Chapter 9
Chapter 9
“Did we buy everything?”
“Yep. We got everything. Let’s head back!”
Perhaps because he kept comparing things to the twenty-first century, looking around the market had actually been pretty fun.
And unlike back when he was just a clueless little kid being dragged around without understanding anything, now he also carried memories from his previous life of shopping and living alone. Because of that, he at least had a rough sense of what people needed and how much they usually bought, which made things less boring.
But contrary to what he expected, once the shopping was done, he could not immediately return home and resume coding.
“Let’s stop by here for a moment first.”
“Huh?”
“Just for a bit. Okay?”
It was a laundry shop located along the road between the market and their house.
<Galaxy Laundry>
Galaxy Laundry? That’s a pretty grand name.
Despite its vast-sounding name, the inside of the shop was cramped. Clothes hung everywhere, and heat blasted from somewhere inside, making the place feel even narrower.
“Oh? Hyein’s here.”
“Yeah. Have you been doing well, unni?”
Apparently, it belonged to a friend of his mother’s. Insu looked around for a moment, quickly grasped the situation, and politely bowed his head.
“Hello.”
“Oh, hello. Wow! You’ve grown so much!”
Because of his twenty-first-century perspective, when Insu imagined a laundry shop, he pictured older owners. But the woman running this place looked to be around his mother’s age. Since his mother called her “unni,” she was probably slightly older.
Still, this was not something unique to this particular shop. Back then, demand for laundry businesses was high, and since they could be opened with relatively little capital, there were quite a lot of young owners.
In a slightly different sense, it was somewhat similar to how many café owners in the twenty-first century were also young.
Listening quietly, it seemed they had not come because of any specific business but simply stopped by because they were passing through.
Though they did spend fifteen minutes chatting for people who “just stopped by.”
While Insu wondered whether this meant ajummas were naturally this talkative or if his mother had actually cut the visit short out of consideration for him, his mother suddenly spoke to him.
“The husband of that ajumma from earlier is a manhwa artist.”
Hyein had already decided to support her son, but computer games were so unfamiliar to her that she had no idea what she was supposed to do. So she searched for someone nearby with a similarly unusual profession and thought she could at least tell Insu stories she had heard.
“A manhwa artist?”
Strictly speaking, manhwa artists and game developers were not completely unrelated, but they were still fairly distant professions. Even so, Insu found the information extremely interesting.
Partly because he liked comics, but more importantly because he was desperately searching for someone who could draw art for his game.
“Yeah. What was the title again? Masked Avenger? She said it was serialized somewhere.”
Insu firmly engraved the title into his memory.
But where am I supposed to find it?
In the twenty-first century, he could have searched it in literally five seconds. But now there was no internet, so there was no easy way to look it up while sitting at home.
He thought of comic rental shops, but during this era, they were not the mainstream spaces they later became in the 1990s and 2000s. Instead, they were darker places often filled with cigarette smoke.
Maybe if he were an elementary school student, it would be different, but it was difficult for a five-year-old child to go alone.
In the end, Insu decided he would have to wait until he could visit a bookstore with his mother sometime in the future.
However, he unexpectedly ended up seeing the work somewhere else entirely.
“Insu, your hair’s getting too long.”
It was probably two days later. Without realizing it, his hair had grown quite a bit. Insu assumed he would be going to a beauty salon, but instead, his mother led him by the hand into a neighborhood barbershop.
Uh...
Barbershops still existed in the twenty-first century, but they carried the image of places only older men visited. He had seen them in passing before but had never actually entered one. Back in this era, however, it was normal for men to go to barbershops rather than salons.
This place feels gloomy.
Unlike beauty salons, the interior had a darker atmosphere.
There were mirrors and chairs just like any salon, but the old-fashioned interior, the large dark-colored sofa, the calendar featuring women in revealing clothes, and the men waiting around while smoking all combined to create a distinctly heavy mood.
“We came to get this kid’s hair cut.”
“Ah, yes. I’ll take good care of him.”
The barber looked somewhat intimidating, with a large build and a rough face, plus straight razors and huge scissors tucked all over his belt. At first, he seemed scary. But hearing the way he spoke to his mother and seeing him grin while handing Insu a yogurt drink from a small refrigerator instantly erased that impression.
Definitely someone working in customer service.
“Mom’s going to run a quick errand. Don’t wander off. Get your hair cut and wait here, okay?”
“Yes.”
A tedious stretch of time began. At first, looking around an unfamiliar place was mildly interesting, but only for a moment.
Smartphones truly were the light of civilization.
Since there were no children his age to talk to, Insu started looking around for something to pass the time with. Then he noticed a small bookshelf in one corner.
Oh.
It held magazines, newspapers, and books, including some comics. Excited, Insu started browsing through them and spotted a familiar title.
<Masked Avenger>
He never expected to find it here. Unfortunately, the collection was incomplete, with several volumes missing, but at least he could still get a rough sense of the artwork and overall feel.
He pulled out Volume 2, the earliest one available, and opened it.
“...”
The excitement on his face quickly dimmed.
The genre seemed to be a fusion martial arts story. It took place in a near-future dystopian world where a man whose face had been completely ruined by human experimentation hid himself away in the mountains, learned ancient martial arts there, and then returned to destroy villains and evil corporations.
For this era, the premise actually felt fairly original, and the action scenes were impressive. The problem was the art style. It was done in a realistic dramatic style.
