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fallen6253 · 5 days
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They're all love stories:
Could you imagine loving someone so much that you would break down their door and tell them to live with a ferocity that surpasses rabid animals? Ask them to stay with a fragile voice bound to break any second?
Ending a world so they could have a place in it because they couldn't save themselves?
Choosing them, every time, over everything else?
And it is a choice, you make it every time. Because they make you feel alive in ways that scare you sometimes. Because they ignite a fire in you that was supposed to die with you. You were supposed to be cold. But they warm you, and they burn you, and you want to keep the fire close.
Could you imagine loving so deeply that you choose to burn like Icarus?
To keep going.
To be selfish enough to want someone else to live.
To love someone so much that you rip the stars from their place in the sky, tear apart fate like a paper you would burn, unravel the universe to create their epilogue. You die to live with them, you kill all futures where they are not there. You stab your own heart thinking it doesn't matter, they are your soul.
To love someone so much you choose the worst path for yourself, for your loved ones, for your world, because you have to wade through bramble and broken glass with nothing but bleeding cuts and the deceptive smell of roses to see them. You have to ignore their protests and all the pain because if you doubt yourself for one second, they will slip through your hands and run off to die without you. And you promise that you want to live with them, that if they could make it, so could you. Through everything.
Could you imagine loving someone so much that you endure?
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fallen6253 · 6 days
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Was looking at the fandom's wiki page and:
kind of hilarious to me that the fandom’s wiki assumes Kim Seung Jong is dead (it's got the little cross after his name lol).  Like I have no clue if that was revealed by the author and I didn’t know about it, but.  If this was what we assumed because of how Choi Han kept looking at the wooden sword (I just assumed it meant he would kick his ass into a hospital at most).
That’s incredibly funny to me bcause like.  He didn’t kill Cale in the novel when he insulted his dead family, and he will slaughter any enemies that threaten his home, but Choi Han.  That is murder in the modern world sweetie, and police are a lot less okay with it than the Roan kingdom.  
I like how we just assume that while Choi Han does not want to ruin the life of the person he possessed, he is so down to commit murder because it’s just what needs to happen now.
It is a little concerning though because I don't know if that was ever confirmed as a fake world or a mirror of the real past, but if it's real that could be what happened to the man that saved little Rok Soo. Cale admits that he had a lot of help getting away from his uncle, but there is this perpetual shadow following all of his life where everyone he cares for is ruined in some way. So I worry that if Choi Han murdered his uncle in someone else's body, and somehow left evidence, that was how the man who saved Kim Rok Soo was destroyed and that to Rok Soo, it was his fault in some way. I know that this sort of thing tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, similar to Cale's sloth test, but I'm not too sure.
Thoughts? Ideas? Theories? Want me to shut up about my totally incorrect opinions? Correct me yourself!! :)
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fallen6253 · 8 days
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About the soul-swap partners:
I love that neither of them decided to stick to their given roles.  In either universe, really.
You’ll get what I mean.
Cale, who was Kim Rok Soo, does not keep up the image of trash.  He calls himself trash, he is called trash.  He does not keep his reputation.  Not the alcoholism, and he doesn’t throw bottles at gangsters.  No, he takes care of the underworld and other nobles in his own way (ie, recruitment or utter destruction).  He does not have his old reputation in this world either.  He’s not known as this cold leader who doesn’t care when someone dies, he’s known as a brilliant young man who cares way too much.  He’s known as an idiot who would rather pass out from exhaustion a week later than leave things to fester for one minute.  
And then there’s Kim Rok Soo, who was Cale Henituse once upon an apocalypse.  (First the fuq of all, nobody knew jac squat about him in the first place, and being the son of his mother probably made him something of an automatic anomaly.  I assume just being a Thames makes you kinda weird.  But anyway!) He lived as trash, an alcoholic who threw too many bottles back and then at the wall.  Then he lived through 20 years of a losing war.  And he got tired.  Tired enough to listen to a voice in his head in his last moments, to switch worlds and bodies with some stranger.  And he chose the motto that reflects the sentiments of his soul swap partner to a T: let’s live peacefullly.
And he smiles now, as Kim Rok Soo.  He sits back in his office chair, with an easygoing attitude.  He’s not the trash that would only shout; he is sly, and he knows how to use his status to properly put punks in their place.  He’s the team leader who refuses to be mistreated by anyone.  He will not be used, he would rather do his work as he needs to.  He isn’t a lowlife with no responsibilities in the wake of a war he would be just about useless in; he has a niece he has to go home to.  He drinks casually, not too much.  And he smiles in a way that’s too bright for the cold Kim Rok Soo.  He’s too happy now to be called cold-blooded. It’s like there’s a fire in his eyes that had been lost ages ago. Something that was rekindled when he had someone to go home to.
