"What?" Juho breathed the word in utter disbelief. He blinked rapidly, praying his eyes were playing tricks on him in the dim morning light. His gaze darted wildly across every pixel on the screen, while his thumb smashed the refresh button over and over.
The weak signal made the loading circle spin with agonizing slowness, grating on his nerves. But no matter how many times he tried, no matter how hard he pressed the screen, the result remained the same.
The site was empty, and Villain Overkill was gone.
His heart was pounding against his ribs in an almost painful rhythm, making it hard to breathe from the shock. The tip of his fingertips trembled slightly as he gripped his phone tighter, as if it might break at any second.
As an avid overthinker, he remembered clearly that he had imagined the worst-case scenario, that his favorite site was shutting down or data getting erased, but Juho always dismissed it as pure paranoia. Because how could something like that happen in the real world, right?
Now, when that fear had become true, he didn't know how to react.
"No…" Juho muttered in denial.
He immediately exited the browser and opened the file manager app. With palms growing wetter from cold sweat, he searched for the backup folder he was supposed to have made years ago.
He'd once intended to copy every chapter out of fun, he even remembered opening his phone to do it. But a bitter truth slammed into his gut. The folder was empty, and only one corrupted file remained, unopenable.
Juho's eyes narrowed at the sight, a flicker of pain passing through them. A cold sensation crept through his chest, dragging him back to an honest admission he'd buried all this time: he'd been too lazy.
He'd always put it off, thinking, 'Ah, the site will always be there, why bother?'
But now—
"Why..." Juho rubbed his face harshly with one hand, frustrated. He buried his face in his palm, peeking through the gaps of his fingers with squinted eyes. "I should have saved it back then! How, how could I be this stupid…"
It's not even entirely his fault, but he still blames himself anyway. Juho laughed bitterly, a dry sound that felt hollow in his own ears, as if he couldn't believe what had just happened. His legs weakened as he slowly slumped down and squatted, everything still buzzing from the chaos outside.
His phone stayed clenched in his grip, the dim screen reflecting a face full of sorrow. A heavy awareness settled at the back of his mind, everything was locked inside a dead site.
Juho stared at his fading phone screen with a blank stare, then squeezed them shut. Regret crept in, bitter and suffocating in his throat.
He cursed his own laziness, and worse, his own arrogance. While the outside world was in turmoil, he was forced to swallow the bitter truth: he had just lost the silent witnesses to his youth. Among the many great novels he had cherished, Villain Overkill was the crown jewel, and now, it was gone along with the rest.
The characters that once felt so "alive" and make him feel connected were now forcefully severed. The suffocating ache he felt when the novel stopped updating four years ago was nothing compared to this overwhelming sense of despair and helplessness.
Back then, he thought he always had time. Thousands of days had been spent merely staring at that title in his library, never once willing to touch it again.
The "one-read" principle he had once taken such pride in now felt like a death sentence. He used to feel that consuming a world once was enough to "own" it, but now, as his world truly crumbled, he realized just how fragile human memory could be.
"I should have read it again... at least once," he whispered, his voice cracking with undeniable regret.
He shook his head, realizing how many details were starting to blur. The small things he once took for granted now felt like missing puzzle pieces. He had thrown away the chance to "reunite" with Seo Seonwoo, and now, the door to that world had been slammed shut. Forever.
Juho took a deep breath, trying to scavenge the remains of his shattered logic. "Even if I regret this, nothing will change," he muttered bitterly, forcing a smile. He tried to comfort himself, but from the look of it, it was in vain. "Maybe... It's just a temporary network glitch. Maybe it's not as bad as I think, maybe…?"
The disappearance of the novel was part of a much larger problem, one far beyond his control. Everything depended entirely on the recovery of the global data systems that were currently paralyzed.
The government had already announced that a massive amount of data had been compromised, corrupted by an unexplainable phenomenon, an event occurring not just in Korea, but across the entire world.
Even if the author suddenly decided to return and continue the story today, it would be impossible until the corrupted data was restored.
He slowly lifted his head. His heart was still heavy with regret, but his eyes turned toward the window, his thoughts drifting through the darkness of his apartment.
Who could be crazy enough to wield this much power? Who would dare to execute data destruction on such a global scale—
—BOOM!
A sudden, bone-shaking thud from outside snapped Juho out of his thoughts. The glass in his windows rattled in their frames, vibrating against the silence of his apartment.
"What now?" he mumbled in confusion and fear.
He adjusted his glasses with a trembling hand, forcing his leaden legs to move. He stood up slowly and approached the window. He leaned forward against the cool glass, peering down at the streets seven floors below.
