WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈

Chapter 679: Episode 22: Name (1)

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「One day, an Incarnation asked their Patron.

“Why do you have several modifiers when you are only one being?”

The Patron replied.

“Why do you think I am only one being?”」

* * *

She first began writing novels when she was around thirteen.

As with anyone else, it began much the same way. She happened to write something, won an award, and people praised her for writing well.

“Suyeong, what happens next?”

It was strange that someone was curious about a story she had written.

“You want to know?”

A universe the size of a notebook page. Within that small world made of neat, tiny letters, she was a god.

The characters lived or died, laughed or cried according to the sentences she wrote. The friends reading the story laughed along or burst into loud sobs.

The problem was that it happened during class.

“Suyeong.”

Her homeroom teacher called her over during break. Though young, Han Suyeong was quick to read the room. She understood what was happening and bowed her head first.

“I’m sorry.”

Her homeroom teacher nodded as if impressed by her, then handed back her notebook.

“Be careful during class.”

The teacher scratched his chin for a moment, as if he wanted to say something else.

Looking back, perhaps the young teacher had been mindful of a certain assemblyman who was Suyeong’s father.

“It wasn’t only your fault. The children who read it during class were at fault too.”

In any case, the young teacher proudly recited a passage from a book he had been reading.

“You know how they say a work belongs to its readers the moment it leaves the writer’s hands?”

That obvious, clichéd sentence sounded a little strange to thirteen-year-old Suyeong.

“Why?”

“Hmm?”

“I wrote it, so why does it belong to the readers?”

The teacher laughed at the bold, childish question.

Perhaps he wanted to leave his influence on a child who might become a writer someday. Without expecting her to understand, the young teacher added one more thing.

“Some works can only be completed when their writer dies.”

Some works could only be completed when their writer died.

Young Suyeong mulled over those words several times before asking again.

“Then what does the writer who completes a work have left?”

“Well, they can make money and gain fame.”

“Is that all?”

The young teacher felt flustered by Suyeong’s disappointed expression and racked his brain for a better answer.

But he could not find one.

Of course he could not. The words he had recited were not his own, either.

So the teacher hurriedly wrapped up the conversation.

“I don’t know. If you ever find out, will you tell your teacher too, Suyeong?”

The following year, the teacher transferred elsewhere, and Suyeong never saw him again.

It was not as if she kept writing just to give that teacher an answer, but she continued to write after that.

Perhaps she was simply lucky, but her writing became known to the world early on. Many people read her novels. They talked about them.

The characters truly were living in that world. By the time she came to her senses, Suyeong was inside that world too.

「What remains for a writer who has completed a work?」

Living in that world with her companions, laughing and crying, narrowly escaping death again and again, Suyeong felt as though she was gradually approaching the answer.

She even met someone who seemed to know it.

To bring that person back, Suyeong sat before a keyboard once more.

Yet she did not know what to write, or what should come to be in that blank space. It felt like she had returned to her childhood, when she first picked up a pen.

What did she have to write, and how, to bring that guy back?

As she sat there for a long time, clutching her head and thinking, someone came to see her.

“If you want to save Dokja, you must die.”

It was the Dokkaebi King of the 1,863rd round.

* * *

The Dokkaebi King came to see Suyeong, Yu Junghyeok, and a few companions of Kim Dokja Company right after they reached the conclusion of the story.

The end of 『Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint』.

The companions who entered Dokja’s hospital room faced two endings.

One was an ending where Dokja returned.

The other was an ending where Dokja failed to return.

Suyeong and the companions, who wanted to bring back every Dokja, could not accept the possibility that an ending where Dokja failed to return could exist.

But they also did not know what to do in the world After the Ending to bring Dokja back.

“You are all truly pathetic.”

When the Dokkaebi King muttered that after taking a long sip of Americano through a straw, Suyeong snapped.

“Who did you come here to mock?”

A colorless landscape that seemed molded from plaster. The two sat in a café assembled from a rough frame, drinking coffee and iced chocolate.

