Chapter 31 - A Night of Counting Stars (5)
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“Shall we go around and introduce ourselves? I’m Yevgeny. Yevgeny Novikov Karamzin. Kim Eugene, currently occupying the body of a son of House Karamzin!”
Eugene wrote his name in Korean on the clubroom whiteboard as he spoke, standing before a terrified girl from the Knight Department, an elf whose languid expression gave nothing away, and his murderous Santa Claus of a boss, the mere sight of whom still made his knees shake.
“The last novel I read was <The Swordsmanship Genius and Scoundrel of the Northern Grand Duke's Family>, and now I’ve enrolled in the Theology Department and I’m on the path to priesthood! Oh, and I can see a Status window. Anyone else here have one?”
He shot his hand up, tossing out the question to establish a little common ground, but the others merely exchanged wary glances.
Nobody?
Was having a Status window actually something really special...? He lowered his hand awkwardly and continued.
“Um. Hmm... Any other questions?”
“The ending.”
“... Sorry?”
“Explain the ending, setting, and plot of the novel you read.”
Eugene thought for a moment. Where was he supposed to start?
Long-running serial novels generally met one of three ends.
One: a proper conclusion.
Two: abandonment.
And finally: becoming the author’s pension plan.
The novel Eugene had read was a pension plan through and through. An ultra-long-running serial with over a thousand chapters.
The sort of easy, mindless reading that was perfect for a commute, gliding along without any frustrating stretches—or much substance, either.
In other words, it had no ending to speak of. The protagonist just went to the academy, collected hidden perks, started fighting an evil family of mages, and then suddenly a world war broke out...
It prolonged its life by repeating “It turns out the real mastermind was so-and-so” every hundred chapters...
The sort of novel whose author probably couldn’t even imagine ending it anymore.
“Hmm...”
Ivan considered Eugene’s account. Definitely an unfamiliar plot, and an unfamiliar novel.
After all, Ivan—or rather, Kim Seonwoo—had been serious about novels.
Meaning he had strict selection criteria. He also had too much pride to read some endless, romance-free pension-plan novel with a dash of BL, prominently advertised on a major portal’s front page.
“Next.”
When Ivan turned toward him, Oswald rose hesitantly.
“Oswald Eastvelfen. Second son of Viscount Eastvelfen. My father is a serving privy councilor, and I’m an elf from Kallion. As you can see. My Korean name was Park Jaeyoung. The novel I was reading was, uh... Um.”
Oswald squeezed his eyes shut and forced the words out.
“The Genius Mage the Villainess Is Obsessed With... That was it.”
“Ooh. Romance!”
“Shut—Please keep your mouth shut.”
Oswald clenched his teeth at Eugene’s interjection.
“I didn’t even read thirty chapters! The story wasn’t very good, the dark stuff was already over by then, and after that it just kept shoving contrived frustration down your throat!”
“Ooh, an expert.”
“Shut—Keep! Your mouth! Shut!”
“How old are you? I was thirty-one in Korea, and I’m four years into possession!”
“... Twenty-seven in Korea, and four years into possession.”
“Then you’re definitely the younger one! Come on, call me your big bro!”
“Wow. Excuse me, Mr. Ivan? I can’t work with this asshole.”
So this one knew neither the ending nor the plot.
Ignoring their bickering, Ivan nodded.
“Next.”
“Eek!”
Yuri, who had been cowering all this time, struggled to her feet.
“I’m Yuri... Frank. In Korea, I was... Lee Yuri. I was an illustrator.”
“Wow! A working adult!”
“U-um... I was twenty-nine... Four years into possession... No parents.”
“Whoa! Immune to yo-mama jokes...!”
“Is that asshole actually insane?”
The steady stream of fellow Possessors his own age had sent Eugene’s excitement soaring. The very fact that there were more people who shared knowledge of his homeland in this godforsaken premodern other world seemed to thrill him.
Yuri, meanwhile, was still cowering.
“I-I didn’t mean my parents were gone. I meant this body doesn’t have parents... I’m called Yuri Frank...”
“The original story?”
“Eek!”
Yuri flinched at Ivan’s question and averted her eyes.
Silence fell for a moment as everyone waited for her to speak.
“What, is this a riddle? Let me guess! Let’s see. An academy story, regret-despair-obsession, so this one’s a gender-swap story...! That fits the pattern! W-were you actually a man in Korea...?”
“No!!”
“Or maybe we’re suddenly switching to a livestreaming story... Oh, it could turn out to be traditional fantasy...!”
“W-well, you see...”
“Shut up, Eugene. Now, Miss Yuri Frank. Let me cast a calming spell on you.”
Oswald raised his hand with a warm smile. He specialized in Mind Sorcery, the school of mental magic.
Which meant he could use buff skills like [Bestow Courage] or [Guidance of Wisdom].
As mysterious purple mana began to ripple, Yuri leaped backward in a convulsion of terror.
“H-hypnosis!! Noooo!!”
“... What?!”
“Wh-what are you going to do to me with that?! Y-you know, don’t you? You all know! You pieces of trash!!”
