Chapter 173: Between the Lines

‘A blanket and… a pillow?’

I must have been hazy because I had just woken up from a faint.

Because of that, it took me some time to realize that Yor had not only propped a pillow under my head and covered me with a blanket but had even taken off my shoes and set them aside.

“Myaoooo…”

As I sat there blankly trying to grasp the situation, Yor let out a weak cry and studied my complexion.

It was only after meeting the baby dragon’s worried face that I realized my mistake.

He must have been incredibly anxious while I was unconscious.

How terrified must he have been seeing me wake up and just blink blankly, unable to pull myself together?

“I just woke up to find myself lying on the floor, so I was a bit dazed for a moment. I haven’t lost my mind, so don’t worry.”

“Yaong…?”

“I’m sorry for making you worry. Brother is really okay now, so you don’t have to be concerned anymore.”

I gave a gentle smile as I spoke, hoping the baby dragon would stop trembling with anxiety.

Perhaps he only felt relieved after seeing the smile on my face.

“Nyaa… Myaaaaaang!!”

The baby dragon’s eyes grew moist, and then tears suddenly came pouring out.

“Oh dear… You must have been so scared. Even so, you stayed calm and took care of your brother. As expected, My Baby Dragon is truly amazing. You got me a blanket and a pillow, and even took off my shoes… Is that why? Even though I collapsed on the floor, my body feels fine without a single ache or stiff muscle. Yor, it’s all thanks to you. Thank you so much.”

“Nyaooooong! Myaat, nyaang…! Yaooooong…!”

“Yes, that’s right. You have no idea how much strength I get from having you by my side.”

“Myaaaaaa, nyaaaaaa….”

Yor burst into the cries he had been holding back, meowing sorrowfully as if pouring out his grievances.

I held the baby dragon in my arms and patted his back until he calmed down.

[Reason]

A long while later.

The baby dragon, who had stopped crying, slipped out of my arms and wrote that word on the whiteboard.

He was asking what on earth had shocked me so much that I fainted.

‘Is it okay to tell Yor this?’

I hesitated for a moment, wondering if My Baby Dragon would also be shocked.

However, Yor was the only being who knew that I had possessed a body in this novel world.

If I swallowed my troubles and shared nothing even with Yor, I would truly become isolated in this strange world.

Furthermore, there was no way my wise baby dragon hadn’t realized the truth I had discovered.

Even so, the reason Yor demanded an explanation was likely his own way of being considerate — telling me not to suffer alone and to ease my anxiety by sharing my worries and fears with him.

“Well, it seems the world I possessed is the remake version of 《Nas-e》. As for how I reached that conclusion…”

When I began my explanation, Yor listened intently, nodding with a serious expression.

Seeing him so unfazed made me feel reassured, but it also made my heart feel heavy for some reason.

I realized that despite his resolute personality, he still trembled in fear and shed tears whenever something went wrong with my body.

“The problem is, I can feel that Author Senna is determined to write a depressing development this time as well. Constructing an Awakened Special Class in such a coercive manner…? If you want to write an Academy novel with a bright atmosphere, that’s something you should never do.”

If they had added a school rule stating that students must take at least a few combat-related lectures under the pretext of allowing students to protect themselves when they get caught in the creation of a Demonic Realm again, an environment where everyone could train without resentment would have been created.

After that, they could have divided classes based on skill and Awakening status.

They could have even used the excuse of practicing group battles to bring the main characters together.

Instead, a situation was staged where the Imperial Family was praised for trying to sacrifice the protagonist and his group.

Because of that, the students of the Awakened class were forced into unwanted training and spent their daily lives fearing when they would be sent to a Demonic Realm to fight a life-or-death battle.

And was that all?

They were even deprived of the opportunity to overcome their fear and grow mentally by deciding to save people of their own free will.

“On top of that, a ‘traitor’ character was introduced. Maybe he won’t betray anyone this time… but I think the possibility of that is low. The moment Author Senna feels the plot needs tension, she’ll use him to cause an incident that will shake the mental state of the protagonist, Reysir.”

Just like on the day of the Graduation Ceremony, when she tried to kill Hailga to shatter the peaceful daily life and flip the atmosphere, identical to the version before the remake.

“In that sense… I wonder if Author Senna is either completely unaware that I’ve possessed this body, or if she views me as a nuisance who is ruining her designs. As proof, she seems to have no intention of building a peaceful and safe world for the person trapped inside her novel, right?”

“Nyaong, myaong….”

“The biggest problem here is that whether Author Senna knows about my possession or not, there are more than enough reasons to kill ‘Karbaldr’.”

From the perspective of the readers of the original remake.

My apology to Reysir could be considered a random, out-of-the-blue event that had no foreshadowing.

But Reysir went even further.

