1014 Episode 62 Snowfield Kim Dokja (4)

"Yoo Joonghyuk. It's the person you showed me before, right?"

Father smiled faintly at Kim Dokja's quick-witted question.

"Did you know?"

"I had a feeling it might be him."

The man with the piercing eyes and a pitch-black coat who had appeared in Father's story sometime ago. Kim Dokja vividly remembered the man's appearance.

"Well, he is a man hard to forget once you see him."

"That was the first time you took away a story to prevent me from reading it, Father."

"Because back then you weren't used to stories yet."

Kim Dokja tilted his head for a moment and asked.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Because if you start reading that man's story, you'll end up reading only that one."

"Why?"

"That is just how a protagonist's story is."

The protagonist. Father had certainly called him the protagonist last time as well.

"I've seen that person in other stories, too."

"Of course. He is the protagonist."

"Then do the stories of this universe exist for the sake of that person?"

Father had clearly said so. That, ultimately, all the stories of this world exist to complete the protagonist's story.

"That is correct."

"But he looked lonely."

"He is someone who wants to be lonely."

Someone who wants to be lonely.

Kim Dokja tilted his head once again.

"Where is there such a person?"

"There are people like that."

Father's words sounded as strange as the explanation that 'there are people who like to risk their lives', but Kim Dokja made an effort not to argue back.

There are still many stories in this world that he does not understand, and perhaps Yoo Joonghyuk's story is of that kind as well.

So, instead of asking questions, Kim Dokja read Yoo Joonghyuk's story. True to his nature as a protagonist, the man appeared in every corner of the stories scattered throughout the universe. His name was even in the story he liked the most.

In that story, his name was called as often as Kim Dokja's. A cry filled with worry and anxiety, or perhaps an unknown hope. His name was always shrouded in emotions of that color.

"Were you acquainted?"

"In a certain world, yes."

"Were you friends?"

"We were comrades who lived and died separately."

"Separately? Not together?"

A playful smile appeared on his father's face.

"That is correct."

Does that mean they weren't very close? Then again, looking at the story, he thought that might be the case. After all, in the stories he had read, Kim Dokja usually looked at Yoo Joonghyuk with a look of exasperation or called him by adding retorts like, "You bastard!"

"What was his relationship with father?"

"He had nothing to do with me."

"That may be true in the <Kim Dokja Company> story, but it's different in your story, Father."

Father's eyes widened as if he had learned something like that.

"It seems you are reading stories quite diligently."

"Because that is the only thing I have to do here."

"Yoo Joonghyuk was my rival."

Kim Dokja's eyes widened at the unexpected word that came from his father's mouth.

"A rival?"

"Yes."

"It's not just in your imagination, is it?"

"I fought life-or-death battles with him several times. We nearly killed each other, and nearly died again."

"Do you miss him?"

"…"

"It feels just like you are talking about an old friend."

Father was silent for a moment, then smiled bitterly. Kim Dokja was slightly surprised, as it was the first time he had seen his father smile like that.

Father continued.

"I killed him with my own hands."

"…"

"I saw with my own eyes the moment he breathed his last and left this world."

His father looked somewhat hollow as he told this story.

Kim Dokja hesitated for a moment before asking.

"You said your life's goal was to surpass that man, didn't you?"

"That is correct."

"Then you achieved the goal you wanted, Father."

His father did not answer with a simple 'Yes' as usual. Kim Dokja asked again.

"Weren't you happy?"

"He left me behind and moved on to the 'next story'."

A voice like an indifferent period. Kim Dokja realized, a little late, what his father meant.

It was an explanation regarding Yoo Joonghyuk's ability, [Regression].

"In his long journey to prevent the destruction of the world, I was merely a minor villain decorating a single episode. The residue left behind in a world abandoned by the protagonist. That is me."

Kim Dokja was flustered. The stories he had read had never taught him what to say in a situation like this.

So, Kim Dokja had to think for himself. He had to do his best with his small head to ponder how to comfort the villain alienated from the protagonist's story.

"No one likes stories like that."

Born as a character in a story, destined to live a story receiving no one's love. Kim Dokja thought about that fate for a long time.

The man who survived alone to the very end in a world abandoned by the protagonist, finally arriving at this snowfield. He thought and thought about the father who found him—about the man named 'Cheon Inho'. And he reached a conclusion.

"I like it."

At Kim Dokja's words, Cheon Inho's shoulders trembled slightly.

"Wouldn't it be okay for at least one story in the world to exist where a villain who worked incredibly hard defeats the protagonist?"

"…"

"Father did his best. I know that. How much effort you put into that story, and how hard you tried to make it shine alongside the protagonist."

Cheon Inho stared blankly at his son. No constellation had ever spoken to him in that way.

"Even if it isn't the protagonist, every character is worth recording."

