TSDSE 1

Chapter 1: There Was, But There Wasn’t (1)

“Seo-yul. What do you think is the biggest strength of my web novel?”

“The fact that you have zero readers, so if you ever hold a fan meeting, it’d just be a date for the two of us?”

I gave a playful retort and downed a shot of soju.

“No, not that kind of stuff.”

“What then? That your comment section is completely hate-free because no one reads it?”

“······Should I just kill this guy right here?”

The man sitting across from me was visibly trembling with rage.

Looking at Kim Shin, I stifled a laugh.

“Seo-yul, I’m dead serious.”

His gaze quickly shifted back to one of utter earnestness. A desperately pleading expression.

Well, fair enough. As an author, he’d flopped two books in a row. It made sense for him to look desperate.

Then again, did he really have a reason to feel desperate?

If he sold just the luxury brands draped over his body, he could probably buy a whole apartment. Still, money aside, having your own work go unrecognized is a painful thing for any creator.

Trickle.

I poured myself another glass and replied.

“Hmm. First off, your writing style, your consistency, your output speed—those are all top-tier strengths. Plus, your books happen to be completely my style. And······.”

It had been seven months since I first met him.

Curious about an author whose novel didn’t even have 100 bookmarks announcing a fan meeting, I decided to show up—and that was how our connection began.

“Ah, your worldbuilding is pretty fresh too. Inserting a fantasy worldview into a modern setting in your latest work was actually a great call.”

“And?”

“Mmm.”

We started out as fan and author, but after grabbing drinks together so often, we seamlessly transitioned into an 형 (hyung) and 동생 dynamic.

“Hyung. Do you want the cold, hard truth? Or do you want me to sugarcoat it?”

“······The cold, hard truth.”

“Got it.”

I knocked back another shot of soju.

“Whew~ Okay, first off, your novel—”

Just to be clear: I’m the type whose body never actually shows how drunk he is.

“The basic storyline is just bland. Above all, it completely lacks commercial appeal. Who’s going to pay to read something like that? It’s not like we’re back in the outdated rental-book era. I only read it because I care about you, hyung.”

And right now, I was exceptionally hammered.

I had crossed my tolerance threshold a long time ago.

“Still, there are about 50 readers per chapter······.”

“Fifty? Fiftyyyy? Hyung, what was the total completed purchase count for your last work?”

So much so that my thoughts bypassed my brain’s filter and spilled straight out of my mouth.

“······3.”

“And one of them was you, right?”

“······.”

“One was me. That leaves only one real reader. Where on earth did you pull the number 50 from?”

I poured another shot and drank it in one go.

For the record, my drinking habit is that alcohol invites more alcohol. The drunker I get, the more I drink until I collapse.

“That’s why I’m asking! For my next work!”

Feeling the heat himself, Kim Shin downed a shot.

Not to be outdone, I downed one too.

One shot feels lonely, so let’s make it two.

Ah, life is good~

“Whew~ Hyung, then let me give it to you straight.”

The two hyungs nodded in agreement.

Wait, when did he turn into two people?

Is he a god?

Ah, right. God. Kim Shin.

My tension was spiking through the roof.

“Hyung, the problem with your novel is the status window. Yeah? That damn status window! The statuuus windooow! If you just removed that, it would’ve been a massive hit!”

“······What?”

I completely unclipped the safety pin in my brain and let my words pour out like a burst dam.

“A generic status window that every Tom, Dick, and Harry uses doesn’t suit your style at all. If you just dropped that one element, you would’ve made a thousand times more money than you do now!”

“Bu-but status windows aren’t an option in modern fantasy anymore, they’re the bare minimum baseline······.”

Trickle.

Another shot.

“Baseline? Base-liiiine? That’s all absolute bullshit. I told you, it doesn’t fit you!”

By now, Kim Shin was looking blurry.

“In the first place, your current work would’ve been an absolute success if you just removed the status window!”

“Hey, no matter what, how can you remove the status window from an [S-Rank Status Window] worldview······”

“The title itself is the root of the problem! What’s so special about that damn status window anyway?”

This hyung knows way too little about how the real world works.

“······Are you saying that seriously?”

“Of course.”

To be completely honest, there was a bit of personal bias mixed in. A selfish desire to stop seeing status windows everywhere I looked.

“No, but still, you can’t just remove the status window. The whole worldview would completely collapse.”

I downed another glass of soju.

“If changing the whole worldview is too much work······ fine! How about just lightly stripping away the protagonist’s status window? Doesn’t that sound fun?”

“······Just the protagonist’s?”

His expression turned strangely serious.

I beamed bright and pulled hard on his cheek.

