[Yeah, I came to find you.]

Kim Dokja stared blankly at his avatar, then tilted his head.

[But no matter how I think about it, it doesn’t make sense.]

[What doesn’t.]

[How are you able to exist here?]

No matter how much the time of <Star Stream> moved toward the ‘empty spaces of the story’, this was a story that didn’t make sense.

Whether 51% or 49%, all of Kim Dokja’s soul had been broken apart and scattered into the universe.

It had become <Star Stream> itself.

If not for the novel Han Sooyoung had written, the current Kim Dokja would not have been able to come back to life either.

So how could a 49% avatar exist in such a random place.

What was even stranger was that the avatar in front of him felt like it had been in existence long before him.

The avatar answered.

[If you exist, it’s not that strange for me to exist too, is it.]

[Han Sooyoung didn’t write the story that way.]

The avatar’s gaze changed subtly.

[That’s true.]

[You are me. I am you. If Han Sooyoung’s story had succeeded, we should have been restored as a single existence.]

[It’s simple. We’re no longer ‘one’.]

We were not one.

Kim Dokja thought about those words for a moment, then spoke.

[Let’s stop and go back. There are people waiting for us.]

[They’re people waiting for you.]

[What nonsense are you talking about?]

[Take your hands off and back away.]

[What?]

[The world you’re trying to interfere in right now is ‘my world’.]

Only then did Kim Dokja look at the ‘void curtain’ he had placed his hand on. The world inside this ‘void curtain’ was a world that even Kim Dokja, who had been the ‘Oldest Dream’, did not know.

「Why could a world he didn’t know exist.」

Realization arrived a step late.

The answer to the question was simple.

It was because the avatar in front of his eyes had become the ‘Oldest Dream’ of this world.

He had watched over this world so it could gain vitality and so the characters inside it could live.

[So that’s it. You…… don’t want this world to end, do you?]

The avatar didn’t answer.

Kim Dokja let out a light sigh and added on.

[You can imagine this place after we go back too. So let’s go back. I’ll read this story together with you. There’s no need to carry it alone―]

When had it started. The avatar, holding the exact same ‘Unbreakable Conviction’ as his, was aiming at his neck.

[What are you doing?]

He was confused.

Why was the avatar harboring such strong hostility toward him.

[I just told you. This is my ‘world’. I don’t want to read it together.]

[What do you mean, your world and my world. You…….]

He had used [Avatar] who knew how many times before, but nothing like this had ever happened.

An avatar that escaped the control of the main body.

It was like his self of yesterday or the day before suddenly declaring, “I’m not Kim Dokja.”

[Don’t tell me.]

Kim Dokja recalled Han Sooyoung’s avatar he had met long ago in the 1,863rd regression.

That Han Sooyoung had also escaped the control of the main body and possessed her own ego.

If the avatar before his eyes had also become that kind of case.

Kim Dokja smiled faintly and asked.

[Who are you.]

[What?]

[Who gathered you.]

For a moment, the avatar’s pupils shook.

Kim Dokja did not miss that opening and pressed on.

[Like I said, Han Sooyoung never wrote a story where you existed like this. Which means…….]

Kim Dokja slowly raised his grade as he spoke.

[It means that before Han Sooyoung wrote the novel, someone gathered my ‘soul’.]

[Nonsense.]

[Who knows. Whether it’s nonsense or not, it seems like the beings behind you are explaining it quite well.]

Kim Dokja could clearly feel it. The ominous and distant grade felt from behind the avatar’s back.

[Run, run away! Run away!]

The stars surrounding them began to heave.

Absolute beings of the universe who could terrify even those constellations.

There was something there whose power was strong enough to be a threat even to him, the ‘Oldest Dream’.

[I was wondering what bastards they’d be.]

Kim Dokja frowned.

The abyss of this universe was vast. No matter how much he was the ‘Oldest Dream’, there were beings in this universe who escaped his observation or lived hidden between the lines.

Beings who feared being recorded more than anyone, and at the same time desired more than anyone to seize the record.

Right now, those beings were undoubtedly behind the avatar.

[I don’t know who sweet-talked you, but you’re being deceived right now.]

[It doesn’t matter.]

[It doesn’t matter? Are you serious?]

Even Kim Dokja, who had silently endured again and again, couldn’t bear it this time.

[There are people waiting for us. Are you thinking of betraying them?]

The avatar he had left behind had been a ‘Kim Dokja’ that existed for <Kim Dokja Company>. Kim Dokja could not accept the fact that such an avatar was refusing to return to <Kim Dokja Company>.

[Those people don’t want me, they want you.]

[You are me too.]

[“You are me too”.]

The avatar subtly smiled once more.

[Feels like that’s something I should be saying now.]

[What?]

[What do you think a ‘real one’ is.]

[Are you suddenly trying to have a philosophical discussion or something?]

[If ‘real’ and ‘fake’ are divided just because one side holds a few percentage points more of memories.]

Grade slowly began to boil up from the avatar’s entire body. The surrounding region of space dangerously rippled and heated.

[Then right now, the ‘avatar’ seems to be you.]

Looking once more at the sword light aimed at him, Kim Dokja tilted his head.

[Aha, so you’re saying you’re the ‘real one’ now, is that it?]

The two Kim Dokjas aimed their swords at each other.

The same-looking coat, the same-looking Unbreakable Conviction.

The only thing that distinguished them was the meaning contained in that conviction.

[You haven’t forgotten, have you. You’re no longer 51%.]

Kim Dokja grinned and nodded.

[You’re not the 49% I knew either.]

As if to announce the beginning of battle, a single shooting star fell from somewhere.

