Chapter 17: The Author's Footnote
The light from the torn page didn't explode — it rewrote.
Lines of golden ink spiraled outward, curling like sentient script, slashing across the Narrative Realm's sky. The battlefield, once painted in monochrome and crimson, now shimmered with vibrant contradictions: places and people that had never been, yet felt unbearably familiar. In one breath, Kim Dokja stood on a shattered subway platform. In the next, he blinked and found himself standing on a mountaintop, wind howling with Yoo Joonghyuk's screams from a loop that hadn't happened.
A reality that wasn't his.
[System Message: Anomalous Narrative Detected.]
[Warning: A localized Reality Rewrite is in progress.]
[Defensive Protocols are temporarily disabled.]
Kim Dokja gritted his teeth as the shift dug claws into his mind. It wasn't physical pain. It was worse. Memory fragmentation. Narrative corrosion. His grip on his version of events began to slip — not because he doubted himself, but because the system now whispered, "What if?"
What if Yoo Joonghyuk had never forgiven him?
What if Han Sooyoung had died in the fifth regression?
What if Shin Yoosung had become the Disaster after all?
"What did you do?" Kim Dokja demanded, voice strained.
The girl — Unregistered Reader_XYZ — floated just above the fractured ground, untouched by the chaos. The torn half of the page hovered before her, reshaping itself into a pen of molten script.
"I inserted my ending," she said simply. "You talk about authenticity — but the system listens to the one who writes."
Her Yoo Joonghyuk stepped forward, eyes devoid of recognition. He wasn't angry.
He just didn't know who Kim Dokja was.
"I was there," Kim Dokja said, reaching out instinctively. "You— we— I bled for you!"
The projection did not respond.
But his Yoo Joonghyuk — still battered, flickering — stood behind him. Sword broken. Eyes smoldering. Still there.
Still his.
Kim Dokja's voice dropped to a whisper. "He remembers me."
Unregistered Reader_XYZ shook her head. "A memory isn't proof. The story you lived in… it was one of many. I read a different one. One where you failed."
"And yet here I am," he snapped, pushing back against the corrupting scene. "Still standing. Still fighting. So maybe your story failed."
The girl said nothing. But the look in her eyes darkened — not with malice, but with sadness.
"You think being the main character is a blessing. But I saw what it did to you. I saw the chapters you were never meant to read."
Kim Dokja paused. The wind around them whispered — voices without form.
"…Save me."
"…This isn't what I wanted…"
"…Why did you write me this way?"
The cries of characters. Of casualties.
"Are those…" he hesitated.
She nodded. "Residual echoes. Drafts abandoned by the author. The versions of Yoo Joonghyuk that didn't make it. The Sooyoungs that died too soon. They remember, even if you don't."
[System Message: Narrative Overlap Detected.]
[Calculating Emotional Resonance...]
[Anomaly: Your Narrative Core is displaying signs of sympathy toward opposing framework.]
Kim Dokja's knees almost buckled.
Sympathy?
No — it wasn't that simple. These voices… they hurt. Because they sounded like truths. Just not his.
He looked at the torn battlefield — at his own companions, flickering now between certainty and uncertainty. At his Yoo Joonghyuk, whose grip on the shattered sword tightened, but whose face looked… afraid.
"You're not the villain here," Kim Dokja whispered. "But you're not the Author either."
Unregistered Reader_XYZ looked startled for the first time.
"You don't get to decide who I am," she said.
"No," he agreed. "But neither does the system."
He took a step forward — and the 4th Wall pulsed.
Not in defense.
In response.
[Your awareness has surpassed narrative containment.]
[Permission temporarily granted: Invoke Narrative Override — "Editor's Clause."]
Kim Dokja reached out — not with his hand, but with intention. The 4th Wall shimmered, and from it emerged something small and absurd: a red pen.
An editing tool.
The system wanted an author?
Then he'd be the one to mark revisions.
He gripped the pen — and drew a line across the sky.
The world shuddered.
The mountains fell back into subway tunnels. The false projections evaporated. Even the golden ink began to recoil, hissing as if burned.
"Do you think a pen is stronger than my ending?" she asked, stepping forward now, real anger behind her words.
"No," he said. "But I'm not here to erase you. I'm here to correct the story."
He raised the pen — and began to write.
On air. On memory. On belief.
Yoo Joonghyuk remembered Kim Dokja because he chose to.
Han Sooyoung survived because she was too stubborn to die.
Shin Yoosung didn't become a Disaster — because someone told her she didn't have to be.
Each line was an act of war. But also one of healing.
And as he wrote, his companions reformed.
[Your companions have restored Authenticity: 99%.]
[System Message: Narrative Advantage has shifted.]
Unregistered Reader_XYZ faltered, her remaining page crackling.
"You're… not supposed to know how to do that."
Kim Dokja smiled, breathless. "I didn't. But then again — neither did the Author."
Above them, the Constellations stirred — not as spectators, but as readers finally moved by a new chapter.
Then came the voice.
Cold. Final.
[Emergency Scenario Final Phase: Commencing.]
[All Candidates will now face Judgment.]
A single chair descended from the sky.
And a figure sat upon it — face hidden, but radiating an unbearable pressure.
The Judge.
The system had stopped watching.
Now it was deciding.
End of Chapter 17