“Ugh.”
“Suhwan!”
Heeyoung reached out to support Suhwan’s staggering body. Lying half-reclined on the sofa, Suhwan frowned.
Was it because too many memories came rushing back at once? Suhwan clutched his pounding head and continued to groan.
No, it wasn’t sudden. While recalling his past life memories, Suhwan naturally thought of the dreams he had every morning. Those dreams, which he couldn’t remember after waking up, were actually memories of his past life.
The first novel Heeyoung wrote, where Seunghyun and himself were the protagonists—those memories.
“I… was on my way to the old school building to meet Seunghyun…”
“…!”
“Suddenly, I collapsed then…”
Heeyoung’s eyes widened at Suhwan’s quiet murmurs. After looking down at Suhwan, who was speaking falteringly with trembling eyes, Heeyoung finally moved her lips and said:
“You’ve remembered everything.”
“Haah.”
Shaking his head vigorously, Suhwan looked directly at Heeyoung, whose tension was evident. The emotion on her face was now clearer than before. It was guilt.
“I’m sorry.”
“…”
“I’m truly sorry. Because of my regret… everything went wrong.”
Heeyoung closed her eyes tightly. When she manifested here and opened her eyes, everything was confusing, but one thing was clear. It was when she met Suhwan. For some reason, she immediately knew his identity. The man before her wasn’t some foreign substance written to create tension at the beginning of the novel, but Suhwan, the protagonist of that other novel.
Using Suhwan’s name as a foreign element in the Omegaverse novel was something Heeyoung did to sever her lingering attachment to her first novel. But Heeyoung ended up deeply regretting it, and to fulfill her wish, this world did something terrible.
‘If I hadn’t regretted… then this wouldn’t have happened. You wouldn’t have manifested into this novel.’
The reason Heeyoung regretted was because she had written another novel without properly concluding her first one. And it was an incredibly provocative story that pursued a completely different direction than what she wanted. So this world first killed Jin Suhwan, the foreign element. Then it brought Suhwan, one of the protagonists of the first novel, and made him manifest in Jin Suhwan’s body.
“If you manifested in Jin Suhwan’s body, Lee Seunghyun would love you. Then the ending of this novel would turn out the way I wanted.”
“For that reason…”
Suhwan’s head was still throbbing. But he could understand what Heeyoung was saying to some extent. Having recovered all his memories now, he seemed to grasp the situation.
Anyway, this world had killed Jin Suhwan and brought him here to fulfill the author Heeyoung’s wish. To reconnect him with Seunghyun. And that was also the ending Suhwan had wanted before he regained his memories. He had hoped to take over the role of the main character, Ju Geonyul, and be with Seunghyun.
But why had Seunghyun acted so strangely? If this world also wanted him and Seunghyun to end up together, it wouldn’t have suddenly forced Seunghyun into the role of a foreign element. Feeling doubtful, Suhwan asked Heeyoung:
“Then what about Seunghyun? Why did he suddenly change?”
“Seunghyun…”
Heeyoung looked at Suhwan as her lips trembled. Heeyoung could recognize Suhwan’s identity at first glance, but Seunghyun couldn’t. Surely, when she and Suhwan had just manifested, Seunghyun was still the “intact Seunghyun” of this world. The Lee Seunghyun she had created as the main top character.
Heeyoung decided to help Suhwan. It was only natural. After all, she had to prevent Suhwan from being treated as a foreign element like Jin Suhwan in this world and dying.
The problem was Seunghyun. At first, he seemed confused by the changed Suhwan. But Heeyoung was confident that he would soon accept the current Suhwan. The two loving each other was almost like an unshakable destiny.
But Heeyoung became anxious as Seunghyun’s behavior changed more and more. At one point, she thought like Suhwan. She wondered if this world had assigned Seunghyun the role of a foreign element, causing him to be so obsessed with Suhwan. Because Seunghyun had done things that couldn’t be explained otherwise.
‘That kind of attention makes me uncomfortable. Senior is my boyfriend, you know.’
‘It’s not your concern, Kwon Heeyoung.’
From his sharp tone and manic gaze, Heeyoung felt a creepiness that others couldn’t perceive. It could be because she was generally sensitive, or because she was the author who created this world. Heeyoung often noticed things that the characters in the novel didn’t.
At school, Seunghyun acted as if he was normal, but Heeyoung could tell. That his normalcy was just a facade. After the post on the school forum, Suhwan stopped coming to school, so she couldn’t check on him, so Heeyoung secretly observed Seunghyun.
