Has Winter Become Spring? (2)

The girl who owned the computer hadn't bothered setting a password. Do-hyun got onto the desktop without any trouble and started looking over the handful of icons on the screen.

So she plays League of Council.

Right in the center of the display sat the League of Council launcher, impossible to miss. A few streaming program icons were scattered nearby too — so she'd done broadcasts at some point.

He checked around the monitor for a webcam, but it didn't look like the kind of setup for face-cam streaming. There was a headset, though no separate mic. Even the headset was caked in dust, as if it hadn't been touched in a long while.

The moment he double-clicked the League of Council icon, the client popped up. The account was set to auto-login.

Do-hyun hit the login button without much thought and dropped into the lobby. His eyes drifted to the friends list on the right side of the screen.

Someone at the very top of that list snagged his attention first.

SpringPlum?

He knew that nickname. Of course he did. He'd spent who knew how many years grinding Recon just hoping to become someone like that.

"What the hell… Why is she friends with Lee Do-jin's solo queue account…?"

Just who was this girl? Landing a friends-list spot on Plum — Lee Do-jin — was no small feat. Those slots didn't come easy.

Bae Do-hyun frowned and checked the other IDs under SpringPlum.

An astonishingly empty friends list. Just two people added: Lee Do-jin, and one offline friend.

What even are you? What kind of kid is this?

Bae Do-hyun considered messaging Lee Do-jin, then thought better of it. Stirring things up might only make trouble for the girl. This body already had an owner — he was just some weirdo who'd washed up here by accident.

Heading out of the room because he was starving had been unavoidable, but from here on out, impulsive moves seemed like a bad idea.

"…I'll just queue a normal match."

If he queued ranked and tanked her LP with his garbage mechanics, that would be its own kind of problem. She was a girl, so her tier probably wasn't that high — but girls could get ridiculously territorial about people touching their stuff.

And so Do-hyun managed to get a queue search going.

Except then—

Something completely absurd happened.

A strange, unidentifiable window had appeared over the monitor screen.

But then again, seeing ghosts was already weird. Bae Do-hyun getting hit by a truck and waking up in Jin Gyeo-wool's body was already ridiculous. Maybe that was why he hit Yes without batting an eye. He could have pressed No and taken stock of the situation — but the parade of absurdities so far had already numbed him out.

Even he had to stop cold in front of that warning.

Soul Assimilation. It meant fusing a selected soul into one with Bae Do-hyun's. The words "Memory Erosion" in the warning made it clear why the system asked twice before letting him activate anything.

Memories get eroded… huh.

Thoughts crossed and tangled in his head.

He still had no idea how he'd ended up in this girl's body, or how she'd been shoved out as a spirit in the first place. What he did know was this: the name of the girl in the mirror — the owner of this body — was Jin Gyeo-wool. And if he activated this new ability, her memories would start eroding into his.

So what happened when that Memory Erosion Rate hit 100%? Would Bae Do-hyun lose himself completely? Would his and Jin Gyeo-wool's selves coexist? Or would some third being, a blend of both of them, be born instead?

But I don't even know what I get out of activating it.

Which made flipping it on right now premature.

So Bae Do-hyun chose No.

Until he learned more about Jin Gyeo-wool — until he understood why he'd been tangled up with her through something as bizarre as Soul Assimilation — he couldn't afford to hit that button on a whim.

"…Ah, damn it."

Whether it was the body swap or the string of events wrecking his focus, Bae Do-hyun ate a clean loss in his first game.

A former Diamond player, he'd pinged the entire map trying to micromanage his teammates — and none of them listened.

"Worthless jungler bastard. Didn't gank top even once."

Farming bots never moved unless you cussed them out properly. He'd been screaming for the jungler for a full twenty minutes and the guy still never showed. This one had a spine of steel — and clearly thought top lane was a joke.

It wasn't just the jungler's fault, though. He'd barely survived a miserable laning phase, then thrown out a beautiful ultimate initiate in the teamfight stage, and his teammates still couldn't close it. Ungrateful bastards.

"Tch…"

Bae Do-hyun gave his head a light scratch through the long hair covering it.

Normally, when you got possessed or reincarnated, you picked up one or two special abilities as a package deal. This girl's body had nothing you could call special.

The face and figure he'd seen in the mirror deserved some credit, sure. Beyond that, though — nothing. No magic. No ridiculous strength. Didn't seem especially smart, either.

Decent athletic instincts, maybe. That was it. He'd become a girl, but it felt like only the outer shell had changed. Inside, he was still just Bae Do-hyun.

So that Soul Assimilation thing earlier really does have something to it.

There was no other reason a status-window knockoff would just pop into existence. No other reason he'd suddenly be living someone else's life.

