Entrance Exam (3)
‘I went to all that trouble sending you away, and here you are again… is that it?’
The line left far too much room for interpretation. As if he were claiming he’d been the one to send me packing. As if he’d known I’d been here before.
I rose slowly from where I sat, watching him with open wariness.
“What do you mean, you went to all that trouble sending me away?”
At that, he looked almost puzzled. He seemed to turn something over in his head for a moment, then huffed a quiet laugh and began lowering the hoverboard’s altitude.
“If you don’t know what I mean, then that RoomCornerHoney guy really didn’t say a word.”
“What?”
Why is RoomCornerHoney coming up here?
Had the fact that RoomCornerHoney knew about this cave been connected to this guy all along?
While I stood there frowning, lost in thought, Dopamine Addict stepped down from the hoverboard and walked toward me at a leisurely pace. My hand went reflexively to the knife at my waist—then I stopped myself. He hadn’t looked like he meant me any harm last time, and he didn’t now either.
I eased my stance and asked, standing easy,
“So what is it that RoomCornerHoney didn’t tell me?”
RoomCornerHoney had claimed he’d known the cave and that was why he could send a rescue team, but even at the time the explanation had felt thin. Pressing him for how he’d known would never have gotten me a straight answer, so I’d come back to the cave to check for myself. I just hadn’t expected Dopamine Addict from the Unicorn Area to drop in.
Between RoomCornerHoney and this other Addict… no, that was too long. From here on, I’d just call him Ttopamine Addict.
Anyway—if there really had been something between RoomCornerHoney and Ttopamine Addict, why keep it a secret from me?
Ttopamine Addict didn’t answer. For some reason he only gazed up into empty air, then looked back at me with a faint smile.
“Check your messages.”
A message window popped up in front of my eyes like a system alert.
A message written under my own game nickname had arrived for me.
I wasn’t particularly shocked.
So he unlocked the additional system after all.
The only reason he could message me without being friends was that he’d bought a note from the shop.
Once it was clear I’d read it, Ttopamine Addict went on.
“I sent RoomCornerHoney a note with the exact same contents.”
The exact same note to RoomCornerHoney?
If he really had sent that note to RoomCornerHoney—back when I’d blacked out in the cave, before I’d ever opened RoomCornerHoney’s system for him—then it meant notes could be sent to any player regardless of system access.
Well, the item description did say ‘players who aren’t friends,’ not ‘players who’ve unlocked the system.’
Judging by the message, Ttopamine Addict had impersonated me, sent RoomCornerHoney a note, and RoomCornerHoney had fallen for it completely and dispatched a rescue team to the location this guy had given him.
There were still a few things that didn’t add up.
“How did you even know to tell him to send a rescue team? No—how did you know I was here in the first place and come looking?”
Even as I asked, Ttopamine Addict only watched me with a smile at the corner of his mouth and eyes ringed dark with exhaustion.
“And… if you really sent that note, why hasn’t RoomCornerHoney ever mentioned it to me until now?”
“That one I can answer.”
So the first two questions were off-limits.
Ttopamine Addict glanced into empty air again, and another message arrived.
“…….”
I was speechless for a second, then asked,
“So… he kept quiet even with me because of one childish message like that?”
“He looked like a kid who needed attention.”
Hard to argue with that.
“Though honestly, even after I sent it, I figured a guy like him might still go around blabbing. But he never said a word to you either. Tighter-lipped than I expected.”
I was surprised myself that RoomCornerHoney had taken a message like that and never so much as hinted at it to me. What surprised me more was that Ttopamine Addict had burned a hundred points on RoomCornerHoney just to save me.
No—the fact that he spent another hundred points in the shop just to explain this one thing is pretty amazing on its own.
I had no idea how many points he had stockpiled. But one thing was certain.
This guy genuinely had no intention of hurting me. If he’d come here to do me harm, there was no reason to waste points answering my questions so patiently. And that opening line—‘I went to all that trouble sending you away, and here you are again’—made it clear he’d come to check whether I was safe.
Why does he keep wanting to make sure I’m growing up okay?
Until now, there’d been no way to dig into him, so I’d deliberately avoided thinking about it. But he’d walked right up to me of his own free will. I couldn’t let this chance slip.
I asked Ttopamine Addict,
“You. Are you really ‘Dopamine Addict’?”
“You checked the system and still don’t believe it?”
He looked genuinely baffled, and I frowned.
“Just because the system says Dopamine Addict doesn’t mean I can trust it.”
“Why not?”
Why not, he says. Asked in that mad-scientist character model of his, he really did look unhinged. Still, I answered honestly.
“I’m ‘Dopamine Addict.’ So you also being ‘Dopamine Addict’ is weird.”
“What part of it is weird?”
“Because that would mean you’re… me.”
Ttopamine Addict started laughing as if he’d found that genuinely entertaining. Was this guy actually committing to a mad-scientist bit?
“That’s exactly right. I am ‘you.’”
“What?”
“I never hid it in the first place. Last time I told you that if I’d started in the Cola Area, I would have poisoned Meursault first.”
He had said that. That was why the pronoun had felt wrong.
“Are you an AI?”
“Interesting. But wrong.”
“Then am I the AI?”
“A fascinating theory. Also incorrect.”
Ttopamine Addict dropped his gaze as if the conversation were growing dull.
“When I say I am ‘you,’ I mean it literally. Neither of us is a copy or an impersonation.”
