The single ray of sunlight that slipped through the half-closed blinds felt less like warmth and more like judgment.
It cut across the cluttered desk with surgical precision, spotlighting the wreckage of a dream: crumpled printouts, sticky notes crowded with half-formed ideas, empty ramen cups stacked like trophies from a war he'd clearly lost. At the center of it all sat **Seojun**, slumped in his chair, pale skin washed almost translucent by the merciless glow of his laptop screen.
His dark hair was a disaster—bangs hanging into his eyes, the rest sticking up from repeated, frustrated rakes of his fingers. Dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes, deep enough to look permanent. He stared at the dashboard of the web novel platform, the numbers glaring back in cold, indifferent pixels.
**Views:** 312
**Unique Readers:** 47
**Comments:** 3
**Subscriptions:** 1
One.
Just one.
Seojun let out a long, exaggerated groan, leaning back until the chair creaked in protest.
"Why?" he muttered to the empty room. "Why does it suck so much?"
Months. Months of sleepless nights, of revisions stacked on revisions, of entire arcs written, deleted, rewritten—only to be erased again because they felt *wrong*. He'd poured everything into this novel, chasing perfection with a desperation that bordered on self-destruction.
And for what?
The comments scrolled past his eyes like open wounds.
*Too slow.*
*MC is boring.*
*Dropped at chapter 5.*
The latest one—posted just yesterday—sat at the bottom of the list, quiet and lethal:
*This is hot garbage. Author, give up.*
Seojun's chest tightened. He wasn't even angry anymore. Just tired. Bone-deep, marrow-level exhaustion—the kind that didn't fade with sleep.
He'd read all the advice. *Study the top-ranked novels.* *Analyze what makes them popular.*
But the thought of forcing himself through hundreds of cookie-cutter power fantasies made his stomach churn. Overpowered protagonists. Endless harems. Revenge plots stretched thin over a thousand chapters.
Did he really have to read a thousand novels he hated just to learn how to write one that mattered?
His attention span was shot anyway. He'd start a popular series, make it ten chapters in, and drop it the moment the protagonist stumbled into yet another *ancient inheritance*. How was he supposed to learn from that?
Seojun rubbed his eyes, grit scraping beneath his lids.
Maybe he was just bad.
Maybe talent was something you were born with—and he'd missed that lottery. Or maybe his story simply hadn't found the right readers yet. In a sea of millions of novels, what were the odds?
His gaze drifted to the other tab open on his laptop.
**Eclipse of Reality.**
The title he'd agonized over for weeks. The story he'd once believed would be his masterpiece—a slow-burn apocalyptic fantasy where stories bled into reality, where *reading itself* could reshape existence.
Meta. Deep. Different.
Now it just felt pretentious.
The final chapters were done. He'd uploaded the penultimate one the night before in a fit of desperate clarity, promising himself this would be the end. No more endless serialization. No more chasing phantom success.
He'd finish the story. Tie the loose ends. Then move on.
Maybe get a real job. Something stable.
His finger hovered over the upload button.
**Chapter 30 — Black Sun Rising**
In it, the protagonist—isolated, grieving, clinging to the last threads of meaning—reads the final words of an ancient text. Reality fractures. Walls glitch like corrupted code. A black sun blooms in the sky, its edges ringed with dying light.
Then—
Darkness. Absolute.
He'd written it months ago, in one of those rare moments where the words flowed perfectly, effortlessly. It had felt powerful then.
Now it felt like wish fulfillment.
An author destroying his own world because the real one had rejected him.
Seojun clicked **Upload**.
The progress bar crawled.
When it finished, a small notification appeared.
**+1 subscription**
He blinked.
"…Huh."
He refreshed the page.
Still there.
Two.
For the first time in weeks, something flickered in his chest—small, fragile. Hope, maybe.
Stupid, he told himself. Probably a bot. Or someone who subscribed to everything.
Still.
Someone was reading.