Despite changing their own lives so much, they wound up being nearly the same as one another and that drives me a little insane.
And let's not forget the best part.  One famous line they have in common in every world:
“Should I flip everything over?”
Another thing: I think Cale's gonna start resembling Kim Rok Soo. As in, he'll start relaxing a bit as the work goes on, he'll learn to rest as he goes (as in actually rest) and delegate work properly. He won't brush past comments like he used to, he will look a person in the eye and go 'I can just leave this world and leave you to your fate' which I would love to see, honestly. I feel like their individual capacity to be petty increases with age, and that's probably one of my favorite things about these characters. So them finding new ways to piss off people who don't like them could just be made into its own series and I would sell my soul for it.
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fallen6253 · 11 days
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Hello hello!
I was rereading Choi Han’s indignity test for the thousandth time (I need more little rok soo pls I'm desperate) and the thing that catches my attention now is the clues.
It says food, warm home, clean clothes, and abundance of food for dinner.
Not thinking about any other clues the author did not show us (there was definitely so much more; we were robbed–) because that would drive me insane from what we know so far (there’s so much yet so little I wanna cry).
Anyway, some found it confusing how there were two notifications about ‘food’ and ‘abundance of food for dinner’ so now I want to word vomit about it.
There is a difference between having food to eat at all and being in front of so much food there’s no way you could eat it all.
Food in general was scarce for Kim Rok Soo at that age (well, at most of his ages but anyway) so imagine being Rok Soo and letting a stranger take you to their house because you want to avoid your own and instead of the things you probably had been expecting, this total stranger just.  Started putting food in front of you and tells you to eat.  To eat all you wanted.  And he leaves for a bit and Rok Soo enjoys the cartoons you rarely get to watch because the TV makes too much noise and you don't want to be locked away in your cold and dark room again.  But then the guy comes back with even more food and when you tell him you’re full he looks.  Devastated.  And the man hides the food he thought you didn’t see, which is so ridiculous you almost crack a smile, until he brings out an apple pie, and now you’re baffled.   
And what really gets me is that Choi Han calls him a good boy.  And little Rok Soo looks baffled.  And there is no notification about comfort or praise covering up his indignity.  
Which implies he is already at that stage where he does not know how to take compliments seriously and just assumes the person is either lying or stupid (which may track in his logic for this stranger that brought some random kid home and just started feeding him).
Or it implies that compliments and praise were never something Kim Rok Soo thought of wanting.
You can’t focus on wanting to be loved if your priority has to be finding a way to survive.
Which tears my heart into pieces because.  This little baby, o my lord, I wish you could feel safe enough to want someone to say something nice about you, that you lived well enough to be concerned about people liking you.  I wish he knew that there would be people who loved him, waiting for him in the future, and that he would not only feel lost forever.  I wish he was living well enough to want to delve into his favorite books with open fervor, talking with others who were reading the same thing and discovering a new way to see a story.  I wish he could feel safe enough to express himself in any other way that did not say ‘it does not matter much what happens anymore’ and ‘I don’t have the strength to go against all of this despair’.  Because this little kid grows up to be so strong, in ways he can’t even see in himself because he’s too busy lifting other people up from groundless depths. 
And he grows up to be something so big, and so warm that it’s such a happy miracle he survived the environments he lived through.  And even after suffering so much loss and failure, he still can’t help caring for people.  And he does it in a way he is conscious of, but he explains it away as a strategy to survive, and it’s his selfish way of finding solace in bright young futures he never had.  Because he needs to justify it.  Because simple kindness can be thrown away and mistrusted so easily, and it can vanish in an instant.  
So he explains it away as a selfish action when he wishes to find solace in saving others.
In becoming the comfort to others he did not get.
In becoming the person he wanted to save him.
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fallen6253 · 11 days
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Calling him dad:
I feel like Cale would have a blank face with mildly wide open eyes if the kids were to call him dad.  Raon would fumble with the words a little because while he considers him his father, he still feels shy about being so open about it.  Hong is beet red while shouting in a mix of embarrassment and excitement about proclaiming this to his dad’s face.  On would say it a bit quietly but steadily, glancing away for a second before maintaining eye contact because she wants him to know they mean it.  She looks almost unfazed but there’s a slight red on her ear. They see Cale have a blank look on his face and know it’s because he’s an idiot and needs a moment to process. Which is absolutely right because he’s like ‘me? Dad? Where did they get that idea? Well, not that i mind, but– when did this development happen?
