VSP 141

“Are you already dealing with erectile dysfunction? Is something wrong?”

Sejun muttered discontentedly, pressing down on Dogyeong’s crotch with his hand. It wasn’t like he was kneading fermenting bread dough; pressing down wouldn’t make his crotch swell up.

As for Dogyeong, he was just blank.

It wasn’t that he was shocked it wasn’t working, nor was he angry at Sejun’s irritating words.

He simply couldn’t comprehend the situation itself – being at the height of his vitality, with a boyfriend he’d just started dating right in front of him, and yet being unable to get it up. He felt his own body was strange.

“You’re tired?”

“……Let’s just say that.”

Dogyeong sighed. His body wasn’t tired. But mentally? That part might be pretty exhausted.

In the end, the sex ended in failure. It was their second time having sex since they started dating, and it was the first time in a while. Yet, he couldn’t even get an erection.

He’d heard stories about sex sometimes failing, but as someone who’d never imagined he’d be the one experiencing it, this was hard to believe.

Yet, strangely, he didn’t feel any self-loathing. It felt almost natural, and he felt relieved too. He couldn’t even sort out his own feelings.

“……”

“……”

A strange tension hung between them as the mood cooled instantly. It was different from the subtle, sexual tension that had always existed between them in some form, though invisible.

“I’m leaving.”

Instead of pointing out the atmosphere, Dogyeong stood up.

The original Sejun would have tried something here. Instead of simply wrapping up the situation with “I’m tired,” he would have rushed over with a flustered, awkward expression, yelling, “Hey, you bastard, don’t go! Wait!”

Sejun knew that well. The original Sejun would have acted like that.

“…Alright.”

But Sejun chose instead to let Dogyeong go without a fight. He realized it wasn’t wise to hold onto Dogyeong, who was frowning with indescribable discomfort.

Dogyeong gathered his clothes, said goodbye, and left Sejun’s house without further words. Normally, he would have lingered, chatting and flirting for a while before leaving.

The sound of the door lock automatically engaging echoed as Sejun rubbed his numb cheeks with his fingertips, still consciously forcing a smile.

“…Hah.”

This is tough. His voice lacked strength.

“Guess things really are different.”

Ruya, who had vanished earlier, reappeared and fluttered around Sejun’s side.

“What is ?”

Sejun’s voice was quite sullen. He’d thought only Cha Dogyeong was upset, but Sejun was pretty annoyed too.

“Both you and Cha Dogyeong.”

Ruya fluttered around the bouquet Cha Dogyeong had brought as a gift, sniffing its scent. The vibrant bouquet seemed to emit a pleasant fragrance, causing the dragon to melt limply and stretch out beside it.

“It’s not just the genre that’s different.”

“Right, the personalities are different too. [Read on]Cha Dogyeong is the type who’d rather bite his tongue than giving you a bouquet, yet here he is, bringing you something like this.”

Even to Sejun, the bouquet was beautiful. Of course, the florist had arranged it, but Cha Dogyeong had surely chosen the flowers himself. And he’d done it hoping ‘Seo Sejun’ would be pleased.

I’m jealous, Seo Sejun.

Sejun found himself thinking that. After all, he’d never once received a bouquet from ‘Cha Dogyeong’.

“But how come his body is so honest?”

“……”

“How could he not get it up there? His body knows, right? That this isn’t the Seo Sejun it knows~ That another self has popped out!”

“Will you shut up?”

Ruya was excitedly chattering away, having found something to tease Sejun about for the first time in ages, and Sejun, ​visit our site​irritated for no good reason, lay down in the hammock with a nervous sigh.

The manga he’d been enjoying recently was right in front of him, but he couldn’t muster the mood to read it, so he just closed his eyes.

It was a visit that left both Dogyeong and Sejun feeling bad. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.

No, wait. Maybe it was my fault. No, it was my fault?

His thoughts shifted almost at the level of a split personality. He closed his tired eyelids.

Damn it, sleep still eluded him.

•••

He must have dozed off at some point.

His mind drifted through unconsciousness until it reached ​Read on​somewhere. It was a completely empty space. A place where the horizon, rarely seen in Korea, stretched out in every direction.

