NOVEL WEB Chapter 0
Vroom Crash
I totally got hit by a car, for sure.
With a dazed head, I thought.
Just a moment ago, I felt like I was hit by a truck at the crosswalk. There was a child walking in front of me. Did the truck have a brake failure, or was there some unknown problem? I remember pushing the child away as the truck honked like crazy, desperately trying to run over them.
And in the next moment, a golden light filled my vision…
Um, it’s still filling it right now.
I blinked a few times, rubbed my eyes with both hands, and looked up at the dazzling golden light.
A temple. A temple made extravagantly of gold.
Anyone witnessing this scene would surely share the same feeling. Thick columns supporting the arched, soaring ceiling were adorned with countless intricate patterns. Up close, it was clear that these shapes were neither orderly nor similar in any way.
The depiction of people looking up at the sky, and perhaps the god or goddess leading them, or a monarch. Numerous kinds of animals, trees, fruits, and flower petals.
Familiar shapes of familiar spirits, and many bizarre or grandeur-filled beautiful spirits I had never seen before in my life.
And unknown — at least, types of characters I had never seen before.
In the endless distance stood countless columns, each bearing entirely different, highly detailed patterns, engraved as if they were alive.
If such a magnificent cultural heritage existed, I couldn’t possibly not have heard of it.
Just like how ancient people must have felt chills seeing the pyramids, there couldn’t have been anyone who didn’t report on this massive temple. It must have definitely become an immensely famous tourist spot.
But there were no tourists here.
Not only tourists, but there wasn’t a sound to be heard that hinted at any living presence.
Only the noise of my own clothes rustling as I moved, the sound of my feet stepping, and my breath filled with wonder could be heard.
So, I naturally realized.
Ah, I’ve died.
I’ve ended up in the afterlife.
I couldn’t say whether this place resembled the otherworld I would continue to live in, or if it was a place where my life would be judged, but seeing this majestic location that seemed impossible to create by human hands over hundreds or thousands of years made it impossible not to think such thoughts. Even though I had never believed in the existence of gods.
Moreover, as I mentioned earlier, I was just walking at a crosswalk. I remember the truck coming right in front of me, but after that, I have no memories. At the very least, it seemed I died instantly without pain.
Was the child safe?
That thought suddenly crossed my mind.
“The child is safe. Thanks to your righteous sacrifice.”
It would have been surprising to hear such a sudden voice, but perhaps it carried some kind of power, even though it sounded like a fairly large noise in a quiet place; to my ears, it was merely soft.
Maybe it was just that the voice was infinitely gentle and merciful.
I took my hands off the pillar and turned my body toward where the sound came from, and there stood a beauty I had never seen before.
With shining, golden, lustrous hair that reached her waist, dressed in a very neat blue suit, with skin as white and smooth as Joseon porcelain, and gentle eyes with sparkling blue irises, this being looked like an ordinary white woman when described, but just seeing her deserved the title of “goddess” due to the indescribable majesty she radiated.
Hmm?
Something felt familiar.
No, it’s not the goddess’s appearance that’s familiar. I certainly haven’t seen a face like this before. Even recalling foreign actors I know, there was no match.
What felt familiar was not this woman’s appearance but the way I described her.
I’m pretty sure there was a description like that in something I doodled in my notebook when I was very young. I always tried to fix it but gave up reading the earlier cringe-worthy parts, so I hardly remembered the later sections; however, I clearly stuck to reading the beginning every time I attempted to revise it.
It was undoubtedly a half-hearted attempt at a very beautiful description that ended up failing miserably.
Later, I tried to fix it but ultimately gave up because I couldn’t express anything better.
No, wait.
If I thought even for a moment in front of a (likely) god, I might just fall into hell for blasphemy. To compare a real god to a crumpled-up note hastily filled with my childhood scribblings? I must’ve been struck by that truck hard. There’s no way I could get caught thinking such inappropriate thoughts by the god that seemed to read my mind just moments ago.
Though that goddess wore attire remarkably similar to that of the one I had unsuccessfully attempted to describe in my notes, like a new employee nervously dressed to impress for their first day at work!
…Hmm?
Heh heh heh.
Seeing my expression as I realized something was seriously off, the goddess laughed, as if she had anticipated it. It was an incredibly gentle, beautiful, and merciful smile — an unmistakable goddess-like smile — but as she covered her mouth with her right hand, I felt chills run down my spine.
Indeed. The goddess’s smile, attempting to describe some action, turned out to be nothing but a clichéd smiling pose.
Wait, chill out, me.
Even though the goddess standing before me seemed like a living embodiment of my cringeworthy past, didn’t she say herself that it was nothing but a generic smile? Sure, even if she looked like a goddess, no matter how beautiful, anyone could smile this way.
There must be a noble lady somewhere in Europe who smiles like that. At least, the female characters I watched in anime often smiled like this. So relax. It’s just a coincidence.
See? Just look at that suit. The suit I had envisioned while scribbling down had to be a mid-range suit worth around 180,000 won that college students casually pulled off the shelf when graduation day was nearing. That was about all I could manage with the meager knowledge I had back then.
