Shut-in Hubby
Safe Zone nickname: Shut-in Hubby.
He had grown up under entrepreneurial parents and had never once lacked for material things. But his body had been frail from childhood, a constant cycle of hospital admissions and discharges that kept him from attending school properly. By the time he was old enough to go, his personality had twisted so badly that making friends of his own age was nearly impossible. Parents, doctors, nurses—even his mean-spirited older sister—had always yielded to the sickly boy in everything. He never learned consideration for others.
He tried to fix his character later, only to end up the victim of a kind of school violence that fleeced him of his wealthy circumstances. The moment his parents found out, they pulled him from school and brought him straight home.
"Yeobom. You don't have to go to school. You don't have to go to college. You don't have to get a job. Live doing whatever you want."
Shut-in Hubby knew perfectly well that his parents said those words not because it was truly all right to live that way, but because of the doctor's advice: his illness was not cured, every day he remained alive was already a miracle, and he should at least spend what life he had left in comfort.
What I want to do…
He wanted to go to school. He wanted friends his own age. His parents asked why he never told them he was being bullied. But Shut-in Hubby had never even realized it was bullying. Those rare moments when the kids shared snacks with him as if doing him a favor, or when they stopped and waited for him whenever he walked too slowly—those scraps of time had been too precious.
But if I'm not going to live much longer anyway, I don't want to worry Mom and Dad…
And so Shut-in Hubby stopped going outside. He became a hikikomori game addict who vented all the anger he could never show his parents or peers onto the internet.
Dopamine Addict posted a new guide!
Dopamine Addict.
His sister had forced him to play a middle-aged romance simulation. The game Apocalypse: Safety Zone was clearly an homage to it, and among its players, "Dopamine Addict" was one of the people Shut-in Hubby most admired. Even when people called his guides sociopathic, he kept posting them to the community without flinching—that was cool. And even though he never seemed to care about getting along with anyone, those same broken guides somehow produced a whole army of followers. That was enviable too.
I want to get close to him.
To grow closer to Dopamine Addict, Shut-in Hubby put the dating-sim techniques he had learned into practice.
Everyone else calls him hyung this and hyung that and worships him. I need a different approach.
If he left a different impression from the rest, Dopamine Addict would notice him. The kind of person a guy who posted sociopathic guides and enjoyed the attention would like was obvious. Shut-in Hubby left a comment with confidence.
Heh.
The skill of casually elevating the other person while using rough language. Top three things a guy who posted this kind of amoral guide most wanted to hear: "Author seems like a psychopath," "This is crazy," and "Only you could pull this off"—mixed in just the right proportions. With a high-level skill like that, Dopamine Addict was bound to take interest in him soon.
Without ever realizing that those insult comments were being deleted one by one by Dopamine Addict himself, Shut-in Hubby diligently left recommendations and replies on every guide. Only after he got blocked right after the knife guide went up did he finally understand something had gone wrong.
I got blocked…?!
"Why!! Why the hell!!"
Shut-in Hubby cried harder than he had the day school violence forced him to leave his friends. For several days he wallowed in depression and did not even log into the game. When he finally made a sub-account and entered the community, an unexpected rumor was circulating.
The heavy users disappeared?
He hurriedly checked Dopamine Addict's account. He too had no login record for the past few days.
He always used to vanish for a few days at a time…
While looking through the login records of other heavy users, he spotted that Home Protector—the one who always acted unnecessarily close to Dopamine Addict—also had no recent logins, and Shut-in Hubby was stunned.
T-that guy isn't logging in? Did he really go missing?
Shut-in Hubby began digging into the heavy-user disappearance case. Before long another player passed him an address for a certain convenience store—the Safety Zone collaboration convenience store address that Dopamine Addict had posted right after blocking him. Shut-in Hubby headed straight there. Finding nothing particularly special, he bought a single cola and was stepping out when he was possessed.
Forced to enlist by Tibalom and put through hellish training day after day, it was actually not such a bad life. The body he had possessed was more than healthy—it even had a self-healing ability. And the player he had thought was Tibalom turned out to be the real Dopamine Addict.
As long as Dopamine Addict is on my side, the apocalypse isn't a problem.
Thanks to that bastard actually succeeding at the illegitimate-child guide and becoming Young Master Haydam, military life had gotten easier too.
"The furred crocodile's tail was flying right at my face, and in that instant Haydam stepped in front of me and—wham!"
"Huk, no way!"
"Exactly. Haydam took the hit for me."
One of the senior soldiers listening to Shut-in Hubby's "adventure" tale (…) shouted in excitement.
"Holy shit, so the injury from that rumored fight with the furred crocodile—he got it protecting you?!"
"That's right."
"Whoa, insane!"
Then another senior asked, unable to hide his suspicion.
"No way. Why would he do that for a washout like you?"
"I already told you. Haydam promised long ago that he would put me to good use."
"Yeah, but why you? The guy already has someone as incredible as Commander Meursault at his side."
Shut-in Hubby glared at the senior.
"I can't go into detail, but I have an incredible talent."
"What talent? The talent for pissing people off?"
"A guy who still talks like a civilian going on about talent is pretty pissing-off, yeah."
"Are you questioning Haydam's judgment right now?"
