The page caught fire slowly.
Not with heat — but with meaning.
Each word they'd written combusted into golden smoke, curling upward toward the sky where the constellations hovered, watching, waiting.
[Audience Vote: In Progress]
[Processing: 82%… 89%… 97%…]
Kim Dokja tried not to look.
But how could he not?
Each flare of starlight overhead represented a vote — a reader casting their belief into one of two stories. And belief was the most volatile currency in the universe.
The other reader — the girl — stood quietly, her eyes reflecting the burning page like it was her own eulogy.
Then—
[Vote Complete.]
[Winning Narrative: 50.01%]
[Margin of Victory: 0.01%]
The realm shuddered.
Not a quake — a recalibration. As if all of reality took a breath… and decided.
[Your Narrative Will Persist.]
[Candidate: Kim Dokja — Recognized as Dominant Narrative Source.]
The scale reappeared.
And tipped.
Not dramatically. Just enough.
Just enough.
The girl staggered.
Not physically — something deeper. A fray in her presence, a slow unravelling of threads that had once held her place in the system's version of truth.
Her projections — her companions — began to fade. Her Yoo Joonghyuk looked at her once, like a dream trying to remember itself, before dissolving into light.
She said nothing.
Kim Dokja wanted to. He had won. But it didn't feel like victory.
It felt like guilt. Like survival.
"I thought I was supposed to be the Author," she said at last, voice hoarse.
"You were," Kim Dokja said. "Of your story."
She looked at him sharply.
"But I wasn't wrong," she whispered.
"No," he said. "You just weren't the only one who was right."
The Judge raised its hand one final time.
[Candidate: Unregistered Reader_XYZ — Narrative Core Decommissioned.]
[Transference Optional.]
Kim Dokja blinked. "Transference?"
A second option hovered into existence.
[Absorb Fragmented Narrative into Existing Canon?]
[Warning: May Alter Thematic Consistency.]
The girl's eyes widened. "You… could let mine live. Inside yours."
It would be easier to decline. Cleaner. His story had survived. Why introduce risk?
But that wasn't how he'd ever lived.
"You once said your ending had Yoo Joonghyuk refusing to forgive me," Kim Dokja said.
She nodded, slowly.
"Then maybe it's worth adding. Not everything has to end cleanly."
He reached out — and tapped [Yes].
The realm exploded in color.
Not a destruction. A merger.
Fragments of her world began stitching into his. Places he didn't recognize — alternate timelines, missed lives, broken loops — became buried layers in the deeper bedrock of the narrative.
It hurt. It burned like truth always does.
But it held.
[Integration Complete.]
[Narrative Core Stabilized.]
[Kim Dokja: Recognized as Custodian of Unified Storyline.]
The girl exhaled.
And finally smiled. Just a little.
"I'm glad it was you," she whispered. "Even if I wanted it to be me."
Her figure turned translucent.
And then was gone.
No fanfare. No scream. Just… gone.
The Judge, too, faded.
The Narrative Realm folded.
And Kim Dokja opened his eyes — back in the subway station, standing alone beneath the flickering lights.
Only he wasn't alone.
A hand clapped his shoulder.
"You took long enough," said Yoo Joonghyuk.
Kim Dokja turned.
Yoo Joonghyuk. His Yoo Joonghyuk.
Solid. Real. Alive.
Not just a projection.
Han Sooyoung stood a little farther back, arms crossed. "The constellations were going nuts up there. I thought you'd tripped and fallen into a bad fanfiction."
Shin Yoosung ran toward him, practically tackling his leg. "You're okay!"
He looked at all of them. Every face. Every friend. Every impossible survivor.
They were back.
And somehow, the world was stronger for it.
Kim Dokja smiled.
No — he laughed.
Because the story had chosen.
And for once, it had chosen all of them.
End of Chapter 19