「“As the price for loving stories, must we become lonely?”」
—Dionysus, God of Wine and Ecstasy

*

【He has returned.】

*

[You have acquired a new fable!]
[You have acquired the fable, ‘The One Who Knows the Truth of the False Epilogue’!]
A piece of the glittering fable scattered and was absorbed into me.

[Part of the abilities of the character ‘Han Sooyoung’ is inherited by you.]
This was probably the last gift Han Sooyoung left me.

「“Learn it well.”」

Even though she knew I would end up facing this kind of ‘epilogue’, even though she knew I wasn’t needed in her ending, Han Sooyoung taught me everything she had. This was her choice.

Her voice buzzing in my head.

When I barely managed to steady my breathing, another message came.

[You have obtained the possibility of a new ‘Great Fable’!]
The possibility of a new Great Fable.

It was probably because I had affected the 1,863rd round’s world line.

It was something I should have been happy about, but I had one problem.

[Your ‘Great Fable’ is violently fluctuating!]
[Your ‘Great Fable’ absorbs the possibility of a new ‘Great Fable’!]

As expected.

Han Sooyoung was right.

「“You… maybe you won’t be able to complete the beginning, development, turn, and conclusion.”」

It looked like all the ‘Great Fables’ I obtained would end up being absorbed into the ‘first Great Fable’.

[The sign of an ‘Ultra Great Fable’ becomes even clearer.]
[You have achieved an impossible feat!]
[The Administration Bureau of this world line questions your existence!]

The premonition of the Backlash of Plausibility that was gradually surging.

It was the result of someone who wasn’t even an existence of this ‘world line’—me—receiving excessive benefits in this world line.

Normally, in a case like this, the ‘Administration Bureau’ makes one of two choices.

One is to turn an existence that has a negative influence on the scenario into a ‘disaster’ and incorporate it into the scenario.
And the other is to exile that existence outside the scenario.

[Someone has succeeded in negotiations with the ‘Dokkaebi King’ of this world line.]

The Administration Bureau’s interests matched some ‘proposal’ that had just come in.

[The ‘Vice King’ agrees to proceed with the negotiations.]
[Someone has granted you permission to use a ‘portal’.]

‘Forced world line movement’ was a miracle that wasn’t easy to attempt unless you were at least an existence on the level of the ‘Secretive Plotter’.

And yet, an existence that could draw out that miracle by negotiating with the ‘Administration Bureau’.

Han Sooyoung, who on earth did you contract with?

Han Sooyoung said I mustn’t learn that name yet.

But I was an existence that knew the completion of 『Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint』.

Could there be an existence whose name someone like me mustn’t know?

It was then that a strange scent wavered faintly at the tip of my nose.

The scent of apples?

As the fragrance softly spread, my vision swayed. The portal in front of me was calling me.

「This is the end of the ‘false epilogue’.」

In the distance, I could see Han Sooyoung’s main body savoring a reunion with her companions. I wanted to at least say goodbye one last time, but that ‘Han Sooyoung’ wouldn’t recognize me.

The Han Sooyoung who remembered me has disappeared now. And I have no choice but to live on in the blank space she left behind afterward.

「“It must be hard for you too. The end of the 41st round is already decided.”」

Bearing all the words she left behind, I had to keep writing the next sentence.

「“But you know what? Even if you already know the ending, there are stories you still have to write.”」

Could I do it like Han Sooyoung did?

Like Han Sooyoung, who didn’t hesitate to advance toward the same future even while knowing she would become tls123.

Could I choose an eternity that never ends, just to save one person’s world?

[World line movement is beginning.]
My vision distorted, and all scenery grew distant.

[As a Sub Scenario clear reward, a special privilege is being granted.]
[You have acquired 500,000 coins!]
[Additional reward settlement is delayed.]
[The Administration Bureau requests that the Administration Bureau of another world line ‘pay out your rewards’.]

Listening closely to the messages I could hear, I focused my mind.

