Faust was a man full of desire. With endless desire, he wished to achieve everything spiritual and intellectual.

One day, he thought his soul resembled God’s, and therefore, he could satisfy everything.

Faust grabs a book and mystically reads aloud the spirit’s diagram.

A reddish flame flickers, and a spirit appears from within the flame.

The appearing Earth Spirit.

However, it was a being with terrifying power, and Faust did not resemble it, only falling down from its powerful force.

He spoke.

Earth Spirit: You resemble the spirit you understand, not me!

The Earth Spirit disappears just like that.

Faust sits down helplessly, muttering.

Faust: I don’t resemble you? I don’t even resemble you! Then who do I resemble!

Faust despaired.

ㅡ(From the play Faust)ㅡ

…

Lewis Carroll, gradually losing vitality, continued to tell Jack O’Lantern her story.

“All Lewis Carrolls experiences the same despair. We are merely motifs, so the real Alice Pleasance Liddell we desire only exists in the original world. The condition Mephistopheles brought me back from death with was also to meet Alice Pleasance Liddell. However, I decided not to dwell on such things. Rather than longing for the original Alice Liddell, let’s cherish and love our own Alice. Even if we can’t break free from that unfulfilled love and become Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (real name), let’s become Lewis Carroll (pen name)…”

Lewis Carroll speaks in a voice as if about to burst into tears from overwhelming emotions.

“But the existence called Snark Hunt was a great shock to me. While longing for the original Alice, yet driven mad by love, the sight of myself searching for my own Alice by traversing parallel worlds overlapped with my own.”

Carroll suddenly shouted.

Her agony of despair at not being able to become the original surges.

“I thought I was special! That’s why I wanted to prove it! I… am different! I don’t think of Alice as a substitute, but I truly love her! I thought my true love could prevent what would happen to Alice in this world! But this is the result. I acted boldly as if I was doing something great, but in the end, I was just an ordinary person!”

Her anger and sadness echo in the air.

It was truly a story with no answer.

All the Lewis Carrolls who cannot meet the original child, and wander around searching for another Alice out of that sadness and obsession.

Indeed, they were living in hell.

Among them, there was a person who had run all the way to hell believing that her actions would bring about good results, and now she was crying so sadly.

Jack O’Lantern listened in silence, then spoke.

“I already knew you were ordinary. Seeing monsters that kill people overflowing in the world and becoming exhausted, and even killing people yourself, you tried to act okay… but you were just a person whose heart was being eaten away.”

“…Yes, I am ordinary.”

“Right. Isn’t the world a bit of a shithole for ordinary people?”

“What?”

Carroll asks back at Jack O’Lantern’s nonsensical words.

Jack O’Lantern smiled, finding her foolish face, even while sad, quite amusing.

“Being pushed around here and there by the world, it must have been full of things you disliked. You open your eyes, and some devil bastard tells you to handle Alice. But then some monsters are killing people. And even though you endured it for Alice’s sake, in the end you couldn’t stop the girl from meeting an ending she didn’t want!”

“I don’t really understand what you’re talking about…”

“Just think simply. You’re tired of the world’s absurdity. Your obsession with Alice must have worsened because of that. So, let me tell you my story, Carroll!”

“Jack O’Lantern… you…”

It was quite unusual for Jack O’Lantern to offer comfort by telling his story.

He always just joked around.

He would tease children who were teasing him in return, and even got his head cut off by the queen while making a joke.

His old stories, which he only told when boasting…

Despite her fading existence, she focused on Jack O’Lantern’s story, not her lingering attachment to Alice.

Like an innocent child.

“In my past life, I was a famous eccentric. I lived my life playing strange pranks and telling jokes and scams. That was my joy! Nevertheless, I was a genuinely bad guy who cleverly cute the line and saved my own skin! I hated the world too. Because they were all guys who didn’t know humor…”

Jack O’Lantern recalled his past.

In his memory, unlike the modern era, the underdeveloped and bleak village of the past came to mind vividly.

“I went around nitpicking at everything. My pleasure was to nitpick at the annoying things in the world. I was hated for that. One day, the higher-ups announced a foolish policy directly, and everyone was in a situation where they couldn’t object. I strangely nitpicked at what I didn’t like in front of the person involved. Very wittily! Just enough not to die! His face turned red like a tomato, and all the residents saw it and laughed. From then on, the world started to look different to me. The shitty things in the world started to look like joke material! Carroll, do you remember what I said?”