And he’s close to saying they should not call him that if they feel weird about it, but he sees the genuine excitement on the boys’ faces, and the fond determination on On’s face that seems to know his turmoil and tells him that yes they mean it and no this doesn’t feel weird it feels liberating and suddenly he can’t say anything.  He just pats each of their heads before letting them fall into his arms in a warm embrace.  
Because children should be happy.
And his kids will be happy for as long as he can make it so.
So if calling him ‘dad’ makes them feel like this, he’s okay with it.
(He’s more than okay with it)
He ignores the way his chest feels.  Because that’s not important right now.
What’s important is that On started sniffling like she was about to cry.
That was new.  On had never made such an expression.  She seemed happy and relieved.
Like the weight she had been carrying as the older sister that was thrown away by her home was finally lifted from her small shoulders.  The usual serious expression was gone.
And Cale hugged her tighter.  He ignored the way his arms trembled from the effort.  So did the kids.
Because children should feel like children.
And On was feeling like a kid again. 
And her siblings were right there with her.
With their dad.
With this large yet little family of theirs.
In their own corner of the world.
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fallen6253 · 12 days
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Question:
Did anybody discuss yet whether the god of death was a member of the white bloods or had a connection to the ancient white star? I remember something about Choi Jung Gun despising him because of the mistakes he made, and the whole story about how he became a god being pretty dark, but did it ever suggest he was a hunter from a specific household? Any theories on this? I'd love to see them.
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fallen6253 · 13 days
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Still can't think of an interesting title, but...
Tanned skin.  White hair.  Dark eyes. Their gaze moves slow, steady, makes its way to the window of a subway car.  In the brief moment it passes by, a small head with black hair peeks through. 
There was no eye contact.  But they knew the other was there. On some subconscious level, as if their very essence were attuned to one another.  
A rumble.  The car trembles.  Then it shakes.  Suddenly it's been thrown off the course of eternity and into a place of being known.
The subway crashes into solid ground.
A dreaming boy wakes up.
Miles away, a priestess known for denying god staggered in her footsteps.  Another migraine.  Another message.
Accompanied, for the first time, by an earthquake.
Huh. New.
The priestess picks up a pen and paper and rushes to a place hidden in darkness.  
A young man, hair and eyes as dim as night alight with stars, is waiting for her at the door to a beautiful home.  He walks her to a sitting room, tables set to the tone of a business meeting as if that was what this was.
Business as usual.
Of course.  It is.
He has a message about this world’s newest arrival.  And…a request.
She says this looking towards a man known for his wit and wile.  Brown eyes saturated to a dulcet red.  Blood red hair.  Clothes fitting and comfortable.  
He was on vacation.
Was.
The note warned first and foremost that nobody would hear from the god for a while.  Apparently bringing stars down from the sky costs quite a bit.  Well, that was what the note said, but the one reading it did not know its meaning yet.
The note then told them that the epicenter of that earthquake was near his home, and the damage to the forest should not be too drastic, since the cause was made of stardust and dream remnants and memories far too old to recall anymore.  It should fade with time, as all memories do.  By then it will return to creation and merge with the forest.  Again, the reader did not know what that meant.  He could only guess some things.
But the last lines caught his attention.  For two reasons.
The first being the mention of a child.  Far too young and far too ancient for all that it has seen.  The second reason being that this god made a request.  Not some mission with a reward.  Not some threat or warning with a clue as to how these mortals would react.  A genuine request he could choose to ignore completely without consequence since the god was indisposed. A sincere gesture for help that does not involve favors or world-blaming calamities.  
This being known for death asked a single mortal to save a helpless existence.
And for once the person reading it did not think about rejecting it at all.
He could be annoyed about it, something crashlanding into his forest, but…
There’s a kid that needs help first, we can yell at god for throwing him here later.
Do you think the plotting protagonist kept a library with stories of others like him?  Of dying worlds and forgotten names and tired heroes who made too many mistakes?
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fallen6253 · 15 days
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Constantly thinking about these novelties and:
Do you hear that? Salvation in the rumbling of a train car.
No, alas, it is but a dream.
Currently having a breakdown because ‘Salvation’ became the ‘Oldest Dream’ and the amount of thought that thing took up. 
