novelleonline Chapter 191: your story, Jisoo (II)
Chapter 191: your story, Jisoo (II)
「The first eight resets were hard.」
It was pure hell. Si Hon would walk out into the street until something finds him— a thing with too many limbs or a mouth that has too much sharp teeth. It would grab him, pull, push, take him anywhere, and tear him right after. He felt every claw sink in. He felt his ribs snap like a dry sticks. He felt his stomach rip open and his intestine spill out onto the pavement. He spent the whole time screaming in his head, (it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, fuck you jisoo, make it stop.) just repeating.
Every time he wake up at the gate, his hands would be shaking, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Tell himself it was fine. That it wouldn’t always feel like this. That his body will get used to this things. He mostly believed it.
「By the ninth reset something had shifted.」
It still hurt— it always hurt— but he stopped caring about the pain. He just wanted the end. He’d walk toward the biggest shadow in the street, turn his back, and wait. (Please just make it fast. I don’t care about the rest of it, just make it fast. Just rip my head off,) he’d think. (Just fucking get it over with.) He stopped fighting. He stopped trying to run. Which meant some part of him had accepted it all and was now just negotiating with the details.
「By the thirtieth reset he stopped caring.」
He’d walk down the street, stepping over piles of trash and whatever was left of the city, he would check corners not to hide, but to see what was there. If he saw something moving, he’d go right to it. It felt like doing chores. Like washing dishes or brushing teeth. He’d feel the impact of a fist caving in his skull, and his only thought was, (Okay, almost done.)
At one point while getting his ribs get bash, his thoughts were only. (We’re almost through her life anyway,)
And when his inside was getting gouged out. His only thought was. (Few more and we’ll have covered everything. It’ll be done soon. ಠ_ಠ fuck I’m tired.) Practical. Matter of fact. It’s like the way you thought about the last few pages of something when you were tired of reading but too far in to stop
There was one weird thing he noticed though. The city was different every reset in small ways— Different alleys were blocked off, different things were prowling. But he stopped looking at the details. It was all the same ending anyway.
Then there was Jisoo.
Seventy three times. She’d grabbed that same piece of concrete seventy three times she would slit her throat. She never flinched. She never cried. She’d slice, bleed out, and wake up at the gate with that same dead look in her eyes. It was just punctuation to her. A comma. A period. She didn’t even look at him when she woke up anymore. She just reset, stood up, and waited for him to continue the story for the penalty to ariv and to start the cycle again.
Four thousand eight hundred and ninety eight times of practice.
They were just grinding through it. Waiting for the story to end so they can stop.
***
Regressed: 73.
Si Hon opened his eyes.
Rain. Gate. Dark sky. The city ahead, same as it had been every time, smoke and distant sounds and wrong shapes moving in peripheral vision that he’d learned to not care... I mean, "not my problem right now."
Jisoo was already standing beside him, one hand resting against her waist, mid yawn, blinking rain off her lashes with the energy of someone who had died and reset so many times today that even the inconvenience of it had become routine.
Si Hon tilted his head back slowly and looked up at the clouds.
Dark. Heavy. Moving steadily across the sky in the way they’d been moving since the beginning, since the chalk and the phone screen and someone laughing in the back of a classroom that felt very far away now.
"I wonder what time it is," he said, to no one in particular.
Si Hon rubbed his face slowly before another thought occurred to him. "And fuck, I forgot."
Jisoo glanced over.
"What now?"
"My level."
Jisoo blinked.
Then blinked again.
"Holy shit."
"What?"
"I forgot about levels."
Si Hon stared at her.
"How do you forget levels?"
"I’ve been dying for four thousand eight hundred something loops!" Jisoo snapped immediately. "At some point you stop checking your stats every five minutes.... And you just forgot about yours just now, you BITCH."
"Fair."
Si Hon held out a hand.
"Status."
The familiar blue light appeared instantly.
A translucent window unfolded in front of him, hovering beneath the rain while droplets passed harmlessly through the glowing letters.
────────────────────────
Name: Si Hon
Level: 56
Tendency: Careful Strategies
Job: Unemployed
Title:
Dragon Slayer
The one who died to a dragon
Still new but hanging in there
Thief
A Clown
Stat Points: 103
Strength: 34 (12.8) (special 4 — more...)
Agility: 32+
Stamina: 56+
Endurance: 59+
Luck: 41+
Intelligence: 29+
Mana: 26+
────────────────────────
For several seconds Si Hon just stared at it.
Then his eyes widened.
"Holy shit... I’m level fifty six with one hundred three points!!!" He shouted.
"Dude... don’t be loud."
He nodded.
Si Hon looked ready to frame the status window and hang it on a wall.
After everything that had happened, after the dragon, the deaths, the checkpoint, the penalties and the monsters, seeing a giant pile of stat points waiting for him somehow felt more rewarding than it probably should have.
Then something occurred to him.
He looked toward Jisoo.
"...Wait."
"What?"
"You can see mine?"
Jisoo stared.
Then scoffed.
Then held out her own hand.
A second status window appeared beside his.
────────────────────────
Name: Jisoo Park
Level: 39
Tendency: Observer of Possibilities
Job: A Fated Regressor, Life to Death
Titles:
21 Different Titles Available
[Tap to Expand]
Stat Points: 112
Strength: 18+
Agility: 21+
Stamina: 19+
Endurance: 24+
Luck: 16+
Intelligence: 23+
Mana: 27+
────────────────────────
Si Hon looked at her face with that annoying face. "You have a system, so do I... so how does that make it that you can see mine?"
Jisoo just stared at him. "ಠ_ಠ, dumbass!"
"Oh!"