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Taejongtaesebeyonce.
Real name: Kim Tae-jung.
Strictly speaking, his occupation before the possession had been unemployed. Until an ugly scandal forced him into retirement, he had been a national-team soccer player.
Doping.
The act of taking or injecting banned substances to enhance athletic performance.
Kim Tae-jung had failed a doping test during the Olympic qualifiers. When the first result came back positive, he had naturally assumed some kind of error. After all, once he turned pro he never even took cold medicine lightly, and even after transferring to the Bundesliga he still ate nothing outside the meal plan his hyung had been preparing for him since childhood—diet checks, posture correction, the whole regimen.
So he denied the doping charge completely. He was already famous as a clean-living player with a handsome face that kept him in the media spotlight, and at that stage most of the public still stood behind him. The coach and the other national-team players comforted him, insisting it had to be home-crowd bias from the host country or outright racism. Then the second test came back.
The second test is positive too…?
With a second positive, he could no longer deny having banned substances in his system. Kim Tae-jung was in free fall. If there had been a hospital visit on record, or even a cold pill, he might at least have had something to doubt. But right up to the Olympic qualifiers he had lived exactly as always; he had no memory of ingesting anything outside the meal plan prepared back in Korea.
At that point most public opinion turned against him. The coach and the national team began looking at him with suspicion. Only the teammates from his own club—who knew exactly how he lived day to day—still believed he was innocent.
“No way. This can’t be right. Did they fake the results?”
Miki Parker, a fellow Bundesliga club player and a member of the U.S. Olympic squad, stared at the luggage Kim Tae-jung had packed for the flight home and exploded in Korean. A second-generation Zainichi Korean, Miki was the only real friend Tae-jung had made in the Bundesliga.
“You’re seriously just going back to Korea like this?”
“It came back positive twice. What am I supposed to do?”
“Tae-jung, what the hell would you even gain by doping in the Olympic qualifiers?”
That was exactly why domestic opinion had still backed him after the first test. What kind of idiot dopes for the qualifiers instead of the final and then gets caught? On top of that, until the Olympics Tae-jung had been mid-season in the Bundesliga; he had asked the club for leave to join the national team. The Bundesliga ran random post-match tests, and he had been pulled for one. He had passed. Which meant he hadn’t been on anything during the league season. How many players would deliberately dope for the Olympics—where testing was even stricter than the Bundesliga?
But once the second test was positive, there was no room left for excuses. Accuracy aside, a positive doping result was treated as the athlete’s fault by default. Miki was furious, yet he knew better than anyone that illegal drugs had almost certainly been found in Tae-jung’s blood.
“You piss somebody off? Somebody spike your food to screw you over?”
“Impossible. You know how careful I am.”
“I know! That’s why this is driving me crazy! If nobody else gave it to you, the only explanation is you took it yourself—and there’s no way you actually touched that stuff!”
Kim Tae-jung couldn’t make sense of it either. He could swear to heaven he had never attempted to dope, and no one had ever handed him a suspicious drink. Even at the Olympics, everything he ate had come from the personal meal plan his hyung had prepared…
“I don’t trust that Big Brother of yours.”
Miki’s suspicion wasn’t baseless. If the only food he had eaten here was what hyung prepared, anyone would wonder.
But hyung would never do that.
No one had been happier than hyung when Tae-jung became a successful soccer player. Tae-jung had entrusted him with managing every bit of his income, and even then hyung reported the budget in advance every time he bought ingredients—transparent to a fault. Even if hyung had been skimming somewhere in the middle, watching Tae-jung crash this absurdly would not have been good for him either.
“Even if he didn’t do it himself, an outsider could’ve messed with the ingredients, right?”
“Who the hell hates me enough to go that far? All I’ve ever done is play soccer…”
“Don’t overthink it. If you’re in this unjust situation right now, it means somebody out there wished you harm.”
Miki leaned in close, voice hard, as if he wanted Tae-jung to remember it forever.
“Tae-jung. Human malice is beyond imagination. Don’t forget that.”
Even so, Kim Tae-jung refused to believe hyung would ever hurt him. Still, before returning to Korea he went to hyung and asked whether anyone might have tampered with the ingredients. Miki’s theory—that someone could have spiked the materials hyung managed even if hyung himself was clean—had sounded plausible.
Hyung answered that nothing of the sort could have happened.
“I managed the ingredients here more carefully than anyone. And still the second test came back positive…”
Tae-jung had worried hyung might explode at the implied suspicion. Instead hyung sank to the floor in tears.
“I can’t believe it either, Tae-jung. I know better than anyone that you never took any drug or injection. I feel like this is all my fault. If there was something wrong with the food you ate, how am I ever supposed to make it up to you…”
Faced with a man whose mental state looked even more shattered than his own, Tae-jung stopped asking. He simply boarded the plane home with hyung. A few days later in Korea, he learned the severity of his ban.
A four-year ban. For a man nearly thirty, it was a bolt from the blue.
Domestic opinion had already stopped using the name “Kim Tae-jung.” They called him Druggy. The interview in which he had confidently insisted the first test was wrong had been turned into a meme and used for every kind of mockery.
Honestly, by then he felt nothing at all. A four-year suspension? For something he hadn’t even done? It didn’t feel real. He didn’t even cry.
All he could wonder was who on earth hated him this much.
When the online mockery hit its peak and YouTubers started showing up at his house, the hyung living with him left a suicide note—blaming himself for failing to manage the ingredients and begging Tae-jung to forgive him—and attempted to take his own life. Kim Tae-jung saved him by a hair’s breadth. That was when he made his decision.
