episode_0137

‘I am not a genius.’

I was poisoned by this sentence.

“Can I leave my luggage here?”

“I’m sorry I seem to be just playing around.”

“What are you sorry about? My back hurts so much I can’t even stand properly.”

Moving into a hallway-style apartment that looks old at first glance. Putting the moving boxes down on the floor.

He is a big man in the big company. He got married not long ago and has a big age difference.

——————-

Some jobs don’t usually come with hard work.

No. It would be more accurate to say that there is not enough time to put in the effort.

It takes a lot of skill to draw a single picture properly. If you were to create a story by weaving together hundreds of pictures, it would take about 10 years.

During that time, their livelihood was ruined and their parents sighed.

-The drawing style is beautiful, but somewhat ambiguous.

-There is no charm that attracts people’s hearts.

I wanted to become a webtoon writer.

However, the only comments that come up are feedback that cannot be fixed even if you want to. On top of that, people in the webtoon industry are frighteningly uninterested.

What was even more difficult to bear was the fact that young newcomers appeared every year.

I clenched my teeth. I vowed to myself that I would make up for the talent gap with effort. I took on commissions and part-time jobs to earn money, and in my spare time, I sat in front of my tablet and drew pictures.

“That’s right. The tablet. Did you throw that away?”

“Yeah. I threw it away when I moved. I didn’t even want to look at it.”

“…Good job.”

He makes a bitter expression and then turns his gaze towards the door.

“Okay, I’ll go. I’ll contact you later.”

“Yeah.”

thud.

After moving from one room to another, I moved into an apartment with help from .

That was the first day.

[Ghost Apartment Survival Diary, EP1, Move in]

***

A lot of things have changed.

If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, it’s that I still haven’t thrown ‘that’ away.

Buried items among the moving boxes piled up in front of the door.

There was a time when I swore I would just throw it away.

I thought I would never come back after coming to this dangerous apartment.

Tablet and pen.

This is something I’ve been writing while dreaming of becoming a webtoon writer.

I wondered if something had broken while I was away. There was no sign of anyone breaking into the house, but I decided to check anyway.

Rustle.

When I first came here, I piled my luggage in front of the door, afraid that the scary thing outside might come in.

A bitter smile forms.

I unpacked the box, took out the tablet, and moved it.

The first day I got here, I didn’t even think about unpacking and just lay there listlessly. I didn’t even let my brother help me. In fact, I was afraid he’d find out that I had kept my tablet instead of throwing it away.

Thanks to that, I now have to work hard.

First, let’s start by setting up the computer.

After roughly setting up the computer and connecting it to the tablet, a workspace is created.

Beep-

Both the tablet and the computer. Fortunately, they are still working fine. The electronic pen is also fine. The tip has not fallen off and the lines are drawn well. The pressure control seems to work well.

“Yeah, everything is fine.”

I muttered to myself for no reason and moved the mouse cursor.

Now what I need to check is the last file I was working on.

Click.

[Loading file.]

After some loading, the file is loaded.

The screen is still white, but we already know what image will appear.

It’s just a common work of an aspiring webtoon artist. It had to be that way.

“… … Uh.”

I froze in place with that one word.

What appeared on the screen was the entrance to the cave.

A gaping hole in a white background, with torn pieces fluttering around.

As I stare at the tablet, a wind blows inside.

I reached out to the LCD screen.

Naturally, the hand is blocked above the screen.

But I can feel the wind blowing.

I came here through that entrance.

After staring at my fingertips for a moment, I moved away.

I’m confused. I’m trying to organize my thoughts, but I don’t know what to believe.

– I will kill all the other party members in the future.

– Or, you will pay a corresponding price.

Is this the price?

Sister Se-rim, Da-ju, the faces of the people I’ve come to know come to mind one after another.

Instead of killing them, is this the price I have to pay?

As I leave the hallway, I hear the sobbing again.

“Ugh. Ugh. Sob.”

The woman from earlier is sprawled out on the hallway floor.

She must have taken quite a hit from the fire extinguisher I swung at her, because now she can’t even maintain her female form.

A monster that lives by borrowing the form of a human. A black liquid-like creature that gurgles on the ground and makes unpleasant noises.

It’s a situation where you can’t escape because it’s covering the entire hallway.

Ugh-

I had no choice but to step on him and head to the elevator.

It’s confusing.

The people on the hotel floor were still frozen, as if time had stopped.

After looking at their faces one by one with curiosity, I stopped at a spot on the hallway.

“Yebin.”

“Huh? Huh?”

Yebin looks around, turning her head as if she just woke up from a nap.

“Dabin? Where have you been?”

“I checked something.”

“Huh? Why are all the others frozen?”

This is almost the first time I’ve seen Yebin looking so flustered.

Normally I would have enjoyed it, but things are different now.

“Dabin. What’s the situation right now?”

“Listen first.”

“… … Yes.”

This is dangerous knowledge.

A normal person would feel their mind destroyed as soon as they recognize it, leaving behind a cigarette burn mark that seems to continue to burn in their presence.

But if it’s Yebin, she’ll be okay.

Yebin inherited the authority of the Infinite Library together with me.

It will be a shock, but it won’t harm you.

“Yebin-ah. Let’s say I draw a webtoon.”

“Yes.”

“Then how do the characters in the webtoon feel and think?”

“Do you think something is unnatural?”

“No. You wouldn’t know you were a character.”

“Then?”

“You probably think you’re acting on your own will.”

I put my palms down.

“Now let’s take this up a level.”

One more hand rises above the other.

“There is a webtoon writer in the world I live in.”

“Dabin is a webtoon artist, and he’s on top of that.”

“Yeah.”

