< Into the Manuscript (2) >
"H-huh?! Ahhhhh!"
Wrapped up in the Han River's current, he flailed like crazy. It was his first time going inside water after being discharged[1]. He had sunk so low that he couldn't float up no matter how much he tried.
It wasn't a good life to live, but he couldn't die this pointlessly. He had felt like he would die because life was so hard – it wasn't that he wanted to die!
But was that the illusion that you were said to have before you die?
His mother's face, his younger sibling's appearance, and even the face of his classmate Minsan, who he had a one-sided crush on in college, brushed by.
'No. I don't want to die. Somehow–.'
"[Save me!]"
When he mouthed the words that didn't even make a sound, light exploded from Kim Jungjin's left hand. A golden semicircle surrounded him. Black water was pushed out from inside the shining circle.
The body of Jungjin, who had lost consciousness, was dragged by the circle of light and rose out of the water surface.
The thin figure that had rushed over after discovering the light, snatched Jungjin's body rising from the riverside and dragged him to shore.
The unidentifiable gold light was sucked into the graduation ring on Jungjin's left hand and disappeared.
"Get ahold of yourself, Kleio Asel!"
Jungjin opened his eyes.
Red hair, deep green eyes. A girl with incredibly memorable good looks shook his collar.
"Hk, cough."
It was a long time before he spit out water. His eyes, nose, mouth, ears all felt stuffy and hurt.
"Kleio–!"
"…Let, go… a bit."
Maybe he had drank too much water, because his voice came out weird. Jungjin closed and opened his eyes that couldn't focus well several times.
The person glaring at him was a slender and tall foreigner girl. The pretty girl with big eyes and refreshing features, was someone Jungjin didn't know at all.
"What were you doing in the middle of the night in someplace like this?!"
"Kleio or whatever, why are you suddenly…"
Jungjin, who had fallen into water from Dongjak Bridge, didn't know why his collar was grabbed by a foreign stranger.
"You're Kleio Asel from Year 1! Don't play innocent. I definitely saw the Magic Circle you cast flashing!"
The girl whose body was trembling fiercely didn't let Jungjin off at all.
The words shooting out of the girl's mouth didn't seem like Korean. Even so, he could understand it.
Though just because he understood the meaning didn't mean he knew what she was talking about.
"What are you saying… Who are you, that you're being like this to me? Let go."
Being grabbed by the girl and shaken around, his head rang. Jungjin flailed his arms, but it was no use.
How long had he been in the water that he couldn't even shake off this one thin girl?
Jungjin collapsed limply just like that. The loud interrogation continued for a bit before becoming quiet.
It felt like his body was wrapped in some warm and nice scent, and he was lifted up, but he couldn't remember well.
***
When he opened his eyes, it was around a milky dawn.
It felt like he had sleep dozens of hours, and it also felt like he had woken up after a short nap.
A cool breeze blew over from the half open window. At the time when it should be stickily hot in July.
'Exactly where is this?'
He raised his body, which felt listless and heavy like he had been sick for a long time. He was limp and didn't have any energy.
Unconsciously rubbing his stinging dry eyes with the back of his hand after sitting up and catching his breath, Jungjin suddenly felt out of place.
He stared closely at both his hands.
The hand with thick knuckles from doing all sorts of part time jobs during his campus life, the rough tips of his fingers from sanding while trying to restore returned books. His hands that had been like that were now thin and smooth.
The grand injury from getting twelve stitches after cutting his hand with a grinder in the navy wasn't there either.
There was a rectangle made of whitish lines on the back of his right hand instead of the scar. The lines were so faint that he had to bring his hand right to his face to distinguish it.
'What is this? It's not my hand.'
Jungjin urgently examined the room. He saw a decorative mirror next to the door.
A boy skinny enough to look half starved was reflected on the mirror surface. His eyes were drooping, so that he looked like he had no strength.
Even though his head wouldn't become clearer if he did so, he shook his head, and the boy in the mirror also shook his rough brown hair.