As young Kim Dokja spoke those words, his eyes shone like stars. Starlight illuminating the forgotten in the blank spaces of a story that no one remembers.

Watching his son chatter away to comfort him, Cheon Inho slowly opened his mouth.

"Let's read a particularly interesting story today."

"A particularly interesting story?"

Stories were falling from the sky. Stories so vast that it seemed impossible to finish reading them even in a lifetime. Fortunately, Cheon Inho knew a few of those stories that were quite intriguing.

"It is a story about a man who eats dirt."

Time in the snowfield continued to flow. A week, a month, a year, ten years. Like snow. Welcoming the falling stories and reading them, Kim Dokja lived on with Cheon Inho.

"Here, here is a true story that fell today."

"Thank you."

"Have you finished organizing them?"

"Roughly enough."

"But why did you set this one aside?"

"It's a story about a kid who eats dirt."

As time passed, Kim Dokja found more stories he wanted to read.

Most of them were true stories about <Kim Dokja Company>. Stories about people wandering in search of him, who had disappeared from this universe.

"But I don't understand this part."

"This part."

However, most of the stories falling on the snowfields were not intact, so the two often had to put their heads together to study them.

"How about interpreting it like this?"

A faint light flowed from Cheon Inho's fingertips and mended the broken stories.

Power to handle stories and fill in the blank spaces.

The ability to revise [Fate].

With that power, Cheon Inho joined forces with Kim Dokja to excavate the stories scattered within the ruins and began to piece them together.

"Or, this interpretation is also possible."

Watching Kim Dokja rejoice at the continuing stories, and feeling unfamiliar with himself for unconsciously smiling at him, Cheon Inho continued to gather stories again and again.

A single being is the totality of the records he read. Cheon Inho felt, in real time, Kim Dokja becoming Kim Dokja.

As they read the lost stories together and reread them, the number of questions Kim Dokja asked gradually decreased. Instead, the time he spent gazing somewhere with longing eyes increased. Cheon Inho felt he knew what Kim Dokja was missing, but he didn't specifically ask about it.

"So this is how it turned out."

Reading the latter part of the undone narrative, Kim Dokja sighed or his sorrows grew. In particular, there was a story he watched repeatedly. It was the scene where '49% of Kim Dokja' was being lifted.

Kim Dokja, who wanted to be with <Kim Dokja Company> but ultimately could not possess that story.

"My comrades."

Now, that Kim Dokja was reminiscing about them within the restored records.

"Do they know I am here?"

"…"

"If Han Sooyoung had written this story, and if the imaginations of the fragments of Kim Dokja scattered throughout the universe had gathered to bring about the miracle of the 'Kim Dokja' they remembered returning—"

Watching the endlessly falling snow, Kim Dokja continued to ask.

"Why am I still here?"

Why could the Kim Dokja of this place not return to <Kim Dokja Company>?

Cheon Inho could not answer. It was a question he could not understand.

Recalling that sentence, Cheon Inho slowly opened his mouth.

"Do you want to meet <Kim Dokja Company> again?"

Kim Dokja's ethereal eyes blinked.

"If I want to meet them?"

"You just need to leave this world."

"How?"

"That is..."

Cheon Inho said, gazing at the landscape of the snowfield he had seen for so long.

"I don't know either."

A vast snowfield with no discernible entrance or exit. They had been trapped here for over a decade.

After a moment of silence, Kim Dokja asked.

"What about you, Father? Do you want to go outside?"

Cheon Inho thought. Clearly, he had something he wanted to say.

"I wanted to go outside."

He wanted to be the protagonist. He wanted to be recorded alongside Yoo Joonghyuk, in his own ending.

"Until recently, that is."

Nevertheless, while staying in this snowfield with Kim Dokja, that desire gradually faded. Perhaps it was because he had become accustomed to this life.

"Lately, I often think that I don't necessarily have to go outside."

Cheon Inho felt unfamiliar with himself for saying those words. It was because it was a statement that denied the entire history he had lived until now. Cheon Inho forced a wry smile without realizing it.

"I just mean that I am like that. You..."

Thinking he had said something unnecessary, he turned his head, but Kim Dokja's condition seemed somewhat normal. Kim Dokja wasn't listening to him. To be precise, he was in a state where he couldn't hear.

"How."

With Kim Dokja and his voice a mixture of intense emotion, Cheon Inho gazed at the story that had settled on Kim Dokja's fingertips.

"How is a story like this—how is that possible?"

Kim Dokja was reading the story. It was a story he, too, had never seen before.

"How does a 'Kim Dokja' like this exist?"

Reading the story together, Cheon Inho sighed.

The Kim Dokja chosen by the group, and the Kim Dokja left behind in the snowfield.

And on that day, Kim Dokja of the snowfield.

He came to realize the existence of a brother who was not yet known.