But surely, the goddess’s suit looked like a high-end luxury brand. On the surface, it may have seemed ordinary, but the way the collar gently folded, the appropriate angles, perfectly tailored sleeves, luxurious materials, and just the workmanship screamed that it was handcrafted by a skilled artisan.
Wait! No, not again!
Damn it! I was strutting around in an 180,000 won outfit all the way until my dying moment! I was the rookie who dressed up nervously for my first day at work!
“Are you feeling a little calmer now?”
The goddess appeared again in the quaking aftermath of my seismic thoughts. Seeing her gentle smile as she asked this, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything like, “No, I’m not calming down at all!”
“Yes? Ah, yes… Yes? YES!?”
Fearing that she might think I went crazy or stuttered due to being overwhelmed, I felt the need to clarify that the reason for my awkward, high schooler-like response of uttering “yes” was simply because my voice came out as female.
Not just any female, but the voice of a very girl-like young girl.
“Ah, ah, ah.”
I grabbed my throat and tried to speak, but no deep male voice came out.
Thinking about it, I had been looking up at the goddess since earlier. While it might be prideful, I certainly wouldn’t say that I was short. I couldn’t say I was taller than all women, but at the very least, among the women I generally conversed with, none were taller or even close to my height.
Was the woman before me that tall?
I realized something above my sight had been shaking for a while. When I touched it, it turned out to be my bangs. I may not have curly hair, but I certainly did not have such beautifully textured hair either. No, more importantly, I had just gotten a haircut not too long ago, so my bangs hadn’t even reached my eyebrows.
I suddenly realized that my ears had been feeling strangely ticklish for a while. When I touched them, I discovered my well-textured hair was now growing to my shoulders. I could do an epic headbanging if I shook my head.
Did hair grow rapidly after death or something?
I decided to stop there.
Yes.
I must’ve turned into a girl after dying.
A foreboding sensation washed over me.
Somehow, I had a strong feeling that the smiling goddess in front of me would say something like, “Please save this world.”
And that “world” was likely the one I had excitedly created back in middle school, but had later become overwhelmingly dark, convoluted, and boring due to excessive settings, eventually dumped in a corner of my room.
With demons, vampires, witches, arcane powers, heroes, academies, and everything that middle school kids would fantasize about being filled, but the longer I wrote, the less I found enjoyable, devolving into mindless world-building with excess explanations that ultimately made me tired, leaving it crammed somewhere in my room, that draft that I tried to revisit several times only to give up beyond page five after hitting a dead end.
An originality that was completely shaped by influences from Japanese anime and Korean web novels.
More than that, I thought of killing off characters as cool, and went on a spree until I, in my youth, slaughtered civilians without a second thought, and now the crazy world I never wanted to live through.
I strongly felt like this goddess was bound to ask me to save that world.
That was understandable since getting hit by a truck and falling into another world as a hero was a common trope.
And the reason my gender changed was…
“Recently, you’ve read a lot about that sort of thing, haven’t you? Did you enjoy it?”
Upon hearing that, I covered my face with my hands. It must have referred to those web novels where I TSed into a pretty girl and had lots of wink-wink moments with other characters.
If my guess was correct and this goddess was just like the character I created, there would be no malice there. Intelligent, good at planning, and kind of a mastermind in a realistic sense but still just and extremely naive when it came to anything sexual — that was the setting I created. Probably with the intent to later include her as a member of the protagonist’s harem. Yet, I never got to write it all out.
But was it more embarrassing for me to know that this goddess knew about the smut I had read, or that the absurd character from that ridiculous setting was now alive and moving, and it just so happened that I had eagerly written all of that?
Thinking again, this place was also something I created. I had written “It looked very fancy and divine,” and left it at that!
Indeed, this was definitely not heaven. This was a torture chamber where human rights violations occurred indiscriminately. In fact, once I left this place and returned to reality, thinking back on the world I had written, it would also appear just the same as an endless torture chamber. While I was, in fact, the one violating those rights against myself, it was what it was.
Human rights… Human rights, please…
“By the way, do you remember my name?”
The goddess, who had been silently observing me covering my face for a while, asked that, and I peeked through my fingers and saw her tilting her head, smiling sweetly, as if clueless about my reaction.
No.
At the very least, this goddess was surely aware that I was incredibly embarrassed. Despite being an unrealistically naive virgin character (because she’s a goddess), she was very old (because she’s a goddess), mature (because she’s a goddess), clever (because she’s a goddess), beautiful (because she’s a goddess), with a playful human side added too.
She enjoys drinks and has many moments of being a mess, even having verbal spats with the protagonist… Wow, my settings are really numerous and ridiculous.
So, I’m not entirely sure what the principle is behind why I feel embarrassed, but it’s clear that this goddess is teasing me right now.
I glared at her through my fingers, but her expression didn’t waver. There wouldn’t be a need for me to be cautious. Even if this world was shaped as I described it, the one who brought me here was the goddess’s power, and I was just an ordinary otaku doodling in my free time.
“…Ariel. Goddess Ariel.”
After pondering for about 15 seconds on what to call her, I ended up blurting out a name that came to mind, and the goddess smiled brightly, bowing her upper body in greeting as she said:
“Welcome, our creator!”
So it turns out this world was the very one I had envisioned.
This is insane.