“Then that person draws a webtoon featuring Dabin.”

“That’s right.”

This is a story that both Yebin and I know to some extent.

But now we need to do this.

“If you do that, it might keep repeating.”

“Yeah.”

“It will continue to repeat the same thing in the webtoon drawn by Dabin. If a character who takes on the role of the writer appears there too… … .”

“That’s right.”

Creation and creative works.

The relationship between the two builds up and builds up.

Countless layers of existence result from this.

On that layer, stories sometimes appear anew, sometimes come to an end, and sometimes are forgotten without a trace.

I just blurted out something I knew.

“That layer is called the narrative layer.”

“Yeah. I vaguely found out about it too.”

Yebin nods.

I took a deep breath.

The reason I am going into such a long explanation is because I need to organize my thoughts.

You need to let go of the random thoughts that are running through your head and think calmly.

“… … .”

“Dabin. Then can I ask you something now?”

“Yeah.”

I was just about to say that.

“Why are all the others stopped?”

“Because I have to come to a conclusion.”

He answered quickly and leaned his back against the wall.

“Normally, there is no movement between narrative layers. But I… … .”

A level higher than this story.

That’s why I was able to make a reversal.

“I came from one level above.”

I don’t know how this was possible.

What matters is how I take this.

How much of it is fiction and how much is reality?

The image of the future I had seen from the emergency exit came to mind.

The sight of me walking out of the apartment without any hesitation, even after killing everyone close to me.

If I take just one wrong step here, I will be like that too.

Anyway, they are characters in a made-up story.

It doesn’t make much difference to me whether they live or die.

Even if this world is erased, I will survive.

Because it came from a different narrative class in the first place.

The evidence was the transparent curtain that appeared beneath my feet as I tried to exit the apartment through the emergency exit.

It was a moment when I could actually see the narrative hierarchy with my own eyes.

then…….

The only way I can escape from here is… … .

“Dabin. What are you thinking about now?”

“I don’t know. It’s too complicated.”

What if we let this world be erased?

What if we let the Professor do what he wants, stand by and watch the world end, and do nothing to stop the Seven?

Can I go back to where I came from?

Was it not this apartment that I had to escape from, or was it the story that I had to escape the apartment?

Now I know.

A man. A failed webtoon aspirant. And an old apartment he just moved into.

The novel that started here originally ended with me succeeding as a webtoon writer.

***

-He stands in front of me smiling.

——————-

The surroundings had changed in the meantime. It was no longer a shabby apartment, but a living room with large windows and plenty of sunlight.

Next to the air conditioner in the corner, a life-size figure of a character I drew is proudly displayed.

“My friend’s son said he saw yours too. He asked me to get an autograph from author Im Da-bin?”

I looked at the thing in front of me with a bewildered face.

This is the story of a world where I succeeded with webtoons.

That’s not why I was surprised.

No matter how improbable the story, there is a world line where it happens. That means someone came up with it.

This expression that was smiling brightly changes.

He looks around with a completely expressionless face, then blurts out.

—————–But you were originally a man.”

“What?”

“I was a little confused as to why you wanted me to change it. This look suits me better. I like it.”

“What the heck… … .”

——————-

“Good job.”

Surrounding objects are transformed into information and then disappear.

A collapse at the information level, not a material collapse.

On the table, there is a word ‘table’.

On the clock, the word clock is written.

The letters are pulled out and slowly begin to disintegrate.

B ye gg ae g ji a

You are my friend

Corn k – ri t – j o each

Everything was turning black and disappearing.

Everything is gone.

[Ghost Apartment Survival Diary, EP100, Burning Narrative Layer]

***

But in an instant, the whole flow changed.

I was trapped in my apartment as a woman.

You have become a librarian at the Infinite Library, and in order to survive, you must prevent the destruction of the world.

When on earth did it start?

Am I being dragged into this story by someone’s need and forced to move?

My memory is hazy. Even about the reality I remember.

If you go back, where do you go back to?

Even if I go back, that too is just a story.

Now that I know this, I can’t live anywhere.

“… … Yebin.”

He quietly called out to Yebin, who was beside him.

“I’m going crazy.”

Even if everything is over, there is no law that says I can go back.

It is possible to be trapped alone in an erased world.

No. I already saw the possibility.

In an internet broadcast I saw on Jeong Hae-won’s cell phone, my future self was blankly staring at the night sky.

Left alone in a world where there is nothing, living on, literally unable to die.

Just one thing.

I will not be defeated.

No matter what the outcome is.

That was the scariest thing.

It’s not ‘us’, it’s just me.

I barely raised my head.

I asked Yebin with trembling breath.

“What are you going to do?”

What conclusion would someone else draw? It’s just a story. And it’s just a story that will soon disappear.

‘Seven’ will eventually eat all the stories here, and the world will be simply deleted like a computer file.

It doesn’t stop there. He’ll head further up, to a higher narrative level. The reality I came from will also be erased.

The gods too.

In a place where even the gods of gods have disappeared, no new stories are born.

All narratives and existences will eventually disappear.

“Huh?”

I held onto poor Yebin and kept asking her.

Because there are really few people who can understand this story.

“What would you like me to do?”

“… … Dabin. I am… … .”

Yebin comes up with an answer with difficulty.

“I don’t know. But still,”

“Yeah.”

I cut off Yebin and turned around.

The tears had already dried.

“Okay.”

I think differently now.

If you are a ‘professor’.

What would be the answer if you were a ‘professor’ at the foundation?

Maybe soon we’ll hear the answer he gave.

The conclusion was not drawn properly.

But the story starts rolling again.

A hotel inside an apartment. People who had been frozen in time were slowly waking up again.