The College Girl Crying in Front of My House Comforted Me

Call center work is fucking awful. Absolutely fucking awful. People who've never done it have no idea.

"You piece of shit! How long has it been since I asked you to cancel this? Why the hell haven't you canceled it yet?!"

Korean boomers think whoever yells the loudest wins. They think they can swear at you all they want and you'll just sit there and take it.

"Sir, if you continue to use that kind of language, it will be difficult for me to assist you."

"Fuck you! Put yourself in my shoes! You think I wouldn't swear?! Must be real nice sitting there in the AC on a hot day, just flapping your mouth for a living!"

Still, with a political party that loves to talk about human rights in power, the industry had gotten slightly better. At least they'd gone through the motions of doing something.

"If you continue to use abusive language, I will be forced to end this call."

The result was a new clause: after three warnings, if the customer kept going, you were allowed to hang up first.

"Aren't you a customer service rep? A customer service rep, and you're just gonna fucking hang up on me?! You piece of—"

In other words, you still had to sit through three rounds of pure verbal abuse.

"You have used abusive language three times, so I will be ending this call from my end."

Having to grit your teeth and deliver that line as politely as possible was already a joke, but in every other situation, you absolutely could not hang up first. Not if you wanted to keep your job.

Human rights, my ass.

It was all for show, in the end.

Honestly, the ones who just screamed at you were the easy ones.

"So? How exactly are you going to fix this for me?"

"That's not something I can resolve on my end. I'll need to inquire with the relevant department—"

"And how long am I supposed to wait for that? You know what, just put your supervisor on."

I glanced over and my team leader suddenly looked very busy. Translation: handle it yourself.

"This is a call center, sir, so we don't have separate ranks or titles."

"What kind of nonsense is that? I'm not hanging up until you fix this, so hurry up and fix it. You get off at six, right? Guess you're not going home until this is sorted."

He knew the call center game too well. A veteran, no question.

He knew exactly how to pick you apart, exactly which buttons to push to make a rep's stress levels skyrocket.

Anyway, there were far too many people in this country who could destroy a person without ever raising their voice.

"Why won't you transfer me?"

"Sir, as I've already explained, this is a call center, so—"

The company was the one that made shitty products and provided shitty service, but I was the one who had to eat shit for it.

If I could just grovel a little, maybe they'd calm down. But we weren't even allowed to say "I'm sorry." It damaged the corporate image.

And if I couldn't resolve the issue, a complaint would come in and my incentive pay would go up in smoke.

That was the tragedy of subcontracting for you.

Oh, and who put a knife to my throat and forced me to take this job?

Yeah. Fair point.

But the truth was, almost nowhere hired just anybody the way call centers did.

"Man. What a variety show. Seriously."

I didn't usually like talking about work over drinks, but this friend of mine had always loved listening to my stories.

Apparently I was a natural at spinning a yarn.

It wasn't just him, either. I'd been hearing that since forever. So for a while, I actually believed I had talent.

Trusted that bullshit, tried writing web novels, and completely wrecked my life.

Five whole years. Five years of burning through my savings and throwing away most of my twenties.

Which was exactly why a guy with no real certifications and no real experience ended up working at a call center.

"Anyway, my contract's almost up. Fuck. Once this one's done, I'm never coming back to this industry."

I figured I'd collect unemployment for a while, then go do construction or something.

"Still, all that customer service must've sharpened your tongue, right?"

"Sharpened my tongue? All I learned was how to kiss ass. There's a demon living inside me at this point. Why are you even asking?"

"I've been into something lately. AI chat."

AI chat?

"Oh, like those chatbots? I heard they're replacing customer service reps left and right these days."

"No, no. Not that. Uh… how do I put this? It's more like a game."

My friend launched into an enthusiastic explanation of AI chat.

"So there's a scenario and characters, and you become the protagonist of the scenario, and then…"

After listening, I reached my conclusion.

"Isn't that just a dating sim? I used to play those all the time as a kid."

"Hey! It's different, you idiot! You wrote web novels and you don't even know about this?"

"Why are you getting so worked up? How different could it possibly be?"

But after hearing the rest of his explanation, I understood why he'd gotten so defensive.

"Holy shit. So the story gets written in real time based on whatever I type?"