“Damn, this tastes like boiled newspaper.”

“Because it is a world no one has ever written, its taste has never been properly described either.”

The Dokkaebi King looked around idly.

It was not only the café. No matter where he looked, this world was not normal. It was full of scattered empty spaces, like childhood doodles in a notebook.

“Looks like even you had trouble imagining this world.”

“I naturally believed Dokja would return.”

As she said that, Suyeong examined the Dokkaebi King’s attire.

A white coat and a fedora pulled low over the face.

There was no doubt about it. This Dokkaebi King was the very Dokkaebi King who had been with Suyeong of the 1,863rd round.

“Why are you dressed like Dokja?”

“It was fashionable to dress this way in the worldline I recently visited.”

“I thought you were still on that subway.”

“My main body is there. But sometimes, I want to travel too.”

“What are you, some dragon? Come to think of it, you talk differently than you did back then.”

The Dokkaebi King lightly cleared his throat, cold eyes glinting.

【Sh all I sp eak like th is, Han Su yeong】

Suyeong threw her straw to the floor, downed her iced chocolate in one gulp, and slammed the cup onto the table.

“Hey.”

“Yes.”

“Where is Dokja?”

The Dokkaebi King mumbled as if troubled.

“There was something similar before.”

Suyeong remembered too.

There was no way she could forget.

The memories of the 1,865th round.

To bring back the Dokja they had lost, they had used Junghyeok’s power to attempt Group Regression.

“Are you planning to repeat that mistake?”

They had failed once then.

The one who had informed them of that failure was the Dokkaebi King before her eyes.

The Dokkaebi King who protected Dokja, who had become the Oldest Dream. The being who had served the young god for ages and become [The Fourth Wall].

“Do you think we have another choice?”

Suyeong said, tightly holding back her anger.

“The Dokja left behind in our worldline was dying.”

In a world where the system had disappeared, the 49% Kim Dokja created by [Avatar] was losing his power and dying.

To save either Dokja, the companions had no choice but to cross worldlines.

“Dokja did not want you to find him because watching your stories was his happiness.”

“Did Dokja tell you that himself?”

“······.”

“See? You don’t know either.”

“You speak as if you do.”

“I don’t. That’s why I’ll meet him and ask.”

“Do you truly believe you can meet him again? Why can you people not give up?”

Suyeong rummaged through her clothes and took out a Lemon Candy.

“Someone risked his life to save us.”

“Is that not common in the world of Scenarios?”

“He died for us, truly, over and over again.”

Suyeong still remembered every one of Dokja’s deaths.

She had never forgotten even one moment.

It was probably the same for everyone in Kim Dokja Company.

“You know Dokja comes back when he dies. But just because someone has the power of resurrection, how many people do you think can truly risk their lives for someone else? How many do you think can keep repeating something that insane their entire lives?”

Was a resurrected person really the same as the person before death?

After every cell that made up a body had died and the person was resurrected, were they not simply a copied being, like text repeatedly copied and pasted?

No one knew the answer.

Dokja probably did not know either. Even so, he willingly died for his companions. Then he came back to life.

“We were saved by someone like that. I watched him die right in front of me so many times. I remember that pain, that suffering, and his face smiling until the very end. I remember them clearly.”

“······.”

“After going through something like that, do you think it is possible to decide this is enough, that we have done all we can?”

The Dokkaebi King stared at Suyeong for a long time, then quietly sighed.

“Everything has already been written, and is being written at the same time.”

“Will you help?”

The Dokkaebi King flinched at Suyeong’s quiet question.

The Dokkaebi King was one of the few beings who could freely travel to other worldlines.

If he helped, perhaps Yu Sangah or Biyoo could track the traces of Dokja, who had vanished.

Unexpectedly, the Dokkaebi King nodded without resistance.

“As I said before, if you want to save Dokja, you must die.”

Suyeong frowned and asked, “You said that earlier too. What the hell are you talking about?”

After thinking for a moment, she added, “Is my death written in your Wall too?”

