Editor 133

The Place of Friendship (1)

Kleio was dragged into endless sleep.

It felt as if his mind had overloaded from taking in too much information he couldn’t understand all at once.

As night and day alternated without order, ‘Jeongjin’ saw his mother in a dream.

She warned him to dress warmly because it would rain, just as she had in the previous world.

His mother was especially good at predicting the weather. There was no need for forecasts.

The fishing village people liked her, but kept a subtle distance. She was often misunderstood as someone who had received shamanic powers.

Over time, their misunderstanding would be replaced by other prejudices. Because of her unique way of speaking and unusual details in her resident registration, rumors spread.

‘Jeongjin’s’ mother was a defector from North Korea.

She was one of the rare cases of a young woman drifting alone across the West Sea. It was a fairly famous incident; people who recognized her name from newspaper headlines would sometimes appear.

He heard that his father, while serving at the front, found her collapsed on a sandbank where the river met the sea.

In those days, there were no cell phones, and even phone contact was difficult. They reunited based on nothing but a single address, and the two orphans became husband and wife.

In the old letters his mother kept, in elegant handwriting, were sweet and embarrassing words like, “When I first saw Myunghwa, I thought she was a princess, not a castaway.”

It was a story from the old days.

The two were together for not even ten years.

The settlement money and house the naïve young couple had were snatched away by malicious people and scattered.

After his father, who had tried to make a living by working on an ocean liner, died in an accident at a canal, his mother suffered greatly raising the eldest son and a sickly posthumous child. The posthumous child died young in the end.

When he got a job, he tried to bring his mother to Seoul, but she never left the seaside. In the end, she passed away during a typhoon.

Ssshhh—

The harsh sound of rain knocked at his consciousness. ‘Jeongjin’ woke up as if pushed, drenched in cold sweat.

It really was raining.

Watching the terrace window get streaked, Kleio just lay there.

Faced with the surreal situation of his consciousness being transplanted into a “different world,” thoughts he had forcibly stopped overflowed like a breached dam and bound his limbs.

‘The author said they know about the previous world by “reading” it.’

If the world was a text written by the hand of God, it could, naturally, be read.

There was no God here who sent floods and rainbows, but the names from the Bible left alone, the words with no origin in this world, all had their sources in the previous world.

Sometimes, the utopian project that seemed naively innocent gained coherence exactly this way.

A God who knew the sins humanity had committed in the previous world didn’t want the same ruin and conflict to happen again.

But probably, humanity didn’t respond to her good intentions. Even if the laws of astronomy and time were different, human nature remained unchanged.

‘The system of rewriting is clearly collapsing.’

The existence of princes who remember the past is evidence, and his own summoning to seal the cracks is another basis.

Kleio looked down at the back of his hand.

A faint rectangular mark felt heavier than any shackle.

Behemoth, who had been circling the bed all along, hid in some corner of the house when Kleio still didn’t get up.

It was just as well.

Even the warmth of the soft, black cat that had always comforted him would only serve as a catalyst for self-destructive thoughts now.

He didn’t want to think that even that tender being was part of a structure to bind ‘Jeongjin’ to this world.

When he closed his eyes, the past shouted at the present indiscriminately. Old voices spoke of misfortune and curses.

‘Jeongjin’ didn’t believe in superstitions, but even among those with PhDs, there were many scholars drawn to such things.

A professor who majored in Korean history but studied fortune-telling as a hobby once asked for Jeongjin’s birth date and hour at a drinking party, offering to read his fortune.

After confidently checking things for a while, the professor began muttering to himself and sweating profusely.

‘…Fate can’t come out like this.’

‘Jeongjin’ just poured another drink and put on a social smile. After all, he hadn’t lived a particularly lucky life.

The professor, who had started it and then awkwardly changed the subject, sold so few travel essays that royalties were only paid once. He never contacted the company again.

Such things were nothing new for ‘Jeongjin’.

In the military, there was a fellow recruit assigned to the same ship. It was such a rare chance that he was somewhat glad, but soon after, there was an accident on deck while the ship was docked.

By a hair, ‘Jeongjin’ survived and the other died.

The friend’s parents wailed, “You’re a ghost’s child. My son ended up in the grave you were supposed to fill.”

If coincidences keep happening, they become rules. Misfortune and ill omen were appropriate words to summarize Kim Jeongjin’s life.

But the life of Kleio Asel, whom he came to inhabit, was the opposite in every way.

When ‘Jeongjin’s’ mind was added to the body of a quiet, melancholy boy who had died young, their life became something different than before.

Under the blessing of a god who wanted to complete this world of in the most perfect form.

Shwaa.

The rain grew heavier, making the room as dark as midnight though it was daytime. Only after his eyes adjusted to the darkness did he recognize the envelope Dione had brought.

Kleio got up groggily and clumsily broke the seal.

The letter signed by Gideon Asel was not as curt and short as before.

Praise and concern, painstakingly written by a middle-aged businessman unaccustomed to expressing his feelings in writing, lined up neatly on stationery with the Asel family crest.

There had been nothing about Albion’s richest neutral during the civil war in the previous manuscript, but he doubted this result had been planned.

The text is an organic being. Sometimes the revision of a single line can affect the whole work.

Gideon acted as a loving father, and Vlad suspected that the one occupying this body was not his brother.

The author’s revision to transfer him into this world produced unexpected external effects.

Hadn’t previous revisions always gone this way?

If you rewrite history to prevent colonization, massacre, or famine, unexpected disasters and conflicts would arise elsewhere.

He felt as if he could understand why this world had to be rewritten eight times.