Not only did he forgive the person who had bullied him, he even felt a sense of closeness and asked to be friends.

How absurd would that seem?

Even that wasn’t the end.

Reysir didn’t hesitate to treat me like a tsundere and paint me as a ‘shy and kind child.’

No, he went around insisting on it quite strongly.

He even went around saying that I had saved him.

My own readers, who knew that I wasn’t the real Karbaldr, would have likely moved past it without much concern.

However, Senna’s readers wouldn’t be able to do that.

What they saw was the protagonist and victim of school bullying personally glorifying the perpetrator.

‘School bullying is a societal issue; if you handle this theme in such a way, what reader would be able to accept it generously?’

At this level, it wouldn’t just be the character ‘Karbaldr’ being targeted; there would be more than enough criticism and insults poured onto the author, Senna…

“Wait a minute? Does that mean Reysir’s affection for me is independent of Author Senna’s will…?”

“Yaong?”

I described the thought process behind what I just said to Yor, who tilted his head in confusion.

After I did, Yor wrote the following symbol on the whiteboard.

[ = ]

It meant his thoughts were the same as mine.

The moment I realized this world was still under Author Senna’s influence, I had been secretly afraid that the attitudes of those around me were all just Author Senna’s puppetry.

‘They were acting on their own will, with their own self-awareness…?’

Instead of burying my anxiety deep in my heart and turning away from it, it seems I can only discover the hope buried within my worries by taking them out one by one and examining them closely.

I felt a wave of genuine relief wash over me.

“That’s a relief…”

While Author Senna was essentially the god of this world, it seemed she couldn’t completely control the characters, including the Original Protagonist, Reysir.

Come to think of it, I couldn’t completely control the actions of my characters when I wrote novels either.

I suspect many authors are the same.

For characters to break free from an author’s control, they need probability.

And that probability stems from each character’s personality and their interactions with those around them…

“Manipulating the world to cause incidents is something only Author Senna can do. But still, wouldn’t you say the influence I can exert on the characters is much greater?”

“Nyaong-nyaong, nyanyanyat, myamyang!”

“I can directly interact with the characters to guide their actions, or I can move personally to produce results.”

“Yaooooong~!”

“Now that I think about it, I successfully prevented Hailga’s death on the day of the Graduation Ceremony, right? So even if a similar crisis occurs again, I’ll be able to overcome it somehow.”

“LFLFLF!!”

“Besides, I can continue to move in the ‘spaces between the lines’ that the original author outside the work doesn’t observe. Perhaps there’s a way to utilize this…”

Just as I was shaking off my anxiety and fostering positive thoughts with Yor’s encouragement.

— Knock, knock, knock.

The sound of someone knocking on the door reached us.

There was a high probability it was the Original Protagonist, Reysir.

After the orientation ended, he likely came to check on me because he was worried that my condition didn’t look very good on the way to the dormitory.

‘If I open the door and talk to him face-to-face, will that scene be observed by Author Senna and recorded in the serialized chapters of the remake version?’

Under the circumstances, the fact that my condition wasn’t good would have been attributed to the ‘Awakened Special Class.’

Since Karbaldr’s current setting is that he’s so afraid of dying that he even developed insomnia, it was only natural for him to feel more stress than others when faced with a situation where he had to risk his life fighting monsters.

‘She’ll definitely highlight it, if only to show the gravity of the situation and the desperate atmosphere.’

Around the time I reached that conclusion, the person outside knocked again, and this time, he spoke up to identify himself.

“Um…, Yor…? It’s Reysir. Could you open the door for a moment?”

I didn’t know why he was looking for Yor instead of me.

Regardless, the visitor was indeed Reysir, just as I had guessed.

In this moment, in case there are any readers worried that Reysir might have heard the conversation between Yor and me, let me clarify something.

Normally, the rooms in this dormitory provide excellent soundproofing, but once someone knocks from the outside, that insulation weakens for a short while.

Actually, it isn’t just this place.

Almost every indoor space in this novel world is like this.

It’s so that characters can have secret conversations inside a room with peace of mind, yet still be able to respond to a visitor’s voice.

It wasn’t a feature of Aether Engineering.

It was just a strange physical law that existed only within this novel world, born from the contradictions created for Author Senna’s convenience.

“…What brings you here?”

I opened the door just a crack, only enough to show half of my face, and checked on the visitor.

The moment our eyes met as the door opened, a flash of relief appeared on Reysir’s face before vanishing, leaving only worry in its place.

“When I came by earlier, Yor slid a piece of paper under the door to tell me you were sleeping… Did I wake you up?”

No wonder it was strange that he was looking for Yor first without even calling the name of this possession body.

It seemed this was his second visit.

When I glanced back, Yor was holding a whiteboard that said [I forgot].

He looked so cute that I decided to just let it go without saying anything.