Dating sims, at best, gave you a handful of choices leading to predetermined endings. AI chat, on the other hand, generated algorithms on the fly, producing dozens or even hundreds of different situations.

A hundred people would get a hundred different stories. For the first time, the march of science was starting to scare me a little.

"So at the end of the day, it's still just about trying to fuck the female characters."

"Well, yeah. But it's a kind of virtual reality, right? Nothing beats it for living vicariously. People are going absolutely nuts over this stuff lately."

"Hmm."

"Why don't you try it? You're stressed as hell. Blow off some steam with this."

Of course, that wasn't the real reason he'd brought it up.

"You've written before, and you do customer service, so this should be a cakewalk for you. Unlock some scenarios and share the walkthroughs with me."

I'd gotten a lot out of this guy over the years.

I wasn't particularly confident, but if this was a way to pay him back even a little, it was the least I could do.

"How does it work?"

He asked for my phone, installed an app, and handed it back.

A simple but intuitive name.

"Give it a try."

"…Right now?"

"If you go home you'll get lazy and never do it, dumbass."

"I was hoping to drink a little more."

"Just hurry up."

In the end, I caved to his nagging and launched the app.

And there they were—photo after photo of beautiful women.

Not only that, they were moving, almost as if they were alive.

"Dude, are these actually the characters?"

"That's what I said. AI-generated images."

Holy shit. They looked insanely real.

"Yeah, I can't open this in public."

"You'll get yourself arrested."

Every single woman was either in her underwear, seducing me, or fully dressed but striking some ridiculously suggestive pose that went straight to my lower half. Damn.

"First, make a character and run the tutorial."

"I have to make a character too?"

"Yeah. You can set up a quick profile of what kind of loser you are."

"Immersion's gonna be off the charts."

"Right? And the tutorial scenario gets generated to match."

Pretty slick.

But I was in a hurry, so I just went with the default settings. Once you fall down the customization rabbit hole, hours disappear.

"Once you rack up points, you can create your own characters and scenarios later."

"Points?"

"You'll get the tips later. Just jump into the tutorial scenario first."

So I did.

Ding!

The info laid out in the scenario went, in order: scenario title, character name, related tags, and the intro.

Setting aside the fact that the girl was the one crying, yet somehow I was the one getting comforted…

"This is completely ridiculous. A gorgeous college girl just randomly talks to me?"

"Is that what it says? It generates based on the settings you put in."

Ah. Right.

"You poor bastard. You must've been pent up as hell. Your tutorial scenario is a one-night stand."

"Even so, come on. When does this kind of thing ever happen in real life?"

"That's exactly why people go crazy for it. Real life's already shit—who wants to get stressed out even in a place like this?"

He had a point.

Chasing realism too hard—that obsession had been the decisive reason I'd failed as a writer.

I'd even been less popular than the metallic, soulless crap AI churned out, so I'd quit.

Fine. Let's see how entertaining AI writing can actually be.

Caught between a faint inferiority complex and genuine curiosity, I hit start on the scenario.

The text froze and the choices appeared. I couldn't help snorting out a laugh.

"Dude, is this a driver's license written exam? If it's this easy, I'd be sleeping with every girl I meet."

"Look at this cocky bastard, getting full of himself over a tutorial. Let's see if you're still this confident when the difficulty ramps up."

"Whatever. I get the idea. Let's just drink."

"Suddenly you want to drink? I can tell—you just want to go home and jerk off."

"That obvious? Then shut up and drink."

I hadn't actually done anything yet, but the moment I entered the intro, I knew this thing was the real deal.

It was because of the AI-generated POV images that appeared beyond the text—they felt unnervingly realistic.

This is the real shit.

From now on, I probably wouldn't need porn anymore.

Yeah. This is sex. This is virtual reality.

I thought, and drained the rest of the bottle in one go.

"Ugh, fuck. She keeps flickering in front of my eyes."

Park Yerin, was it?

I was dying to pick up where I'd left off, but I decided to hold out until I got home.

Like I'd said earlier, it wasn't exactly the kind of app you could just whip out in public.

Anyway, I'd walked hard enough that it didn't take long to reach my studio apartment.

But then.

Sniff. Sniff. Suddenly, I heard a woman crying.

A chill shot straight down my spine.

…It's not a ghost, right?