He closed the laptop. The room sank into shadow as the accusing ray of sunlight slid away. The apartment felt unbearably quiet. No friends dropping by—he'd lost touch with most of them when writing became his whole life. No family nearby.
Just him. And his failure.
Seojun stood, stretching aching muscles, and shuffled to the window. Outside, Seoul moved on without him—traffic crawling, pedestrians weaving through crosswalks, life continuing at full speed.
He pressed his forehead against the cool glass.
"What the hell am I going to do?" he whispered.
---
Across the city, where apartment towers thinned into quiet streets and small houses with stubborn little gardens, **Yeonji** navigated the crowded aisles of a supermarket with mechanical precision.
She was twenty-three, though grief made her feel both younger and impossibly older. Her dark hair was tied into a practical ponytail. A simple hoodie clung to her frame despite the mild weather—comfort clothing for a day she didn't want to exist in.
Her mother's death had been sudden.
A stroke, the doctors said.
One day she'd been there—nagging Yeonji about eating properly, teasing her about finding a nice boy. The next day, she was gone.
The funeral had been small. Yeonji had stood in black, nodding at condolences that blurred together. Afterward, the house felt too big. Too empty. Every corner whispered memories—laughter in the kitchen, gentle scolding, pride over the smallest achievements.
She placed items into her basket automatically: rice, vegetables, instant noodles.
Survival food.
What kept her from completely falling apart was something small. Ridiculous, maybe.
A web novel.
Buried deep in the fantasy rankings.
**Eclipse of Reality** — by *Seojun*.
Almost no one read it. The view counts were painfully low.
Yeonji didn't care.
From the first chapter, it had spoken to her. The quiet loneliness of the protagonist. The way stories became anchors in a world slowly coming apart.
It felt like someone had reached into her chest and named the ache there.
She read every update religiously—even when weeks passed between them. The author's notes were sparse, but when they appeared, they carried a raw honesty that made her feel less alone.
As she reached the checkout, her phone buzzed.
She ignored it.
Then it buzzed again.
And again.
At the register, she finally checked.
**New Chapter: Chapter 29 — Fractures**
**New Chapter: Chapter 30 — Black Sun Rising (Finale)**
Her heart stuttered.
The finale.
She paid quickly, barely registering the cashier's smile, and hurried to her car. The drive home blurred past, her thoughts already racing ahead.
The house greeted her with silence.
She set the grocery bags down, flicked on the lights, and sighed. Her gaze drifted to a framed photo on the wall.
Her mother.
Smiling.
Yeonji lifted the frame carefully, fingers tracing the glass.
"I miss you," she whispered. "So much."
Tears came quietly at first, then all at once.
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry I couldn't give you what you wanted." A wet laugh. "A wedding. Grandkids. Someone to take care of me."
The crying ebbed, leaving her hollow but lighter.
Her phone buzzed again.
She set the frame back.
Then she curled up on the couch and opened the app.
Chapter 29 drew her in immediately. Quiet desperation. A world slipping sideways. She finished it with tears on her cheeks—this time not from grief, but from being understood.
With a steadying breath, she opened the finale.
The protagonist sat alone, reading the last forbidden text.
The silence pressed in.
Yeonji swallowed.
The walls began to glitch.
A loud bang echoed down her hallway.
She jumped, nearly dropping her phone.
"Hello?" she called.
No answer.
The light flickered.
The walls *wavered*—pixelating, stretching, snapping back into place.
Outside the window—
The sun was gone.
A perfect black circle hung in the sky, its halo pulsing weakly, like a dying heartbeat.
"No…" Yeonji whispered.
A blinding flash.
Then—
Darkness.
---
Back in his apartment, Seojun jolted awake as his laptop chimed.
The dashboard refreshed.
Numbers skyrocketed.
Comments flooded in—glitched text, broken symbols, fragments of words.
Then the screen went black.
Every light in the room died.
Outside his window—
The sun was gone.
Only a black circle remained, bleeding darkness into the world.
And somewhere between reader and author, between fiction and reality—
The story had turned the last page.