And there, he saw a man.

It’s me.

Sejun instinctively thought that, only to realize immediately that his thought was wrong.

It’s me, but it’s not me.

It was Sejun, but at least not the Sejun who was currently thinking these thoughts.

Lying on a plush bed, its origin unknown, Sejun had his eyes closed. Nearby, a man visible only as a silhouette was covering him with a blanket or something similar, ensuring Sejun could sleep comfortably.

-This wasn’t the plan.

At that moment, a woman’s voice spoke. Her unauthorized copyform was invisible, but her voice resonated throughout the space.

-Sejun was so bitter about his own weakness…Of course, that was my setting too, so it’s only natural if you blame me, but back then, I didn’t know my character would suffer like that. I couldn’t have known I’d actually see him like this. To me, this is a miracle, so…….

The voice was filled with an inexplicable sense of guilt.

-So I just thought I should make him strong. Since I had the chance to give him a reward, I figured since he was someone who felt sorry for his weakness, making him ‘strong’ would be good. I imagined it. I really didn’t mean for it to turn out like this. I just… thought I could borrow a little ability from the past ‘Sejun’s’ setting.

“So that was the ‘reward’ you had in mind from the start?”

-Yes.

The woman replied to the man’s question.

-Maybe that very thought was wrong from the beginning.

Hm. The man, chin resting on his hand, closed his eyes and looked at Sejun lying there.

Sejun didn’t look like he would wake up anytime soon. His breathing was very slow.

-At first, I suspected that Part 2 was unfolding without my knowledge. I thought it wasn’t the story I had written.

“You did.”

-But as I watched, I felt a strange sense of déjà vu. I thought something was wrong starting at the department store. Then, when I saw the dungeon with the snakes, I remembered…

The department store, the dungeon with snakes. He knew that story too.

-It’s the dungeon I once envisioned. The department store, the snakes wrapped in blades. But it wasn’t used in ‘Genius Hunter Smashes the Gate’.

With the genre change, many settings were discarded. She had no memory of using that dungeon in ‘Genius Hunter Smashes the Gate’.

-The only overlapping dungeon settings are the Final Dungeon and its boss.

“So you changed everything else.”

-Once I switched to a hunter story, I needed combat scenes, and the dungeon especially had to be meticulously crafted. I thought the original ones were a bit awkward for battle scenes. But the Final Dungeon and its boss had quite the presence. So I just borrowed them as-is.

The final dungeon and its boss, Asura.

When the conversation reached a story he cared about, Sejun found himself unconsciously drawn into it.

-Maybe the moment I conceived those ‘stories,’ they began influencing this world.

“……”

-That was all planned out when I was organizing the synopsis for ‘Bill… Master… Law’…

But the voice grew more distant, stolen content and before he knew it, Sejun’s consciousness was slipping away from that place.

No!

He shouted desperately, but no sound came out. When he came to his senses, he was already drenched in cold sweat, his eyes wide open as he jolted awake on the hammock.

“……”

He had no idea when he’d fallen asleep; everything was bright. The once-dark outside was now filled with sunlight, and inside, Ruya, who had fallen asleep reading a comic book with the lights off, was curled up at Sejun’s feet, snoring softly.

The sound of his phone notifications had forcibly roused Sejun’s consciousness. Several messages arriving in quick succession had woken him.

Sejun snatched his phone nervously. Tap tap tap. He manipulated the phone, and soon he could see the message that had woken him.

The sender was Ryu Sehyun.

It said there would be an important announcement tomorrow, Read onso he hoped everyone would cancel their schedules and gather if possible.

Sejun sighed and swept his bangs back. It was an important call, no doubt about that.

But ultimately, the frustration of not hearing the news he’d hoped for was greater.

If it was a dream, then it was a dream, but Sejun didn’t think it was one. The man whose silhouette he could see was probably the System. And the woman conversing with that System…

Sejun’s mouth twisted.

That voice, full of guilt, saying he hadn’t known, still seemed to echo in his ears.

Sejun was someone who existed there, yet didn’t exist. So he couldn’t refute that voice, but if he could have, he probably would have shouted this:

You shouldn’t do that, even if others do.