Just.  Salvation being something everyone ‘dreams’ about, something always out of reach in a space only the loneliest people have the imagination to fathom.  Something existing as a hope, a dream, in a dying endlessness so that life could go on without it.  Existing as a hope that would be torn from the skies if its companions could write their own ending.  The dream living on the hopes of a house, lived in, loved in.  A salvation that could never dream its own happiness. A dream that could never speak up and ask for its own salvation.  
The dream becomes real.  The dream of Salvation lives only for a moment in comparison to eternity.  Upon the epilogue, it becomes a dream once more.
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fallen6253 · 16 days
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So when do you guys think Cale and the gang are gonna world travel to a world with little information from the God of Death about it because he said something like 'you'll know it when you see it' and they run into the middle of a mission run by Team Leader Kim Rok Soo?
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fallen6253 · 19 days
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So I'm gonna be completely transparent here, I have yet to read the S-classes that I Raised novel (because I cannot fuqin find it). But I AM reading the manhwa and it makes me feel. So many things. The whole awakening system is a normal genre thing (as far as I know) but I wanna know what Yoojin's potential could have been if he was awakened properly. If hunters need to be in the right environment for their specialties to develop to their fullest, there was no way in hell Yoojin was only an F-ranker to start, and there was no way he was going to be anything but an F-ranker pre-regression. His title as custodian was always a little broken, but it was definitely meant to be different. I just think that when his reason for living pushed him away when Yoohyun told him to get lost and to forget about being his guardian, he was basically rejecting his existence. I think when he said 'you're no custodian of mine' it really broke his potential as a hunter and a person because the kid he raised so lovingly threw him away like that. And it just got worse as life happened, and then the dungeon happened and he found out it was to protect him. So now he can't say Yoohyun hates him, but he can't say there isn't a part of him that doesn't feel broken by the feeling that his brother no longer needs him.
Basically, I think Yoojin could have awakened at a higher rank if he wasn't suffering from such a crippling form of empty nest syndrome.
But again, I haven't read the novel, so please (please) correct any errors or misunderstandings I may have here.
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fallen6253 · 23 days
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Is it weird that every time I see pop-culture that alludes to mythology or history (like epic and Hamilton musicals, BBC Sherlock, any show on supernatural creatures) I consider that ORV was a precursor to our futures. Like it influenced how people interpret stories, and now we've thrown ourselves into retelling them and keeping these stories alive. And one day they'll wake up and scenarios of our own making will begin. We have stuck ourselves with a perpetual retelling of a story. Is that weird?
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fallen6253 · 24 days
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Every time Lee Soo Hyuk calls Choi Han 'little han' or any time he uses any of those nicknames for the gang I go a little more feral.
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fallen6253 · 26 days
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Little extra ORV thingy (bc I can't shut up apparently)
Just coming to the realization that Han Sooyoung’s Avatar skill (as it stems from her author title) comes from the tendency of a writer to place themselves in someone else’s shoes in like the most ORV way.  They pretend to be someone else for a moment and gauge their emotions, actions, what they experience.  And that sort of copies into the real world as a clone skill.  They create this whole other person that may resemble someone else but has not existed that way until now.  So each time I see the Avatar skill in effect I think about the sort of characters Han Sooyoung thinks about.  The people she sees in the world and takes inspiration from for whatever character she needs in a moment.  And I think about how she uses this same sort of inspiration when she wrote both novels, but they were in a more direct way.  When writing TWSA she brought together whatever she could remember about the original, whatever Kim Dokja told her, what Yoo Joonghyuk said or showed, and any of her own experiences.  Then the same thing happened when she wrote ORV, it was just on a larger, more personal scale.  Every piece from the company and herself, she carefully translated and placed into the novel so it would be comprehensible.  
Love the looping theme too where she becomes an author with the Avatar, and also develops a weird form of DID because of it too.
I know this was likely explained long ago by the novel or someone else, but I wanted to say it myself anyway. And it's like really hitting me now.
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fallen6253 · 26 days
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*Clever title*
The entire Failure Test for Cale just boggles my mind because I thought about the line from the beginning of the novel, where he says he doesn’t make wishes or have high expectations.  In his head he compares winning the lottery with low or high expectations:
“It feels great if you scratch a lottery ticket hoping for $1 and end up winning $5, but if you scratch it hoping to win the grand prize and only end up with $5, you are bound to get annoyed.”