The world outside had transformed into a landscape of pure, unadulterated chaos.
Faintly, slicing through the low hum of distant sirens, a scream reached his ears. It was a desperate, jagged cry for help that seemed to claw its way up to the seventh floor. Juho's expression tightened in a pained wince, if help was the one who came, he was certain it wouldn't sound like that.
He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly felt dry. He took a step back, yet his eyes remained narrowed, trying to catch any detail amidst the blurry, chaotic crowd below.
Then, in a fraction of a second, his eyes caught something moving through the panicked mass. A single figure whose movements were too fluid and seamless for a normal human.
One by one, people in the distance collapsed after being struck by that figure. Their face was hidden behind a black hood, pulled low to cover their forehead.
Juho froze. His breath hitched in his throat. That hood...
His mind, which had just been shattered by the loss of his novel's data, suddenly replayed one very specific description. A black cloak with a cut that didn't reflect light... the Void Hood?
Juho's body stiffened. Cold sweat began to form on his temples as his brain struggled to process the bloody scene before his eyes.
"What the hell...?" he whispered, voice trembling. His heart raced wildly. "Isn't that the same person who appeared on the broadcast earlier? The description matches, but how did they get here so fast?!"
And what if they notice him next?
Suddenly, the figure snapped their head toward Juho, as if sensing the pair of eyes watching them from above. The figure tilted their head slightly. Beneath the shadow of the hood, a cold, sharp gaze seemed to pierce through the seventh-floor window. Though unclear from this distance, a thin smirk appeared on their lips.
Slowly, Void Hood turned toward Juho's apartment and began to walk. Their steps were calm and unhurried, as if they were merely playing a game.
Juho's body went rigid. A chill crawled up his spine the moment he realized his presence had been detected. In a panic, he scrambled to a crouch, hiding beneath the window frame to break line of sight. He stared at his hands, which were now shaking far more violently just from that single look.
"I shouldn't have looked for too long..." he whispered.
His expression turned grim as he forced himself to stay calm. He should have known better than to let his curiosity keep him pinned to that glass.
Staying low to remain hidden, he awkwardly pivoted and crawled a few inches back until his spine hit the cold, solid surface of the wall. He finally let himself sink completely onto the floor, leaning his head back against the wall as he took a long, shaky breath to steady his nerves.
This situation was far more serious than he had ever imagined. He couldn't just sit still and wait for help, he had to find a way out on his own.
Before that, he raised his hand and slapped his own cheek hard. He prayed for the pain to be absent, hoping this was all just a fever dream. But the stinging heat left on his skin only confirmed the reality he feared most.
"...." Juho sat in heavy silence, staring blankly at the phone in his hand.
His mind raced. The events unfolding before him, the chaos below, the deafening sirens, even that hooded figure, everything triggered a powerful sense of déjà vu.
It felt like fragments of an old memory, something that should have long remained buried. "Wait, this scene…" He closed his eyes, his forehead creased as he thought hard, digging through the fog of forgotten pages.
"They match the opening chapter of Villain Overkill!" Or so he thought.
Because wasn't that exactly how the first chapter began? Seo Seonwoo, bored out of his mind in class, before a sudden explosion in the distance turned his world into chaos in an instant.
Suddenly, Juho bolted upright. His movements were stiff and hurried, as if pulled by a sudden surge of horror. Disregarding his own safety, he pressed his face back against the glass, staring at the plumes of smoke rising over the city skyline. The location wasn't a campus, but the pattern was too accurate to be a mere coincidence.
"No way..." he whispered, shaking his head.
His logic tried to reject it outright. No, that's insane. How could a novel become real? But at the same time, his heart felt shackled by the realization that the protagonist of Villain Overkill experienced the exact same thing, trapped in a world that abruptly shifted to follow a written plot.
"So... am I now inside a novel about someone reading a novel, where the novel is becoming reality?"
No, get a grip, Juho—or so what he might have told himself at that moment. He couldn't afford to be that arrogant. He had read enough stories to know the fate of those who mistakenly believed they were the chosen ones, those who thought they were the Main Character just because they had a bit of insider info, only to meet the real protagonist a few chapters later and die a pathetic death.
"Don't be silly, Juho," he muttered, pressing the bridge of his nose. "Even if my guess is correct, knowing the plot doesn't make me invincible. It just means I know exactly how many ways there are to… die."
He exhaled sharply, forcing his mind to stop spiraling. But even as he grounded himself, the sinking feeling in his gut remained, whispering that this was only the beginning. If this truly followed the path of Villain Overkill, then something far more unimaginable was heading this way.
Something that would ensure today wasn't the end of the chaos, but the dawn of a nightmare that would never end.