“Anyway, hyung, you need to let go of trying to chase trends. Okay?”

“······Right. I get what you’re saying.”

“Okay!”

I let out a bright laugh and knocked back the final shot.

Thud—

With that, my consciousness snapped off completely.

“Ah! Right! Then how about this? I have an item level restriction setting, right? What if we······ Seo-yul? Are you asleep?”

Kim Shin’s voice faintly echoed as my world went dark.

“······Ugh, my head.”

My mouth was bone dry.

Along with a severe, throbbing headache that felt like needles pricking my brain, my stomach was churning.

“Ugh.”

There was no doubt about it.

This was a massive hangover.

By the way… how did I get home yesterday?

I definitely met up with Shin-hyung and started drinking. He looked a bit down, so I accelerated the pace, and then······.

I had no memory.

I had completely blacked out.

I vaguely remembered hyung saying something with a serious face, but…

“Argh, my head is splitting.”

The pain was too intense for my thoughts to connect properly.

I had to do something about this hangover first.

“I feel like throwing up······.”

I really drank an insane amount. This was practically a personal record.

It seemed I had kept pounding down drinks long after my memory cut out.

I gingerly threw on a light jacket and stepped outside.

“Ugh···.”

The moment the scorching sunlight hit me, my head spun.

Soothe-ing my nauseous stomach as best as I could, I slowly shuffled toward a nearby convenience store.

Upon arrival, I bought a hangover relief drink, chugged it down immediately, and slumped over one of the outdoor tables.

Ah, now I feel somewhat human.

The cool breeze felt nice. And above all, it was quiet.

If I just stayed like this for a little bit, the hangover would pass quickly······.

“Hey, lady! Are you done talking out of your ass?!”

“Yeah, I’m done! What about it?!”

“Ugh!”

A sudden burst of high-pitched shouting made my brain throb again. It felt like an ultrasonic attack.

I clutched my head tightly and turned toward the source of the noise.

“Why are you taking out your own mistakes on me in the first place?!”

“Mistake? Ha! Don’t make me laugh! You’re the one who failed to pass the message along properly!”

“Oh my, listen to her! Laughable! This is precisely why you shouldn’t mix words with people from uneducated households!”

“What? Uneducated household? Why, you little—!”

An automatic sigh escaped my lips.

There went my peaceful recovery time.

“Tsk.”

Nothing I could do. I just had to leave.

Just as I stood up from my seat—

“Anyone can tell just by looking! Your son must be as dumb as a brick, taking after you!”

“How hilarious. Why don’t you worry about your own son? I heard his Intelligence stat is barely 3.”

Flinch.

My feet came to a natural halt at the incomprehensible words.

Intelligence 3?

“Our son is a genius, so his Intelligence is already 5. I guess the mothers in your so-called ‘educated’ family just passed down terrible genetics, huh?”

“You bitch! How dare you!”

This time it was Intelligence 5.

It didn’t seem like I misheard.

In all my life, I had never seen people quarrel in such an inventive way. They must have been creative writing prodigies back in their school days.

“So what if his Intelligence is good? I heard your son failed the Strength threshold test. Can a weakling like that even grow up properly?”

“What? A weakling?”

Now it was Strength stats.

I had no idea what on earth they were talking about.

As I stood there staring foolishly at the two of them—

“What are you looking at over there?!”

“Is there a show going on?!”

The hostile gazes of both middle-aged women snapped straight toward me.

I hurriedly waved my hands in defense and spoke up.

“A-Ah, no. It’s nothing. I was just standing here dazed because of a hangover.”

The pressure radiating off them was no joke.

“T-Then, I’ll be on my way. Please, carry on with what you were doing.”

I made a break for it at the fastest speed my body could muster.

Behind me, the high-pitched arguments of the two women continued to echo. Now, not satisfied with insulting each other’s sons, they had moved on to full-blown family insults.

What could possibly have made them so heated?

No, more importantly, what was all that talk about Intelligence 3 and Strength thresholds?

It sounded like a conversation between two severe game addicts.

“Ah, this is bugging me.”

Lost in thought as I walked, I eventually arrived at a park.

“Sigh. Whatever~”

I brushed the thoughts aside. I’d just lay low here until my hangover cleared up.

I picked a suitable bench and sat down, leaning my back against the rest and tilting my head up toward the sky.

“······Huh?”

A bewildered voice leaked from my lips.

“What is that?”

A tree caught my eyes.

Of course, trees in a park were completely normal. But that thing was, by no metric, a normal tree.

It was big.

Seriously… WAY too big.

“······Why is something like that in the middle of Seoul?”