I sort of compare that to how he feels about failure and success.  It really seems like all or nothing with him.  If one failure equals another, then there are countless times in which he considered a mission a total failure, whether the objective was completed or not.
He was constantly thinking about every mistake he’s made, and every time that mistake turned into failure which, in his life, resulted in loss of life more often than not.  So no, he wasn’t lying here (for once).  He believes it really is easier to live without high expectations, because if you’re confident in your plans; if you’re confident in yourself, then you believe you can prevent someone’s death. Until the time comes and you fail, and those expectations and all of that confidence shatters into smoke and you’re left with whatever you can bury.  To prevent this, instead of even thinking about expectations in a hopeful or dreading sense, he turns himself into a makeshift prophet.  His expectations turn into an endless stream of hypotheses and predictions about how something will go, what he can do about it, how others should or should not act on it, and how he can best prevent loss of life in each case.  His expectations are not hopes or aspirations, but predictions, and those do not come with wishes.
I like rambling about this little man, how about you guys? Also, how many times have you reread this novel, because I've lost count by now
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fallen6253 · 29 days
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ORV thingy (because I wanted to contribute to this lovely fandom at least once)
You pick up your pen, you pick up your sword, you pick up your phone.  And you start typing, swinging, scrolling.  You write, you fight, you read, you create and destroy and perceive and the cycle only repeats. Until you reach that end, that blank page, that unpainted wall, and that terribly empty space.  You reach the end of the story and realize–
You wanted it to continue.
Not for yourself.  Because god are you tired,  and you wished you could just calm down, drop your sword, your pen, your book.
But life has to continue, and whoever stops shall be denied existence.  Your story can’t continue if you stop.  They cannot continue if you don’t.
So you pick up your pen, you pick up your sword, you pick up your phone.
And you start typing.
And you start swinging.
And you scroll once more.
And you read far past that epilogue.
[This story is for just that one reader]
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fallen6253 · 1 month
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Another post whoo! This one's kinda long.
Cale’s tendency to think of himself as trash probaby is from the survivor’s guilt but there’s also the idea that he knows that what he does worries the people around him.  And he believes that that’s what makes him – Kim Rok Soo Cale Henituse (not just Cale Henituse and his former reputation) – trash.  The whole ‘cold blooded Team Leader' taunting likely didn’t help his self-esteem in that life, but I think what others say about him never really bothered him.  I think he’s more of a person of action and raw emotion, so when he sees that his tendency to put himself in danger genuinely worries his teammates and (later on) his family, he thinks ‘wow, I am a terrible person for making them feel this’ because he knows what loss feels like.  And he feels the fear of losing people every day. 
But he can’t really stop doing it altogether because he feels that if he stops or slows down too much, someone will die.  Because someone always died.  I get that kind of feeling when they showed what his first day off was like when he became Team Leader, how he got really uncomfortable sitting still when he got home, and when they called him in he was grateful.  Because not only would sitting still open his Records–he’d be stuck worrying about people he isn’t able to watch over.  That was a big source of fuel for his work back then, and it still rings true.  Whenever a threat pops up Cale cannot, for the slacker life of him, sit still.  His thoughts are simplified to ‘annoying’ but it’s really that if there’s a threat he won’t stop worrying about it.  He can’t because (again) if he stops, or ignores it, it will eventually take someone from him, like how Ron came back without an arm and he just decided ‘nope this won’t stand’.  So while he thinks his actions make him trash, he sort of accepts that image and takes it in stride because hey, it’s better than anyone else dying.
Once again I hope people understand this and that this does not in fact sound like the ramblings of a madman, which this novel has turned me into.
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fallen6253 · 1 month
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First post in this fandom,
Well, first post ever on this platform, let's hope it goes well.
But someone mentioned how it was weird that Kim Rok Soo had Record as his first ability, when supposedly, they developed based on a person's characteristics, hobbies, etc.
But if White Radish's body was actually a Thames, then it tracks, doesn't it? Like it travelled with him when he got to that world, so it's attached to his soul. And if that soul was yeeted into another dimension (twice) then it would follow. Like, the Thames family was supposed to watch over and record time, so it makes sense they have abilities like that. Jour Thames had the Rings of Life so I'm assuming there's a pattern in that family to have abilities or ancient powers related to time. If that tracks, then Kim Rok Soo's original body was supposed to have Record (possibly as an ancient power) but it left with his soul and developed as an ability instead.
If that tracks then Instant was probably one of them too.
Does this makes sense? I don't know?? Has anybody else said this???
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