【Ev er yt hi ng i s a lr ea dy w ri tt en, a nd a t t he s am e t im e, i t i s b ei ng w ri tt en.】

Along with the familiar voice of the Vice King, I felt the flow of space-time twisting.

[You have succeeded in ‘world line movement’.]

When I opened my eyes again, what was revealed was a desolate sight.

The deepest depths of the ‘apocalypse region’ where everything had been destroyed.

I couldn’t sense any sign of people around me.

Suddenly, the scenery of that day came to mind once more. The apocalypse region falling, and the incarnations of the apocalypse region fleeing aboard the ‘train’.

The constellations of the Great Nebulae that had attacked the apocalypse region, and the tail-swing of the ‘Apocalypse Dragon’ that flew in across the stratum. The Otherworldly Divinities fleeing in a panic from the hidden ‘time stratum’.

The traces of ruins that still remained were bearing witness to the history of that day.

Starting with the portal I had come through, all the other ‘time strata’ were closed.

[This ‘time stratum’ has been closed.]

A time stratum.

Was the story I experienced truly an existing ‘history’? Or was it merely a ‘time stratum’?

If it was a story no one could remember anyway, did a meaningful difference even exist between the two?

Bzzzz.

My smartphone was vibrating inside my chest.

I immediately checked the caller.

It was a call from the ‘Demon King of Salvation’.

*

I walked through the ruins of the apocalypse region while talking with the Demon King of Salvation.

—Hey, you bastard! Pick up the phone!

The ‘Demon King of Salvation’ seemed to have gotten a little worse-tempered while I hadn’t seen him.

—Hey! I said don’t touch that! You wanna die, seriously? Huh? Huh? Hey! It’s all gonna fall over! Hurry up and stand it back up!

Who was he talking to?

For a while, clattering, crashing noises came from the other end of the phone. It seemed a commotion had broken out in the [Fourth Wall].

—Damn it, it’s filthy hard to hear your voice even once. Why the hell don’t you ever pick up?

“You called?”

It was strange. While I was in the 1,863rd round, my smartphone hadn’t rung even once.

—Yeah! Do you have any idea how many coins it takes every time I make a call?

“You always call collect.”

When I checked my phone, there really were dozens of ‘missed calls’ logged.

But why hadn’t I known the calls were coming in? Was it an out-of-service area?

—No matter how distracted you were by Han Sooyoung, you still should’ve picked up my calls, shouldn’t you?

It seemed the ‘Demon King of Salvation’ roughly knew what I had gone through in the 1,863rd round.

“If you had something you wanted to say, I could’ve passed it on for you.”

—Even if you did, she would’ve forgotten it all.

“Just because Han Sooyoung disappeared doesn’t mean even that story disappeared too.”

If it was anyone other than Kim Dokja, he definitely had something he wanted to say to Han Sooyoung of the 1,863rd round.

The two of them had never met even once after facing each other in the 1,863rd round.

—I’m not the ‘Kim Dokja’ that girl remembers.

“Still…”

—And what I wanted to say, you already said it all.

Sometimes, whenever I spoke to Han Sooyoung, there were times I felt like someone was knocking on the wall at the edge of my heart.

As if someone beyond the wall was conveying their intention to me.

Maybe that had been a signal sent by the ‘Demon King of Salvation’.

—I didn’t expect you to say even that.

“You mean the tls123 thing.”

No matter how I looked back on it, the story related to tls123 was a story that must never be conveyed to Han Sooyoung when considering the twisting of the world line.

“Why didn’t you stop me. Even without using the phone, you would’ve had a way to talk to me.”

—Do you think you’re someone who’d listen if I stopped you?

“If it were the usual you, you still would’ve stopped me.”

The tls123 story was connected to the origin of this world.

If Han Sooyoung didn’t become tls123 and write the novel, Kim Dokja wouldn’t survive, and 『Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint』 wouldn’t begin.

That meant that because of my slip of the tongue, the establishment of the world itself could have been twisted and this entire universe could have been overturned.

