The flickering light of my computer screen cast harsh shadows across the cramped gosiwon room. Empty ramen cups towered like a monument to my failures on the desk beside me, their dried remnants creating an ecosystem of despair that I'd grown too familiar with. The cursor blinked mockingly at the end of Chapter 847 of "The Hero is Born" – a webnovel that had garnered exactly seventeen subscribers after three years of daily updates.
Seventeen.
My mother had killed more people than that. Well, technically just one person, but still.
I rubbed my bloodshot eyes and glanced at the comments section. The latest comment from "FantasyLover99" made my jaw clench: "Author-nim, your story is boring now. I'd rather read about that piece of shit Julius than these new chapters. At least he was interesting to hate."
Julius Vaelorian. A spoiled young master with silver hair and violet eyes who I'd killed off 800 chapters ago. He'd been a minor villain who attempted to assault the elf maiden Elaine Windrider, got his ass handed to him by her brother Mathias, and died like the pathetic worm he was in Chapter 23. I thought readers would be happy to see him gone.
I was wrong. Apparently, even my failures were more compelling than my attempts at success.
"Kim Jiwon-ssi?"
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Mrs. Park, my gosiwon landlady, stood in my doorway with that expression that meant one thing: rent was overdue. Again.
"Mrs. Park, I can explain—"
"Three months," she said, her voice carrying the weight of someone who'd dealt with too many failed dreams. "I've been patient because you seem like a good kid, but I have bills too."
I stared at my laptop screen where Julius was in the middle of his introduction scene at Lovina Royal Academy. Arrogant. Condescending. Everything I wasn't but secretly wished I could be. At least Julius had money.
"One more week?" I asked, hating how small my voice sounded. "I'm expecting a payment from the platform—"
"You said that last month." Mrs. Park's expression softened slightly. "Jiwon-ah, maybe it's time to consider other options. There are factory jobs—"
"I'm twenty-eight years old," I cut her off, then immediately regretted my tone. "I'm sorry. I just… this story is all I have."
She looked around my room – at the unwashed clothes, the empty bottles of soju, the rejection letters from publishing companies that I'd printed out just to make my failure tangible. Her eyes lingered on the single framed photo on my nightstand: me and my mother at Busan beach when I was seven, before everything went to hell.
"Your mother would want you to be happy," Mrs. Park said quietly.
*My mother is in prison for murder*, I wanted to say. She killed my father with a kitchen knife when I was fifteen because he came home drunk one too many times and decided I needed another lesson in respect. She's been happy exactly zero days since then, and neither have I.
Instead, I nodded. "One week. I promise."
After she left, I turned back to my screen. Chapter 23: "The Young Master's Arrogance." Julius was sneering at a commoner student, demonstrating exactly why everyone would cheer when Mathias Windrider split him open like a ripe fruit.
The irony stung. I'd killed Julius off thinking it would improve the story, but apparently his toxic charisma had been carrying more weight than I realized. Now, 800 chapters later, readers were bored with my "pure" hero and wanted the complexity that only a proper villain could provide.
My phone buzzed. A notification from the webnovel platform: "Payment delayed due to insufficient readership metrics. Minimum threshold: 100 active subscribers."
I laughed. Actually laughed until it turned into something that might have been crying. Eighty-three more subscribers. I needed eighty-three more people to care about my imaginary world where heroes always won and villains always lost and everything made sense according to neat moral categories.
The irony wasn't lost on me. I'd created Julius to be everything I despised about privilege and power, killed him off for being irredeemable, yet here I was, envying a dead fictional character because at least readers had cared enough to hate him passionately.
I stood up, joints protesting after hours hunched over my laptop. Outside my tiny window, Seoul glittered with possibility – for people who weren't failed writers living off convenience store kimbap and broken dreams. Somewhere out there, successful authors were attending meetings, signing contracts, buying their mothers houses instead of visiting them in prison.
My stomach growled, reminding me that I'd eaten exactly one piece of bread today. The convenience store downstairs would have to do. Again.
I grabbed my jacket – a thin thing that had seen better years – and headed out into the October evening. The streets were busy with people going somewhere, being someone, mattering to someone. I envied them all.
The crosswalk light turned red just as I approached, trapping me with a cluster of other pedestrians. A group of high school girls were chattering about some webtoon, their voices bright with the kind of enthusiasm I'd once had for storytelling. One of them reminded me of my mother at that age, from the few photos I'd seen. Before my father. Before everything.
