Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint - Chapter 754

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈

Chapter 754: Episode 32: King of the Beasts (1)

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「“When writing a story, I often get confused. Am I writing the story, or is the story using me to reveal itself? Anna, have you ever thought about that?”」

- Asuka Ren

* * *

It was the first time I had told the others my name. I had hesitated until now because I didn't want to make them feel uneasy for no reason.

Han Suyeong had actually written ORV, but in the worldline where I had lived, I was the one who wrote it.

And the readers before me had undergone Possession from that same worldline.

They couldn't help being shocked when they heard my name.

“Wait, that name.”

As expected, Gyeong Sein reacted first.

Uncle Dansu, standing beside them, also looked startled, as if he had realized something.

I thought perhaps Uncle Dansu wouldn't know, but they all...

“Which Hanja do you use?”

I was a little taken aback by Uncle Dansu's unexpected question.

“Hak, as in crane, and Hyeon, as in flying.”

I left out the “lightly” that came before “flying.”

Uncle Dansu nodded admiringly.

“That is a very elegant name. I can tell whoever gave it to you put a great deal of thought into it.”

“Wow, Uncle. You can judge names, too?”

“I studied naming when I named Jiyoon. Lee Hakhyeon. It is a good name.”

A good name?

No, wait. That wasn't the important part... Hadn't they noticed at all?

I had told them my name.

“Um...”

As if knowing what I was about to say, Gyeong Sein waved their hands.

“Ah. Don't worry. We'll keep calling you Kim Dokja.”

“No, that's not...”

“We have to call Hakhyeon Kim Dokja so the name Kim Dokja becomes famous! Then fables will form! And the Kim Dokjas, including the Demon King of Salvation, will be more likely to notice us!”

“Yes, that's true, but...”

“Don't worry. We'll definitely keep it up!”

I stared blankly at Gyeong Sein, then let out a small sigh.

Maybe this was for the best.

I didn't know whether they were pretending not to know or truly didn't know.

Come to think of it, it wasn't strange for them not to know my name. Ordinary readers remembered The Work they had read, but not necessarily the name of its author.

Then Killer King, standing opposite me, spoke.

“My name uses the characters for star and friend.”

“I don't know about naming theory, but it is a very cool name.”

“I named it myself.”

I looked over the faces of my companions one by one and found the only person whose expression had changed.

A face that had gone pale, unlike usual.

Seeing Chae Yerin avoid my gaze, I suddenly remembered.

Ah, right. Come to think of it, Yerin...

[It is time to enter the Twelve Zodiac Ball.]

[The Representative of Area 13, please designate Companion Marks for the companions who will enter with you.]

So it was finally time.

There were six of us in all, including Junghyeok and me.

I left one Companion Designation Mark on the back of each companion's hand.

The Mark looked strangely like someone's face, but no matter how I looked at it, it didn't resemble an animal.

Didn't it look a little like me?

The next moment, the sky split open, and an orbital elevator descended toward the ground. The elevator doors opened amid a small cloud of dust.

For some reason, however, the inside of the elevator was a little cramped.

[Only two people can board the orbital elevator at a time.]

[Board with one companion.]

Wait. Then what about the others?

[An additional orbital elevator will arrive shortly.]

Ah, so several elevators would come this way. It would have been easier to go together, but I didn't know why they were deliberately making us pair up.

Was it related to the next Scenario? Then again, they wouldn't impose such a restriction without a reason.

I looked at my companions.

It didn't matter whom I took, but it would be better if I took the most dangerous one with me.

Just as I was about to call out to Junghyeok, the boy who had opened the distant inn's door and emerged, Chae Seongwoo shoved someone toward me.

“Take this one first.”

* * *

A long time ago, I had participated in an event called “A Conversation with Readers.” It was held at a small bookstore in the provinces.

The event consisted of five or six writers, myself included, talking with around thirty readers.

Of course, none of the readers there had read my novel.

