All the Dust that Falls - Chapter 4: Dust Bunnies

I thought I had seen bad endings before—but nothing prepared me for the garbage conclusion of The Hero’s Path.Years of investment, countless struggles, and for what? The protagonist failed. The villain won. Everyone else? Dead. Furious, I sent a message to the author, only to get a chilling response:[Do you think you could do better?]Before I could even blink, my phone exploded in a blinding light, and the next thing I knew—I was waking up in a completely different body.Now, I’m Merlin Everhart, a fourteen-year-old with a 12-star talent, the kind of gift only the strongest should have.But here’s the problem: I have no idea who I am supposed to be.With nothing but a system and a first-day-of-school alarm ringing in my ears, I’m thrown into the world of The Hero’s Path.Am I just another side character in a world that already ended once?…Either way, I refuse to let this story beat me too.

Qin Yi was reborn half a month’s time before the apocalypse. In this life, having already seen the true colors of her scumbag sister and father, she swore to let them have a taste of their own medicine—an eye for an eye. She disguised herself as a man and kept improving, getting stronger day by day. Common people hailed her as «Prince», making countless people bow in homage.

Haewon, a violinist, is a nonchalant person who neither blocks the ones who come into his life nor holds onto those who leave. One day, his only friend, Taeshin, commits su*cide, and after failing to speak to Taeshin, who called him several times shortly before his death, Haewon is haunted by his death, even though he doesn’t have much of an attachment to human relationships. Then, he inevitably runs into Woojin, the man Taeshin had a crush on, and Haewon indifferently crumples up the business card Woojin hands him.One day, Haewon, forced into an unwanted relationship, becomes entangled in an assault case, but thanks to the business card given to him, he receives help from Woojin, who’s a prosecutor. Haewon feels uncomfortably guilty and tries to keep him at arm’s length, but Woojin is comfortable enough to take a few extra steps.

A cold and homophobic top matched with a person he hated on a dating app, and discovered that the other was even more clingy than he thought!