The Outcast Writer of a Martial Arts Visual Novel

Childhood friend.

Just hearing the word brought a ticklish feeling.

It was a perfect setting for adding plausibility to romance stories and a powerful heroine trait in harem narratives, though it often signaled a losing flag.

I, too, had a childhood friend during my elementary school days.

Back then, I lived in a quiet neighborhood with aging houses and villas, not in a city filled with apartments like today.

In those days, there wasn’t much to see or do. What could a child in such a quiet neighborhood play with?

Whenever I went to the playground at the same time, kids I had seen the day before would be there, as if by unspoken agreement.

We would play until dusk and then part ways. I had a childhood friend with whom I used to play.

A girl a year younger who lived next door. Her parents were both working, so she often spent the evenings alone. She was my childhood friend.

We played many games together: house, square ball, other ball games, air games, and building snowmen.

Of course, having a childhood friend didn’t mean our relationship developed like in the cartoons.

We played together until elementary school, but as we grew older and went through puberty, we gradually grew distant.

We’d just greet each other if we bumped into each other at the local market. After I moved, we lost touch completely.

Thinking about it now, it might have been during puberty when my facial features started to really come into their own, disrupting our individuality. If I had been better looking, would the memory have turned into an ongoing connection?

Anyway, it was a distant memory from childhood. I couldn’t remember the face or voice of my childhood friend, but the memories lingered.

Now, I just needed to transplant that face and voice onto the Heavenly Death Star. We’re now childhood friends who used to play together in the neighborhood.

My childhood friend, wherever you were, I shall replace those memories with the Heavenly Death Star! Thanks!

“Don’t lie.”

Cheon Sohee spoke to me with an expressionless face. However, upon closer inspection, I detected slight cracks in her facade. She seemed a bit shaken.

“Sohee, what lie are you talking about?”

“I can’t have an older brother.”

“Haha. Sohee, do you think I’m your real brother? You’re overthinking it. I’m Kang Yun-ho, the older brother you used to play with, not Cheon Yun-ho.”

I clarified, just in case. A family setup would be problematic. She might remember having a family in her scant memories.

I was not your family. I was the older brother you used to play house with.

This was the most fundamental setup that had to be firmly established. If this initiation failed, it was all over. Please don’t outright deny it.

Please let it work. Let it work.

“I can’t have had an older brother to play with…”

Good! She was unsure. That’s right. You hardly have any memories of the past. You can’t be certain.

“Don’t you remember playing with me when you were young? We played square ball and your favorite, the air game. Despite being older, I always lost to you at air games.”

I was terrible at air games. My younger childhood friend always won. As a child, it frustrated me so much that I even practiced at home, but I still always lost.

I gazed at the Heavenly Death Star with nostalgia.

“I don’t remember that.”

Cheon Sohee responded gruffly. My wistful eyes rendered the Heavenly Death Star slightly uneasy.

It’s okay. I was accustomed to that look. I’ve received worse.

“It’s been too long, over 10 years. It’s natural.”

I nodded as if to reassure myself. There was no need to contradict her denial outright. Instead, I asserted my perspective while acknowledging hers.

In the past, in car accidents, the louder and more shameless person often prevailed. It was challenging to determine who was at fault objectively.

The same principle applied now.

It was a memory that neither of us possessed. An unverifiable memory, a void. I brazenly inserted my own memories as fact into that blank space.

“Don’t lie. There’s no way anyone from that village could be alive.”

“So, you’re saying I’m a ghost standing before you?”

“That’s why you’re lying.”

Cheon Sohee held the small blade tightly, seemingly at a loss for words.

Hey. She might stab me at any moment. I need to create common ground that she can’t quickly deny.

“I witnessed the tragedy in your village myself. It was truly horrific.”

I put on a face as if recalling a terrible past that was hard to bear. Facial expressions were an art. I managed to make it realistic by recalling the time I got caught watching adult videos without locking the door.

“You just said ‘your village.’”

Cheon Sohee’s eyes lit up. It was the look of someone who had found a weakness in their prey. The angle of the blade in her grip changed.

“Yes, your village. It seems Sohee really doesn’t remember me correctly. Sohee, if you don’t remember your older brother, do you remember the Kang family? They were wealthy and always dressed well, so they should be memorable.”

Listen to me till the end without doubting every word, will you?

Cheon Sohee stood ready to strike at the slightest provocation, just like Moyong Sang-ah. At least Moyong Sang-ah hid her blade, but Cheon Sohee seemed ready to strike at anything. I deliberately showed vulnerability, but she didn’t hesitate, which scared me for a moment.