That was only natural. I had just made my debut in literary circles then. Though we were all writers, I was an unknown who had not published even one book, while the others were promising newcomers receiving some attention.

Readers raised their hands to ask questions, and the writers answered them.

There, I was neither a writer nor a reader. I was simply an audience member watching their stories.

As I watched the questions and answers pass between them, I think I briefly had a thought like this.

Would I ever receive questions like that?

Would I ever meet someone with deep eyes like theirs, someone curious about my story?

“Um.”

The scenery of Area 13 was growing more distant below the slowly ascending orbital elevator.

“Well. I'm not sure what to say.”

Chae Yerin stood beside me by the window. Perhaps because the elevator was narrow, the air inside felt strangely stifling.

Only then did I think that perhaps the writers receiving questions that day had not been enjoying themselves quite as much as they seemed.

Did Chae Yerin resent me for hiding the fact that I was a writer?

Still, from my perspective, it had been unavoidable. At the time, I couldn't trust Chae Yerin yet.

Even so, hadn't I revealed my identity too late? Shouldn't I have given her at least a small hint? If not...

“I'm sorry.”

Unexpectedly, Chae Yerin apologized first.

A little flustered, I waved my hands.

“My brother put you in an awkward situation for no reason.”

“No. I should have told you sooner...”

“My brother knows everything.”

It wasn't difficult to guess what she meant.

Killer King, Chae Seongwoo, likely knew that I was a writer, and that his younger sister liked the novels of an author named Lee Hakhyeon.

That was why he had pushed his sister into the orbital elevator.

“So much time has already passed.”

Chae Yerin's voice was deep, as if she were reflecting on the years gone by.

“It went by so quickly. Like the words ‘And several months passed’ had simply been written down.”

It was a very LiteraryGirl64 sort of metaphor.

I remembered the day I first met Chae Yerin. We had been inside the Dark Fold, fighting the Odok Association.

It was still a time when enemies and allies were unclear.

“It feels strange somehow.”

The beast people below the orbital elevator were growing distant. The Crane innkeeper, who had decided to support us, was waving. I could also see the leader of the bear beast people.

In a world where everything became a story, this moment would one day become a story as well.

We looked down at the companions who had shared that story with us. The others waiting for the orbital elevator were there. Chae Seongwoo, Noh Gyeonghwan, Sung Minwoo. And Junghyeok.

As we looked down at that scene together, Chae Yerin added,

“Just liking the same story is enough for us to become companions.”

“Fortunately, everyone is good people.”

“Author.”

“Yes.”

“I'll call you that only until the orbital elevator finishes ascending.”

“I understand. Is it all right if I call you Reader?”

Chae Yerin lowered her head slightly and looked at her feet. Then, her expression suddenly hardened.

“Our Possession. Was it your intention?”

“No.”

Using my authority as a Constellation, I searched for the stars watching us. Fortunately, no gazes were eavesdropping on the conversation inside the orbital elevator.

In other words, we could speak freely here without worrying about filtering.

“May I tell you a little about my situation?”

Chae Yerin nodded briefly, and I began.

I told her about receiving a strange note from the Kim Dokja Representative the day before my Possession.

About attending Kim Dokja's Banquet and meeting the Kim Dokja Representative.

And about suddenly undergoing Possession into this world when I came to.

“It's very similar to what happened to Dokja. Like someone made a parody of it.”

A parody.

I hadn't thought of it that way.

“How does it feel? Undergoing Possession into a story you wrote?”

“I should have written a more peaceful story. And made the protagonist die a little less.”

We smiled faintly at each other.

“Can we change the ending?”

“We will change it.”

By then, the scenery of Area 13 was no longer visible. Once the orbital elevator entered the space between floors, nothing but pitch-black darkness could be seen outside.

“The ending of the 41st round is already set.”

“No one has ever properly read the story of the 41st round.”

“Because it has never been read, we can fix it.”

“Yes. That is what I think.”

“It won't be easy.”