"W-well, not exactly, but—"
Shut-in Hubby had already been summoned privately by Haydam several times, so the doubtful senior mumbled something noncommittal and dropped it. The other seniors also knew that Haydam and Shut-in Hubby were fairly close, so ever since the first pork-belly party they might still treat him like a washout, but they no longer bullied him.
Just then a soldier came out of the barracks, spotted Shut-in Hubby, and called out as he approached.
"Hey, Assa. You've got leave."
Hearing that, Shut-in Hubby put on a haughty expression.
"Well, well. Speak of the tiger and it appears. Haydam must be calling for me again."
"You say weird things sometimes. What's a tiger? You mean a butterfly tiger?"
"Why would a butterfly tiger appear when I talk about it?"
Shut-in Hubby lightly ignored the ignorant game NPCs who did not even know a Korean proverb and asked the soldier,
"The Commander's residence again?"
"No."
The approaching soldier handed Shut-in Hubby a leave pass.
"Errand this time. You're from the Slums, right?"
"Ah, yes."
Remembering Haydam saying he had written "orphan from the Slums" on the enlistment form, he nodded, and the soldier continued.
"Go to the Slums and bring something back."
"Bring… what?"
"You'll know what once you get there, apparently."
You'll know once you arrive at the Slums…?
Did Dopamine Addict order this?
At this point the only person who would deliberately send him on an errand to the Slums was Dopamine Addict. But if it were that bastard, he would have told him directly instead of going through some random soldier. Even knowing a soldier should never ask such a thing, Shut-in Hubby questioned him.
"Whose order is this?"
Sure enough, the soldier's face immediately hardened and he stared straight at Shut-in Hubby.
"Why do you care? You planning not to go depending on whose order it is?"
For a second Shut-in Hubby boiled with the urge to flop onto the ground and scream, Do you know who I am?! I've eaten meals and gone hunting with the Commander's son, you bastard! But the soldier in front of him belonged to the newly promoted lieutenant general's line—in other words, a subordinate of a pro-Daphne officer. Haydam's name would not carry weight here.
"Ah, no. I'll go."
Shut-in Hubby barely swallowed the urge to be snarky and answered. Anyway, he knew the Slums of the Cola Area better than any resident of this world. There would be no problem.
I was getting ready to attend the military academy graduation ceremony when Meursault told me something absurd.
"Darling Outsider isn't in the barracks right now?"
"Yes."
"Finally deserted, huh."
I said it as a joke, but Meursault's expression did not change.
"…Huh? For real?"
"It's a little ambiguous."
"Ambiguous how?"
"According to the other soldiers, he went to the Slums on an errand."
"An errand?"
I frowned and asked,
"Who besides me would send that guy on an errand?"
"They said they don't know who ordered it."
"Have you checked the Slums?"
"Yes. But by the time I arrived he had already moved elsewhere."
"Moved elsewhere? A soldier went AWOL and they're just leaving it?"
"His leave pass says return by midnight tonight, so they told me to wait until then."
"A kid disappeared and—never mind."
Thinking about it, this was the Apocalypse setting. One child soldier vanishing was nothing unusual. Shut-in Hubby was not actually a little kid either—he was a player—so he probably was not in serious danger.
He said he was twenty…
From my perspective twenty still counted as a kid, though.
Once the graduation's over I'll go look for him.
As I thought that, Meursault read my mind with eerie accuracy.
"I'll have a vehicle ready once the ceremony ends."
"…Yeah. Thanks, Meursault."
I paused while putting on my jacket and asked him,
"But are you really going to join the subjugation campaign?"
"I don't understand why everyone is so worried. I am a soldier, after all."
"Because you're doing something you never do."
"I have participated in subjugation campaigns before. Always at the very rear, admittedly."
"This time you said you'll move with me. Front line."
"I ran the numbers in my own way."
"What numbers?"
"The calculation that staying by Haydam's side is safer than the rear."
"……"
It was not a wrong calculation. But if he was sticking to me this openly because he thought it was safe, and something happened to him later, I would have nothing to say to Daphne. Still, what could go wrong…
"By the way, what scheme have you cooked up with Cadet Platon?"
"Scheme? Anyone listening would think I was plotting something at the kids' graduation."
"You are plotting something."
Meursault shot that back, then tilted his head and muttered,
"The kids' graduation? You're more of a kid yourself…"
"Meursault, you going to keep mumbling? We'll be late."
"Are you really not going to tell me what you planned?"
"Go listen for yourself."
After refusing him, I turned a playful smile on Meursault.
"Come to think of it, Meursault, you're not a military academy graduate, right?"
"No. As you know, parent connections matter a great deal for the academy."
In this zone orphans made up more than eighty percent of the population, yet even so a bourgeois class that had managed to accumulate wealth still existed. Children of high-ranking officers like Platon, or adopted wards sponsored by officers like Bones. Only those kinds of kids could enter the academy. The reason Meursault—who had enlisted as a child soldier and clawed his way up to major general—was so obsessed with family was probably all because of that unfair structure.
"Parent connections… I really hate that kind of thing."
"Excuse me? Coming from the person who exploits parent connections more than anyone, that sounds like hypocrisy."
"Maybe so."
"Wait. You don't mean—"
I grinned at Meursault, who seemed to have caught on.
"Look forward to Platon's speech."