“My village was a poor fishing village. There couldn’t have been such a rich family there.”

The blade at Cheon Sohee’s waist was angled towards me. With a slight movement, it could pierce my throat.

I needed to keep talking quickly.

“Right. The Kang family wasn’t from that village. They visited the fishing village for a different purpose.”

“A different purpose?”

It felt like walking on a tightrope.

When dealing with the Moyong Family, I at least had shoes to prepare. Now, all I had to rely on were my own two feet. But if I wanted to survive, I had to make do with what I had.

I recited the prepared backstory.

I looked at Cheon Sohee with a distant expression.

“Sohee, our family, the Kang clan, interpreted for the Joseon. We earned money legally but also dabbled in smuggling. We transported goods by land, but when the loads were large, we shipped them by sea to the Central Plains. To elude the official ports, we secretly set sail from quiet fishing villages to the Central Plains.”

The Kang family had indeed been involved in such smuggling. A lie with a purpose, sprinkled with truth for credibility.

“So what?”

“It has been over 10 years. There was a boy who missed his father, who was rarely home due to business. He figured out that waiting at the port was better than waiting at home to see his father sooner. So, several times a year, he would wait at a quiet fishing village.”

“Our village?”

“Yes. I met you, Cheon Sohee, in that fishing village. While waiting for my father, I would play with you and then return home when he arrived. That’s how I avoided the tragedy that day.”

Of course, none of that had happened. When my father was away for smuggling, I spent my time terrorizing the neighborhood, even at that young age.

“……”

Cheon Sohee seemed at a loss for words. How about that? I’ve included the DLC setting of being a villager from your village. Pretty good setup, right?

“Sohee. Actually, I want to ask you. That day, when the Japanese pirates attacked your village, all the villagers died. How did you survive? And what’s with your current condition? I thought you were dead, yet here you are in the Central Plains?”

If the setup had taken hold, it was now my chance to counterattack. By mentioning the events of that day, I pressed Cheon Sohee.

“I don’t want to… talk about it.”

Cheon Sohee’s expressionless face crinkled. Her furrowed eyebrows showed her reluctance to remember that painful day.

Cheon Sohee’s Achilles’ heel was the memory of the day when all the villagers perished, a shock so profound that she lost most of her past memories.

“I’m sorry. That memory must be too painful for you. I was too insensitive.”

I averted my gaze from Cheon Sohee, staring at the ground with pursed lips. The room sank into a brief silence, laden with the weight of painful recollections.

Yet for me, it wasn’t actually a painful memory.

“…Okay. I accept that you were a person from our village.”

It worked.

As I suspected, it was a convincing ruse.

Now, let’s shake hands and part ways. It was pleasant meeting an old neighbor, wasn’t it?

Time to return to my main job. I’ll be active in Hubei Province for a while, so you just operate in other provinces, okay?

“Sohee. Do you finally remember me, your older brother?”

“No. I understand that you stayed in our village. But if we were that close, I would have remembered you.”

She wasn’t easily convinced.

That was a fair point. Even with most of her memories lost, someone that significant should have lingered in some recess of her mind. But it seemed that I was absent from her memories.

If I continued to speak of past memories and she recalled nothing, her suspicion was warranted. It would indeed be strange to warmly greet and bid farewell to someone who claimed to know your parents, especially after suffering a blow to the back of the head.

The root of Cheon Sohee’s suspicion was ultimately one thing:

Her own memory.

With most of her past memories nebulous, she couldn’t be certain of her own recollections. She only trusted what was clear in her mind.

Yet Cheon Sohee had no indubitable memories.

The character Cheon Sohee had lost the majority of her childhood memories.

Consequently, that was precisely why Cheon Sohee treasured her past so fervently.

The cherished memories that remained were vigilantly safeguarded in the depths of Cheon Sohee’s heart. She placed unwavering faith in those memories.

Being so precious, she couldn’t help but question the presence of someone outside those memories who claimed to be part of her past.

No matter how much I insisted we were childhood friends in front of her, she wouldn’t believe it.

It didn’t matter whether I actually played square ball, air games, or squid games with Cheon Sohee. Whether true or not, if they weren’t in her memories, they didn’t matter.

Because her memories were too certain.

Or rather, she believed they were certain.

So, Cheon Sohee.

The memories you held.

The memories you considered precious.

I was about to drop a bomb into those memories.