chapter 6:the reset
It began with silence.
No crashing skies. No burning buildings. No screams.
Just silence.
Kim Dokja opened his eyes to a familiar ceiling—white plaster stained with age, flickering lights above humming faintly. He was back on the subway. Line 3. Car 7. Seat 8.
His heart pounded.
It was the same moment from before. The exact beginning of the Second Scenario.
People sat around him, calm and unaware. Some were tapping their phones, some dozing off, some just staring into space. The overhead screen hadn't yet flickered with the doomsday message.
"No way," he whispered.
He stood abruptly. His legs shook. His hand went to his chest, half-expecting to find the card she had given him—the Plot Fragment: 'False Death.' But there was nothing there.
"Did it all... reset?"
The Scenario hadn't started. The world hadn't ended.
And she was gone.
That girl. The reader who had changed everything.
Dokja turned his head, scanning every face. No glowing eyes, no eerie calm, no one watching him like a secret waiting to be told. It was as if she had never existed.
[Main Scenario #2: "Team Battle - The Great Divide" will begin in 00:10:00.]
The message arrived, just as it had before. But the text shimmered this time, flickering faintly like static.
He blinked.
The memory was clear in his mind. Her voice. Her warning. "You're not the only one anymore."
Then it hit him: he shouldn't remember any of that. If this was a true reset, his memories should've been erased.
But he remembered. Everything.
When the Scenario began, it unfolded almost exactly as it had before. The monsters, the chaos, the teams dividing. Yoo Joonghyuk appeared right on time, cold and efficient.
But Dokja watched it all with detached horror.
Something was wrong. Too smooth. Too scripted.
And Joonghyuk—he was different.
Colder. Emptier. Like a puppet reenacting a role.
"You there. State your name," Joonghyuk said, sword raised to a trembling survivor.
Dokja stepped between them.
"Joonghyuk," he said firmly. "We need to talk."
The regressor paused, eyes narrowing. "Do I know you?"
Of course he did. They had survived so much already. Fought side by side.
But this Joonghyuk didn't remember.
Reset.
The girl's warning came back to him: "The story is hungry. It wants conflict. It feeds off arcs."
Was this the story's attempt to preserve itself?
That night, Dokja wandered alone through the half-burned city. Survivors huddled in shadows. Notifications pinged like fireflies in the distance.
He reached the ruined bookstore.
The place where they had hidden together.
Now it stood intact, pristine, as if it had never been touched.
"She was here," he whispered. "She was real."
[Error: Narrative Inconsistency Detected.]
The message blinked before him.
[Commencing Story Realignment Protocol.]
The ground trembled. A cold wind swept through the streets. And then—a figure appeared.
A man in white robes, face hidden behind a porcelain mask etched with quill marks. Books floated behind him, chained and sealed.
"Unauthorized reader," the figure said in a hollow voice. "You have interfered with the sacred chronology."
Dokja took a step back. "Who are you?"
"I am a Storykeeper. Custodian of the Written Flow."
The floating books flipped open, pages fluttering madly.
"You have met a character not meant to be seen until the Final Chapter. This interaction endangers narrative integrity."
"So you're saying... the story rejected her?"
"Correct. Her presence caused instability. She has been extracted."
"Where is she?" Dokja asked.
The Storykeeper tilted its head. "Erased."
Dokja's fists clenched. A heat rose in his chest—not from fear, but rage.
"You can't erase people just because they don't fit your plot."
"This is not a democracy," the Storykeeper said. "It is a story."
Before Dokja could speak again, the books snapped shut. The figure vanished into mist.
And once again, silence.
Days passed.
Scenarios advanced. Battles were won. Victories were hollow.
But Dokja remembered.
He saw traces no one else could. A burned wall with a faint handprint. A silver glint in the trash—the edge of a card.
One night, while resting beside a dying campfire, he opened his messages. A system error flashed across the screen.
[Memory Leak Detected. Unauthorized Archive Present.]
[Would you like to access hidden content?]
He clicked 'Yes'.
A single message appeared:
"The story isn't over, Kim Dokja. It's just beginning."
His breath caught.
Her words. Preserved.
He looked up at the sky, and the stars flickered like blinking eyes.
Then he saw it: a silhouette. In the distance, atop a building. A girl. Just standing there.
Watching him.
He stood. Stepped forward.
But before he could call out, she vanished.
The wind whispered around him.
The world had reset.
But the story remembered.
And so did he.
End of Chapter 6