WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈

Chapter 641: Episode 17: SSS-Grade Talent (1)

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Kim Dokja's silent profile felt unfamiliar. Had Kim Dokja ever seemed as distant as he did now?

Kim Dokja.

A man who toyed with his enemies with overwhelming knowledge, always sacrificing himself to protect his companions.

He had gathered five fables and become a star in that sky, collected all the Great Fables of introduction, development, twist, and conclusion, and seen the end of the Scenario.

A man who chose Eternity to protect the world and became the Oldest Dream.

He was speaking.

「Can you dream whenever you want to?」

For a moment, I was speechless.

Was there anyone who could dream whenever they wanted to?

When I shook my head, Dokja said,

「Neither can I.」

“An omniscient but powerless god.”

I remembered the words Dokja had once used to describe the young Oldest Dream.

「I'm not someone who dreams only the dreams I want to dream. I just dream every dream in the universe.」

After saying that, Dokja turned to look at the snowfield.

I was looking at the same landscape.

Then I became afraid.

Was Dokja really looking at the same landscape as me?

Was the Dokja before my eyes really the Dokja I remembered?

「You don't need to bear that burden.」

The words slipped out before I knew it.

「That's why Han Suyeong wrote the novel. So everyone could dream the dreams you dreamed. So she could free you from this Eternity.」

Dokja nodded readily.

「But I'm the only one looking at this ‘world’ right now.」

This world.

It surely meant the forty-first round of TWSA.

Dokja asked me,

「Do you think it would be better if this world disappeared?」

In the world of the Star Stream, unread fables disappear.

Like an Incarnation dying alone without receiving any star's gaze.

「I...」

It wasn't an easy question to answer.

Should a world destined for tragedy never have begun in the first place?

After thinking for a long time, I finally answered.

「If it were truly fiction, I wouldn't know. But this world really exists. If it's a world destined for destruction, a world with more sorrow than joy...」

「Would it be better if it didn't exist?」

I couldn't bring myself to nod.

Even if its end was tragic, that world surely held all kinds of joys and sorrows.

Someone might find their own happiness in that doomed world.

I knew. I knew that, too.

But there was something I had to say.

「Someone died. There was someone who died because of this story.」

Readers who had been outside the story had been swept into it. I still couldn't forget the faces of Jeong Jaewoo and Master Sergeant Jeong Munho as they were dying.

Dokja replied,

「But someone might have survived because of that story.」

It felt like cold water had been poured over my head.

Dokja, who said those words, was certainly one of those who had survived.

He had survived because he read the TWSA Suyeong had written.

「Even so, should this story never have begun?」

I couldn't say anything.

Anyone would have felt the same.

No one could tell a boy who had grown up through such misfortune, “You were the one who should have died.”

I thought of Suyeong from the 1,863rd round, who had written TWSA.

The Dokkaebi King had said the story would have begun even if she hadn't written it.

But he hadn't told her how that story would begin.

And Suyeong knew one story where Dokja could certainly survive.

She wrote it, Dokja read it, Junghyeok lived it, and the three of them met.

A world where the beginning, middle, and end interlocked. A circular universe where no one could tell which had existed first.

Before that chain of causes and effects, biting its own tail as though it were only natural, I didn't know where or how to judge right from wrong.

Could we even hold this universe at fault by the standards of insignificant humans? Were we really such great beings?

When I raised my head, I saw Dokja's face.

「Some stories are sad, and some are fun. There are stories that break your heart, and stories where you can't bear not knowing what happens in the next chapter.」

There was a story in that distant sky that only he could see, and Dokja gazed up at it endlessly.

「Are sad stories bad, and happy stories good? What about stories that are sad and happy? Does a story with a predetermined destruction have no meaning?」

I listened to him blankly.

「Would a universe born as a tragedy from the very beginning be better off not existing? If any story unfolds for a very long time...」

Only then did I begin to understand what Dokja was saying.

「From a human perspective, it would only end in tragedy.」

Perhaps it wasn't a story unique to the Star Stream.

The universe I had lived in was the same.

No one in the world knew the universe's beginning or end. Even in a world without Scenarios, people suffered. They died from war and famine, hated and killed one another. They rejoiced and grieved, finding hope even as they despaired.

And everyone faced their own destruction.

What made that universe any different from this one? Who could be blamed for the crime of the universe beginning, and how? Was it even possible to ask such a question?

As if answering me, Dokja said,

「We're all within destruction. Life and death are only stories within it. Like starlight that shines for a moment in the distant universe.」

I knew what he meant.

But I was too ordinary a human being to accept those words.

I was afraid of death. I hated sadness. I was terrified of someone disappearing. That was why I wanted to run away.

From the destruction to come. From the fact that neither this universe nor the Star Stream, nor anything else, would last forever.

「There are no stories that never end.」

Unlike me, Dokja had accepted that fact. He understood it.