Carroll answered, fumbling through her memories.

“Did you say the world was one big joke…?”

“Yes! Hahaha! In the end, I got my neck cut off for nitpicking at the queen who always implemented shitty policies, but I don’t regret it!”

His way of thinking was still far from Carroll’s, but Carroll found a common ground with him in what he said.

There was a time when he too suffered from the absurdity of the world.

And a time when he wandered in loneliness.

He told Carroll about his past, how he, without power or strength, had brightened the dark reality by treating the world as a joke and nitpicking.

“Carroll… It might not resonate well with you, but the way ordinary people deal with the world is truly diverse. Even if you compromise and fight… don’t hate.”

Jack O’Lantern wiped her tears.

The message he conveyed was one.

No matter what situation you are in, don’t despair, but look at the world in a different way.

Lewis Carroll, while trying to break away from her obsession with the original Alice, eventually directed that obsession towards another Alice.

That was born from the sadness of a world where she couldn’t meet the original Alice.

If you want to stop despairing, you need to break free from obsession and see the world differently.

Even if Carroll’s existence is being consumed as material to transcend Alice.

Even if she is now on a time limit, he is telling her to break free from it.

Clang-!

The Little Prince, who had dealt with most of the Snark Hunts, comes running.

Lewis Carroll tried to ring the bell to call for a Snark Hunt, but she didn’t have the energy to do so anymore.

Jack O’Lantern stepped forward for her.

Carroll told him to run away.

He was by no means strong enough to handle a tale devil.

“Burn!”

The lantern’s flame was powerful, but it wasn’t enough for the Little Prince.

The Little Prince’s thorny rose pierces Jack O’Lantern.

“Lewis Carroll! You said you wanted Alice because of love! But what kind of love is that?! If you have a value you pursue, make it clear!”

Even as Jack O’Lantern’s body is shattered by the Little Prince, he doesn’t back down.

Why are you going this far… Lewis Carroll cried out.

“You said you’re an author! You have a greater profession than a mere joke-teller like me. If so, think about why you held the pen!”

“Jack O’Lantern!”

Lewis Carroll shouts his name.

At that moment, the Little Prince pierced Jack O’Lantern’s head.

Simultaneously, Jack O’Lantern caused an explosion with maximum firepower and collapsed.

As the Little Prince steps back from the flames. He, almost in tatters, speaks to Lewis Carroll.

“I am… just a supporting actor… That’s why that guy named Mephistopheles didn’t pay any attention to me… Did you say this world is a story? I’m probably the kind of being that those who listen and watch don’t even care about…”

Jack O’Lantern handed over his lantern, which contained his power, to Lewis Carroll.

His body is losing strength. He is dying.

“But you’re an author… Won’t you make even this supporting character’s sacrifice… and words meaningful…? So, think about it, let go of the obsession and the sadness of despair… and consider the true value you pursued…”

His eyes lose their light as he leaves his last words.

“You know why I’m doing this, don’t you…? Those left behind are easily lonely… My dear friend…”

Lewis Carroll recalled.

A memory of Professor Dodgson, which she couldn’t help but recall countless times before falling asleep, even knowing it wasn’t her own.

There, the original Alice smiles at Dodgson.

Whining, nagging, smiling lovingly. She was a child with a pure, untainted innocence.

He loved that purity, and to protect her childlike innocence, he sat by the river with Alice’s sisters and became a storyteller, telling warm stories…

She loved Alice Liddell.

But Dodgson, before that, loved her innocence…

The innocence of children.

That was why he became a fairy tale writer.

Crackle…!

The lantern’s flame burns.

The Little Prince rushed through the flames.

The children’s story writer Lewis Carroll picked up her pen and shouted.

Fairy Tale Writer: Get out of the way…!

…

Mephistopheles: (With a laughing tone) Can you answer my question? Tell me. You little candle in the wind. What is the reason you can move forward? (Reaches out to kill Shin Ha-rim immediately after)

Shin Ha-rim thought as she looked at the slowly approaching hand.

About the question Mephistopheles posed.

Shin Ha-rim recalled the keyword “faith”.

Faith.

What does she believe in?

Believe in God?

No, this world is a creation.

There was no God.

Then believe in Alice?

