< Chapter 1: It Was There, But It Wasn’t (1) >
“Seo-yul. What do you think is the strength of my novel?”
“That, there are no readers, so if Hyung holds a fan meeting, only we will meet?”
I joked and drank a glass of soju.
“No. Not that.”
“Then what? That there are no hate comments on your writing? Because there are no readers.”
“…Should I just kill you?”
The man in front of me was twitching.
I smiled inwardly, as I looked at Kim Shin.
“Seo-yul. I’m being serious.”
But he soon had a serious look.
A somewhat pitiful expression.
Well. It’s understandable that he’s pitiful, since he’s already had two failed works as a writer.
But does he really have any reason to be pitiful?
If he sells the luxury items he’s wearing, he’ll probably be able to buy a house.
No, even if it’s not financial, it’s sad that his novel is not recognized.
Glug, Glug.
I filled my glass with alcohol and answered.
“Hmm. First of all, the strength of your novel is that. Your writing skills. Your diligence. Your writing speed. And that’s totally my taste. And…”
It’s been seven months since I first met this guy.
At the time, he was going to hold a fan meeting even though he had less than a hundred total works, out of curiosity I decided to attend it and in the end, it turned out to be a fateful encounter.
“Ah. The fairly fresh world-building. It was pretty good that you put the fantasy worldview into the modern era in this work.”
“And then?”
“Hmm.”
At first, we were fans and writers, but we drank often and without knowing it we became brothers.
“Hey. Do you want me to be honest? Or do you want me to sugarcoat it?”
“…Be honest.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
I drank another glass of soju.
“Kee~ First of all, your novel is.”
Let me tell you in advance, but I don’t look drunk even if I’m dead drunk.
“First of all, the story is bland. And most of all, it lacks mass appeal. Who would pay for such a novel? It’s not some old-fashioned rental shop novel. I’m just reading it because I care about you.”
And now I’m pretty drunk.
I passed my limit a long time ago.
“But still, there are about 50 people per chapter…”
“50 people? 50 people? Hey. How many purchases did you get for this work?”
It’s enough to spit out without thinking through the filter called the brain.
“…3.”
“One of them is hyung, right?”
“…”
“One is me. Then there’s only one left. Where did you get the number 50 from?”
I poured another glass of soju and drank it in one gulp.
By the way, my drinking habit is that alcohol calls for alcohol.
The more drunk I get, the more I drink until I collapse.
“So I’m asking you for the next work…”
He also took a shot of soju as if his stomach was craving it.
I can’t lose either, so I took another shot.
One drink is not enough, so another drink.
Good~
“Kee~ Hey. Then I’ll tell you straight.”
Two guys nodded their heads.
When did they become two?
God?
Oh. He’s God.
Kim Shin. (Shin means God)
The tension rises.
“Your novel is… the problem is the status window. Huh? The hell with the Status window! If only that wasn’t there, it would have been a hit.”
“…What?”
I let go of the control strings in my head and spewed out words like a fountain.
“You don’t need a status window that everyone and their dog uses. I told you it doesn’t suit you. If only that wasn’t there, you would have made more than a thousand times more money by now.”
“But status windows are now a basic rather than a choice for modern fantasy novels…”
Glug, glug.
Another drink.
“Basic? Basic? That’s all bullshit. I told you. It doesn’t suit you.”
Now he looks blurry to me.
“From the beginning, this work would have been a success if there was no status window!”
“Hey. No matter what, you can’t take out the status window from the “S-class Status Window”. The world view itself will be completely twisted.”
(Name of the novel by Kim Shin)
I drank another glass of soju.
“If changing the world view is too much… That’s it! How about just lightly removing the protagonist’s status window? Doesn’t that sound fun?”
“…Only the protagonist?”
His expression became somewhat serious.
I smiled brightly and pulled his cheek out.
“Anyway, you need to let go of the trend a little bit. Okay?”
“…Okay. I get what you’re saying.”
“Okay!”
I smiled innocently and drank the last glass.
Thud-
As soon as I said that, I collapsed.
