Carmilla

“…Hey, Yoo Joonghyuk."

He stopped his actions when I spoke up.

"You probably know this already, but I'm not a prophet. No, I am as far removed from such a being as you can get."

Ever since we got into a tussle back on the Dongho Bridge, I had never introduced myself properly once. To Yoo Joonghyuk, I was the prophet, a man with a mysterious background.

"I'm not the 'Demon King of Salvation'."

[Story, 'Demon King of Salvation', has stopped its storytelling.]

"I'm also not the 'King of a Kingless World'."

[Story, 'King of a Kingless World', has stopped its storytelling.]

One by one, my Stories stopped their stories. Excluding my own, everything else became dead still.

"My name is Kim Dokja."

The wings on my back disappeared, and the ballooned-up muscles shrunk back, too.

"Twenty-eight… No, wait. I was twenty-eight, and I was an employee of a game company.
My hobby was reading web novels…"

As if I was talking to someone I met for the first time, I continued to tell my own story.

"It's pathetic, right? Well, this is who I am… Yoo Joonghyuk, who are you?"

To me, Yoo Joonghyuk was someone I 'knew' since from a long time ago. To be more specific, he was someone I read about all by myself.

That was why I had never heard about his story in his own words.

He finally opened his mouth.

"I am Yoo Joonghyuk."

His blade slowly moved and cut me down.

"Yoo Joonghyuk, a former Regressor.”
― Singshong

“I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“After awhile you could get used to anything.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“The reason why she suddenly wrote the essay was to make me the son of a murderer, not a murderer.”
― Singshong, 전지적 독자 시점 1 [Jeonjijeog Dogja Sijeom 1]