an unfortunate change in genre

Part 1

Reality is a funny thing.

Nelan Barrow was an unfortunate person. Unlucky and burdened with the weight of an impossible tragedy. Such a man decided to write a guidebook.

Among the coexisting realities that would clash or overlap with seemingly random disparities, there was a rather strange one where he wrote a very different guidebook.

His connections to this particular reality was tenuous at best, but there was an unmistakable connection that connected with what was left of his hardened heart and led to a very different book.

As a wanderer, he had a certain amount of privilege to provide information that no one ought to know, futures that would hopefully never come into fruition.

It was a whole lot of obnoxious nonsense if anyone were to be totally honest.

The decision was impulsive because there wasn't previously a good reason for these two realities to be linked. His true goal, the hunters that were a scourge upon all of existence, were blessedly uninvolved and it gave him no real reason to interfere.

Maybe it was because of the echo within realities that caused that pitiable Kim Rok Soo to become dragged along into a curse that he never earned.

There were no hunters, but through a strange twist of fate there had still been a White Star. Considering the cause and effect that linked the existences, it shouldn't have been possible but after thorough investigation, Choi Jung Gun had confirmed that this White Star had been coincidental. Maybe it was the realities attempting to mirror one another and creating a weak reflection.

Tragically, with the first White Star, there would be a second White Star. And with his rebirth the soul of Kim Rok Soo would be pushed out of his own reality and into one that Choi Jung Gun could consider nearly identical to his own.

He'd felt pity for the boy when he wrote his guidebook.

A teenage boy who had lost everything through no fault of his own. Lonely and isolated but still decent.

It wasn't a strong enough pity for Choi Jung Gun to save him from his situation, his priorities were on the hunters and his own family. But the incidental soul that was lost and damaged was a truly pathetic existence.

Even so, his pity didn't amount to much.

It was really the decision of Cale Henituse to regress that nudged Jung Gun's hand to write just one more guidebook.

It was nowhere near as detailed or as prolific as the one he'd written for Choi Jung Soo. He didn't have the time to waste on writing something so grand once again.

This reality was unrelated to his own.

None of the Choi family had been sacrificed to protect the other world and there were no hunters hiding within the pockets of lies.

It was just a pathetic world that suffered under the hands of a poor imitation of a White Star and a boy that he could feel some pity for.

Especially when he learned of the deal the God of Death had struck with the Henituse boy.

With just one more book penned under the name Nelan Barrow, Choi Jung Gun left it to fate whether Kim Rok Soo would ever read the book that had been craftily slid into his school bag.

It was a half hearted attempt at helping a pathetic child.

Choi Jung Gun sort of regretted it when he learned of the results but his priorities were elsewhere.

—

Romance novels really weren't Kim Rok Soo's genre of choice. He enjoyed fantasy novels and adventures the most and if there was romance, he preferred it to be an incidental side note.