No. If she believes that Alice will save them like a god, that would be what that devil intended.

Then what should she believe in?

If they are just creations, what do they believe in?

Mephistopheles: Timeout. If God existed, he would have saved those who endlessly try. But your adventure in a creation… That’s all the value it had. Because it’s a story that can disappear if the author lifts a finger.

The moment Mephistopheles tried to kill her.

Shin Ha-rim opened her mouth to answer Mephistopheles’ question, even as her neck was being strangled.

At that sight, Mephistopheles momentarily loosened his grip.

“We, who were made based on the real world, are just fake humans in a creation… right?”

Mephistopheles: (Eyes narrowing) Yes.

“That’s the basis.”

Mephistopheles: What…?

“Even if we are fakes, if we are based on the original, then we… resemble the real thing!”

Not the original, but a fake, yet conversely, the fake resembles the original.

Shin Ha-rim shouted with conviction, as if that was the answer.

Mephistopheles: (Eyes widening) Ha! What an unimaginable reason. (Sarcastically.) It was the best faith you could have, a mere candle in the wind?

Shin Ha-rim recalled the tale devils that had attacked them.

They were the end result of despairing in their respective stories and meeting tragic ends.

Like a book that met a bad ending.

They too, as a story, could have met such an end.

But the tale devils of their world helped them.

They were the footprints of their adventure, and the plausibility that pushed aside these ominous possibilities and allowed them to confront the devil.

A hopeful narrative steadily built up moment by moment.

Shin Ha-rim believed not in Alice or God, but in their own hopeful footprints.

It’s true that a bad ending might come, but they had walked through shining moments.

Does God save those who try?

Does he guide them to a righteous and hopeful path?

The path they have walked is too difficult to despair. It’s already sufficiently similar to the original world Mephistopheles spoke of.

“We have faithfully overcome adversity until now! It’s not us who needs to prove something, it’s you!”

Resemble.

This was truly an abstract word.

A word that borrows its essence like the image in a mirror, even if it’s not the real thing.

Shin Ha-rim and the children affirmed their hopeful footprints, and because they resembled the humans of the original world, they asserted that they too had the right to overcome this and move forward.

It was Mephistopheles’ role to shatter that faith.

Mephistopheles, who had mocked them by posing a question with no answer, was now being asked to prove something in reverse by Shin Ha-rim, who had walked a hopeful narrative.

Mephistopheles: (Frowning for the first time) Do you think such sophistry will work! Fine, I’ll prove it! That you are worthless!

Mephistopheles finally extended the hand that had hesitated to take Shin Ha-rim’s head.

If this continued, Shin Ha-rim’s footprints would be cut off, and she would meet a despairing end.

In a world without God, who could help them?

Crackle.

Mephistopheles’ hand burns as soon as it is cut off.

Fairy Tale Writer: Don’t touch the children.

Lewis Carroll, burning her own body, appeared before them.

And following her were knights in armor.

They were once Snark Hunters, but now they were Knights of the Lantern, transformed by following Lewis Carroll, who had realized the value she pursued.

Fairy Tale Writer: I’ve made my decision. Rather than meet Alice, I’ve decided to open a path for the children.

Mephistopheles: (Angrily) Lewis Carroll… Are you going to burn that insignificant life?

Fairy Tale Writer: My name is Lewis Carroll. I am a writer of stories for children, and a lantern that illuminates the darkness of reality!

Lewis Carroll, who had been obsessed with her love for Alice, was no more.

Instead, only the knight and children’s story writer Lewis Carroll, who protected the pure childlike innocence of children, remained.

She shouted loudly like a creator who shook the heavens and the earth.

Fairy Tale Writer: As an author of children’s stories, I command you! Get out of the way of the children, you evil spirit of this play!

Mephistopheles: Ha! Good. Come at me then. You fake Faust! You’ll eventually stop and die while coveting the new world of freedom!

“This seems… quite an enjoyable situation!”

The awakened Dorothy and Lewis Carroll, burning her own soul, clashed with Mephistopheles.

Lewis Carroll’s lantern pointed somewhere in the darkness.

Shin Ha-rim and the children followed the lantern and headed for the final staircase.

And as they quickly descended, the Alice they longed for was standing there.

Fairy tale writer Lewis Carroll!

As always, if you spot any mistakes, feel free to let me know—and I hope you enjoyed the read!

—Chi