Two Puzzles
Sometimes, it just happens.
Those moments when you know your own failings better than anyone alive—and still can't swallow the rage when someone uses those failings as a weapon against you.
Moments when the alcohol drags your mind into a slow, heavy fog while your emotions detonate all at once.
What some people call a mistake, and others call an accident: the drunken brawls and bellowing that only ever seem to happen under the influence.
"Hey! Break it up! Break it up!!"
"Bae Do-hyun, are you insane?! Stop!!"
"Bae Do-hyun!!!"
"Die, you son of a bitch!!"
"Agh! You fucking—!"
But this was closer to a one-sided beating. One man straddled another, raining punches into the face of the man pinned beneath him.
"Just stop already!"
"Yaaaaah! Jang Jae-hong, you bastard!! Are you even human?! Huh!!"
The people around them finally managed to haul the two apart, but the man who'd been throwing the punches kept pouring out furious, animal howls.
The man who'd been on the floor staggered to his feet.
"Hey, Jae-hong. You okay? You're bleeding a lot!"
"I'm fine."
Then he walked straight up to the restrained man and drove a fist into his face without a word of warning.
A sharp crack, and Bae Do-hyun's head snapped hard to the side.
Jang Jae-hong gathered the blood welling in his mouth, spat it out, and fixed Do-hyun with a cold challenge.
"What? Want to hit me some more?"
"…."
Anyone looking could see it was Bae Do-hyun's fault.
Even if Jang Jae-hong had been tearing him down for ages, even if he'd been badmouthing him behind his back without rest—
in the end, Do-hyun was the one in the wrong. He'd thrown punches in front of a crowd this size. There was no walking it back.
"So this is what it comes down to. Fists. What a magnificent specimen of a man. Right? You're that old and the best you can do is beat up a kid~ A kid way younger than you~. Tch."
There wasn't a single thing wrong with what he'd said.
Twenty-four years old this year. Bae Do-hyun, the immature pro-gamer hopeful. For nearly six years he'd been grinding toward that dream—a fool of a human being.
"I told you to beat me with skill, didn't I? You can't!! Don't you get that this scene is decided by skill? Play well and you're 'hyung.' Play like trash and you deserve every insult you get. The fans know that better than anyone. You pathetic bastard. You don't even deserve to be called hyung."
Yeah. I'm a pathetic bastard. Bae Do-hyun squeezed his eyes shut, his face twisted with misery.
Two years in the military had killed his mechanics, but he'd told himself he'd be fine once he started again.
He'd have to juggle part-time jobs, but he had talent, so he'd be fine. That was what he'd believed.
Two years passed like that, and Bae Do-hyun was still exactly where he'd started. Time was the only thing that had moved on. Everything around him had transformed at a blistering pace.
Council Champions Korea, which had only just been born in 2012, was already in its 2018 season.
Jang Jae-hong—the storm of a rookie who'd exploded onto the League of Council streaming scene the year before—had joined a CCKC team as their top laner for the 2018 Spring split in under a year. Bae Do-hyun was still standing in place.
People had called him a top-lane artisan, but only a handful who actually knew him ever had—and even that name had been swallowed whole by Jang Jae-hong's shadow.
Top-lane artisan?
Artisan, nothing.
Bae Do-hyun was a top-lane disaster now. Six years of clawing toward a pro career, and all he had left was a string of part-time jobs that never lasted more than two years and the empty title of a man who'd finished his military service.
He hadn't even graduated from an ordinary university. He'd finished high school, sure—but he'd thrown his grades in the trash chasing the dream of becoming a Recon pro gamer.
All that remained was one thing.
A wounded ego, and the despair of knowing he had to give up the dream. A future so black and bleak he couldn't see a single path forward.
Every word Jang Jae-hong had thrown at him was true, and Bae Do-hyun was too pathetic a human being to deny a single one of them.
"Fuck…."
The men around him sensed that he'd given up and slowly put distance between themselves and him.
Do-hyun lurched to his feet and bolted straight out of the bar.
"Hey—hey! Where do you think you're going, you crazy bastard?!"
"Jae-hong, you not going after him?"
"Why would I?"
What was there to chase? Everyone in that bar knew perfectly well that Bae Do-hyun had beaten the hell out of Jang Jae-hong.
Witnesses were overflowing. There was nowhere for him to run.
"Leave him. Six years of playing the eternal scrub is long enough. Tell him to wrap it up and go live in a cell! Puhaha!"
Tch. Spitting out another mouthful of blood that had already pooled again, Jang Jae-hong wore a thin, nasty smile.
"I'm never agreeing to a settlement. A dumbass who thinks age alone means something, who thinks effort is enough for everything—he deserves exactly what's coming to him."
Sometimes, it just happens.
Those moments when you know better than anyone that it wasn't your fault—and still can't swallow the rage at your own powerlessness.
Moments when the medication drags your mind into a slow, heavy fog while your emotions detonate all at once.
What some people call a mistake, and others call an accident: a soul slipping its body after an overdose of sleeping pills, and things of that nature.
"How am I supposed to get back in…."
The girl had tried to kill herself. Not because she truly meant to die—she only wanted to meet the friend whose soul she believed was still wandering somewhere between heaven and earth.
