How Are You a Dopamine Addict
I had already decided I would only tell Shut-in Yeobo that I was a Dopamine Addict after I had put him in my debt for his life.
And right now, having just taken a bullet meant for him, the timing could not have been better for confessing that I was a Dopamine Addict.
It would also be inconvenient if he went on believing that the Unicorn Area player was the real Dopamine Addict.
Shut-in Yeobo looked flustered for a moment before he finally managed to ask me,
“You’re… what?”
“You heard me.”
“How are you a Dopamine Addict?”
His voice rose, the words tumbling out one after another.
“How the hell are you a Dopamine Addict? You said you were Tibalrom! If you’re the Dopamine Addict, then what the hell was that guy earlier? No—why are you only telling me this now?”
He isn’t even stopping for air.
I figured I ought to calm him down a little, so I opened my mouth.
“It wasn’t like I deliberately hid it… Okay, fine, I deliberately hid it.”
“What?!”
“If you’d known I was a Dopamine Addict, would you have cooperated with me this far?”
“…….”
He seemed to remember how thoroughly he had cursed out Dopamine Addicts when we first met, because Shut-in Yeobo fell silent for a moment.
But the unfairness of it all must have hit him again, because his hand started rising.
“You little bastard, even so—!!”
“I’m a patient.”
“Ah, fuck……!”
He was furious, but he couldn’t exactly thrash the guy who had taken a bullet for him, so the treatment continued without pause.
“This is just ridiculous… No wonder every single thing you do looks completely unhinged…….”
“Don’t heal everything. Just enough so that when Meursault comes back and looks at me he’ll think, ‘Oh, it was only a light wound after all,’ and let it go.”
“God, you talk way too fucking much. You kept your mouth shut just fine while you were stringing me along.”
He was going to hold this grudge for a long time.
Shut-in Yeobo focused on the treatment for a bit, then suddenly looked over toward Taejeong with the face of someone who had just realized something.
“But from the way that guy reacted earlier, he already knew you were a Dopamine Addict, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Taejeong knows.”
“What? Why tell that bastard and not me……!”
“There were circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“A player who used to hang around with Taejeong was impersonating me.”
“Impersonating? There was a player like that?”
“The one just now was probably impersonating me too. Most likely.”
Shut-in Yeobo’s face twisted into pure disbelief.
“What the hell is with all these impersonators! What do they even get out of pretending to be a sociopath like you!”
I had thought the same thing myself, but hearing it from his mouth somehow put me in a bad mood.
“Anyway. The first one who impersonated me failed his strategy and died, but the guy just now is a bit more dangerous.”
“You don’t have to tell me. He copied your charisma down to the last detail. Creepy as hell.”
“…It wasn’t just him copying me.”
My body had recovered enough that I pushed myself up and sat properly.
“That guy is a Unicorn Area player who’s opened the system the same way I have.”
“Unicorn? Ah, so that’s why the hoverboard…….”
“And for some reason he deliberately impersonated me and sent messages to other players.”
“He sent messages to other players? What kind of messages?”
“That inter-zone exchange was possible… Ah.”
The moment the words left my mouth I realized something.
“Seeing that he made it all the way here, it really does look like the barrier is gone.”
“The barrier’s gone? So even before the Second Apocalypse we can travel to other zones?”
“Probably… ngh.”
My shoulder throbbed, cutting me off mid-sentence, and Shut-in Yeobo grabbed my arm, insisting he needed to treat it a little more.
While he worked on me I continued.
“And… you saw it just now. That body.”
“Right! How is he the only one who looks like an adult? If he’s a Unicorn Area player, maybe they forced growth with science or something?”
Forced growth through Unicorn science.
It wasn’t something I had considered, but it wasn’t impossible either.
Still…….
“From what I saw… it didn’t feel like simple forced growth. There’s definitely something more to it.”
I just don’t know what that something is yet…….
From the moment I first saw him, something had felt off.
He might only have been an impersonator of me, the Dopamine Addict… but he was far too perfect for a mere copy.
His speech was even more irritating than mine, sure, but how the hell had he copied my gait?
And that line about coming to check whether I was growing up well still bothered me.
At my claim that there had to be more to it, Shut-in Yeobo’s face twisted with unease, but true to his flower-garden head he soon shrugged it off.
“We were going to head to Unicorn once the Second Apocalypse hit anyway. This is perfect. Now we’ve got a real reason we have to go there.”
“Well… true enough…….”
Just then Taejeong, who had been keeping watch, approached and whispered,
“Meursault is returning.”
I lifted my head. Not far away, Meursault was charging toward us with a squad of soldiers.
“We’ll talk later. And if anyone asks about today, you answer nothing.”
“Got it.”
“Yes, sir!”
The soldiers who arrived with Meursault hurriedly loaded me onto a stretcher to treat me, so we cut the conversation short and put on a full performance of me suffering from a serious gunshot wound.
By the time Meursault returned, Shut-in Yeobo had already healed most of the wound.
To the other soldiers it would have looked like the bullet had only grazed me.
Even so, Meursault forced me into a hospital bed despite the minor injury.
And that was when the Commander came to see me.
“How’s the body?”
“As you can see, I’m fine.”
The Commander already knew I possessed the same healing ability as Luna Moon, so he showed no great agitation over my injury.
Even after hearing I had been hurt, he hadn’t come immediately; he only showed up late at night after finishing all his own work.
That was why the nurses muttered that he was an Iron-Blooded Führer who wouldn’t even flinch if his own son were wounded.