Before lectures started, after lectures ended, during lunch, until heading home—for tens of minutes to several hours, Seunghyun barely put down his phone. Calls and messages were one thing, but when he was watching what seemed like a video, Heeyoung was inwardly horrified.
What he was watching was CCTV footage. Though she couldn’t see it clearly, it looked like the interior of a house. While those around them didn’t know that Seunghyun and Suhwan were living together, Heeyoung, as the original author, knew. Her eyes trembled as she glimpsed that screen in passing.
Something was going wrong. Heeyoung had felt that way since then. Until she warned Suhwan to be careful of Ju Geonyul, she had believed that if only the main character Geonyul was dealt with, everything else would turn out well.
‘But would it really?’
Feeling doubtful, Heeyoung recalled the end of her first novel. Though it was the “end,” she didn’t provide a proper conclusion because she wasn’t in a good state of mind, so it ended at an ambiguous point. And that was right before the protagonists confirmed their feelings for each other.
Suhwan, having decided to confess to Seunghyun, was heading to the old school building when an urgent matter made him return home. So that’s probably the last thing Suhwan remembered. But in the novel, the story continued a bit more. The day after they kissed, Seunghyun went to Suhwan’s classroom to find him because he hadn’t come to the old school building and wasn’t answering his calls.
That’s as far as Heeyoung had written. She hadn’t written anything after that. So even Heeyoung didn’t know what happened to Seunghyun who was left behind after Suhwan manifested into this Omegaverse novel. Whether he continued to live freely in a world where the narrative abruptly ended, or if everything just stopped.
And until now, she had thought of the two novels as separate worlds, but not anymore. Just from the fact that Suhwan had manifested in this world, it was right to think that the two novel worlds were connected in some way.
After organizing her thoughts, Heeyoung calmly spoke:
“Seunghyun might have received a great shock in that world.”
“What do you mean by a shock?”
“This is just my theory.”
Though she said so, Heeyoung had a strange certainty. In fact, as she spoke, it became clearer. This world wouldn’t have welcomed Seunghyun changing like a foreign element. Because then it wouldn’t end the way Heeyoung wanted.
So Seunghyun’s change was closer to an anomaly. The Omegaverse world made Suhwan manifest, but not Seunghyun. It would have been better to make both of them manifest, so why didn’t it do that? Why did it only make one side manifest? There must have been a reason why it had to be that way.
“Seunghyun from that world still had consciousness after you manifested. There was more content written after that.”
“…!”
Suhwan’s eyes widened at Heeyoung’s words. He didn’t know this because he had manifested before meeting Seunghyun. Shocked, Suhwan questioned Heeyoung urgently:
“Is that true? How much? How much longer was he there without me?”
“Not for long. Seunghyun went to your classroom the next day because you didn’t come to the old school building… that was it.”
“Did the novel… end like that?”
Then what happened after?
Did she sense the unasked question in his eyes? Heeyoung quietly shook her head.
“I don’t know either. But.”
“…”
“If at that time, Lee Seunghyun was greatly shocked by your disappearance…”
“Seunghyun?”
“…Because of that, the current Lee Seunghyun might not be in his right mind. That’s why he’s obsessed with you to such an abnormal degree.”
“…!”
Suhwan looked at Heeyoung, who was speaking as calmly as possible, with shocked eyes.
It was all just a theory. Even Heeyoung, the original author, was manifested, so she couldn’t be certain. But the situation was incomprehensible otherwise. And at that moment, Suhwan recalled the strange dream he had on the day Seunghyun’s heat cycle came.
‘Don’t go.’
‘Don’t go, please.’
‘Don’t leave me behind.’
The small silhouette in the darkness, the pale, slender arms that held him, the youthful voice. He hadn’t noticed before because he had no memories, but they all resembled Seunghyun from that world when he was a young boy.
‘You promised to stay by my side. Even if everyone else pointed fingers at me, you, only you would…’
Seunghyun didn’t care about rumors and was actually a strong person, but it wasn’t always the case. He knew well that he too could be hurt by people. So sometimes when he jokingly complained, Suhwan would tell him kindly. That he would always be by his side, that he wouldn’t leave…
‘You can never escape from me anyway.’
Had Seunghyun been even more hurt after he left? Suhwan’s heart ached terribly. And here he was, living peacefully without any memories. Suhwan covered his head with trembling hands. Then he asked Heeyoung:
“Is there no way… to bring back Seunghyun, the current Seunghyun?”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