“The memory of meeting me now will be erased from the Wall.”

“Because it violates Plausibility?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t die. So relax and help me.”

The Dokkaebi King looked at her with sad eyes, then raised his gaze into the empty air.

“Your story will end soon.”

Snow was falling from the sky.

Pure white snow that covered the living and the dead, the written and the unwritten alike.

“What remains for you now, Han Suyeong?”

What did she have left?

Suyeong drew in a lungful of cold air and opened her mouth.

She tried to answer.

But no voice came out.

Along with the snow touching her cheek, her time froze too.

When she blinked, the Dokkaebi King was already gone.

It was not only the Dokkaebi King. The scenery around her, her arms, legs, torso, even the organs that let her speak had already vanished.

Ah.

The memories came flooding back too late.

The memory of finding the 41st round with the equipment the Dokkaebi King left behind.

The memory of meeting Yi Hakhyeon there, the reincarnation of 49% Kim Dokja.

The memory of her Incarnation body being damaged while fighting Asmodeus.

The memory of joining forces with Hakhyeon to defeat an Outer God.

Finally, the memory of her Incarnation body disappearing.

Was this a life flashing before her eyes?

An immense cold embraced her in the darkness.

Her soul was slowly disappearing from its edges. She could feel her life’s final period steadily approaching. No one had to tell her.

This death had already been recorded.

She could not avoid it with [Avatar] or anything else.

In the darkness, she felt the story she had written leaving her.

Suyeong recalled a sentence she had once written with her own hand.

「The moment a world is completed, the writer must step down from the position of creator.」

It was the fate of every work.

「For a reader to be born, the writer must die.」

Suyeong understood the Dokkaebi King’s words now.

She smiled as she fed her own flesh to the darkness of the black universe.

Somewhere in this universe, there was surely someone reading this story with her.

Then, if this can become the Plausibility for you to come back to life.

Soon, darkness like densely packed letters swept over her, and Suyeong’s soul vanished into the abyss.

* * *

Then, within that pitch-black darkness, the man who had once been the protagonist of this story realized she had died.

“Han Suyeong?”

Yu Junghyeok muttered as he looked beneath the Void Curtain.

It was strange.

He had clearly sensed Suyeong’s fable until a moment ago, but now he could not sense anything.

It was as if every fable about her had been erased from this world.

What that meant was obvious, but Junghyeok could not accept it.

Just as Suyeong knew Junghyeok well, he knew Suyeong well too.

There was no way Suyeong would die like this.

But Junghyeok’s companion, who did not know Suyeong well, apparently did not think so.

“It is time to head back.”

The man fending off the Hounds Chasing the Abyss with repeated thrusts spoke.

“I don’t care, but if we keep hanging around here, this whole area will get caught up in it.”

A violent storm of sparks raged around them.

For the safety of Earth in the 41st round, and for their own safety, they had to leave soon.

Junghyeok thought so too.

That was, until a small ray of light passed beneath the Void Curtain.

“Hey.”

Meteors flying in sporadically from the distant universe passed them and fell beneath the Void Curtain.

“Yu Jung-”

Before the man could finish, Junghyeok’s figure moved like a flash and crashed into the Void Curtain.

The Curtain that allowed meteorites through did not allow Junghyeok through. The moment he touched it, a terrible electric shock surged through him and shook his entire body.

Even as his flesh burned black, Junghyeok reached for the Curtain, as if something he had been searching for all along was beneath it.

“Is he insane?”

In the end, the man stepped in and dragged Junghyeok, who was being roasted alive, back.

Even while being dragged away by the man, Junghyeok did not take his eyes off the Curtain.

“It was there.”

“What?”

He had seen it for only an instant.

The faint ray of light that appeared just as Suyeong’s fable vanished, then disappeared moments later.

He did not know why that light had shone there.

But Junghyeok recognized it.

Because it was the light of the star that had watched over his back for a very long time.

“Kim Dokja.”

Dokja was beneath that Curtain now.

Footnotes:

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