“I’m losing track of this conversation. Mr. Ivan, what do we do?”
Ivan considered it for a moment.
She was reluctant to reveal her original story and suspiciously frightened of his perfectly ordinary appearance.
The same went for Eugene, who looked like an ordinary handsome young nobleman, and the kindly-looking Oswald, whose eyes always curved in a gentle smile.
“I-I was dragged here while... working on an illustration! Th-the original was a hu... hu...”
“Aha! Got it! Humiliation porn!”
“Aaaaaah!!”
Yuri sank to the floor, covering her face. She wanted to go home. She hated them all. She was scared...
She had never, ever wanted to attend an academy featuring a blond, tanned creep, a narrow-eyed hypnotist, and a suspiciously powerful gardener...
As Yuri sniffled, Ivan suddenly murmured,
“Four years for all of you.”
“Oh, and this boss of mine? He’s been here a whole thirty years.”
“How old is he this year...?”
“His body’s thirty-four!”
“Oh... Dear.”
Oswald stared at Ivan’s beard and sighed mournfully. How hard it must have been... He nodded, deciding to be understanding even if Ivan occasionally acted like a lunatic.
“Come to think of it, we all landed here around the same time! What happened four years ago? Hmm...”
“The Demon King died.”
Ivan surveyed them gravely.
“The hero killed the Demon King four years ago. And both of them were Possessors.”
“Uh...”
“This world has no ‘story.’”
Because this was reality.
Barely managing to accept that statement, Ivan continued.
“But individuals have their own ‘stories.’ Separate stories... Like the ‘original stories’ each of you read before coming here. Maximilien, who presumably arrived after reading a traditional hero story, became the ‘hero.’ It was probably the same for the Demon King.”
“Uh, then...”
“The northern grand duke’s swordsmanship genius and scoundrel.”
Ivan gestured toward Eugene, then turned his finger toward Oswald.
“The Genius Mage the Villainess Is Obsessed With.”
“Hah...”
Oswald shook his head, looking distinctly uncomfortable.
“... And some unknown humiliation porn...”
“Waaaaah...!!”
Yuri began to sob.
“You all began your stories in circumstances similar to your originals. A ducal family’s scoundrel, a mage a noble girl has an unrequited crush on, and some unknown humiliation porn...”
“S-stop emphasizing that...!”
“Very well. But the stories that follow are different.”
Ivan’s gaze deepened.
“A woman who knew Possessors from earlier generations once told me something.”
[“Live your own story and bring it to an end. How that story ends isn’t for fate or the world to decide. That’s something you must decide for yourself.”]
[“Each person’s story has its own ending, and the path leading to that ending isn’t necessarily dictated by a predetermined fate.”]
“There is no fate. Here or on Earth, our lives aren’t trapped inside a story running along a fixed track.”
[“Don’t wait for fate to end your story, my disciple. Turn your pages with your own hands. All the way to the end.”]
Ivan nodded, recalling Enrique’s words.
“After spending thirty years in this world, meeting the Hero's Party, and now meeting you, I’ve developed a hypothesis.”
Ivan walked over to the whiteboard.
“While fate doesn’t determine a person’s future, I believe it does at least intervene in their past—in their ‘beginning.’”
Suppose the world had wanted a Demon King and a hero, and therefore brought those two here to possess bodies in those roles.
And here were three other Possessors who had appeared immediately after the Demon King’s death.
They had each arrived through an entirely different story, yet, remarkably, with a ‘starting point’ similar to their originals.
And all of them had gathered here, at St. Jansk University. An extraordinary coincidence? No, this was some kind of ‘design.’ Surely it was.
In other words, there might be a particular kind of story the world wanted.
What they could infer at this point was...
“It’s an academy story.”
“Knew it! Hell yeah!”
“And we have the ability to track the ‘official’ course of events in real time.”
Ivan gestured toward Eugene.
“He has a ‘Status window.’ It points the story in a direction through Quests. They change dynamically to reflect the current situation.”
“Oh...”
“So, from now on, we...”
Ivan began writing in large letters on the whiteboard.
[What story requires all of us.] [What ending we will all reach.] [What we must do in this world.]
“We band together to find these answers. We identify our individual stories, analyze the course of the world, and move toward our ‘ending.’”
“Oooooh...!”
“Ah, one moment.”
While Eugene exclaimed in excitement, Oswald raised his hand.
“We haven’t heard what your story is, Mr. Ivan.”
“Oh, right! I don’t know either. What was your story, Boss?”
“... I don’t know.”
“Huh?”
Ivan swept a solemn gaze over all of them, then spoke matter-of-factly.
“I left hate comments on over thirty works to get myself possessed.”
“Oh... Wow.”
“Good lord...”
Lunatic.
In all three of their minds, three red lines appeared beneath Ivan’s name.
* * *
That night, all of them stood atop the tallest spire at St. Jansk University, gazing up at the sky.
“All right, Korean Patriotic Corps, move out!”
“I told you, it’s the Returnees' Party.”
“I’d rather we didn’t name it at all.”
Inwardly, Ivan was naming it the ‘Volunteer Club.’