It was so massive that its top pierced right through the clouds. To see such a thing standing smack-dab in the center of Seoul was nothing short of mind-boggling.

“Am I dreaming?”

I rubbed my eyes and looked at the tree again. I repeated the action several times, but the scenery reflected on my retina didn’t change at all.

“Holy crap.”

The throbbing headache from my hangover had long since evaporated. Shock had swallowed the pain whole.

‘What on earth is going on right now?’

I desperately kicked my brain into overdrive.

For starters, my surroundings were completely peaceful.

Children playing in the park, mothers watching over them fondly, people riding bicycles, and others stretching.

If the world had changed drastically overnight, everyone around me was far too nonchalant.

Which meant… it wasn’t the world that had changed.

I accelerated my line of reasoning.

If the world hadn’t changed, and if that giant tree was just an accepted reality of daily life, then the one who was different wasn’t them—

“······Is it me?”

It was one of two possibilities.

Either I had gone crazy, or the entire world except for me had shifted.

Either way, there was an unbridgeable gap between their perception and mine.

What could it be?

“······Huh?”

Suddenly, a hypothesis flashed across my mind.

An impossibly vast, unrealistic tree.

And those women earlier, throwing insults like ‘Intelligence stat’ and ‘Physical stat’ at each other.

Wasn’t there an intersection where these two abnormal occurrences overlapped?

“Shin-hyung’s [S-Rank Status Window]!”

This exact situation was shockingly identical to the plot of that web novel.

If so, that gigantic tree over there had to be the [World Tree]—the sacred tree worshiped by elves.

And the argument between those women made sense now, too.

In the world of [S-Rank Status Window], every single living being possessed a status window. Naturally, it was possible for parents to see the Intelligence or Strength stat of their newborn children.

“So that’s why they were fighting like that.”

Once my thoughts reached that conclusion, my mind actually calmed down.

This was my greatest strength: when faced with an unimaginable wild card, my head became exceptionally cool and composed.

“Still, I should verify it first.”

I checked my pockets. Unfortunately, my smartphone wasn’t there. I must have rushed out in a haze without grabbing it.

Nothing I could do about that.

I carefully stood up from the bench and approached a mother who was watching her child play with a fond smile.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry to bother you.”

“Yes?”

At my voice, a sharp look of vigilance flickered in the woman’s eyes. It was only natural to be wary when a complete stranger called out to you.

“Ah.”

However, that wariness melted away in an instant, replaced instead by overwhelming goodwill.

It was an incomprehensibly dramatic shift.

“Is something the matter?”

“Ah, yes. I just wanted to ask you something.”

Well, a positive reaction was a good thing regardless. I initiated the conversation to achieve my goal.

“I’m trying to prepare a tour around the World Tree for a friend visiting from abroad. Do you happen to know any good spots or shops near the World Tree you’d recommend?”

I asked with the most pleasant, friendly smile I could muster.

If that tree really was the World Tree, I’d get a normal response. If not, she’d look at me like I was insane.

“Ah, World Tree sightseeing? There are a few good places! If you head over to Gangnam······.”

The woman eagerly began gushing about popular travel spots.

That was the exact moment it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt: this world was indeed the web novel [S-Rank Status Window].

“Haah.”

I palmed my forehead. It was the most likely hypothesis, but deep down, I had really hoped it wasn’t true.

“By the way, is that friend coming from abroad a girl?”

“Huh? Ah, no. It’s a guy.”

I made up an answer on the fly.

“Oh my? Really? You’re such a handsome student that I naturally assumed it was a girl~ Ho-ho.”

“······A handsome student?”

“Oh dear, was that not enough? An exceptionally handsome student? Is that better?”

In all my 28 years of life, I had never heard anyone call me handsome.

But the word ‘handsome’ wasn’t the main point here.

“No, not that. A student? Me?”

“······You’re not a student? My, you look so young~”

Back in my world, I was constantly told I looked older than my age.

Right then, another realization hit me.

What ‘a handsome student’ actually implied.

To confirm it, I needed to get out of here immediately.

“Haha, anyway, thank you so much for your help despite the sudden question.”

“Not at all. I hope it helps!”

I gave a slight nod and quickly left.

My destination was the park restroom.

I rushed inside and stood directly in front of the mirror.

Looking at the reflection, a hollow laugh escaped my lips.

“Ha… haha.”

Standing there was a drop-dead gorgeous young man I had never seen before in my life.

He looked to be around 20 years old.

A person with this level of breathtaking looks existed in only one place within the world of [S-Rank Status Window].

Kang Seo-yul.

Ironically, the protagonist who shared the exact same name as me.

“I’m… the protagonist?”

I had become the main character of the web novel.