Chapter 265 - Side Story. “Revision” (3)
Chapter 265: Side Story. “Revision” (3)
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Every writer experiences moments of joy.
Moments when the pain of creation vanishes in an instant, and sentences pour forth as if they have been touched by divine inspiration. An experience of surrendering to some immense current, unable to tell whether I am writing the words or the words are writing me.
Just as running has “runner’s high,” every novelist experiences something similar at least once.
That was exactly what Jaehwan was going through now.
He was certain he had fallen asleep at his desk while writing, yet when he opened his eyes, an entire piece had somehow been completed.
「Episode 16. Metaverse.」
At first, he thought someone else might have written it for him. Yet judging by the vocabulary, sentence structure, and rough flow, it seemed he had written it himself after all.
It happened to be the section where he had been completely stuck, the part where he needed to use the material he had been commissioned to include.
The tower he had entered at the entrance to the 《Abyss》, Metaverse.
I did climb that tower back then.
As Jaehwan read through the cluttered sentences, old memories returned to him. He had not bothered to describe it in the first draft, but it was true that he had entered a tower called Metaverse at the entrance to the 《Abyss》.
Still, towers had appeared too often in the story, and he did not clearly remember the people he had met there or the stage itself, so he had omitted it.
I don’t know if an item like this really came out, though.
「Demon King of Salvation Kim Dokja Skin」
Even now, he did not remember much about what had happened at the entrance to the 《Abyss》. It had been right after he endured training through excessive time density in 《Chaos》. He had also spent two years wandering the passage to the 《Abyss》 after getting caught in Yu Seolha’s scheme, so he had hardly been in his right mind.
Jaehwan swallowed dryly and revised the sentences one at a time.
When he wrote about the dumplings Manri Shintong used to make for him, he suddenly became hungry and went to a convenience store to buy frozen king-sized dumplings. Chewing through the thick, dry wrappers, Jaehwan repeatedly erased and rewrote his sentences.
Well, this should be fine.
He had indirectly mentioned the material tls123 wanted him to include, so he had kept his promise with this alone.
Truthfully, he still did not understand it.
Who was tls123, and why had they made such a proposal?
And why had the author of the collaborative novel allowed this kind of collaboration with their own work?
He did not know.
All he could do now was write and erase one line at a time.
Jaehwan immersed himself in old memories again.
* * *
A month passed, then another two months.
Yoonhwan, who was handling the editing, came by from time to time to make troublesome remarks.
“Jaehwan, wouldn’t it be better to cut things like this? This part is honestly a little too... outdated.”
Jaehwan agreed with him. Still, he felt wronged.
Setting the content aside, all of those events had truly happened to him.
Even so, he accepted Yoonhwan’s advice and omitted certain parts, changing the way some characters spoke.
As a result, Cheongheo became a far more mild-mannered old man than Jaehwan remembered. Jaehwan wondered what the old man would say if he ever read this story. Then again, he probably would not believe Jaehwan was writing a novel in the first place.
“Jaehwan, let’s do this right. Who knows? It could even become a webtoon.”
“Have you even read my novel?”
Jaehwan glared at Yoonhwan as if telling him not to say such absurd things.
Some stories could become webtoons, and some could not. Jaehwan’s novel clearly belonged to the latter.
After all, Jaehwan had spent much of the 《Abyss》 arc nearly naked.
Yoonhwan said teasingly, “You never know what’ll happen, idiot. Who knows? Maybe in another universe, it’s already been adapted into a webtoon.”
Jaehwan imagined himself drawn as a webtoon character.
Naturally, he could not picture it very well.
Another month passed, and at last, the revised edition was complete.
* * *
That day, Jaehwan went out for the first time in a while. His destination was a bookstore.
“Sometimes, you need to get some fresh air to find good ideas. Jaehwan-gun, if you stare at a single story for too long, your mind will dull.”
If Teacher had not said that, he probably would not have gone outside.
The sky was clear, though clouds drifted through it. It truly was perfect weather for going out, just as Teacher had advised.
The day the 《Tower of Nightmares》 first appeared over Seoul had been weather like this too.
“To be honest, the sales aren’t very good. It’s an old novel, after all...”
As he listened to Yoonhwan’s call trying to comfort him, all Jaehwan could do was nod.
“Still, the reaction is not bad for an older work. You know the print version came out in bookstores today...”
Jaehwan roughly knew the situation.
His novel had never been close to current trends, and it was no longer first enough to be called a “strange novel.” The market had changed greatly since he first began writing fiction.
Now, not only were regression stories common, but anti-regression stories were common too. There were stories about rejecting regression, stories where everyone except the protagonist regressed, stories featuring regressors, body possessors, and Reincarnators all at once, stories about fighting regressors, and even stories where the protagonist became a Companion to the regressor they had fought moments earlier.
『Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint』.
Jaehwan looked at the cover of a web novel volume displayed on the shelf.
A man with an irritating-looking face was making a suitably dramatic expression on the cover.
After glaring at it for a while, Jaehwan felt as though he had once seen a man with a face similar to that cover in real life.
