#D - KDJ's perspective as the MAD shows him regressing to what he was like before the dream of ways of survival.

[your--isgayrights]

Hey! Do you have a theory of why 49%'s last words were "i'm sorry"?

I like your theories, and i love your fanfic! Thank you!

Oh that's such an interesting question...

(this ended up being long so under a read more and also I summarized my points in the tags.)

I think that the avatar of the 49%'s last words were actually "if you're sure this is the story that you want..." The being that says "I'm sorry" is the disappearing child Dokja in the train car that they manage to break through to. In that chapter it's said that him and his avatar were in the car, the avatar then disappears, and what remains is the little kid. This version of Kim Dokja existed as a result of his reckless sacrifices of probability in the zeroeth regression, as we know that his physical form became smaller and smaller.

Ok tw for discussion of suicide from here on out bc I feel like if you've read my meta before then you know that for me Kim Dokja being a suicide survivor is very important to it.

We know that the age the Kim Dokja regresses to is that form the most ancient dream took, around the time that he began to read ways of survival, when he began to "dream."

This is sort of a side tangent, but the existence of the "most ancient dream" is one that I think can be interpreted more literally, because if we accept that the entire universe of the novel is the reflection of the mind of Kim Dokja, then the reason that is the earliest form that it's God takes shows that the world began when he read ways of survival. Because the existence he was before then is one that didn't hold any power.

The regression of Kim Dokja into the position of helpless observer is parallel to his experience of being a child before he began to read ways of survival. Absorbing stories because somewhere on the core of him he equates them with escapism and love, but being unable to change his own physical circumstances or even muster up a conscious will of his own.

This is why Kim Dokja is left hospitalized as a fifteen year old child, parallel to how he was after his first suicide attempt.

So when you think about Kim Dokja's actions throughout the span of the epilogue, what we're essentially watching is that in isolation, at the end of this story, this world, we see what Kim Dokja does with himself. And what he does is extremely parallel to the situation of his younger self.

You have to remember about this part that the laws of the universe are determined by Kim Dokja's subconscious. The rules of probability come from his own internal idealization of sacrifice.

We see in the dream space that Kim Dokja is able to affect the happenings of the zeroeth regression by sacrificing parts of himself in exchange for benefit to his friends. We can see that this is a form of self harm that is a detriment to himself, but because of the way the universe works in his mind, it has a story effect. We could imagine though that before this dream world existed that sacrificing parts of himself=control in situation where he feels helpless and unable to do anything to change his own situation.

So when Kim Dokja is alone he feels helpless to change his situation. It's all out of his control from laws of the universe he doesn't really understand. He chooses to harm himself because it's the only choice he can make that will progress the story, have any affect at all.

But the difference of this lonely Kim Dokja between the circumstances of his first suicide attempt and the dream space that mirrors it is that Kim Dokja has people who care about him. People who are coming for him and want to help him, to save him.

So when Kim Dokja is about to disappear and knows that he is going to disappear, he says that he is sorry to these people because the one thing that gave the actions he took power to himself were that they were his choice entirely, nevermind the circumstances out of his control.

And I think this is a really important moment, because it's all of his friends trying to reach out to him, trying to find out why he is like he is, trying to know why he is doing this.

And this whole scenario is the dream's fucked up way of showing his friends that this is what is at the core of Kim Dokja. This was the struggle that began the dream, the entire universe in the first place.

They're waking up from the dream in that this is the moment where they are really rewinding time, going back to this point that Kim Dokja can't even represent himself as a physical entity anymore.

He's in the hospital bed like he was before the dream started. Was the dream only a distraction from his impending doom? The death that he felt he was always heading for?

But no. We see that surviving in that way, the only way he could, was something that allowed him to make the friends who would tell him how to survive through his apocalypse. The waking up of Kim Dokja from the dream is like finally waking him up from his first attempt, this time giving him a story that is his own. Telling him that this story is his and that he can live for himself now. Because there are people who care about his story the way he had always been caring about theirs.

If we're being specific about the avatar of the 49%'s words... I think like as Kim Dokja he had some inkling of the fact that the wall showed this ugly truth about Kim Dokja's past and current existence. We know that Kim Dokja like. Feels inherently remorseful for 'burdening' others with his sad stuff (like his thing about not wanting to tell too Sangah about his mom) and I feel like "If you're sure this is the story you want" is sort of like an acknowledgement that what they're about to see is going to be bad. But the fact that they're willing to see it at all, to want to know Kim Dokja that much, is important to the stuff that happens later.

TLDR; I think "I'm sorry" is a choice of words that highlights the factor of Kim Dokja's choice in melding into the most ancient dream, but also evokes that feeling that he is burdening others with information about himself.