Chapter 122:

Chapter 122:

Chapter 122

“Alright. Let’s go do the next thing.”

I had already made a huge mess, but that didn’t mean the work was over.

There were still follow-up tasks to do, and a pile of things to prepare for.

But the others didn’t seem to think so, and they blocked me with their angry faces.

“Yu-hyun, why don’t you take a break today?”

“Yeah, Yu-hyun, aren’t you pushing yourself too hard lately?”

Baek Seoryeon and Kang Hye-rim tried to soothe me.

I asked them what they were talking about.

“What do you mean, take a break? Now is the time to work harder than ever.”

“...”

“...”

They didn’t seem to believe my words, and they exchanged glances with each other.

In the end, Baek Seoryeon asked for help from Kwon Jia.

She had been watching the situation quietly, but when she received the sudden SOS signal, she flinched and looked at me and Baek Seoryeon alternately.

“Ahem. Hmm. I think it would be better to take a break right now.”

“What?!”

I couldn’t believe that she, a returnee, would say such a thing. I had the same expression as Caesar who was betrayed by Brutus. Jia, you too!

“Yeah. Honestly, I’ve been feeling this way since I came here. I’ve never seen you rest once since then.”

“What do you mean, I never rested? I took a break now and then.”

“Is that resting? You were holding documents in your hand and worrying about all kinds of things.”

“That’s because...”

I just wanted to loosen up a bit because I was bored when I did nothing.

As soon as I made that weak resistance, the three women got angry.

“What kind of rest is that!”

“Right! You should rest well when you rest. That’s the same as working!”

“At least resting means relaxing your body and mind. Where is the ‘comfort’ in what you do?”

Huh? Did I do something wrong?

I couldn’t understand it no matter how hard I thought.

Usually, when an opportunity like this came up, I should have worked harder.

But when I tried to argue, they were too intimidating.

“But I still have to dispose of the by-products, sort out the additional points, and find the third collector...”

“You don’t have to do that right now. And selling the by-products is my role as the representative of this place. Are you planning to do that too?”

“No, that’s not...”

I realized that it was only natural to leave it to Baek Seoryeon now.

But I felt uncomfortable about that part.

I felt like something was wrong if I didn’t work.

I had this anxiety that I couldn’t rest even for a moment.

“I see, you must be addicted to work.”

Kwon Jia summed up my state in one word.

Workaholic.

“Me? Workaholic? Even a passing dog would laugh at that.”

“You can pretend it’s not true, but we feel that way. How can you not be anxious when you don’t work?”

“Ye-yeah!”

Kang Hye-rim nodded her head as if it was her chance.

I had to refute that reaction, but my words were stuck.

Am I really a workaholic? Isn’t this just normal?

“Sigh. Looking at your face, you still don’t accept it. Have you ever rested properly while working as a teller?”

“That’s...”

“Of course not. You probably don’t realize it yourself, but you’re pushing yourself too hard right now. You can call it torture. What are you so anxious about?”

“Anxious?”

Oh.

I realized then what Kwon Jia meant.

Yeah. I was anxious.

I still wasn’t convinced that I was a workaholic, but since the collectors wanted it, I had to take a semi-forced break.

“But why are you so obsessed with clearing the world of ideas, Yu-hyun?”

Kang Hye-rim asked me out of the blue.

I wondered what to answer to her question, which was thrown at me from a close distance where I could feel the warmth of her skin.

There were several reasons why I wanted to clear the world of ideas, but the biggest one was to protect this world from the apocalypse.

But could I tell her that?

‘But I can’t hide it forever.’

Maybe this was an opportunity.

“Sigh. Well, there’s no point in hiding it now. I was going to explain it to you after finding the third one, but it won’t hurt to tell you in advance.”

I was going to tell them soon anyway. Anyone would have questions if I kept pushing for the world of ideas.

For people, when they set a goal for something, the reason ‘why’ is essential.

The reason ‘why’ is a motivation.

It’s the force that moves people, that makes them have a will to do something.

In other words, Kang Hye-rim had been curious about that ‘why’ and followed me patiently.

“Seoryeon, listen too.”

They both listened to my words with seriousness in their voices, as if they sensed it from mine.

The explanation I was going to give them was very important and shocking.

“I haven’t given you a clear explanation of why I have to clear the world of ideas until now. I just said that if we do this, we can show the spirits a different picture than other collectors.”

“That wasn’t the reason?”

“That’s one of the reasons. But Hyerim. There’s no one in the world who moves for only one reason. Big or small, there are always various factors involved in doing something. Showing the spirits a better picture is a minor reason.”

“Then...what’s the most important reason?”

“That’s...”

I stopped and exchanged a brief glance with Kwon Jia.

She asked me if I was really going to tell them.

I nodded slightly.

Kwon Jia didn’t say anything to me.

She also thought that this process was necessary.

“Ah.”

Kang Hye-rim’s face darkened somehow when she saw Kwon Jia and me exchange glances.

I ignored that and got up from my seat and stood in front of the whiteboard on one wall of the office.

“It’ll be easier for you to understand if you see and hear it.”

I drew a simple picture with a board marker.

A circle in the middle and a large world around it.

“As most of you know, Earth has moved into the mixed system like this. This is Earth, and the surrounding world is the mixed system. Earth entered the mixed system and underwent a transformation. That is, the day of idea integration.”

That’s how the world of ideas and collectors came into being.

“The world of ideas is a space where various stories that exist on Earth and in various places in the mixed system are realized.”

Arrows stretched out from inside Earth to outside.

There were also arrows from outside Earth, from the mixed system, to Earth.

This was the existence of ‘stories’ that were formed into the world of ideas.

This way, Earth has many arrows, that is, many worlds of thoughts.

“But there is a limit to how many worlds of thoughts can come out on the surface. When one world of ideas disappears, a new one comes to fill the empty space. That’s why the association, the government, and the clans are deliberately leaving the world of ideas alone.”

The problem is leaving the world of ideas alone without clearing them.

“If we leave the world of ideas alone, the existing ones will keep their limited places. Then the rest of the stories that can’t get a place will wander around like this.”

The arrows that lost their places kept spinning inside Earth. Their numbers kept piling up.

“What do you think will happen if the stories that have nowhere to go pile up and reach their limit and erupt? “

Kang Hye-rim and Baek Seoryeon swallowed their saliva at my gaze.

Only Kwon Jia, who knew this future, listened to my words with a heavy expression.

“The boundaries of everything will collapse, and these mixed stories will cover our reality as they are.”

The runaway of stories.

The boundary line that separates the world of ideas and reality disappears, and reality becomes a story.

The ‘matter’ that couldn’t enter the mixed system completely couldn’t withstand the ‘power of stories’ that was much higher than itself.

They were half-mixed, half-destroyed, and disappeared.

The final form was the ‘apocalypse’.

“The world is doomed.”

My voice echoed heavily in the office.