#i cut out a few parts of this ch for brevity's sake but there's a part where sys thinks that they're better suited for the scenarios

[lee-hakhyun]

singshong will be taking a one-day break so there will be no chapter sunday! i'll see you for the next ch on monday instead :) 649

shin yoosung opens her eyes. everything's dark. did something go wrong? what happened to ahjussi? a message appears.

[the connection is disconnected.]

she takes off the connection goggles on her head, as lgy does the same, shouting at her that she overused her powers and broke the connection. they argue. is it because of sys overusing her abilites? lgy sending out too many messages? actually, why is his modifier a complete ripoff of secretive plotter? lgy gets really mad at that. they continue fighting until seolhwa's voice comes from a speaker in the access room. she'll fix it, so stop fighting and go outside. the device is incomplete, so both of them connecting at the same time is probably what broke it.

so, they're connecting through something like a vr headset? interesting

and what about sangah? she's still connected, in another room. wearing the goggles, she's been connected for 36 hours straight, watching as a constellation. on her screen is the scenery of the ruined national palace museum, where a beautiful incarnation was ordering others around.. and han sooyoung secretly searching around. unlike them, who have connected through some kind of connection goggles, she entered directly by sending an avatar. she had told them not to come along, but they couldn't just sit around and do nothing. so ysa and lgy have signed sponsor contracts with incarnations, and sys possessed herself.

kim dokja's company, when given the choice between a world where kim dokja exists and one where he doesn't, chose the latter option. they all thought it was a trap. in the same way he stayed on the subway, he's still away from them. maybe he had thought they wouldn't have made this choice, as the two children look out at the unfinished white landscape outside, like someone had just imagined it. a world that the oldest dream had never dreamed of...

it's been 6 months. a lot has happened. kimcom has launched another plan to get their squid back. yoo sangah, using the mandala's guardian's power, used her threads to search for the pieces of kim dokja's soul scattered throughout the worldlines. but there were way too many, so they decided to start with the fragments that hadn't been reborn yet. all of these fragments were pieces of kim dokja's story.

yoo sangah says. even if they collect all these fragments, it won't bring back the kim dokja they knew. collecting someone's footprints doesn't bring back the person who made the footprints. they all knew this. but lee jihye's reply,

"but if we don't do this, there's nothing left for us."

even if this is just how they mourn him, even if the kim dokja they know will never come back. like the days they waited for yjh in space, they wanted to continue their hope. so they continued. as the fragments collected, it began to move somewhere like it was being attracted to something. following it, they found a worldline. the 41st turn, the one that wasn't recorded in ways of survival, like the 0th turn

maybe kim dokja was there.

lgy asks, can they find him? sys says they can, she's already found one. "that's not hyung." "then who is ahjussi?"

shin yoosung and lee gilyoung, they 'know' kim dokja. his likes, dislikes, the foods he can't eat, his height, weight, age, the smile he makes when he sees them. maybe the kim dokja she knows doesn't exist anymore. but, when someone asks 'who is kim dokja', shin yoosung already knows lgy's answer. "hyung is someone who loves stories." and then they start arguing on if kdj likes sys or lgy's story better. during this, shin yoosung thought. in this world, conflict becomes a story. and stories are kim dokja's favourite. and since kim dokja loves stories, he must be watching them now. no matter what he looks like, as long as he's looking at this story.

shin yoosung will surely regain her star.

lee seolhwa's voice was heard through the complex's broadcast.

"he's back."

there's no way. kim dokja can't be back. so that means... someone grabs the mic. "gather around. i have something to say."

yoo joonghyuk has returned.