If someone hated him, then he would disappear from that person’s memory.
And from this world.
After the retirement announcement, many people tried to contact him. Having decided to be forgotten by the world, Kim Tae-jung ignored every single one of them.
Of course he didn’t answer Miki Parker either. Once Tae-jung announced retirement first, the Bundesliga club seemed relieved and terminated the contract with no restrictions, so there was no longer any reason to meet Miki. Even without replies, Miki kept sending messages.
Who knew. He and hyung weren’t the lavish type; they had enough money to live without working. And if the money ever ran out, he still had two working arms and legs—he could always do hard labor and survive.
Even without answers, Miki kept writing. Kim Tae-jung never blocked him. The constant messages seemed to be Miki’s way of confirming—via the “read” receipts—that Tae-jung was still alive.
“I’m getting married, Tae-jung.”
Meanwhile hyung recovered enough of his mental footing to start a family and move out. He could have married much earlier; he had only postponed it because he still had to manage Tae-jung’s meals until retirement. Tae-jung tried to peel off half of his remaining assets and give them to hyung, but hyung flatly refused and left with only the money he had earned himself.
Once hyung was gone, Kim Tae-jung truly felt forgotten by the world.
Not completely. Almost.
Looking at Miki’s text, Kim Tae-jung let out a short laugh. He figured this idiot was the only one who still remembered him. That day the messages ran longer than usual.
Attached to the message was a single link. Following it brought him to Safe Zone: Apocalypse.
At the characteristically Miki username “mikisoccer,” Kim Tae-jung snorted again.
Yeah… not like I have anything better to do.
Lately the emptiness of living had been hitting him hard. He felt no resistance to starting a game—until the title screen of Apocalypse: Safe Zone left him staring in blank confusion.
It’s all in English…
There was no Korean patch. Come to think of it, an American like Miki would never have been playing a Korean game in the first place. Tae-jung could manage decent German, but his English was terrible; he fumbled even on the start screen.
Should’ve gone to the Premier League instead of the Bundesliga…
The idle thought made him realize he must have recovered quite a bit from the old shock. Choosing an in-game nickname, however, made him hesitate for a long time. Fortunately the game accepted Hangul, but if he used his real name, other players would ask why a “Druggy” had chosen that nick.
Maybe I should name it like Miki does…
That was how “Taejongtaesebeyonce” was born. After creating the character, he sent a friend request to mikisoccer. Miki accepted immediately—probably recognizing the nickname as Kim Tae-jung’s the second he saw it.
He clearly hadn’t expected Tae-jung to actually start the game; the chat came in a frenzy of excitement.
So all those texts really were because he was worried I’d die or something.
Kim Tae-jung felt a deep wave of gratitude toward Miki—and a little guilt for having made him worry for nothing.
The chat cursor blinked for a moment, then Miki continued.
He had been texting as if it were nothing, but the silence must have made him anxious. Suggesting they play together might have been the final ultimatum before he boarded a plane just to confirm Tae-jung was alive. After hyung’s suicide scare, Tae-jung understood Miki’s heart well enough to answer without resistance.
Following the link Miki sent to the American Safe Zone community, Kim Tae-jung felt a little startled.
Miki… have you just been gaming instead of playing soccer?
The community guide posts had a ranking system, and most of the top-ranked guides were under the username mikisoccer. That just meant Miki was a veteran of this game, so playing together shouldn’t be too hard going forward. The problem was that every single one of Miki’s guides was written in English.
I really should’ve gone to the Premier League…
Too embarrassed to ask Miki to translate everything, Kim Tae-jung started running the guides through Google. And then—
“……Huh.”
He found perfect Korean translations on a Korean community.
The uploader is… Dopamine Addict?
At first he assumed Dopamine Addict had simply translated Miki’s guides and reposted them. Checking the upload dates, however, Kim Tae-jung realized Miki had been ripping Dopamine Addict’s guides and posting them on the American community.
Miki… no wonder your Korean is so good.
He debated whether he should warn Dopamine Addict that Miki was hotlinking his posts. Instead he ended up reading every single one of Dopamine Addict’s guides from start to finish. To a man who had cut himself off from the world, those guides hit like pure, massive stimulation. Literally addicted to the dopamine from Dopamine Addict’s writing, Kim Tae-jung of course also visited the convenience store the guides mentioned. By pure chance he picked a bottle of cola—and was granted the glory of starting in the same zone as Dopamine Addict himself.
“But since Dopamine Addict hyung-nim is Korean too, I figured once he found out I was ‘Druggy Kim Tae-jung’ his attitude would change, so I’ve been careful with what I said until now…”
…was how it went.
Suddenly summoned by Dopamine Addict and hit with the question, “Are you really national-team Kim Tae-jung?”, Taejongtaesebeyonce’s feet burned with guilt; he spilled every last detail and then watched Dopamine Addict’s face for a reaction. No matter how innocent he claimed to be, he was already known as a Druggy. Expecting Dopamine Addict to believe his innocence was unrealistic. So he waited, worried, for a reaction he couldn’t predict.
The expression on Dopamine Addict’s face was just as unexpected.
Why is he making that face…
Dopamine Addict had listened to Kim Tae-jung’s entire story with a blank expression. Then, at some point, his face lit up with pure, circulating dopamine, and he asked:
“What’s your friend’s in-game nick again?”