"Take my dih, become my side bih! I'll fuck you hard while you moan in agony!"
And send.
I leaned back in my chair, staring at the screen with a faint, satisfied smile. I had just written what I considered a beautiful reply to yet another hate comment under my novel.
Who am I, you ask?
I am Shawn, the author of the webnovel Martial God in a World of Magic. It was a painfully generic story, yet somehow it had been received far better than I ever expected. Right now, I was scrolling through its comments section, watching the chaos unfold.
[Why did you kill my sweet Freyja? What did she ever do to you?]
That was the comment I had just replied to.
The guy was a full-blown simp for a two-dimensional character, simping so hard it almost felt personal. He had been crying about Freyja for days now, defending her nonstop like she was a real person who could thank him for it.
Heck, I even had my own server on Chatcord, and this same guy had been haunting it. He had sent me multiple warnings, thinly veiled threats about how I should never, under any circumstances, kill her.
As for who Freyja was?
She was a villainess — a major one. And I had just killed her off.
Naturally, my comment section had exploded. Death threats flooded in one after another, all suspiciously similar, all coming from the same username.
Mark.
DING!
Just then, another notification popped up; this time, it was a private message on Chatcord. I sighed and opened it anyway. As expected, it was Mark again.
'Holy simp,' I thought as I started reading.
Mark: I will kill you for killing my goddess. I will kill you.
Mark: Fuck you, you son of a bitch. How dare you kill her??????
The messages kept coming. Insults, threats, unhinged rants, each one more dramatic than the last. He did not stop. Not for minutes. Not for half an hour.
Eventually, I locked my phone, tossed it onto the bed, and stood up.
Some things were not worth reading twice.
I stretched my arms, rolled my neck, and glanced at the time on my phone, only to realize it was already past midnight. Another productive night spent arguing with strangers on the internet over fictional war criminals.
Classic.
I walked over to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and took a long gulp as I tried to shake off the lingering annoyance.
Mark was not the first unhinged reader I had encountered, and he certainly would not be the last. Every author who gained even a bit of popularity eventually attracted someone like him.
Someone who blurred the line between fiction and reality a little too much.
I told myself that once I slept it off, this would just become another funny story to tell later.
But just then my phone buzzed again. I froze for a second as I heard the noise.
Slowly, I looked down at the screen.
Mark: Why are you ignoring me?
I let out a tired sigh and pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling the beginnings of a headache form right behind my eyes.
"Because I value my sanity," I muttered to myself, the answer feeling painfully obvious.
I did not reply.
Instead, I placed the phone face-down on the counter, as if doing so might magically erase the conversation, and walked toward my bed with the firm intention of ending the night right there. I barely had time to sink into the mattress before the phone buzzed again.
Then again.
Then again.
Each vibration felt a little more aggressive than the last, like the phone itself was losing patience with me. With a groan, I grabbed it.
Mark: Answer me.
Mark: Do you think this is funny?
Mark: I am serious.
I stared at the messages, my lips twitching despite myself.
"Yeah," I said aloud to the empty room. "That is exactly what scares me."
I was just about to toss the phone aside again when another message popped up.
Mark: Open your door.
My smile vanished.
I stared at the screen for several seconds, waiting for the follow-up message, the punchline, the obvious attempt at intimidation that would fall apart under basic scrutiny.
It never came.
Mark: I am outside.
A strange, creeping chill ran down my spine, the kind that made my skin prickle and my stomach tighten all at once.
"That is not funny," I whispered, even though there was no one else around to hear me say it.
Slowly, I stood up and walked toward my apartment door, my footsteps unnaturally quiet, as if I were sneaking up on my own paranoia. With a deep breath, I leaned forward and peered through the peephole.
My heart skipped.
Mark stood there in the hallway, staring straight at the door like he knew I was watching him. He looked exactly how I had imagined. Average height. Average build. Average face. The kind of guy you could walk past a hundred times and never remember.
Except for the gun in his hand.
I stumbled back, my heel catching on the edge of the rug as my balance wavered.
"What the fuck…?" I breathed.
The phone buzzed again.
Mark: You saw me, didn't you?
My fingers trembled as I typed.
Shawn: This is illegal.
Shawn: You need to leave right now.
There was no reply.
Instead, a voice came from the other side of the door, muffled but loud enough to cut straight through the apartment.
"Tell me why."
My throat went dry.
"Mark," I said carefully, forcing my voice to stay steady, "this is not how conversations work."
"Tell me why!" he yelled, his voice cracking as emotion bled through.
And because the universe apparently had a very specific sense of humor, my mouth betrayed me before my brain could intervene.
"…Ain't nothin' but a heartache?"
There was silence.
Complete, suffocating silence.
For a brief, hopeful moment, I thought maybe he had actually left. Then something slammed against the door hard enough to make it rattle violently in its frame.
"STOP FUCKING WITH ME!" Mark screamed. "WHY DID YOU KILL HER?"
"She was a villain," I replied quickly, panic sharpening my thoughts. "She committed genocide. Twice."
"That doesn't matter!" he shouted. "She was alive to me!"
I swallowed hard.
"That is… concerning," I muttered as the lock clicked.
My blood ran cold as the door slowly creaked open, Mark stepping inside with the gun raised, his breathing heavy and uneven, his eyes unfocused in a way that made my skin crawl.
"Do you regret it?" he asked.
I hesitated, my heartbeat pounding in my ears.
"No," I answered honestly, which I shouldn't have, as his finger tightened on the trigger.
"But," I added quickly, "I regret replying to your comment like that."
That seemed to catch him off guard.
"…You do?"
"Yes," I said, nodding. "That part was immature. Everything else, though? Solid writing decision."
His eye twitched.
"You think you're funny."
"I think I cope with stress poorly," I replied.
He stared at me for a long moment, his grip shaking just enough to make my pulse spike.
"She was beautiful," he whispered. "She deserved better."
I let out a slow breath.
"Mark," I said gently, "she stabbed a child."
"That child insulted her," he snapped.
"…Fair," I conceded automatically, then froze. "Wait, no. Not fair."
He stepped closer.
"You editors and authors," he said quietly, his tone suddenly calm, "you think you can decide when stories end."
"That is literally my job," I replied.
The barrel pressed against my forehead, cold and heavy, and it felt like the temperature in the room dropped all at once. My body went rigid as every instinct screamed at me to run, even though there was nowhere to go.
"If I survive this," I thought, "I am disabling comments forever."
"Tell me," Mark said softly, "do you know what happens to characters when their story ends?"
"I assume they stop existing," I said, and he smiled. It was a smile that made my stomach sink.
"No," he said. "They wait."
The gun went off with a deafening sound.
And I fell.
***
When the police arrived, they found the body of a young webnovel author lying on the floor of his apartment.
There was a gunshot wound to the head.
No bullet was ever found.
And the man who pulled the trigger was nowhere to be seen.