming the galaxy’s hero. Set in a distant future where humanity had long spread across countless planets and powerful empires stood locked in endless conflict, the story wove together war, politics, conspiracies, and mystery into a vast military world that felt almost painfully real.
Even after eventually presenting as an S-Class omega, Jeongguk’s pheromone gland, damaged since birth, made the title practically meaningless. He couldn’t function as an omega the way society expected him to. To most people, he was little more than a failure. A defective omega. A cracked gem that had lost its value before it ever had the chance to shine. Yet, it was from that very lowest point that his story began.
What made Beyond the Stars so popular wasn’t just the premise, but the characters themselves. Every single person in the story felt painfully human. No one was completely good or completely evil. Everyone carried their own ambitions, regrets, fears, and selfishness. The story was filled with betrayals, conspiracies, devastating losses, and partings that left readers staring at their screens in silence long after finishing a chapter. One moment, it could make people laugh, the next, it would completely break them.
There was romance too, of course, between the protagonist and the alpha male lead, but it was never truly the center of the story. At its heart, Beyond the Stars was a story about survival, struggle, and refusing to accept the fate the world had already chosen for you. It followed an omega who clawed his way up from the very bottom until his name became one remembered across the galaxy.
So it was hardly surprising that the novel had stayed at the top of the rankings for months and become one of the internet’s biggest obsessions.
Jeon Jeongguk, the omega protagonist. Seokjin liked him a lot.
It wasn’t simply because he was kind, though he was. Nor was it because he was sweet. What Seokjin liked most was that Jeongguk wasn’t naive. The world had been cruel to him over and over again, yet he still chose kindness anyway. He knew when to trust someone and when to pull a knife on them. He could pity his enemies without ever allowing that pity to become weakness. Jeon Jeongguk was the kind of protagonist who made people want to follow his story all the way to the end, including Kim Seokjin.
Unfortunately, Seokjin was only a third of the way through the novel when he learned that the supporting character who happened to share his exact name—a beta officer, mentor, and one of Jeongguk’s closest confidants—died halfway through the story. Somehow, Seokjin had ended up crying over it.
It felt strange. Almost like the person who had died on those pages was himself.
With a quiet sigh, Seokjin turned off the tablet screen and leaned back against the headboard. He needed a moment to recover before continuing, though he had no intention of stopping. There was still Jeon Jeongguk, after all, and more than anything, Seokjin wanted to see how his story would end.
Besides, the tags clearly promised a happy ending. As long as things turned out okay in the end, Seokjin could survive any amount of suffering along the way. Betrayal, death, tragedy, he could handle all of it. As a reader, he only needed reassurance that everything would eventually be okay.
His stomach growled. Seokjin blinked, only then realizing he hadn’t eaten anything since morning.
Right. He still needed food. Groaning, he pushed himself out of bed and headed for the kitchen, still sluggish after spending almost the entire day lying around reading.
He opened one cabinet. Empty.
Another one. Still empty.
Seokjin stared silently for a few seconds before checking the refrigerator instead. No eggs, no meat, even the milk carton sitting on the shelf was completely empty.
In other words, his kitchen had officially become tragic.
Seokjin frowned at himself. He could order delivery, technically, but when he glanced outside the apartment window, rain was pouring down hard enough to blur the entire city gray. Finding a driver in weather like this would probably take forever.
His eyes drifted toward the clock on the wall. 1:03 PM. “…Fine.”
Resigned, Seokjin went back to his room, grabbed his wallet and car keys, then headed out wearing the same oversized shirt and sweatpants he had thrown on earlier.
A few minutes later, his car was moving through the steadily worsening rain.
The roads were quieter than usual, though that wasn’t surprising in weather like this. Most people were probably staying indoors unless they absolutely had somewhere to be. Or they were like him, too hungry to wait any longer.
The windshield wipers moved back and forth, barely keeping up with the rain crashing against the glass.
Seokjin turned on the radio. A burst of loud music filled the car. He turned it off again. Too noisy.
The traffic light ahead shifted red, he slowed to a stop. Rainwater streamed down the windows in uneven trails, blurring the city into streaks of light and shadow. For some reason, his thoughts drifted back to the novel again. To Jeon Jeongguk. To Major Kim’s death.
Seokjin pressed his lips together. It was ridiculous, they were fictional characters, lines of text on a screen, but his chest still felt heavy thinking about it. Maybe reading too many tragedies didn’t actually make people immune after all.
The light turned green. Seokjin stepped on the gas and the car moved forward once more. A few minutes later, a convenience store finally came into view on the other side of the road. He turned the wheel. And everything happened at once.
A horn blared violently. Bright headlights flashed from the side. Seokjin turned—and saw a massive truck speeding straight toward him through a red light.
His eyes widened. Instinct kicked in, he yanked the steering wheel hard. Too late.
CRASH!
The impact tore through the car with a deafening sound. Metal twisted violently. Glass shattered everywhere. Something slammed hard against his side, pain exploding through his entire body as the world spun out of control. Then silence.
For a moment, Seokjin could only hear the rain. Drip. Drip. Drip. Warmth trickled slowly down the side of his face. His vision blurred. Consciousness slipped further and further away, heavy and distant, like sinking beneath deep water, and strangely enough, in what might have been the final moment of his life, only one thought crossed his mind.
…I didn’t even finish the novel.
That was kind of unfortunate.