'Is that me? What weird dream is this?'
Did he fall somewhere because he was drunk?
Losing his footing? Cerebral infarction? Coma?
Somehow, it could be a hallucination while lying in a sickbed.
'So what if I become a different person inside a dream? My ring is here.'
He had become an unfamiliar boy, but Jungjin's hand still had his college graduation ring on it. It was the only thing he had attachment to, so that might've been why it appeared in his dream, too.
Excluding this graduation ring, Jungjin didn't possess anything he would be sorry about losing.
When it was heard, around graduation time, that their major would disappear from the merging of departments, Minsun and several students decided to get graduation rings as a memento.
The ring that was from following her suggestion. He liked wearing the same ring as his one-sided crush, Minsun, so he had worn it up to now, like a loser.
'Not being able to forget her at, not even twenty two, but thirty two. What nonsense is this? And even inside a dream at that.'
It was when Jungjin was clenching his hair in his fists, swept up by self-disgust.
Ring– ring– ring–
He heard an unfamiliar bell sound. It was a clear sound that rang out widely. A dense forest and antique buildings showed up outside the window that had gotten brighter at one point.
Jungjin's mouth dropped open.
This place wasn't Seoul. So if it wasn't Seoul, then where was this?
Dreams were merely the rearrangement of one's memories and experiences. It should scatter when the consciousness woke up.
Jungjin's consciousness wasn't hazy at all.
All his senses felt vivid, too. Including a headache, the ache from lying down for a long time, as well as thirst.
He couldn't escape, thinking that it was a dream anymore.
He had never dreamt a movie-like dream like this before. He was always tired, so he always fell asleep as soon as he laid down and always woke up to the sound of his alarm.
The scene of a foreign country he hadn't even been to, was something that went beyond his imagination.
While he was lost in thought, the weakly resting fingers trembled occasionally.
The white gold ring that originally fit perfectly turned around his index finger like it would fall off. Jungjin unconsciously clutched the ring that was about to fall off.
"Ugh."
The moment his touched the ring, an incredible heat surged out of the thin metal. Even when he tried to take it off, it refused to come off, as if it had melted and stuck on.
Shining lines of text suddenly floated up in front of Jungjin's eyes. Not disappearing even when he closed his eyes, they embedded into his retinas.
[Personal Item: □□□'s Promise
–The level of narrative intervention is low, so the usage of the functions is restricted.
–Promise's link connects dimensions to dimensions. You have entered the last world, so the basic function of 'Promise' is open. Limitless ether sensitivity is granted to the user.
–The stage 1 function of 'Promise', 「Memory」 is open. All text that you have read during your life will be completely remembered due to the 「Memory」 function.]
There were also shining letters similar to augmented reality in his memory.
"That message or whatever it was!"
He had definitely seen it. Right after checking an author's tactless email on Dongjak Bridge, [–The message has been received.] had appeared while the water fluctuated.
"I had thought I saw wrong. What is this?"
With a suspicious face, Junjin scanned the words in front of his eyes.
'What, entered a world so the item's function is open… And I can completely remember text that I've read during my whole life? Does that mean I can recall all the books I've read so far?'
He was dumbfounded, so a scoff came out.
'This seems too much like a delusion I had in 3rd year of high school? Back when I couldn't do math so I forced myself to just memorize the formulas.'
No matter if it was his own dream, a delusion, could that really manifest? When he couldn't even remember if what he ate for dinner the day before was doenjang-jjigae or kimchi-jjigae?
A ghost couldn't speak something that was beyond the viewer's intelligence. The memory of someone in their thirties who was suffering from overwork, couldn't handle that kind of set up.
'It's an excessive set up.'
Whether Jungjin accepted it or not, a different phrase appeared in the air again.
[–With the operation of 'Promise' 's 「Memory」, you can reread
'Ah…'
Coming this far, there was something that Jungjin could infer.
'So, is this inside the novel's manuscript?'