“It won't. But we have you, Yerin. And Seongwoo. We have the other companions too.”

The Scenarios ahead were different from the early Scenarios, when Incarnations merely fought one another.

“It is worth trying.”

What awaited us above were at least Historical Constellations.

We would compete against them in the Scenario.

“Please tell me you can write it well.”

I looked at Chae Yerin through the dim darkness.

Even she, who seemed calm throughout it all, must have been afraid. If I remembered correctly, she was only a girl in her late teens in reality.

“I'll do my best.”

“Say it again.”

“I'll do my best. Someone did read my dull debut novel to the end.”

“It wasn't dull.”

Even in the darkness, I felt as if I could see her serious expression.

“The Origin of Memory is my favorite novel.”

The Origin of Memory.

Hearing the title of my debut work after so long made my face grow hot. It felt as if I had been dragged back into that Conversation with Readers after several years.

“Why? Why do you like that novel?”

There probably weren't even fifty people in the entire Korean Peninsula who had read that novel. Most of them had likely forgotten even its title.

In a way, Chae Yerin before me was the only reader who remembered the novel written by Hakhyeon.

Chae Yerin spoke.

“Kim Dokja likes TWSA.”

“That is true.”

“And I like The Origin of Memory.”

I couldn't answer.

As if she understood my silence, Chae Yerin continued.

“The Origin of Memory is a story about a man searching for his own origin.”

For the first time in a while, I recalled the contents of that novel.

The protagonist of The Origin of Memory had no name. He had no parents either. So he made his own past. He designed his birth, his parents, his family, and every story connected to himself, then said that was who he was.

Yet no one could call that story a lie, because nobody knew his past.

Not even he himself did.

“I envied him.”

I thought of what kind of person Chae Yerin was. A child who had lost her parents from birth and been left at an orphanage.

The only people who remembered her history were Chae Yerin herself and her brother.

“I like the final scene. The part where the protagonist meets his younger self.”

In the final scene of The Origin of Memory, the protagonist met his younger self as though in a vision.

Honestly, I was surprised. I had forgotten that there had even been a scene like that. Before me was a reader who remembered my novel better than I did.

“Come to think of it, that novel has an ending similar to ORV.”

“I suppose it does.”

“And you are Kim Dokja.”

Chae Yerin's eyes were directed at me in the darkness. She was looking at me, but in a sense, she wasn't looking at me.

She was staring into the darkness between us, as if there were an important sentence the author had failed to write between its lines.

“An author is the first reader of their own novel.”

For a moment, I felt strange.

It was as if I had heard an answer I had been searching for all this time, from somewhere in the distant universe.

“In that sense, I could become Kim Dokja too, but...”

Why was I hearing the words I had wanted to hear most as Lee Hakhyeon only after becoming Kim Dokja?

“I think you are much more like Kim Dokja, Yerin. The same goes for Seongwoo, Uncle Gyeonghwan, and Minwoo.”

They really were fragments of Kim Dokja. People who loved this story more than any other readers.

But what about me?

I was the 49% Kim Dokja. A being derived from a Kim Dokja who wanted to become Kim Dokja more than anyone, and therefore could not become Kim Dokja more than anyone.

In that sense, perhaps I was the person farthest from Dokja.

“Perhaps.”

Chae Yerin thought about something for a moment before speaking. The outside of the window slowly brightened, and light dimly illuminated her face.

“Perhaps we aren't the ones who resemble Kim Dokja. Perhaps Kim Dokja resembles us.”

I blankly listened to those words and suddenly opened my mouth.

At that moment, the orbital elevator came to a stop with a roar.

[Main Scenario #8: Area 13 has automatically ended.]

Then the reward I had been waiting for arrived.

[You have acquired 300,000 Coins as a Scenario reward.]

[You have acquired the Fable Fragment Understanding of the Hundred Beasts as a Scenario reward.]

「Understanding of the Hundred Beasts.」

I had finally obtained this Fable Fragment.