Not rushing to my side had been an extremely cold and precise judgment, but it still left me a little disappointed.
If the Commander had dropped everything to come see me, it would have given me a bit more political weight…….
At the same time I understood his desire not to make me into a weakness.
If he had come running at once, the factions that already disliked him would have immediately tried to take me hostage.
Of course, even if I became a hostage I would simply walk out on my own, so I would have preferred the favoritism, but still.
The Commander studied me for a moment before asking,
“Who the hell was that man?”
That was the first thing he asked?
He must have already heard from Meursault how I ended up getting shot.
This was the same man who had refused to authorize a hunt because it was too dangerous, and the moment I stepped outside the zone I came back on a stretcher with a bullet in me. He might not grant permission next time.
Still…….
How much did Meursault actually remember and report?
Even the name “Dopamine Addict”?
That man had been rambling in Korean, so even Meursault couldn’t have relayed every word of the conversation to the Commander.
But Shut-in Yeobo had called him “Dopamine Addict” several times, so Meursault would at least have realized that was his name.
I quickly reviewed the exchange I had shared with the Unicorn player.
Nothing of real significance was said…….
The Unicorn player had avoided answering, mumbled things we couldn’t understand, and vanished.
Come to think of it, Shut-in Yeobo had carelessly used the word “player” out loud.
In that case…….
“I don’t know either.”
“You don’t know?”
The front half of the sentence was missing, but he clearly wanted to ask, “You, a regressor, don’t know?”
There were other people in the ward, so he was being careful with his words.
The Commander intended to keep my status as a regressor completely secret.
That was more convenient for me as well when it came to moving around.
“Meursault said that if you knew him you would know him, and if you didn’t you wouldn’t. Is that right?”
…So Meursault was still more loyal to the Commander than to me.
Well, this much was easy enough to explain.
“Exactly that. There was a time I knew him… but now I don’t.”
One of the Commander’s eyebrows rose.
“Meaning…….”
He seemed to grasp at once that I meant the man had been someone I knew in the future before my regression, but after returning to the past we were strangers.
A complete bluff, of course.
“Everyone else, step outside.”
At the Commander’s order the soldiers who had accompanied him and the nurses waiting nearby all filed out, leaving only the two of us in the ward.
“Speak freely now. Was he someone you knew before you regressed?”
From here on I had to choose my words carefully.
Keep the story consistent front to back.
And above all, never let him realize I was a player rather than a regressor.
“If my memory is correct he’s from the Unicorn Area, but I have no idea why he came all the way here. It’s possible he regressed as well.”
“He’s a regressor too?”
“I’m saying it’s possible. Because…….”
I could see the Commander wanted to ask more, so I struck first.
“That man. He called himself a ‘player.’”
“…I see. Meursault already told me the word ‘player’ came out of his mouth. I was about to ask you about that.”
Ah, so he had heard about the “player” part as well.
Good thing I brought it up first.
Fortunately, that man had appeared in the form of an “adult” just like Luna Moon, so no one would suspect that children like us were “players.”
Of course I would still need to keep Shut-in Yeobo’s mouth shut even tighter.
…Had the Unicorn player tried to eliminate Shut-in Yeobo because he thought the kid would get in my way?
Hmm.
I decided to keep talking.
“If he really is a player, that also explains why he acted like he knew me. Like Mother, he would have watched this world through the game, so of course he would know me.”
“A new player, then?”
“It’s possible that my regression caused a new player to appear.”
“…….”
The Commander seemed to find the reasoning sound. He thought for a moment before speaking again.
“Go to the Military Academy.”
The academy again?
“I thought that discussion was already over.”
“Even if you are a regressor, a child’s body must still be unfamiliar to you. That’s why you took a wound like this.”
Apparently the Commander believed I had been injured because I hadn’t adapted to a child’s body yet.
Well… it was hard to explain how someone who had beaten eight graduating cadets in the training simulation had taken a bullet just to protect Shut-in Yeobo.
Not that I had failed to dodge it. I had deliberately taken the hit to put Shut-in Yeobo in my debt and to test his healing ability.
But still.
“It’s a wound that heals instantly the moment I use my ability.”
“That attitude is dangerous.”
His tone was more uncompromising than I had ever heard it.
“A single moment of carelessness can cost you your life. Remember that your mother, Luna Moon, possessed the same ability as you and still died of the plague in the end.”
“…….”
Bringing up Luna Moon’s death meant he was genuinely worried I would get myself killed.
I believed Luna Moon had died because she failed her strategy route…….
If this man ever learned that Luna Moon might have died because he married Daphne, he would fall into despair, wouldn’t he?
Daphne also seemed not to have told the Commander that Luna Moon might have died after failing her strategy.
Right now I needed Daphne’s cooperation, so there was no reason to say anything that would sour the relationship between the Commander and Daphne.
Even so, the academy still didn’t appeal to me.
“But… you know we don’t have time.”
“I’m not telling you to attend for six full years. Train with the cadets at the academy at least until your body feels natural again.”
“Until my body feels natural—how long is that, exactly?”
“Until you can dodge a flying bullet.”
He had to be joking.
Seeing the “are you kidding me” look on my face, the Commander let out a short laugh and continued.
“At the very least until the next subjugation campaign… If you spend even a short time at the academy, it will be much easier for me to give you an officer’s commission, won’t it?”
Ah… right. I couldn’t very well act as an operations officer in a subjugation campaign with no rank at all.
Well, for me it would just be a short period of recuperation.
The cadets were going to hate it a lot more than I would.
