The Main Characters That Only I Know

Chapter 109:

Chapter 109

I know it’s a bit late to say this, but Celine is not a ‘real’ teller.

She must have tried hard to hide that fact, but I knew it. 

I knew it all from the moment I met her. 

Celine, the teller, left such a big mark on my life that I couldn’t easily forget her.

“How did you know? Did the rumor spread? Or did another teller…”

“You hit the nail on the head. You know you’re too excited right now, right?”

Celine’s eyes were shaking with shock, unlike when I first saw her. 

She frowned and glared at me more intensely.

She must have vowed not to cross the line, but now there was no time to worry about that.

“Do I look like I’m not excited…!”

“No one knows this. Only I do.”

I said indirectly, ‘The thing you’re worried about didn’t happen.’

“Do you expect me to believe that?”

“It’s true. I’m the only one who knows your identity. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to. Anyone can see what they want to see.”

I saw Celine biting her lips. 

In the end, she had no choice but to believe me, whether she liked it or not. 

I had her weakness in my hand.

“What do you want from me?”

“What?”

“What do you want from me, since you’re saying this?”

“Me? You don’t think I’m going to use this as a weakness and do something to you, do you?”

“Isn’t that what you were doing?”

I was speechless at Celine’s question, as if she really didn’t know.

What does she think of me?

“Well, I get that you don’t like me. But do you know what? I asked you a question first.”

“A question… Oh.”

She seemed to remember it now.

I asked her how to show a story as a teller in the storytelling room.

Celine looked at me with a disbelief in her eyes and pondered over the question seriously. 

As if she had no choice because I had her weakness.

“I don’t know.”

That was all she could say after thinking hard.

I didn’t blame her. 

In fact, I wouldn’t have been able to answer properly if I had been asked the same question.

“It’s natural that you don’t know. This is not a problem with a fixed answer.”

“There is no answer…”

She muttered after me without realizing it. 

Seeing her attitude, I chuckled.

“You finally feel like having a real conversation with me, huh? Miss Celine.”

She came to her senses and returned to her poker face, but there was still a trace of her flustered emotion on her flushed face.

She bit her lips slightly and gave me a resentful look.

Geez, scary.

“How did you know that I’m not a real teller?”

“Is that important?”

“It is important.”

“I see.”

She was not a ‘real’ teller.

Her words might sound strange, but they were not wrong.

‘What is a teller?’

A teller is a created race. 

They travel around the mixed world and select the beings of the lower world and show them to the spirits of the upper world. 

Their lives and their stories.

Storytelling.

That was their role and their reason for existence.

‘But does a teller have to be created? Does storytelling have to be done by a teller?’

I couldn’t answer that question for sure. 

Everyone knows that storytelling is done by tellers, but storytelling is not their privilege. 

Just look at our company.

The tellers who do storytelling belong to the storytelling room, and the tellers in other rooms do different things.

In other words, one can show a story even if they are not a teller.

That’s how ‘outsiders’ came into being.

“Celine. You’re an outsider.”

“…”

She had nothing to hide, so she didn’t bother to deny it.

Outsiders. 

They were those who wanted to become tellers even though they were not born as tellers.

To be precise, she was a different race who wanted to do storytelling.

Storytelling was not exclusive to tellers. 

Even humans in the lower world could take on the role of tellers and show stories if they got permission. 

There was no law that forbade other races from doing storytelling except for tellers.

‘But it’s too hard to meet that condition, so they don’t do it.’

Tellers belonged to the [Genesis System] from birth, but outsiders did not.

Outsiders had to satisfy the condition set by the [Genesis System] to get the authority of a teller in the middle world. 

I didn’t know what it was, but I vaguely heard that only a very few beings passed it.

And passing it didn’t mean they could become tellers right away. 

Among the three major teller organizations in the mixed world, only Celestial Corporation was generous to outsiders. 

Comedy Faction and Exodus did not allow them at all.

And Celestial Corporation’s tellers didn’t like outsiders either.

Many of them thought that storytelling was their own property that only they could do.

From their perspective, outsiders were unwelcome guests who invaded their territory without knowing anything or having any qualifications. 

They had no sense of being colleagues.

That’s why Celine hid the fact that she was an outsider.

“Why did you choose this path when you’re one of the best races in the world?”

The Wing race was one of the top races in the mixed world. 

If I had to rank them, they were on par with the Red Demon that my colleague Arisha turned into.

Even among the beings of the lower world, they were far superior to humans.

They were a race that could get close to the second-generation spirits near the stars if they wanted to. 

That was the Wing race.

From my point of view, a Wing-like person becoming an outsider teller for storytelling was no different from a chaebol’s third-generation sticking doll eyes in a factory. 

