They put the survivors in the west hall while the instructors dealt with the body. Yeju sat on a bench against the cold stone wall and tried to work out how much trouble she was in.
A lot. It keeps coming out a lot.
She was not Han Yeju. She was Han Yeju now, which was a different sentence. The real one, the girl who was supposed to die on the flagstones, had left nothing behind that Yeju could find: no memories rising, no second voice, no residue. There was a body, an ink-stained finger, and a name on an entrance token. An extra. The author had written her like a number, and Yeju had spent her last night alive asking that same author to give the number a name, now she was wearing it.
Not yet. We're not doing that yet. Put it down, walk away from it, there's a monster in the courtyard.
Except there isn't. That's the trouble. The monster's dead, the bell's gone, the hall is warm, and there is nothing in front of me at all, which means there is nothing between me and the sentence.
The sentence is: I was strangely obsessed with her, and now i am her.
She was very good at not thinking about things yet. It was, arguably, why her heart had stopped.
Around her the hall held about sixty first-years. Some were crying. Some were too bright and too talkative, in the way of people who have just found out they can die. Two benches over a boy was describing the gloamstag to a girl who had been standing right next to him for all of it, making it bigger and cleaner than the messy terrifying thing it had been.
There it is. Forty minutes and it's already a story. I've had that note come back at me a hundred times, the eyewitness who improves it, but he never once wrote it because he thought it was clutter.
The instructor reached her with a clipboard. Yeju gave the name on the token. The woman made a mark, looked at her core rating, made a smaller mark, and moved on without a second glance.
F-core. Nobody watches the F-cores. He wrote that on purpose. There's a whole paragraph in chapter nine where somebody explains that the school stops looking at you below D. I remember it because I told him to cut it and he wouldn't, he said it was worldbuilding.
It was worldbuilding..... It's the best worldbuilding in the book. It's the only thing standing between me and four years of being interesting.
Fine. Good. That's the one thing this body came with. It's pre-installed with an excuse to be overlooked and I am going to ride that excuse to the last page.
[ While you're catastrophising, ] said the panel, unfolding at the edge of her vision, [ your reward posted. Would you like to see it, or would you prefer to keep staring at the wall. The wall's very good, I understand the appeal. ]
"Show me," Yeju said under her breath.
[ DEVIATION REWARD. ]
[ Event: first-contact re-route, subject BAEK SEORIN. Scripted first meeting redirected from designated love interest to host. ]
[ Payout: 5,000 points. ]
Yeju read it three times.
Five thousand.
The emergency spell cost me one. There's a second-circle form on that shelf at four hundred. Five thousand is a number from a different economy. Its a number you give a person for saving a country, not for sitting in a burnt patch being looked at.
She read the middle line again, the words redirected from designated love interest to host sat there being perfectly clear and making no sense at all.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Explain the payout."
[ You want me to say it out loud. ]
"I want you to explain the payout."
There was a pause. She was learning that the panel's pauses meant things.
[ Fine. Plainly, for the editor. ]
[ This world is a story with a shape. The shape wants certain girls to fall in love with a certain boy. That is the plot. My function is to price deviations from the plot. ]
[ When a deviation moves a heroine's affection away from the male lead, I pay you. The larger the move, the larger the payment. You did not save a heroine this morning. You interested one. Baek Seorin was written to meet Kim Do-hyun over that monster and feel the first thread of something. Instead she met you, and felt something else, it is substantial. ]
Yeju sat very still on the cold bench.
"You pay me," she said slowly, "when the girls fall for me instead of the hero."
[ That is the crude version and also the correct version. ]
"So that's the objective. Not surviving, not fixing the plot."
[ Making them fall for the wrong person. Yes. It is, I will admit, an unusual brief. I did not design it. I only keep the books. ]
Yeju put her face in her small ink-stained hands.
Nine years.
Nine years learning how a story holds together so I could hold other people's together. I died at a desk doing it. And I have woken up inside a machine whose entire function is to bribe me into breaking one, on the exact axis I care about most, for a fortune.
I'm an editor. It's a system that pays me to be a bad editor. A system that pays me to be the author's worst note.
How much did he hate me.
She lifted her head.
"No," she said, to the panel, to the hall, to the cold stone. "Absolutely not. I am going to fix this story. Every heroine goes to the male lead where she belongs, I keep the threads where he put them, I refuse the fortune with both hands, and I coast to the last page as a background character with a clean conscience and a boring life."
[ Noted. ]
[ For the record, that is a plan. You have plans now. I'm going to enjoy this. ]
"Why do you keep saying it like that," Yeju muttered.
[ Like what? ]
"Like you've already read the ending."
The panel went blank for one beat. Then it came back light and dry with all its edges back on.
[ I don't read, host. I keep books. Different job. Lower pay, better hours. ]
Filed away, that one. No idea under what heading yet. Filed.
Somebody stopped in front of the bench.
Yeju looked up into winter-grey eyes. Baek Seorin stood over her with her uniform somehow still immaculate, holding a folded sheet of paper in one gloved hand, her face arranged into a confident expression.
"Han Yeju," Seorin said. She had found out the name. "First year, west dormitory, mana rating." A tiny pause. "F."
"That's the one."
Seorin held out the paper. Yeju took it. It was a form. An actual form, printed and ruled, with the academy crest at the top, filled in by a hand so precise it looked engraved.
[ DISCIPLINARY COMPLAINT. Filed by: Baek Seorin, first year. Regarding: Han Yeju, first year. Offense: reckless use of an open flame in an enclosed crowd. Recommended action: formal warning. ]
And then, below the ruled section, in the same engraved hand:
[ Additional note: the technique showed unusual presence of mind for an F-rank under threat of death. This does not excuse the fire. It is noted separately. It is not part of the complaint. ]
Yeju read the additional note twice.
She went and found a form....
"You wrote me a complaint" Yeju said.
"I filed a complaint," Seorin corrected. "It goes to the registrar. This is your copy. It is standard." She was already turning, chin up. Two steps, then she stopped without looking back. "The presence of mind was noted separately. So you understand it is not a compliment."
"I understand it's not a compliment."
"Good," said Baek Seorin, and left.
[ Deviation logged. Second contact, subject BAEK SEORIN, self-initiated. ]
[ Host. She came back to give you a form! ]
"Don't."
[ I didn't say anything. ] A pause. [ Reward pending. ]
Yeju sat holding a complaint that was not a compliment while the hall emptied around her.
Wealthy. By a measure only I can see, I am the richest first-year in this school, and I got there by being looked at twice by a girl with a clipboard where her heart should be. Five thousand and three points. I could buy twelve second-circle forms.
But I'm not going to spend one of them, because spending them is playing, and I am not starring in a book I already know the ending of.
She folded the complaint back along its own crease and put it in the inside pocket of a uniform that was not hers, where it would not get crushed. She told herself she did it because it was an official document.
I'm an editor. I know a rationalization when I write one.
She kept it anyway.
[ Reward: pending. ]
"You said that already"
[ Yes. ]