One day, a strange email came to me. It was about making a remake of my novel. And I immediately refused it. Why would I want someone to make a remake of a paid serialization? It would go against copyright laws, and the other being was that I also kind of felt ashamed.
The novel I'm talking about, my novel, was called The returnee hero. It wasn't too big or sensational, but fairly popular and my biggest hit in five years. But it has been on hiatus for three months already.
The reason was simple, the words wouldn't just simply come.
I put all my passion into the description about the world, which reached fifty thousand Korean characters, and approximately ten thousand English words. Although, this was a fact I didn't know until long ago.
I put my heart into each chapter of the novel. But after writing for a year, I fell into a slump and simply just couldn't write anymore. And it continued like that for six more months, and after that, everything was done for.
Since I forced myself to write, everything that I built broke apart. The worldbuilding and its coherence fell apart. The personality of the characters became a mess, and the novel became full of plot holes by the mid-late part of the series.
Unsurprisingly, the readers started to drop the novel. It was so bad to the point I was afraid of even reading the comments. After that, I went on a hiatus. But no matter how much I rested, I just couldn't write. Almost like the entire rhythm broke.
Then another email came from the same person. It was a fairly long email. The person was saying this and that about only wanting to write it for self-satisfaction. It was supposed to be only between him and me, even going as far as to say that I might get inspiration for continuing to write if I read his remake.
After thinking for a while, I agreed. Why not? Since I wasn't particularly proud of my work either, I just allowed him to do whatever he wanted.
But right now, could someone explain to me why I was in this situation? If the lottery for a ticket was one in a few million. Then the chance of this happening to me was one in the entire world.
I found myself in an ordinary home and it wasn't my world and I wasn't me. I am not kidding or being philosophical. It was literal. I became an extra in my own novel.
Kim Chundong. Someone with a really old fashioned name. He lived in an ordinary apartment completely alone. I don't know where his parents were. He was admitted to the military agent academy at the age of nine. It was a place designed to train elites who could fight off monsters and djinns.
But what abilities Chundong possessed in order to pass the cube cadet exam? I didn't know. Heck! I don't even know how I look!
Whenever I go in front of a mirror. All I see is… (?). It didn't make sense, all I could see was an oval shaped question mark instead of my face. Was it because he is an extra with no clear identity which was why he was like that? I didn't know.
I just couldn't put up with this body transmigration nonsense. Which was why I thought of two possibilities.
1: I'm being pranked. But it didn't make sense for a prank to be this large scale that it changed the entire world. And how could a prank make me faceless? No, who would even play a prank with me?
2: It's all a dream. Which snapped the fastest, since there is no way a lucid dream can be this realistic, and last literally two weeks.
And I spent the last two weeks pondering whether I should treat this new world as reality or not.
The graduation ceremony for the military agent academy ended thirteen days ago. Although, it was only for noncombatants. The combatants had to attend an extra three years at cube. Worst of all, this bastard Kim Chundong was a combatant.
"Ugh… why the hell do I need to attend school?"
I completed my entire education and even attended the mandatory Korean military service. So why do I need to attend school with teenagers again? But again, I could do nothing about the situation I was in.
For the past two weeks, I did nothing but stay holed up in the house all day long. Maybe eat food whenever I get hungry, watch this and that on the internet, try to search for a way to get back, then laugh at the surprisingly good variety shows that were on the TV, then eat food when I'm hungry… Well, that was all I did.
The most noteworthy thing was the cube entrance ceremony at Seoul two days ago, which lasted for three hours.
It was night, and I didn't know what to do at that moment. Not just that, but school was also supposed to start from tomorrow on, which feels badly nostalgic.
The bad nostalgia of going to school from tomorrow on after a long break. I don't think anyone in the world likes this feeling.
I was lying down on the couch, since I had nothing to do at that moment. Suddenly, the doorbell rang. Which was why I had to reluctantly get up and open the door.
When I opened the door, there was no one. Which made me think that it was a prank and I was almost about to curse because of that before I noticed a parcel placed in there.
"It was supposed to come much later, but it seems like the original and adaptation have a lot of differences, so I had to change the schedule."
As I read the note placed on it, I was simply confused on what the person who sent it was going on about.
I picked up the parcel, closed the door, and got back to my couch. When I opened the parcel, I found a laptop and another note.
'Since the initial integration system was kind of confusing and just too bad, both of us had to change the way it works. So, this time it would be immediate.'
I was a bit annoyed seeing another note there. Without paying much attention to it, I put it aside and started to examine the laptop. And suddenly, I realized… "It's my laptop!"