And is the last chance given to the history of this world. Even history clothed in narrative form could not be rewritten endlessly.

Kleio felt a pressure pressing down on his whole mind. Habitually stroking the ring on his left hand, he found himself trying to force it off.

Even when his hand was chafed and red, the “promise” would not come off. It asserted its solid materiality, reminding Kleio of his duty.

There was no way to know in advance what effect his revisions would have on the world’s future.

It was all so overwhelming.

Click.

“Oh, you’re up?”

Arthur, with an awkward smile, walked as quietly as someone going out to hunt at night. His body was relaxed, his demeanor gentle, as if entering the room of a sick child.

He approached the bed more slowly than usual, pulled up a chair, and sat down familiarly. He examined the wreck that was Kleio, then hesitantly poured him a glass of water.

Kleio stared for a long time at the glass in his wounded hand. Arthur never hurried him.

Only after the storm outside shook the window frame several times did Kleio quietly accept the glass.

The lukewarm feel of the glass warmed by his hand.

The relief of water on his parched throat was something that could never be reproduced by imagination alone.

Maybe he was deliberately running from the obvious conclusion. Dismissing such a vivid world and passionate beings as mere fictional creations.

To escape the heavy responsibility of overturning real human lives and deaths, dreams and futures, with just a few editing marks.

Kleio asked impulsively.

“…Arthur, what would you do if you found out your life was the result of an inescapable fate, swept up in a plan you didn’t design?”

Arthur took the unstable glass from his classmate’s hand, scratched his chin, and answered calmly.

“Hmm. I think my life’s always been like that, honestly. When that happens, I just do what I can first. What else can you do?”

A man who survived countless brushes with death, gathered comrades, and built an army.

The protagonist, who was favored by God but never found personal happiness, spoke clumsily, but there was a strange persuasiveness in his words.

“But you know, if you keep going, eventually things you couldn’t do before will become things you can.”

In the dim room, darkened by March rain, Arthur’s spotless smile was as bright as a magic light.

“Hey, Ray. I’m a cursed, troublesome prince, but it’s still better than being alone. If you borrow a cat or a rogue’s hands, you can do even more. I mean it!”

The third prince’s speech was rough, unlike his elder brothers. Precisely for that reason, the friendship in his words stood out all the more.

A being deeply involved in the safety of the world is a righteous, upright person. Even while desperately living his own life, he never hesitates to reach out to others.

Kleio buried his eyes in his palm.

Even though he had lived a life not allowed to be bright, Arthur acted as if he had never suffered a day. He wielded kindness with an instinct to comfort. He stayed by his friend’s side, wanting him to leave the darkness.

To deceive someone while being comforted by them—how absurd.

‘Jeongjin’ no longer felt guilt, but he did feel reality.

This boy was a real being. Just as this world was real.

The hierarchy between the unwritten world and the written world was not as absolute as he thought.

Even in the world Kim Jeongjin was born in, for the vast population who didn’t believe in evolution, the world was still created by God’s word, not by cosmic chance or the Big Bang.

.

.

.

Arthur twisted his body here and there, coughed unnecessarily, and crossed his legs the other way.

Kleio, who had asked such an out-of-the-blue question, felt heavy-hearted when Arthur showed no particular reaction, even after all that effort to answer.

“The archbishop, after meeting you, stayed awake until yesterday and then fell asleep again. The archbishop’s residence is closed and all visits are suspended until she wakes up. Thought you’d be curious.”

They said he’d been asleep all along, but Kleio looked awful.

He’d always been thin and looked like a straw doll, but now he looked like a paper cutout of a person.

“Looks like you’re lovesick—your face is half gone.”

At least, it was a good sign that Kleio reacted, however faintly, when Arthur joked like this.

It was definitely better than yesterday, when he refused to eat or answer even when spoken to.

Watching Kleio, Arthur just blurted out whatever came to mind without any filter.

“Hey, you’re thinking, ‘What the hell is this idiot saying?’ right?”

“…Yeah.”

Kleio, blinking slowly, answered very quietly. Of course, sharp-eared Arthur heard Kleio’s faint voice.

“Then hurry and pack up before the rumor spreads that you fell for the archbishop and can’t go to school!”

“Pack… why already?”

Kleio’s reaction was still dull, as if he hadn’t fully woken up. Normally, he would have snapped at such a crass remark.

What wavered in Kleio’s eyes was anxiety and fear. Arthur wasn’t happy to see his friend’s defenses so thoroughly broken.

He wondered how he should act, but there was never a clear answer when it came to this friend. He always felt clumsy and foolish in the face of a new event.

‘What in the world happened with the archbishop? Or, was it really right to let those two meet?’

“School starts tomorrow, so we have to leave now. Even if we start packing now, we’re late.”

“…What day is it?”

“March 31st!”

Kleio, who hadn’t even realized the date, looked stunned. In pajamas and messy hair, he looked like a dumb ghost, making Arthur giggle.

Behemoth, who had been waiting at the door, came in at Arthur’s laughter and punished him with a heavy punch.

Behemoth’s sense of ownership shone as he couldn’t stand his underling being mocked by someone else.

“Uwweuuwung! Oaaargh! (You noisy, reckless brat! I told you to comfort my food servant, not tease him at will!)”

“Mota, what are you doing clawing people!”

“Kya! Kyaaaawk! (How dare you! Calling me ‘brat’!)”

Watching the self-proclaimed sacred cat who’d lived over a century and the level 6 swordsman prince wrestling and raising a ruckus on his bedroom floor, Kleio had no choice but to get up.

The long winter break was coming to an end.