A foolish girl who had believed, with absolute faith, the story that falling into a vegetative state would let you become a ghost. And so she had been flung free of her own flesh.
Maybe the incense candle she'd bought with her friend on their school trip had actually worked.
"……. It won't go back in."
No matter how hard she tried to return to her body, she couldn't. She threw herself at it again and again, but her soul only kept passing straight through.
"Do I have to find Bom…? Would that fix it?"
The whole reason she'd attempted this out-of-body escape in the first place was to see the friend she'd lost a few months ago. Maybe if she achieved that purpose, she could go back.
Thinking that, the girl drifted, wavering, out of the house.
With only a soul left, movement was free. She could fly. She could pass through every solid thing.
She left the house and flew several blocks.
A cold wind tore down the street, but the girl couldn't feel it.
A little later she arrived at a wide intersection—the exact place where, months before, her precious friend had died saving her.
She stood in the middle of the crosswalk and stared blankly toward the far end of the road the truck had come racing down.
She's not here….
Where had Bom gone? Had she already crossed over to the other side? Then this whole attempt at leaving her body would mean nothing.
But without Bom… I can't do anything at all….
The girl had a dream, and for years she had chased it together with Bom. One girl with monstrous mechanics who couldn't read the flow of a game, and another whose hands fell a little short but who could read an entire map cold.
The chemistry the two of them made hadn't been bad. They'd even earned praise from Bom's older brother—their role model, a legendary pro gamer.
Bom and Winter, who had wanted so badly to become like him, had been on the verge of entering an amateur tournament. That had been only a few months ago.
But Bom had lost her life a single week before the competition.
It hadn't been entirely Jin Gyeo-wool's fault—but her responsibility was unmistakable.
Nothing should have happened. It had to be that way. But one day of laziness had birthed an accident that snuffed out a friend in the full bloom of her youth.
Winter stood rooted on the crosswalk where Bom had been hit and tipped her face up toward the empty sky.
Bom…!!
She cried her friend's name at the top of her lungs, but without a body, Winter's voice never arrived.
"Uwaaaaaaah!!"
Instead, from far down the road, a completely different person's voice came tearing through the night.
What?
It was a man whose face was a mess of dark red bruises. Judging by the raw, crimson knuckles, he'd come straight from a fight.
And he charged onto the crosswalk without looking around him at all—without checking where he was running, or what lay ahead.
The girl who was nothing but a soul startled as the man stepped onto the crosswalk and whipped her gaze around.
Late at night, passenger cars were almost nonexistent—but this broad six-lane road was notorious for speeding heavy trucks. That was the main reason for the truck accidents that had piled up over the years, Bom's among them.
Wait—wait a second!
Winter shouted. Don't cross.
Just like when Bom had died, a speeding cargo truck was barreling straight toward the man.
Hey! Hey! Hey! Stop! Heeey!!
No matter how she screamed, Winter's voice never reached him.
In the instant before man and truck collided, the scene of Bom's accident flashed through Winter's mind, and she squeezed her eyes shut in terror.
Ah, why is there another accident here—!!
A crash.
At the place countless communities called a "famous isekai dimensional transfer spot," it seemed another life had just been lost.
Sometimes, it just happens.
Those moments when you know better than anyone that you gave everything you had—and still feel your limits close around you and crush you into despair.
Moments when exhaustion drags your mind into a slow, heavy fog while your emotions detonate all at once.
"You did well. You kids did great. It's okay."
"Sorry… Do-jin."
"Sorry, hyung."
The coach and his teammates all told him he'd worked hard, that he'd played the best—but the man couldn't be satisfied.
He should have done better. He should have pushed harder and carried the team.
Only then would he avoid staining the career he'd built, and only then could he satisfy fans whose standards had climbed so high.
But he, too, had finally hit a wall.
The nickname his beloved little sister had given him—Plum—had lost its color months ago, and ever since, player Lee Do-jin's form had been in free fall.
At the 2017 Council World Championship, they had suffered a bitter 0–3 defeat. Whether it was because of his sister's death or simply a form that had already been slipping, no one could say.
Countless people said he would never stand back up. Rumors circulated that he would retire before 2018 even arrived.
The nickname Plum. The retirement of the player who had led CCK to its peak since his 2013 debut seemed to be drawing that close.
The Korean Cup at the tail end of 2017. Hyeonsung Universe had embodied their worst slump in the flesh, sinking without advancing more than a few rounds.
Plenty of members had been swapped out, but 2018 Hyeonsung Universe looked ready to endure a year even harsher than 2017.
Back in the waiting room, Do-jin absently woke his phone screen.
"……."
Filling the wallpaper was Lee Do-jin himself, standing in the back with an indifferent expression—and in front of him, two adorable girls beaming under matching bee-themed knit hats.
Today of all days, Do-jin missed those two girls terribly. The one he could never see again. And the other, who had meant to climb higher together with that girl, and who was now wondering whether she should set the dream aside.
Lee Do-jin found himself thinking, suddenly—
Maybe I'm a washed-up has-been now. Maybe I'm already less than the little sister who always cheered me on and told me to work harder.
But remembering what the two girls had said, Lee Do-jin forced his heart steady again.
He must not grow weak. That was what Lee Bom wanted. That was what Jin Gyeo-wool wanted.
Prologue. End.