“Ah! Then how about this? There’s a thing called item restriction in my setting, right? How about······ Seo-yul? Did you fall asleep?”
The last thing I heard was his faint voice.
“······My head hurts.”
My mouth is dry and parched.
There is a severe headache that feels like being stabbed with a needle, along with pain in my stomach.
“Ugh.”
It’s certain.
This is a hangover.
By the way, how did I get home yesterday?
I’m sure I met up with Shin Hyung and started drinking. He looked a bit depressed, so I drank faster and then······.
I don’t remember.
The film is completely cut off.
I think Hyung said something with a serious expression, but.
“Ugh. My head is cracking.”
My head hurts too much to think any further.
I have to do something about this hangover first.
“I feel like throwing up······.”
I must have drank a lot.
This is almost unprecedented.
It seems like I kept drinking even after I lost my memory.
I put on my clothes carefully and headed outside the house.
“Ugh···.”
As soon as I felt the hot sun, my head spun for a moment.
I tried to soothe my queasy stomach and slowly headed to the nearby convenience store.
When I arrived at the convenience store, I bought a hangover relief drink and quickly gulped it down, then sprawled out on the outdoor table.
I feel like I’m alive now.
The breeze blowing gently feels good.
And above all, it’s quiet.
If I stay here for a while, my hangover will soon….
“You bitch! Did you say everything?”
“I did! Why!”
“Ugh!”
My skull rang again at the sudden high-pitched sound. I thought it was some kind of ultrasonic attack.
I pressed my head hard and looked for the source of the sound.
“Why are you blaming me for something that you messed up in the first place?”
“Messed up? Ha! Don’t make me laugh! You didn’t deliver it properly!”
“Oh, dear? Funny? That’s why you shouldn’t talk to people from uneducated families?”
“What? Uneducated family? You bitch!”
I sighed involuntarily.
My peaceful healing time disappeared like this.
“Ay.”
There’s nothing I can do about it.
I have to get out of here.
It was when I got up from my seat.
“You can tell by looking at it! Your son must have a bad head like you.”
“Funny. Why don’t you worry about your own son? He barely has an intelligence of 3.”
Flinch.
I stopped walking at the incomprehensible words.
Intelligence 3?
“My son is a genius, so his intelligence is already 5. Is his mother’s side’s genes not good?”
“You bitch! Really!”
This time, intelligence 5.
It doesn’t seem like I misheard it.
I’ve never seen anyone fight so creatively in my life.
They both must have attended some Think Big classes in their school days.
“What good is intelligence? Your son. His physical score was deficient. How can such a premature baby grow well?”
“What? Premature baby?”
This time, physical score.
I don’t know what they’re talking about.
As I was staring blankly at the two of them, it happened.
“What are you looking at!”
“Are you enjoying it?”
The two ladies’ eyes full of hostility turned to me.
I hurriedly raised my hand and said,
“No, no. Nothing. I was just spacing out because of the hangover.”
The pressure is no joke.
“Well, then I’ll go. Please finish what you were doing.”
I quickly got out of there as fast as I could right now.
Behind me, the two ladies’ voices still rang out.
They even started to insult each other’s parents, not satisfied with insulting their sons.
What made them so heated?
No. More than that, what did they mean by intelligence 3 or physical score?
Are they some kind of game addicts or something?
“Ah. It’s bothering me.”
As I walked lost in thought, I arrived at the park before I knew it.
“Sigh. I don’t know~”
I decided to put my thoughts aside.
I should just lie down here until my hangover gets better.
I sat down on a suitable bench.
I leaned back on the backrest and looked up at the sky.
“…Huh?”
A surprised voice came out of my mouth then.
“What’s that?”
I saw a tree.
Of course, it’s natural that there are trees in the park, but that was not an ordinary tree no matter how you look at it
It’s big
Really…
It’s too big
“······Why is there something like that in Seoul?”
The tree pierced through the clouds
It was standing there in the middle of Seoul, so I couldn’t help but be surprised.
“Am I dreaming?”