—Are you saying I was supposed to say, with my own mouth, that Han Sooyoung has to die to save me?

Thinking about it, from Kim Dokja’s point of view, this was a complicated problem.

“Well, you’re the kind of person who chooses to die yourself rather than kill someone.”

—Don’t talk like it’s someone else’s business, you bastard.

“But this problem isn’t only tied to our lives.”

If Han Sooyoung didn’t write ‘Ways of Survival’, not only Kim Dokja but the history of everyone connected to us would change. The people who would die and the people who would live would switch, and maybe the world could sink into even greater tragedy and ruin.

Even so, Kim Dokja didn’t stop me. The reason was clear.

“You already knew, didn’t you?”

Kim Dokja probably knew what choice Han Sooyoung would make.

—Because she’s that kind of bastard.

Would a reader who had read one author’s story longer than anyone else come to be able to read even the sentences that author hadn’t written?

—You also knew Han Sooyoung would make that choice. That’s why you could tell her the truth.

I turned my head and looked toward the entrance of the ‘time stratum’ I came out of. It hadn’t even been that long since I went through all of those things, but the events of that world line felt oddly distant.

“Was what I went through really an actually existing ‘history’?”

—With a novel becoming reality, does it still matter what’s real and what’s fake?

Kim Dokja was right. Whether it was real or fake, the fable I shared with her definitely remained inside me.

Still, if I thought it would be nice to have at least one more person who remembered that fable—someone who could say that story was real—was that greed?

—I watched it with the second one. And the other little Kim Dokjas too.

Without a word, I smiled.

Kim Dokja wouldn’t know. How much comfort his one sentence was giving me right now.

—Are you crying?

“……The [Fourth Wall] seems kind of noisy. Did something happen?”

—Are you asking because you really don’t know? It’s all because of you.

“Because of me?”

The Demon King of Salvation said that while I was learning various things from Han Sooyoung in the 1,863rd round, he spent all his time organizing the [Fourth Wall].

—I stuffed all the Outer Gods from the apocalypse region into the library, and what, I’m supposed to just deal with that? Do you think I’m Yoo Sangah?

As expected, it seemed many of the Otherworldly Divinities who lived in the apocalypse region’s time stratum had been incorporated into the [Fourth Wall]. It was a side effect that occurred from accepting the ‘King of Terror’ into the [Fourth Wall].

—I almost had the library collapse…

“Still, you managed to calm it down?”

—They all liked your story.

My story.

—The bastards that would go crazy if I so much as touched them got ghost-quiet the moment the 1,863rd round story started. So in that opening…

Just as the Outer Gods had hidden in the apocalypse region’s ‘time stratum’, Kim Dokja said he folded them up one by one and tucked them between the records of the [Fourth Wall] like bookmarks.

I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but anyway, it was a relief to hear it got organized.

“How’s the ‘King of Terror’?”

—The second one is…

At that moment, static crackled into the call, and the call cut off.

[<Star Stream> has recognized your existence!]
[The Administration Bureau has recognized your existence!]

At last, it looked like the side effects of ‘world line movement’ were about to begin.

Tsstststst.

Light sparks leapt over my whole body.

I recalled the contents of the ‘main story’ after a long time. Just like when the main story’s Kim Dokja went to the 1,863rd round, beings who underwent dimensional travel to another ‘world line’ are always given the ‘Returnee Scenario’.

This time was probably the same.

For no reason, my heart pounded.

Jieunyu, Uncle Dansoo, Gyeong Sein, Yerin, Ye Hyeonwoo, Killer King… were they all doing well? And that bastard Yoo Joonghyuk too.

It was finally time to go meet them again. But.

[Your ‘Great Fable’ begins the story.]

What?

「However, Kim Dokja of that time didn’t know.」

At the sentence that followed, quietly audible, I frowned.

「That, in ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) this story, the ‘reunion’ he desired could never be achieved.」