Reunion (1)
Asgard nickname: Dandan-mukjik. In the real world, the man known as Park Eun-woo was the type who genuinely loved working out. Which was why, first thing in the morning, he was already at the gym putting himself through his morning session.
"Hah…!"
Deadlift: two hundred kilos.
It was a weight that had long since left the realm of ordinary people. But this was a body that had already cracked the five-hundred-kilo big three. Park Eun-woo hoisted the barbell without much trouble and set it back down on the floor with careful control.
"Hoo…."
Wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, he squared up in front of the mirror. Front double biceps. He raised both arms overhead and flexed his biceps hard, and a pair of viciously thick peaks ballooned out. Holding the pose, Park Eun-woo began to drink in the sight of his own body with an almost rapturous look on his face.
Beautiful again today.
Beautiful. This was exactly why he could never quit the gym even if he wanted to. This was the one and only drug the government still allowed.
Next up… maybe I wreck legs.
Muttering under his breath, Park Eun-woo sat down on a bench before the next set and pulled out his phone. At this hour, that person would be streaming.
Right on schedule. Park Eun-woo entered the stream and stared holes through his phone with that grim, hard-edged face of his. HungADC was playing Asgard again today, spitting curses nonstop. A look of quiet sorrow crept into his criminal-looking features.
I wonder if she's even eating properly.
One particular scene from the past refused to leave his memory—the tiny figure of HungADC he had met that day in the park.
Is she going to be all right…?
Finding out she was a woman had been a surprise, but still within the bounds of acceptable. What had truly shocked him was that, adult or not, she looked like nothing more than a middle-schooler. That was what had planted the seed of suspicion about malnutrition and those baggy, hanging clothes—and what had eventually turned into this constant, free-floating worry that kept him coming back to her stream.
I'm worried.
The match must have ended; the results screen came up. Consecutive wins. Thanks to a run of good team luck lately, HungADC was riding a streak.
Out of nowhere, HungADC dropped the sign-off line. But she had only just gone live, so it wasn't the end of the broadcast. She closed Asgard, opened Notepad, and started typing.
Pro Misery-Lifer HungADC's Misery Counseling Clinic
"Mm…."
Straight into the money-collection content. He already had a rough idea that HungADC was scraping by, so it wasn't surprising. Looking at her stream hours, she was a full-time streamer who needed to hit her daily target. In a way, it was only natural.
"Haa…."
Park Eun-woo let out a low sigh. Three Chocomongs. She liked sweets, sure, but this was past the point of reason. Keep that up and her nutritional balance would collapse, and her body was bound to pay for it. But that wasn't even the whole problem.
Park Eun-woo chewed his lip, uneasy. She was at an age when she ought to be growing… well, maybe not, but the food she lived on was always this thin. Whenever people asked about her meals, nine times out of ten the answer was pyegi lunchboxes and Chocomong.
The nutrition is way too poor.
So his guess had been right—no parents? If she had any, there was no way they'd let her live on nothing but Chocomong and expired convenience store food.
If he could have had his way, Park Eun-woo would have tied her up with rope right then and force-fed her vegetables and protein packed with real nutrients. But they were strangers. He couldn't just do that.
And there was something worse than the nutrition.
Her unstable mental state.
HungADC's misogyny ran deep. And yet, astonishingly, she was a woman in real life. He figured a lot of that unstable mental state was showing through right there.
Thank god it was me who went out that day.
That first meeting with HungADC… if it had been some genuinely unhinged psycho instead of him, something unimaginable could have happened.
I can't just leave her like this. I have to help.
But wanting to help was one thing—the method was the problem. If he just showed up and offered help, she would never accept it. Her guard would only go up even higher.
I need a natural point of contact.
She was critical on both the physical and the mental fronts. So the approach had to be as light and natural as possible, nothing that would put her on edge. Of course, no such method was coming to mind. In the end, all Park Eun-woo could think of was donations.
Her nutrition's a mess, so I'll tell her to take care of her health first. And… she's got a lot of enemies, so I should casually mention that going outside carelessly is dangerous, without bruising her pride.
Park Eun-woo entered the amount and sent the message.
After sending the donation, Park Eun-woo closed his phone. He had rested enough. Time for the next set.
I stared at Dandan-mukjik's donation message.
Take care of your body, and watch your back.
Is this a death threat…?
Don't tell me he still remembers getting ambushed back then? If so, that old donation dig about whether I even had parents suddenly made sense. Dandan-mukjik still hadn't let go of the grudge from the day he got jumped.
Is he seriously planning revenge?
He absolutely could be. Thinking back to the size of that guy last time, he was clearly into lifting or combat sports. A gym guy like that getting dropped by my ambush—his pride must have taken a catastrophic hit.
He's coming for payback because he got embarrassed…!
Petty bastard. Can't even accept a loss, and now he's going after the back of my head!
Uh. Uh. Uh.
Why was cold sweat suddenly pouring down my back?
"…Uh, Dandan-mukjik? That whole thing last time was settled clean, wasn't it?"
I asked in a shaky voice. Those kinds of things were supposed to be one-and-done, right?
Fuck. Suddenly the other side of the front door was terrifying. Come to think of it, when I came home that day, had I even checked if I was being followed? I don't think I did…?
"Everyone. That's all for today."
"I suddenly don't feel well."
I slammed the end stream button. The moment the screen went dark, I shot up from the chair and bolted for the front door.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
"Creepy bastard…!"
Click-click. Click-click.
I checked that the door lock was properly engaged, and even that wasn't enough—I hooked the safety chain too. Only then did I feel a little safer.
Two days passed.
"Hoo…."
Thankfully, my skull was still intact. The front door hadn't been smashed in, and I hadn't taken a baseball bat to the head on the street either. Of course, the part I still couldn't understand was that Dandan-mukjik kept casually tossing donations my way.
This guy is a genuine multi-personality psycho.
Still, nothing else had happened, so I could throw myself into Asgard. On top of that, my average stream time was eight hours. A brutal schedule, but somehow I pulled it off.
The result of which….
"Uhh…."
My body was completely fucking wrecked.
Eight hours. With my old body, eight hours of Asgard would have been nothing. Steel stamina that could casually digest twelve hours a day—hell, even twenty-four. But now was different.
"Heh… heeeh…."
The chat swam in and out of focus. At the same time, my head floated loose, and reality started drifting further and further away.
"Eeeeh…."
A soft, cottony feeling. The line between real and unreal was dissolving. And when I came back to myself….
"Eh."
There I was, sprawled in the chair with drool running down my face.
"Uweh?"
I wiped the trail of drool from the corner of my mouth and forced my brain online. Then I checked the time, and realized a truly absurd amount of it had gone by. Faced with this unreal situation, there was nothing left but to roar in the Thunder Tiger Style.
"You fucking piece of shiiiiiiit!!!!"
I blacked out after a measly eight hours!!!!!
Sign me up at a gym right now!!!!!