I rubbed my eyes and looked at the tree again. I repeated this action several times, but the scenery reflected on my retina did not change.
“Wow. Shit.”
The headache from the hangover was long gone.
Panic swallowed the pain.
‘What’s going on right now?’
I desperately racked my brain.
First of all, the surroundings are still peaceful.
Children playing in the park and their mothers watching them.
There were people riding bicycles and people stretching.
It was too peaceful to say that the world had changed dramatically overnight.
That means the world hasn’t changed.
I accelerated my thoughts further.
If the world hasn’t changed,
If that huge tree is a natural part of everyday life, then what has changed is not them but.
“······Me?”
It’s one of two things.
Either I’m crazy.
Or the world has changed except for me.
Anyway, there is an insurmountable gap between their perception and mine.
What is it?
“…Huh?”
Suddenly, one hypothesis flashed through my mind and passed by.
An unrealistically large tree of impossible size.
The incident where the ladies were fighting earlier, saying things like ‘intelligence score’ or ‘physical score’ to belittle each other.
Isn’t there an intersection of these two abnormal events?
“God, Hyung’s [S-Class Status Window]!”
This situation is exactly the same as the content of that novel.
Then that giant tree would be [World Tree].
The sacred tree that elves worship.
The ladies’ quarrel also makes sense.
In the worldview of the S-Class Status Window, every being has a status window.
Of course, it is possible to see the intelligence score or strength score of their newborn baby.
“So that’s why they fought.”
As my thoughts reached that point,
My head cooled down rather.
This was my strength.
When an unimaginable variable occurs, my head becomes rather cold.
“But I still have to check it out.”
I checked my pocket first.
Unfortunately, there was no smartphone.
It seems like I came out half asleep and didn’t bring my phone properly.
There’s nothing I can do about it then.
I cautiously got up from my seat and approached a mother who was looking at her child playing with a warm smile.
“Excuse me. I’m sorry.”
“Huh?”
A hint of wariness flashed in the woman’s eyes at my call.
It’s natural to be wary of a stranger’s voice.
“Ah.”
But that wariness quickly melted away like snow.
Instead, goodwill took its place.
It was a dramatic change that was incomprehensible.
“What can I do for you?”
“Ah. Well. I have something to ask you.”
Anyway, good is good.
I started a conversation to achieve my goal.
“I have to prepare a World Tree tour for a friend who is coming from abroad. Do you have any recommended places near the World Tree?”
I asked with a smile that looked as nice as possible.
If that tree is really the World Tree, then a normal response will come back.
Or they’ll look at me like I’m crazy.
“Ah. A World Tree tour? There is a good place. If you go to Gangnam over there······.”
The woman started to tell me excitedly about the travel spots.
This was the moment when it was proven that this world was the world of [S-Class Status Window], a novel.
“Hah.”
I tapped my forehead.
It was a highly probable hypothesis, but I secretly hoped it wasn’t true.
“By the way, is that friend who is coming from abroad a girl?”
“Huh? No. He’s a boy.”
I dodged for now.
“Oh? Really? You’re such a handsome student, I thought you were definitely a girl~ Hoho.”
“…Handsome student?”
I’ve never heard anyone say I was handsome in my 28 years of age.
But the important thing is not the word handsome.
“Not a student? You look very young~”
I’ve heard some people say I look young before, but not this much.
Something else came to mind then.
What handsome student means.
To confirm that, I have to leave this place first.
“Haha. Anyway, thank you. You must have been surprised, but you were so kind.”
“No problem. I hope it helped.”
I bowed slightly and left the seat.
The destination was the park restroom.
I quickly entered the restroom and stood in front of the mirror.
As I looked at the mirror, a hollow laugh burst out naturally.
“Haha.”
There was a handsome man I had never seen before standing there.
He looked about 20 years old or so.
As far as I know, there is only one being with such good looks in [S-Class Status Window], a novel.
Kang Seo-yul.
The protagonist who has the same name as me ironically.
“I’m the protagonist?”
I became the protagonist of the novel.
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