Chulwoo AU where both die (no powers SL AU as well) and end up story/dimension hoppers that get assigned roles and must lead a story to certain point/ending to move to next stage

Jinchul grasps this weird concept and decides to play along because there’s nothing more to do and he doesn’t want to test out what failure will mean

First couple of stories goes smoothly and relatively easy (despite whole ass set of restrictions) but then he notices spike in difficulty and how some events don’t go as planned

He suspects there’s more ‘hoppers’ than him per story and it turns out Jinwoo is one of those as well but he has different set of requirements that apparently contradict those of Jinchul’s

At first they try to outplay each other because both don’t want to see what happens after failure but in such attempt the best they got is some sort of middle ground which allowed them both to proceed. And since then two been stuck together in each world trying to find a middle ground for theirs requirements and both absolutely hate it when they end up on opposing sides because that’s gotta be the hardest shit.

Two complete strangers slowly get to know each other and reveal bits and pieces about who they used to be before this mess (and as it turns out they actually were lovers who died together in an accident and now it’s literally them falling in love all over again)