3/3/2030
The weekend is quiet.
It's the last day of the long winter break before Han Juho goes back to school and starts his life as a college freshman this Monday, and to enjoy his remaining vacation to the fullest before returning to school tomorrow morning, he sits on the sofa in his quiet apartment, alone, phone in hand. The pale glow of the screen is the only thing illuminating his face in the morning's dim light.
His eyes scroll lazily through a familiar list, there's so many completed novels he's been meaning to start, and new updates from ongoing series he follows casually. But his thumb stops when he reaches the bottom of the screen.
Villain Overkill.
His library shows the status clearly:
< VILLAIN OVERKILL >
404 chapters
Last update: 1,491 days ago
Last read: 1,155 days ago
He stares at it for a moment, then glances toward his room, where the varsity jacket hangs on the back of his chair, left there after he tried it on earlier, his heart still carrying the echo of that nervous, disbelieving thrum
Tomorrow was Monday, and he'd officially be a freshman law student. Just imagining the orientation made his head ache. So rather than stress over it, it's better to just lose himself in a story before tomorrow swallows him whole.
This story, he discovered it back when he was still a second-year middle schooler, back when he had time to binge entire novels in a single weekend, and he remembered Villain Overkill was one of those.
It was the kind of story that made him ignore his meals, stay up until dawn, and text his one friend who also read it with caps-locked reactions every time a new chapter dropped.
It was also one of the most promising fantasy stories he had ever followed and witnessed in real time. But then, on the fateful day of February 2026, the updates stopped suddenly, leaving him and thousands of other readers on a cliffhanger.
"Four years..." he murmured softly, his eyes dropping low as his fingers scrolled past 404 chapters, finally stopping at the last update. "If only the author were still active, maybe the novel would have an ending by now."
For him, four years was more than enough time to finish a full-length novel, that is, if one had been consistent. In reality, since that final chapter was uploaded, Juho had rarely dared to open it again.
Still, he remembered the ache in his chest when he realized there would be no more "next week", a hollow disappointment that lingered far longer than it should have for just a story.
He had spent the first year obsessively refreshing the page, searching for any sign of life, only to be met with the same sight every time. Eventually, he stopped checking the title regularly. It was a conscious choice to move on, yet he never stopped hoping entirely.
Today, however, for some inexplicable reason a strange urge surfaced.
He wasn't the type to revisit stories. Once he finishes something, or in this case, was forced to leave it behind, he moves on. There was always a new world to explore, and for him, a second read could never capture the magic of the first.
Yet, despite his usual rules, he found his thumb scrolling quickly past the latest chapters. He bypassed the long list of familiar titles he had stared at for years, until he reached the very bottom of the list and clicked on the one that started it all.
As the screen loaded the prologue, his gaze fell upon a note at the top of the page. His thumb suddenly froze over the screen, and his expression grew more thoughtful, as if he had just discovered something he had overlooked before.
There it is.
"Even if no one reads this, I'II still write. Because maybe, someday, someone will need this story. Even if that someone is... me."
- Mu-myeong
As Juho's eyes traced that line once more, the corners of his eyes drooped slightly, harboring a feeling he was reluctant to admit. He stared at it in silence before finally closing his eyes, letting out a long sigh while shaking his head.
Back then, perhaps the author hadn't expected their work to attract anyone at all when they first started, and maybe that is the reason why they wrote this sentence. A silent hope that one day, someone would need it.
Juho paused for a moment, then his thumb instinctively pressed the back button, taking him out of the prologue and back to the main story description. He scrolled past the synopsis he knew by heart until his gaze settled on the review section at the very bottom.
Time seemed to freeze there. The comments were still occasionally occupied by readers who shared their grief. Some pleaded politely, some expressed their deep longing, and others vented their frustration for being left in suspense for so long.
His eyes then fell on some of the most recent comments that had caught his attention.
[adflvqwr_gm] ★★★★★
Mu-myeong nim… so many people are still reading your work. Are you really not going to give us any updates at all?? Honestly, I'm so sad. I miss this story and I'm still waiting for you :((
[Caecaaluv789] ★★★★★
Four years of waiting without any more news. is the author even still alive? if you're still alive, just a short notice is enough, please. don't leave it like this…
[Yeomra47] ★
Irresponsible author. At this point, it's just plain disrespect to the readers. Don't waste your time reading this; you'll only end up disappointed. It's better to just block this author and move on.