I stared at the guy claiming we were both the real Dopamine Addict, then asked,
“Say my name.”
“Your name?”
“My real name. If you’re ‘me,’ you should know it.”
“Ah… right. You want to check whether your memories and mine line up. That way you’ll stop doubting me. Fine…….”
He rubbed his chin as if he rather liked the idea, then said,
“My real name is… Lee Dam.”
My heart dropped like a stone.
Lee Dam. That was my real name.
No—but.
A name was something you could dig up from game ID registration data. He could have looked that much up just to disguise himself thoroughly as me…
But then—
“The name is Lee Dam, but it’s neither my father’s surname nor my mother’s.”
His words didn’t stop there. They kept coming without a hitch.
“Thinking of the illegitimate-son route for the Cola Area clear was because of that name too. Haydam. Looking at it, I felt like it was similar to mine.”
There was no deception in what followed. Not about my surname. Not about the illegitimate-son clear route. I’d never once spoken of either to anyone else.
“What else do I have to say for you to believe I’m you? That Mother was too busy running a game company called Salvation Project to look after me? That I don’t even know the name of the man who was supposed to be my father, and I’m not even sure he was my real father? Or that chasing dopamine was really just about being happy, the way I promised Mother—”
“Stop!”
I snapped before I could help it, flinched, then spoke more quietly.
“Stop talking. That’s enough.”
I didn’t need any more proof. This guy was me. Without a doubt, he was me.
“I don’t understand.”
The words I finally managed to force out made Ttopamine Addict snort.
“Not that you don’t believe it anymore—now you just don’t understand?”
“If you’re really me, why were you possessed into an adult body?”
“Hmm… from there on, we’re in territory I can’t explain.”
He could state without hesitation that he was ‘me’—but he couldn’t say why he was possessed as an adult?
“Are you… maybe the parallel-world me who picked the unicorn doll at the convenience store?”
At that, he rounded his eyes in a show of surprise, then shook his head slowly.
“Must be because you’re me—you’re sharp.”
Ha… just listening to this guy talk, I was starting to understand why other people found me so insufferable.
He took the jab smoothly enough, then let the smile fade a little and said quietly,
“But the twenty questions about my identity end here……. I only proved it because I figured you’d waste time on useless speculation.”
He’d answered just so I wouldn’t squander time doubting that he was ‘me’? Why did this guy want me to survive this badly? Saying it was only because I was himself didn’t quite cover it… there seemed to be some other purpose.
Asking wouldn’t get me an answer either way.
“We’re done talking, so go back to your Area. It isn’t safe here.”
It wasn’t safe here?
“The one who always somehow knows exactly where I am and shows up on a hoverboard is scarier, if you ask me.”
“Haha.”
He claimed to be ‘me,’ but our personalities seemed pretty different. This guy honestly seemed a little unhinged.
“You’re not going to tell me why it isn’t safe here either, are you?”
To that, he only smiled.
I let out a small sigh, hesitated a beat, then said,
“If you’re really me, there’s something you need to know.”
“Something I need to know?”
If this guy was truly me—if he was ‘Lee Dam’—then the Lee Dam of the Unicorn Area needed to know as well.
About Luna Moon. About my… our mother.
“I think Mother was possessed into this place.”
“Ah.”
He answered without the slightest flicker of emotion.
“Luna Moon, you mean.”
I was the one left staring.
He knows that too?
Come to think of it, he’d unlocked the additional system before I had—so maybe it was only natural. But the Area he’d been possessed into was the Unicorn Area. I’d only been able to approach the truth of Luna Moon because I’d been possessed into the Cola Area. How had he managed to reach the truth that Luna Moon was my mother from the Unicorn Area?
And the strangeness didn’t end there. He turned around and asked me a question of his own.
“If you know that much, did you wake big brother too?”
“What?”
“You know—the one that dwells in the ring…….”
So he even knows an ego lives in Luna Moon’s Ring.
From the tone, though, it didn’t sound like he’d confirmed Luna in the ring with his own eyes. But if even he was calling it big brother, then Luna really did seem to be Haydam.
“How do you know about Luna?”
“Luna?”
Only then did his face twist in horror as he clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Don’t tell me… you named big brother Luna? Isn’t that a little cruel……? Are you some kind of scumbag?”
Getting that from him while he stood there in that character model left me speechless.
“I didn’t know it was big brother. Is it even actually big brother?”
“Looks like you’re wearing the ring… but you didn’t bring him along. You should’ve. I wanted to see him once.”
“How do you know about Luna in the first place?”
“So you’ve already done the additional unlock, then?”
As if he had no intention of talking further about Luna, he changed the subject. It was extremely annoying that he wouldn’t answer my questions and only asked what he was curious about—but he was me too, so cursing him out would just be spitting in my own face.
Maybe I was a pretty nasty person.
“I didn’t think you’d unlock the additional system this fast. Because you woke big brother…? You’re ahead of me.”
“What are you talking about? You unlocked it first.”
“…….”
He put on an unreadable smile. That was the smile you make when you’re covering for a slip of the tongue.
I looked at him steadily for a moment, then said,
“If you know Luna Moon is Mother, and you’ve done the additional unlock, then you know this too, right?”
“Know what?”
“That the one who possessed us through the Safe Zones is…….”
Ttopamine Addict nodded as if he already knew what I was about to say. And we spoke at the same time.
“Mother.”
“Father, actually.”
A brief silence fell.
“What?!”
“What?!”
Startled voices rang out through the cave in perfect unison.