He put the book down and slowly looked around the bookstore.
The atmosphere was very different from when Jaehwan had first published web novels. Many of his friends who wrote literary fiction had entered this market, and researchers who no longer dismissed it as mere “snack culture” were writing serious papers about it.
Perhaps that was why so many newly published web novel volumes stood out on the shelves.
After looking around for some time, Jaehwan found his own novel at the edge of a display.
『The World After the Fall』.
He started toward it, then stopped without realizing it.
Someone was reading his novel.
It was a young girl with a short bob reaching her shoulders and clear eyes. She wore a mask, so he could not make out her face well. Even so, the moment Jaehwan saw her, he felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity.
It felt as though time had stopped very slowly.
The girl turned a page of the novel as if drawing back a thin curtain.
A part of his life was passing beneath her fingertips.
Her face changed with every page she turned.
She had a beauty mark near her eye like Mino. Yet after one page turned, she seemed to resemble Andersen for an instant. After another, she wore Sirwen’s expression. Or perhaps she did not resemble anyone at all.
The girl was serious. She was reading the ridiculous sentences he had written, his absurd life, with serious eyes. As though he truly lived on those pages. As though she believed that story certainly existed somewhere in this universe.
Jaehwan stood there for a long time, watching her.
How much time passed?
The girl suddenly seemed to remember something and checked the time on her smartphone. Then she left the book behind, called someone, and walked away.
Jaehwan looked at his book, left alone on the bookstore display.
A book still warm from someone reading it moments before.
The flap of the half-open book swayed helplessly. When the story no longer being read came to a stop there, Jaehwan’s time began moving again.
I guess it really won’t work.
He had known it, yet he could not help giving a bitter smile. Even knowing that what could not be helped could not be helped, accepting it was not easy. Still, it was time to truly accept it.
Jaehwan slowly took a deep breath and blinked. He told himself it was all right. He could start again. He could write sentences as if beginning Stabs again.
After all, the time left to him existed to prove his past life and the people who had certainly been there. They had lived there with him. They had fought the System with him and won in the end. Even if the System returned again, even if this universe shamelessly acted as though nothing had happened, even then...
Then Jaehwan saw something utterly unfamiliar.
The girl he thought had left had already returned to the display.
With a serious expression, she alternated between glaring at her wallet and the book, sighing once or twice. Then, as if making the greatest decision of her life, she grabbed the book and headed toward the register.
Jaehwan blankly watched her from behind.
If he could, he wanted to ask her.
Did that world truly exist?
He wanted to ask, even knowing it was a foolish question.
As he watched the girl carry away his life with light, fluttering steps, Jaehwan quietly realized something.
Perhaps he had written all those sentences until now just to experience this moment.
Still dazed, Jaehwan lowered his head. After hesitating for a moment, he bought a book.
『Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint』.
It was the book containing the material tls123 had asked him to write into his novel. He thought he should read it after all.
That was when the books on the display began shaking at once.
His vision swayed, then the floor rippled. People screamed and collapsed. Chilling alarms rang everywhere as emergency alerts arrived on their phones. Yet no one had time to read them.
People clung to the floor as if crawling, crying out.
“What...”
“Everyone evacuate! Quickly!”
People ran toward the exit all at once, while others, overcome with panic, hid beneath nearby tables. Yet this was not a disaster that could be avoided by hiding under a table.
Rumble.
The floor split apart in black cracks, and the ceiling began to collapse. People who failed to escape in time fell into the cracks and vanished without a trace. Falling steel beams twisted tables apart and crushed people’s arms and legs.
What was this?
Jaehwan hurriedly looked around.
In the distance, the girl holding his novel staggered.
The child was limping toward the exit, blood running down her shin as if she had injured her leg.
Among the people running while shoving one another aside, Jaehwan saw her fall.
Then.
Rumble.
With another violent tremor, concrete from the ceiling fell toward the girl. Jaehwan moved on instinct. He threw himself forward, wrapped the girl in his arms, and rolled across the floor as black dust rose around them.
For one instant, the screams in the chaos disappeared.
“Are you all right?”
The girl in his arms also seemed unconscious from the impact.
His arms and legs screamed as they bore the weight of the concrete with a cracking sound. His muscles swelled as though they would burst, and breathing became harder and harder.
He took out his smartphone and called 119. The call went through, but no one answered.
Countless thoughts ran through his mind in an instant. Too many people must have called. An ambulance would come. Someone would come to save them.
“...The earthquake that occurred in Gwanghwamun, Seoul...”
Jaehwan finally checked the emergency alert and shouted with all his strength.
“Is anyone there?”
No answer came from the pitch-black darkness.
It was as though every living thing had been wiped out by that single earthquake.
Could a disaster like this happen so suddenly?
Could the 《Tower of Nightmares》 have appeared?
Jaehwan held the girl close and endured the collapsing steel beams.
No, that was not it. Thinking about it...
He had only been lucky until now. The 「First Nightmare」 was a place where something like this could happen at any time.
Footnotes:
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