Thinking that, Do-hyun queued up again — this time to check whether the message would appear a second time.

The activation prompt popped up right on cue.

For a status window, it was unhelpful. It offered zero explanation of what bonuses you'd actually get from turning it on.

He hit Yes again, and the warning message appeared just as promptly as before.

Bae Do-hyun let out a low groan. When he propped his chin on his hand, his fingertips found the soft give of Gyeo-wool's jaw and lips.

"Guess I really do have to try this."

There was definitely something here.

Powerful abilities always came with matching penalties. He had no idea what side effects soul erosion might bring — but at the very least, it didn't seem like the rate would jump ten percent the second he turned it on. If it did, they wouldn't have bothered displaying the erosion down to two decimal places.

Bae Do-hyun had always trusted his game sense. Hoping his read was right, he squeezed his eyes shut and hit Yes.

Messages poured across the screen, but Bae Do-hyun locked onto the information he needed almost immediately.

The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Medium — that was him, Bae Do-hyun. A Recon player who'd always banked on his brain. His mechanics had been lacking, but pure game IQ had carried him all the way to Diamond. That stubborn bastard was Bae Do-hyun.

And now the cognitive ability — the game sense — he'd always relied on had the athletic ability — the mechanics — of a girl named Jin Gyeo-wool layered on top. Both rated High-grade. His and hers.

They'd filled in each other's gaps. Better gameplay than before was a reasonable expectation.

So that feeling when I jumped off the bed wasn't nothing after all.

He finally understood why the girl's body felt so light.

He used to be slow and clumsy — the kind of player who calculated everything perfectly and still whiffed the execution. With her mechanics in the mix, plays that had been impossible before were suddenly on the table.

Without the faintest clue that using Soul Assimilation would raise the erosion rate, or that past a certain threshold he'd be stuck living in this girl's body for good… Bae Do-hyun started playing the Recon he'd poured most of his life into, all for a fleeting taste of that happiness.

At the same time, in the practice room of the League of Council pro team Hyeonseong Universe.

Maybe it was the early exit from the 2017 Korean Cup — they hadn't even made it to quarterfinals — but the atmosphere in the room was crushing.

Every player set to ride into 2018 together was already fretting over the Spring split. Failing the Korean Cup didn't lock in a regular-season collapse, but the team synergy was off, and worse, the pillar who was supposed to hold everything up — Plum, Lee Do-jin — was badly shaken.

Not that Lee Do-jin was slacking on practice. He was grinding solo queue today the same as always, mind half-checked-out.

"……?"

What caught his eye was a login status he hadn't seen in a while — a younger friend coming online.

Didn't they say she'd been holed up at home lately…?

Jin Gyeo-wool. Best friend of Lee Bom, Do-jin's little sister, who'd died in an accident a few months back. A bold girl who'd wanted to become someone like Lee Do-jin, same as Bom had.

But after Bom died, Jin Gyeo-wool never launched Recon again. Every time she booted up the game, she said, she thought of her.

Lee Do-jin had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠managed to pull himself together relatively fast. For an eighteen-year-old girl, though, the shock must have been enormous.

On impulse, Do-jin almost sent her a message — then stopped.

Whatever was going through her head, she was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠playing again for the first time in a long while. Giving her space to work through it on her own mattered too.

So Lee Do-jin quietly clicked Gyeo-wool's ID and slipped into spectate mode.

Even before, Gyeo-wool's mechanics had been solid enough that a pro like Do-jin could respect them. A few months off would have rusted her up some, but back when Bom was alive, Jin Gyeo-wool had been dead serious about the game. She'd surprised Do-jin more than once.

If Gyeo-wool had finally started to fill the hole Bom left behind, Lee Do-jin wanted to help her. If she still hadn't given up on becoming a gamer — on carrying Bom's will forward — he wanted to be someone she could lean on.

That was what he told himself, anyway. Truth was, Do-jin needed someone to lean on too.

If Gyeo-wool could play at my level, nothing would be better…

But that was never going to happen.

Jin Gyeo-wool was a mechanics-specialist player whose real value only showed when she duo'd with Lee Bom. On top of that, she was painfully shy and froze up in front of crowds — terrible fit for tournaments or the pro scene.

No matter how thoroughly she erased Bom's absence, pulling 100% of Jin Gyeo-wool's form out of her was impossible. That was Lee Do-jin's assessment.

It had to be.

Right up until he watched Jin Gyeo-wool's play after she started Recon again.

No matter how far off her form she might have been, Lee Do-jin was still Lee Do-jin — a pro with the judgment to evaluate prospects objectively.

And to his eyes, Jin Gyeo-wool's play had changed completely. The girl who used to grumble that climbing to Diamond was too hard was massacring Platinum rankers.