↳ [Luce76 Reply to Yeomra47]:
You don't have to give it one star. "Don't read this story"? Whatever, people can decide for themselves if they want to read it or not, even if the story hasn't been continued for a long time. Besides, what if they're actually masochists who want to get hurt by knowing the story isn't continuing? Anyway, if you can't wait, just remove it from your library and boom, it's gone, surprise surprise. You people don't need to go around telling others to block stuff
↳ (+7 other replies....)
Juho shook his head in amusement at the argument. "Unbelievable…" he muttered under his breath, but his thumb was already moving on its own, liking every comment that defended Mu-myeong.
But before he closed the review section with a long sigh, a faint bitter smile lingered on his face, a small wound that often reopened whenever someone harshly criticised this story. It's not necessarily because it was poorly written. Oftentimes, the reason is because the author left the story unfinished.
To Juho, though, that kind of criticism stung differently on the heart. It was as if, by trashing the novel, they were also trashing the years he had spent living within its pages.
Slowly, his gaze drifted to the name "Mu-myeong" on the screen. In the middle of his quiet, boring, and often dull world, where his parents spent most of their time working out of town, Mu-myeong was a bright star.
They had illuminated the dark corners of his loneliness through nothing but strings of words, giving him a world where he could breathe every time the weight of being a "good, successful child" felt too heavy to bear. Yet now, that same star had faded into an unknown distance, leaving only a remnant of their trace.
If only the star had known. Amidst all the longing, the silence, and even the burning anger all these years, the world they created refused to die. It still beats there, haunting those left on the brink of uncertainty.
Juho is one of them, and for years, he held the hope that one day the story will continue again.
Once in a while, on quiet weekends like this, he'd find himself returning to the page, just to check if anyone else still remembered this story.
He'd often stare at the author's profile or scan the review section, hoping for some miracle. But usually, he'd just sit in silence, watching the last update date grow dustier by the day.
What is the author doing now? He wondered, his confusion often written on his face. Are they even still alive? And if a new chapter suddenly appeared, would it still feel the same?
He still remembered very well what that sensation was like back then. The rush that made him reflexively slap his own knees when a twist was unexpectedly revealed. The satisfaction when the protagonist's plan went perfectly with his allies. Or the ache of watching a character he had begun to love suffer.
Now, all of those are simply memories from the past that are now starting to lose their color.
As time passes, his memories about the protagonist's journey begin to fade, leaving only outlines without clear details, an irony that parallels the fate of the novel itself, which has stagnated in place.
Because a few years ago, when the author released the last chapter, they explained that serious real-life problems had forced them into a temporary hiatus. In one of their notes, they also promised to return once things settled down in their life. And of course, Juho believed it.
But as days turned into years, that promise slowly turned into nothing more than empty words, never kept.
It actually wasn't the first time this had happened. The same author had written a virtual reality themed novel a few years before this one.
How had that one ended again? Oh, right, it didn't. Some time after Villain Overkill was published, the author stated they wanted to remake and continue the virtual reality novel only after Villain Overkill was finished. However, with the way things are unfolding right now... it seems that promise will never come true
He'd thought about that one every now and then, though never as much as his favorite. Still, looking at it now, he can't help but think that writers might have a certain knack for vanishing right when things in the story were starting to heat up.
Han Juho let out a soft sigh and leaned back on the couch, his head lolling on the backrest edge, staring up at the ceiling fan spinning lazily above. His strands of hair shifted with the faint breeze, brushing against his eyes. He blinked but didn't move them away.
"It's okay," he muttered under his breath. Even amazing writers have lives of their own.
There was no masking the bitter sting of seeing such an incredible work now abandoned. It felt like a betrayal, and not just to the story, but also to the version of himself that had lived and breathed within those pages.
He wanted to be angry, but at the end of the day, he'd also read it for free. So it didn't quite make sense for him to throw a fit. Besides, anger required a target, and the author was clearly out of reach. So what was the point of shouting into an empty room? And so, the silent disappointment and despair in his heart turned into a helpless yearning and wonder.
Because he kept thinking about the fate of Seo Seonwoo, the protagonist of Villain Overkill, if the story had continued, would he be okay after the betrayal that occurred in the last chapters? And what happened next?
After all, Villain Overkill wasn't just any ordinary fantasy, it was a gritty, high-stakes apocalypse story with a premise Juho had always found deeply fascinating. Sure, there were dozens of similar stories out there. Thousands, even. Apocalypse, a system, and ordinary guy whose favorite novel becomes reality and thrown into extraordinary chaos. The formula was practically a genre staple at this point.