Darkness swallowed everything. The sound of rain faded away.
And then there was nothing.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
That was the first thing Seokjin heard. A steady mechanical sound cutting through the darkness. His body felt unbearably heavy, even opening his eyes seemed impossible. Somewhere nearby, voices moved in and out of focus, distant and muffled, until one suddenly came through clearly.
A boy’s voice, young, panicked. “M-Major…?” A sharp inhale. “Y-You’re awake?! W-Wait! I’ll call the doctor!”
Hurried footsteps echoed through the room, followed by the door swinging open and slamming shut.
Seokjin frowned, pain pulsed through his head. Slowly, with effort, he forced his eyes open. Light flooded his vision immediately.
White ceiling. Bright lights. The rhythmic sound of the monitor beside him. Beep. Beep. Beep. His gaze shifted sluggishly around the room. A hospital bed. Medical equipment. The faint scent of antiseptic lingering in the air. A hospital?
Relief almost came first. …So I survived.
But before he could gather his thoughts, the door opened again. A doctor and a nurse hurried inside, followed by two other people. The first was a tall man wearing a black-and-blue military uniform. Beside him stood the teenage boy from earlier, looking shaken.
The doctor approached the bed. "Major Kim, can you hear me? If you can, please nod once."
Questions crowded Seokjin’s head. Major Kim? Who? But his throat felt dry and tight. In the end, he could only manage a small nod.
Relief crossed the doctor's face. "Good. Very good." He turned toward the nurse beside him. "Check his blood pressure again."
The nurse moved to follow the order, while the man in military uniform behind her remained silent, though the tension left his shoulders all at once
The doctor looked back at him. "Do you remember your name?"
Seokjin parted his lips, voice came out rough and weak. "...Kim... Seokjin."
"Good. And do you remember what happened?"
The accident. The rain. The truck. "...I was in a car accident."
Silence. The doctor blinked. The man in uniform frowned. Even the teenager standing near the door looked confused.
"A car accident?" the doctor repeated carefully.
Seokjin gave a weak nod. "Yeah... a truck ran the red light…."
The atmosphere in the room shifted, something about the silence felt wrong. The doctor and nurse exchanged a quick glance. After a brief hesitation, the doctor cleared his throat, he said cautiously, “Major Kim, you were not involved in a car accident.”
Seokjin stared at him. "...What?"
"You collapsed during a training session three days ago."
Silence.
"...What?"
"And you're currently in the Central Military Hospital of Erion."
Seokjin’s mind went blank at the word “Erion”, gaze shifted from the doctor to the man standing behind him. Without meaning to, his eyes landed on the name tag neatly pinned to the man's chest: KIM NAMJOON.
His heartbeat stuttered. That name felt familiar.
Seokjin's gaze shifted to the teenager who had run to get the doctor. A name tag rested against his uniform too. KIM TAEHYUNG.
Thump.
Cold ran down Seokjin’s spine.
Erion. Kim Namjoon. Kim Taehyung.
The names felt far too familiar, as if they had been tucked away somewhere in the corner of his memory, but the harder he tried to remember, the more his head throbbed. Where have I heard them before?
Seokjin frowned. Suddenly—
Kim Namjoon stood before the Empire’s high council, his command badge hitting the floor with a sharp metallic sound. “If protecting civilians is considered treason, then I’ll gladly become a traitor.”
Seokjin’s breath caught.
Another memory surfaced before he could process the first.
Rain poured heavily over Kim Taehyung’s blood-soaked uniform as he let out a small laugh, exhaustion written all over his face. “The Major said I’m still too young to die… so I’ll try staying alive a little longer.”
Seokjin froze. A ridiculous possibility surfaced in his mind.
No. No way.
"Major?"
The voice made him look up. “Taehyung” had stepped closer to the bed now, concerned. “Do you really not remember anything?”
Seokjin stared at him properly for the first time. That face, too handsome to ignore. Sharp features softened by large almond-shaped eyes. A mole beneath his right eye, another near the tip of his nose. Dark hair falling messily across his forehead.
Just like the novel described him.
Seokjin turned toward "Kim Namjoon".
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Tanned skin. Thick brows and a strong jaw that made him look unshakable. Medals decorated his chest and sleeves. Even without the uniform, anyone would have guessed he was a soldier.
Even Namjoon looked identical to how Seokjin remembered.
Seokjin’s blood ran cold.
Kim Taehyung.
Third-year cadet. One of Major Kim's students.
Kim Namjoon.
Colonel of Erion. Major Kim's superior.
Supporting characters from Beyond the Stars.
The color slowly drained from Seokjin’s face. No, this couldn’t be real. …Could it?
As if the universe decided things still weren’t insane enough, a translucent blue screen suddenly appeared in front of him.
[System97]: Congratulations, Kim Seokjin! You have been selected to participate in the Interworld Travel Program.
Destination: Beyond the Stars.
Character: Kim Seokjin.
Role: Jeon Jeongguk's Mentor.
(Main Mission: Guide Jeon Jeongguk to the story's ending according to the original plot)
(Bonus Mission: Collect 7,000 points and change your destined death)
(Warning: Death in this world is permanent. Please prioritize your safety)
[System97]: Good luck! ^^
Seokjin’s gaze moved from the doctor, to Kim Namjoon, back to the floating screen again.
His mind went completely blank.
...You've got to be kidding me.