"The main character is so cool!" one of them said. "He never gives up, even when everyone betrays him."
Must be nice, I thought. To believe in heroes.
The light turned green. I started across the street, lost in self-pity and empty dreams, when I heard it – the screech of brakes, the terrified scream, the sick certainty that someone was about to die.
Time slowed. A bus, its driver probably dozed off after a double shift, was barreling toward the crosswalk. Toward the group of high school girls. Toward the one who reminded me of my mother.
For once in my pathetic life, I didn't think. I just moved.
The impact felt like being hit by a mountain. The world spun, concrete and sky trading places in a nauseating kaleidoscope. I hit the asphalt hard, tasting copper and feeling something important break inside my chest.
But the girl was safe. Through the chaos and pain, I could see her on the sidewalk, crying but alive.
*Well*, I thought as darkness crept in from the edges of my vision, *at least I finally did something that mattered.*
The last thing I saw was my blood spreading across the crosswalk like spilled ink, and I couldn't help but think that this was a much better ending than anything I'd ever written.
Then nothing.
Then…
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Wait. Dead people don't hear heart monitors. Do they?
I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. Everything hurt, but in a distant way, like pain filtered through thick cotton. Voices drifted around me – unfamiliar voices speaking in accents I'd never heard before.
"—stable now, but the trauma to his mana core—"
"—lucky to be alive after what those bandits did—"
"—Young Master Julius is tougher than he looks—"
Julius?
My eyes snapped open.
I was staring at an ornate ceiling painted with frescoes of dragons and knights. Silk curtains hung from a four-poster bed that probably cost more than my gosiwon rent for a year. Everything was too bright, too rich, too fantastical.
A man in butler's attire – actually butler's attire, not a costume – leaned over me with concerned brown eyes. He had silver hair slicked back and the kind of posture that spoke of military training.
"Young Master Julius," he said, his voice warm with relief. "You're finally awake. We were so worried when the rescue team found you unconscious in the forest."
I tried to speak, but only a croak came out. The butler – Jesus, he's actually a butler– quickly poured water from a crystal pitcher and helped me drink.
"Take your time, sir. You've been unconscious for three days. The healers said your body went into shock from mana exhaustion."
Mana exhaustion. Healers. Young Master Julius.
With trembling hands, I reached up to touch my face. The features were wrong – too sharp, too aristocratic. I looked at my hands and nearly screamed. Pale, unmarked by years of typing and poverty. A signet ring bearing the Vaelorian family crest sat on my ring finger.
"Mirror," I whispered.
The butler hesitated. "Young Master, perhaps you should rest—"
"Mirror. Now."
He reluctantly brought over a silver hand mirror, and I stared into the face of my least favorite character. Silver hair that caught the light like spun moonbeams. Violet eyes that had been described in my own words as "beautiful and cold as winter amethysts." Sharp, aristocratic features that I'd specifically crafted to make readers hate how perfect Julius looked while being so rotten inside.
This was impossible. This was insane. This was…
This was Chapter 1 of my own goddamn novel.
The butler was watching me with growing concern. "Young Master? Are you feeling alright? You're looking at yourself strangely."
I set down the mirror with hands that barely worked. My mind raced through the implications, through the sheer impossibility of it all. But the evidence was undeniable.
I was Julius Vaelorian. The villain of my own story. The character I'd killed off 800 chapters ago in what readers now called "the story's biggest mistake."
And somehow, impossibly, I was experiencing his backstory before his death. Before Chapter 23, where Mathias Windrider would come to kill him for crimes that, in this timeline, he had already committed yet.
I looked up at the butler – Joseph Alden, I remembered now, the loyal family retainer with a mysterious past. In my novel, he'd been nothing more than a background character who brought Julius tea and witnessed his death.
But he was real now. They were all real.
"Joseph," I said, testing the name on my lips.
"Yes, Young Master?"
"How much do you know about the future?"
He blinked, confused. "Sir?"
I smiled, and it felt strange on Julius's aristocratic features. But for the first time since I'd woken up in this impossible situation, I felt something other than fear.
I felt opportunity.
"Never mind," I said. "Just thinking about some changes I need to make."
After all, I was the author of this world. And maybe it was time to give the readers what they'd been asking for.