To him, the world was only a story.

Only a story.

All those happy and sad things were merely stories to him.

He had read stories and was still reading them. That was how he existed.

Probably for far longer than I could ever imagine.

「Are you... really the Dokja I know?」

Perhaps I wanted Dokja to lie.

I wanted him to remain the protagonist of this story.

I wanted him to grin as he always did and say he would somehow solve everything.

I wanted him to tell me that we should see the end of this Scenario together.

「If that's what you think.」

My stomach churned. Was it from the dizziness?

Dokja, who had stood in the snowfield in such a clear form, somehow looked hazy.

It felt as though the darkness that had sunk deep within my mind was rustling.

I staggered as I asked,

「Why did I come here? Why did the other Readers come here? What was it for?」

Dokja didn't answer.

He only gazed at me with the same sad smile he had worn when I first saw him.

I couldn't explain it clearly, but the moment I saw that smile, I knew.

The question I had just asked was one Dokja couldn't answer.

「You can't tell me?」

There could have been many reasons. It might have been because of Plausibility, or because of this zone's special nature.

This ‘snowfield’ had been strange from the beginning.

Whenever I came here, I felt as though I had entered a fairy tale.

A fairy tale had its own way of speaking, and I often found myself speaking like a character in one.

A world where exact stories couldn't be exchanged. A place where everything existed as metaphor and symbol.

I remembered that the ‘snowfield’ was a metaphor for the space between the lines.

A place where nothing was written, yet all truth was revealed.

「Every story I know is a story you know, too.」

「...The you standing before me isn't really you, is it?」

Dokja smiled without a word.

Thinking about it, it made no sense.

Dokja was the Oldest Dream, and he had scattered into fragments of the universe.

Even if he had returned, there was no way I could properly speak with such a great Status.

So Dokja was meeting me through a workaround.

He answered in an ambiguous voice.

「We make fables, but at the same time, fables are writing us. You'll learn the answer you seek once you complete your fable.」

「What answer did you find? You already read all of TWSA.」

「I've read all of it, and I haven't read all of it.」

I stared at him with my mouth open.

Every story had already been written, and was being written at the same time.

If that was Dokja's answer, perhaps I still had something I could say.

「Earlier, you asked me whether a story with predetermined destruction had no meaning.」

Dokja nodded.

Looking down at his feet, I said,

「I don't know the answer to your question. But I know at least one thing.」

ORV had recorded the tragedy of the forty-first round.

This world was destined to end in misfortune. It was said to be one of the most terrible worlds among Junghyeok's countless rounds.

「I'll stop this world's destruction.」

I thought of the Readers who had entered this world.

Uncle Dansu, Gyeong Se-in, Killer King, Literary Girl 64, Ye Hyunwoo, Gu Seona, and Kim Gyeongsik.

「I'll see this world's conclusion.」

I thought of Huiwon, who had lost her father, and Junghyeok, whose pain had worn away even through his terrible Regressions.

「No matter what, I'll struggle until the very end.」

I understood how Suyeong had felt when she had no choice but to write TWSA to save Dokja.

Perhaps my choice would bring about an even greater tragedy in the universe. Someone might blame me and point their finger at me. They would probably be right.

But I wasn't the Oldest Dream, so I couldn't worry about such a vast universe.

All I could see was the world before my eyes. The people I knew who were living in it.

The small, thread-thin happiness before me, on the verge of fading away.

「Inho Cheon.」

Dokja said,

「No, Hakhyun.」

I raised my head without thinking.

Dokja was there.

The person who loved stories more than anyone was speaking to me.

「Whatever happens, this time, tell a happy story.」

* * *

[You have exited Snowfield.]

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the sky above Seoul Station.

And a few things had changed.

[The Star Stream has noticed your existence.]

[Your □□ skill will be subject to Plausibility restrictions from now on.]

[Some functions of that skill will be sealed until your qualifications are met.]

.

.

.

[The Final Wall has recorded the disappearances you collected.]

[Current disappearances collected: 2]

[The Final Wall has acknowledged your contribution.]

[Your Exclusive Skill has evolved!]

[You will receive additional benefits whenever the number of disappearances you collect increases.]

.

.

.

[You have achieved an achievement that does not exist.]

[Your new fable has been created.]

I looked up at the night sky over Seoul Station.

As I watched the twinkling stars, I thought.

Perhaps that starlight had traveled from hundreds of millions of light-years away.

The brightest star among them might have disappeared long ago.

The brightest star right now might not yet be visible to me.

Starlight that definitely existed but had not yet been recorded in this sky.

As Dokja had said, perhaps this universe's conclusion had already been decided.

Even so, this story had only just begun, and I still had something I could say.

Therefore, I would write.

[The fable Recorder of Things That Will Disappear has been born.]

「This world hasn't been destroyed yet.」

After everything that had happened, I still liked stories.

Footnotes:

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