And that was voluntary.

[Why would such a great guy do something like a teller?]

‘I don’t know.’

In my previous life, I only heard that she was an outsider, but I never heard why she wanted to be a teller.

So I asked her this time, but…

“…”

She didn’t seem to want to answer me easily.

Well, there’s nothing more stupid than revealing your goal to someone you don’t trust.

“You must have your own reason.”

I didn’t intend to pressure or force her to answer either.

“But I don’t care if you’re an outsider or whatever. I won’t look down on you or mock you. I won’t spread this rumor to anyone else.”

She opened her eyes wide as if she didn’t expect me to say that.

She must have been worried about that. She came here hiding the fact that she was an outsider, but if she got caught, she would face severe discrimination.

In fact, she had a hard life in her previous life because she was exposed as an outsider.

‘Yeah. That’s right.’

She belonged to the support room now, but later she would move to the storytelling room as she wished.

But other tellers wouldn’t let her do proper storytelling when they found out she was an outsider.

In the end, she was relegated to Earth, where there were no stories.

The Earth where everything was abandoned after the apocalypse.

What could she do on Earth where Pentagram Department and Exodus guys ruled?

She suffered every day because she couldn’t show her abilities even though she had them.

I met her then.

Unlike other tellers who wished people would die, I met her who was different from them.

I still don’t know what kind of emotional change she had when she told me her story because I was in a similar situation as her.

Was it sympathy? Or empathy? Or maybe she wanted to vent her anger by grabbing anyone, even if it was hopeless?

But one thing for sure is:

I got some help from her.

The knowledge about tellers that she gave me helped me a little bit in my current situation.

I didn’t expect to see her again like this.

I was quite glad to see her.

‘At least she looked more human than anyone else in that apocalypse.’

Of course, not only Celine. 

There were not always enemies in the apocalypse.

Yeah. Among them, there was also ‘she’…

“…”

As I recalled ‘her’ faint smile in my blurry memory, my heart sank without me knowing. I

 tried not to show it and smiled at Celine.

“Don’t worry too much.”

Celine didn’t answer for a while. 

She was trying to sort out her complicated feelings. 

After hesitating for a long time, she asked me cautiously.

“What is your reason for helping me?”

Is that all you have to say?

“What if I like you? What if this is pure kindness?”

“I don’t believe in pure kindness. Especially from a teller.”

You’re a teller yourself and you talk like that. 

Of course, she was in a different position from the other innate ones.

In the end, by saying that, she was treating herself and the other tellers as strangers.

“Is the reason that important?”

“It is important. To me.”

“I see.”

She gave me a look that urged me to answer. 

I couldn’t feel any respect for her boss, but that was her personality. 

She was stubborn and unyielding.

If I wanted to earn her respect, I had to show her my achievements and actions that matched her.

In the end, I had one more task.

I shrugged lightly and pointed at her face with my finger.

“Your eyes.”

“What?”

“Your eyes.”

At my words, Celine raised her hand and touched her eyes without knowing it. 

She didn’t know what her eyes looked like, nor could she change them.

“It’s because of your eyes. I like them, so I decided to help you.”

“What was wrong with my eyes?”

“Stubbornness.”

“Stub…bornness?”

She made a ridiculous expression when an unexpected word came out. 

She tried to suppress her expression, but that’s what happened.

“Stubbornness. Or conviction. You keep your mouth shut and treat everything around you with a cold attitude. But your eyes are different. Inside that cold behavior, there is a burning core that is more than anything else.”

“Me…really?”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m helping you. Not you, but something that’s raging in your heart. I’m curious what it will turn out to be, the thing you’re hiding right now. That’s all.”

“Is that really true?”

“What do you expect from a weirdo?”

I chuckled and approached her. 

Celine flinched for a moment, but soon straightened her waist and neck. 

Anyone would think I was trying to eat her.

I handed her a book I picked from my library.

It was the first volume of the story when I gave up my protection for the first time and Kang Hye-rim awakened as a swordmaster for the first time. 

[The Story of the Fighting Teller and the Swordmaster].

“Read it. If you read it, you might get a clue on how to do storytelling when you want to do it later.”

She took the book I handed her without a word. 

She returned to her original expressionless face and looked at the book. 

I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

But one thing for sure was that her eyes were burning vividly unlike before.

She lifted her head from the book and looked up at me.

“I, um…”

“I don’t know how well you’ll do in the future.”

I didn’t bother to listen to what she had to say. 

It was just a word that came out of her emotion at the moment. 

There was no sincerity in it.

So.

“Just watch me closely and try your best to steal my skills. I’ll listen to what you have to say later.”

Tell me again when you can speak with sincerity.

I left my library after leaving those words.