But something about the way the author executed it is, of course, the factor that sometimes made the story the same, or in this case, different. The protagonist was originally just an ordinary webnovel reader whose favorite apocalyptic story suddenly manifested into brutal reality.
Juho remembered how easily he had connected with Seonwoo back then, because they were both just lonely guys escaping their mundane lives through a phone screen.
So no matter how much he told himself to stop wondering about what might have been and to just move on, he couldn't.
The world the author created was rich and full of details, with characters who possessed a complexity that felt raw and human. And from the look of it, they seemed to be using a character-driven style, which made the story feel deeper and made everything hurt so much more.
The rich world-building and character-driven style worked together, making each decision the protagonist made and faced didn't feel like words in a novel anymore, and somehow felt like a weight Juho somehow had to carry himself.
It was suffocating to watch a world so "alive" come to a sudden, unresolved halt. The fact that such an incredible work was left abandoned cut much deeper for him than if the story had been mediocre from the start.
Thinking about that, he suddenly furrowed his brow, his mind drifting back to fragments of the last few chapters before the novel went on hiatus.
He remembered the betrayal scene clearly. Seo Seonwoo, the protagonist, had been left to die in the middle of a life-or-death trial by the woman referred to as "The Woman in the Blue Dress."
"Wait a minute..." Juho muttered quietly, his thumb stopping its movement on the screen. He tried to remember, flipping through his memories of the early chapters when the woman first appeared.
"What was her real name?"
He paused for a moment. He tried to find one name, one single word that Seonwoo or the narrator had ever used to address her. But nothing came.
"No way I don't know the name of such an important character, right?" He let out a dry chuckle, feeling foolish. How could he have read the entire story without ever realizing that the author had hidden this woman's identity so perfectly? Or... maybe there was a name, and he just forgot?
"No, that can't be. It seems like the woman really wasn't given a name." Juho nodded to himself, as if winning an argument against his memories.
And now, after answering his own question, a curiosity that had never existed before suddenly emerged and began gnawing at him. Why? Why did she betray Seonwoo at such a crucial moment? What was her motive?
Since the novel had been dead for years, those questions had now become something almost suffocating, with not a single person who could give him any answers.
He let out a heavy sigh and shook his head, trying to shake off the weight settling in his chest.
It bothered him more than he wanted to admit, but what else can he do?
He pushed himself off the backrest, dragged his body forward until his elbows rested on his knees, and set his phone down on the coffee table.
He quietly stared at the TV placed across from him, the silence of the room pressing in. Slowly, his mind drifted toward his own dreams, buried beneath the harsh reality.
"Writing a novel..." Juho whispered bitterly to himself. He had once dreamed of being a writer, inspired by his love of reading.
Unfortunately, life always had a way of pushing his dreams further out of reach, and one of the main factors were his parents. While they never actually demanded anything, their hope for his future was clear: they wished for the stability and respectability of a career in law, specifically, becoming a lawyer.
Of course, being the understanding parents they were, they didn't mind if Juho didn't aim to be a lawyer. As long as he was happy with his choice, they would support his decision and be happy too.
Although it wasn't really what he wanted, in the end he was willing to try to follow that path. If only they had been strict and demanding, maybe he would have rebelled under the pressure. But precisely because they were kind, he suddenly couldn't bring himself to let them down.
Writing? That was always something for later, and with each passing day, that later felt more distant than ever.
'...What if he had pursued writing more seriously back then and just wrote, without fearing it would be ugly?' Juho wondered, his eyes that were fixed on the table are now glistening with a hint of melancholy. Perhaps, in another timeline, things would have turned out differently.
He kept staring at the table for a moment longer before finally closing his eyes, shaking his head slightly as if to push the thought aside. No point in dwelling on it too much.
He faintly glanced around the room before reaching for his phone. Just as his finger brushed against it, a sharp sting suddenly shot through his hand.
"Ah!" He hissed and reflexively threw it far to the ground, instantly regretting it as it hit the floor with a loud thud. "Good grief..." he muttered, shaking his head as he imagined the damage on his phone right now. "What in the world is that?"
He was about to pick up the phone again, but his movements came to a halt when he felt a faint tremble beneath his feet. He looked down first, then glanced outside, his expression confused, wary of the strange disturbance.
Was it just his feeling, or was there really something going on outside?
Before Juho could investigate, a loud bzzzz noise came from his television out of nowhere, and before he could even register it, the screen flickered to life on its own, making him freeze.
It wasn't a show or a commercial shown on the screen, it was… an emergency government broadcast?