It was material that often appeared in the webnovels he read on this way to and from work. The stories of 'protagonists' who went inside of books they were reading, books they liked, books they coincidentally picked up.
'Isn't something like going into a book too stale? And those were books that had been published. This novel is an incomplete novel that the author is making a fuss about fixing.'
In addition, if his soul had entered a character inside the manuscript, it was weird that his graduation ring was left on his hand.
Taken aback, Jungjin rubbed the outside of the ring that had changed to fit his finger, as a habit.
'
The moment Jungjin focused in order to remember the hazy contents of the manuscript, he cringed at a peculiar sensation.
'Is this the operation of 「Memory」?!'
The inside of his forehead felt hot. A scroll of paper clearly came up in his mind.
When the scroll quickly coiled, the text that he had already read became fresh like he had just reread it right now.
Jungjin laid down again.
Using 'Promise', rereading
'The name Kleio Asel doesn't come up in the manuscript.'
The red-haired girl at the riverside had definitely called Jungjin 'Kleio Asel'.
'That girl said that this guy is a Year 1 student. Seeing how she knows that, she should be a student in the same school.'
There was just one thing that he could make a guess at.
Isiel Kision's short mentions of a student in the same year who had lost footing in a river and died.
It was a period when an unidentifiable magic formula had been discovered inside the school. It was a part where Isiel was telling Arthur that she had scooped a dead kid out from the river while she was on the night patrol that she often went on, in case that magic formula was a ruse from a force that would harm Arthur.
'That's right! So that girl was Isiel Kision, huh. Now that I think of it, what she interrogated me about while holding onto me was magic whatever. So that's why… the pretty kid was also really strong. With that bright red hair.'
Isiel Kision was an important character in
Arthur's first knight, a swordsman[2] who learned how to use a sword under the same teacher, his loyal vassal.
During their school years, everyone had thought that the top newly enrolled student Isiel had become in charge of collecting problem students due to being 3rd prince Arthur's swordsmanship training alumnus.
If it was the time when both Isiel and Arthur were students, then there were more than 5 years before the war.
The magic formula incident was an episode that occurred on merely the second page of the manuscript, and Kleio Asel was a supporting character who disappeared there without even revealing his name.
Regardless of whether he read the manuscript or not, it was obvious that there was no answer. Since the author didn't write it down. He was a low level unimportant character in
Jungjin didn't know what kind of life Kleio Asel lived and how he came to die.
'But I'll think of that later.'
After using his head, he became tired again.
'I can just insist I lost my memory like everyone does. I even fell into a river, it's perfect.'
The Royal Capital Defense Corps School in the capital Rundein of Albion Kingdom was described inn the manuscript as the most elite in the country.
It was a setting where only kids whose ability was good, family was good, or wealth was good – who had at least one of these.
'If so, then this Kleio kid probably has one of those things, too.'
Whatever it was, would it be worse that Jungjin's original life?
'That's right. Well, whether it's my dream or a creation of the author, there's no difference in that they're imaginary.'
After becoming an adult, he couldn't rest properly for even three days. During breaks and holidays, he worked hard by doing freelancing in order to get a bit more money.
He had never gone on an overseas trip, unlike everyone else. No, in the first place, he didn't even have a passport.
Though it could be that he was actually lying in the intensive care unit with a respirator on, feeling the touch of the patient gown that the nurse had changed him into.
'What do I know? Let's just lie down. I feel like I can sleep 10 more years.'
Jungjin snuggled into the soft blankets again. The blankets were comfortable, like he was buried within clouds.
Only the 'Promise' that was on his left hand blinked as it shone. Jungjin, who had completely fallen asleep, didn't notice the golden letters that appeared above 'Promise'.
[–The writing of
[–The author has gained the beginning of a new ending.]
[–The preexisting character is written again.]
[1] Korean men have compulsory military service
[2] The word in krn is gender neutral, so I'm using this as gender neutral for simplicity's sake