「And the fight began.」

+

「Then who exactly is ‘me’?」

+

Gu Seonah remembered clearly the moment she first possessed this world.

That day she had been in a theater. It wasn’t to watch a movie, but to attend some kind of fan event.

―Hey, this is my first time coming to a place like this.

At the theater entrance, she texted her crush, nerves taut.

Her crush’s name was Go Jangwon.

His nickname was Gojang.

It was because he often said things that sounded like his head was broken.

―Gojang. Where are you right now?

―Got on the subway.

―Which station.

―Actually I just left the house.

―Do you wanna die.

―Youngin, we can wait. You know that, right?

―Just die.

Even as she wondered why she had come to like a guy like this, she was really looking forward to today’s schedule.

Once today’s event was over, they’d eat something tasty together, and then go to a café and talk about novels all day.

Thinking such things, she opened the theater door. Having no idea what would happen to her after that.

“It still doesn’t feel real.”

Mumbling a bitter remark to herself, Gu Seonah clenched and unclenched her fist several times.

Already several months had passed since that day.

In those months she had changed a lot. She no longer talked to strangers. If someone approached, she would first be on guard, doubt them, and be prepared to kill them in case of emergency.

If she didn’t, she couldn’t survive in this world, and she had survived.

「For the sole purpose of meeting Go Jangwon again.」

Gu Seonah looked down at the collapsed Cheon Inho. No, he was no longer Cheon Inho. His appearance, his build, the items he was wearing—now he resembled ‘Kim Dokja’ more than anyone.

[Tale fragment, ‘A Certain Primordial’ is shaking!]

Kim Dokja, into whom the tale fragment had been injected, had completely gone off the deep end or something, because his convulsions wouldn’t stop.

「A Certain Primordial」.

She had acquired this tale fragment a few weeks ago.

As usual, while hunting monsters and growing stronger by absorbing the spirits of readers who had died during scenarios, a somewhat familiar existence had appeared in her dream.

【Honestly, I didn’t think you’d survive all the way to here.】

“Representative Kim Dokja?”

The existence she had once met in the ‘theater’ in a dream.

“No, should I be calling you ‘Asmodeus’?”

Now Gu Seonah could see through his identity. It was the result of compiling the information she’d heard from Ye Hyeonwoo and other readers and repeatedly carrying out her own deductions.

【My, have I already become that famous?】

“What do you want.”

【There’s a ‘fragment’ I want to give you.】

Gu Seonah had acquired this 「A Certain Primordial」 then. Unfortunately, most of the fragment had been lost, so she couldn’t obtain complete memories. But even with a tale that was full of holes here and there, it wasn’t hard to guess what had happened.

「Kim Dokja and Kim Dokja fought.」

As a result of that confrontation, the ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) ‘Kim Dokja’ she knew had been torn into several pieces.

Gu Seonah looked down at the convulsing Kim Dokja.

Was this man really that ‘Kim Dokja’?

Asmodeus, who had given her those memories, had described him like this.

【He is precisely the 49% Kim Dokja. The original culprit behind all of this.】

Gu Seonah quietly observed Kim Dokja. But no matter how much she observed him, her feeling was that she still couldn’t really tell.

The more she thought about it, the more there were things that didn’t make sense.

If this guy really was the 49% Kim Dokja, why had he lost all his memories and ended up here. No, in the first place, wasn’t this guy a reader who had lived reality together with her and then possessed this world?

What bothered her most was that she felt a subtle, hard-to-explain difference between the ‘49% Kim Dokja’ she’d confirmed in those memories and the ‘Kim Dokja’ in front of her eyes.

“Ah, I don’t know.”

Slowly, Gu Seonah brought her hand to Kim Dokja’s neck.

She’d find out if she absorbed him.

There was only one thing she was sure of. The man in front of her now possessed more ‘Kim Dokja fragments’ than anything she had collected so far. If she obtained these ‘Kim Dokja fragments’, she would become closer than anyone to ‘a single Kim Dokja’.

‘Then I’ll be able to find Go Jangwon.’

Gu Seonah took several deep breaths.

Her hand kept trembling. Until now, she had never once taken a living incarnation’s ‘Kim Dokja fragments’. The ‘Kim Dokja fragments’ she had taken had all belonged to readers who were facing death or had gone mad.

「“Take my memories.”」

It had been that way when she absorbed Christina too.

While carrying out the <Twelve Zodiac> scenario and facing death, Christina had entrusted the ‘Kim Dokja fragments’ she possessed to Gu Seonah.

She had shouldered that burden, and as much as she shouldered, she became stronger.

‘You can do it. Get a grip.’

Gu Seonah slapped her own cheek several times. She had to do it. She had to absorb him. Only then could she become stronger. Only then could she get Go Jangwon back.

In the end, having steeled her heart, Gu Seonah reached out again.

[Tale, ‘Successor of the Eternal Name’ rejects you!]

Along with a sensation like her hand being bitten by something, intense pain struck.

Tssssss.

And Kim Dokja’s memories began to cross over.

Some memories were sad, and some were painful.

There were memories she knew as well.

「“Ms. Seonah. Please don’t give Mr. Inho too much trouble. He’s not the kind of person who would lie.”」

The more she examined the memories, the more she felt that something was going wrong.

Was it really the right thing to absorb this guy. Could it be that what he’d said was actually true. Maybe there really was no need for someone to become a single Kim Dokja.

Just as she was thinking that.

[Tale, ‘Recorder of Things That Will Disappear’ begins to tell a story.]

In one corner of those memories, Gu Seonah came face to face with a certain tale.

「“Youngin. We can go out. You know that, right?”」

It was the voice of Go Jangwon, whom she had been searching for all this time.