The comic itself is pretty decent, though.
But it would have been difficult to apply this kind of art style to the game Insu wanted to make.
Then again, asking a professional manhwa artist in the first place had always been unrealistic.
Of course, since he was a professional artist, he likely possessed stronger artistic instincts than Hyunwoo ever did. But the chances of a professional manhwa artist listening seriously to the vision and requests of a five-year-old child and putting in that kind of effort were practically zero.
And so, Insu comforted himself with a fox-and-sour-grapes mentality.
“Hey, kid. Time for your haircut.”
“Ah! Yes!”
His hair emerged in a neat bowl cut. Of course, he did not like it, but since this was basically the standard style of the era, there was not much he could do about it.
“Aigoo, so cute.”
His mother seemed genuinely pleased as she stroked his freshly cut hair. Insu merely scratched his head awkwardly and smiled stiffly.
After returning home, Insu once again immersed himself in coding.
Still, I really need to start working on proper graphics now.
Of course, the game was still far from complete. But he could not continue patching things together forever with crude placeholder images. Since graphics also could not be completed all at once, he needed to begin the trial-and-error process earlier if he wanted to avoid dragging development out endlessly.
Especially in areas involving complicated overlaps between animations, effects, and interfaces, places meant to resemble actual gameplay, it was difficult to make proper judgments while using temporary graphics.
It just looks like doodles.
That was the impression that came to mind after he implemented various effects and then tested the combat system again. The rough drawings layered chaotically across the screen looked awful.
“Ah, damn it.”
Insu scratched his head furiously and stared up at the ceiling. Cream-colored wallpaper and dark brown molding filled his vision.
In truth, he had already experimented with graphics work several times. The results were better than he originally expected.
Although his drawing ability was not particularly impressive, he unconsciously carried artistic sensibilities from the future, and the CRT monitor naturally blurred image edges enough to hide much of the awkwardness.
So when he first created the graphics, he briefly felt confident that maybe solo development would actually be possible.
But after more attempts, the results became inconsistent. Sometimes things turned out fine, other times terrible, and trying repeatedly until something acceptable appeared multiplied the already massive amount of time required for work he was not especially skilled at.
At this rate, I’m going to spend several times longer on graphics than coding.
And when he thought about sound work on top of that, the situation became even more headache-inducing.
He once heard a story about someone who spent four years developing a game entirely alone and had been moved by it while also wondering how such a thing was even possible. Now he felt like he was in danger of becoming that person himself.
Well, even four years later, I’d still only be nine.
Insu did not want to delay everything with the mindset of “I’ll do it when I’m older.” For normal children, gaining experience over time might be necessary, but he had already lived an entire previous life.
And right now, the computer market was only beginning to grow, while the games defining entire genres were just starting to appear. Being able to enter the industry as a pioneer was an enormous advantage.
And a young pioneer at that.
Thinking about that reignited his motivation. And when he thought about it carefully, even his coding speed had improved tremendously in less than a month. His art skills would surely improve with practice too. Clenching his teeth, Insu pressed forward.
Then, a few days later—
“Insu?”
“Yes! I’m coming!”
Insu was carefully combing his bowl cut into the neatest shape possible. After examining himself from several angles in the bathroom mirror, he headed toward the front entrance where his mother was waiting.
It was one of their occasional outings together. But this time, the destination was different.
“Watch carefully. But don’t be rude about it.”
“Yes.”
“Though I’m sure our son will handle it just fine.”
They were heading to the laundry ajumma’s house from before. But that itself was not really the main purpose. Hyein wanted to use the opportunity to show Insu what the life of a manhwa artist looked like.
Like many gatherings between ajummas, the invitation had specifically been arranged for a time when the husband was not home, so they would not meet him directly. Still, since he apparently sometimes worked from home, they would at least be able to see the environment he used.
In fact, Hyein had already asked the laundry shop owner whether it would be possible for Insu to meet her husband, but because he was too busy, she was refused, which was how things ended up like this instead.
“You’re here? Come in.”
The laundry shop owner’s home was an old two-story house located in a residential alley about fifteen minutes away from Insu’s home.
The house itself was ordinary. Insu half expected to see manga-related merchandise around the place, if not figures, then at least something. But the walls only displayed wedding photos, calendars, and clocks.
“Hyein said Insu’s really interested in manhwa artists, right?”
“Yes.”
It was not entirely true, but after coming all the way here, he could hardly deny it now. The woman smiled proudly and led them toward a closed room.
“Eunha’s dad usually works at a studio outside and rarely draws at home. But sometimes he uses this room.”
So it was Eunha, not Galaxy.
The room felt sparse, containing only a large desk and bookshelves packed with various books, including comics. There were assorted pens and tools on the desk that seemed related to drawing, but that was about all Insu could identify.
If he had dreamed of becoming a manhwa artist himself, perhaps the sight would have moved him deeply. But what he actually needed was simply someone capable of drawing.
Still, he could not ignore the effort his mother and the woman had made for him, so Insu carefully pretended to observe everything with fascination while acting excited. In truth, it was an unusual experience, so he genuinely found it somewhat interesting.
“So this is where he draws?”
“Yep. That’s right.”
“Wow!”
Apparently, Insu’s acting skills were not too bad. Sneaking a glance at the woman, he saw that she looked quietly pleased.
After spending quite a while looking around the artist’s room, they returned to the living room. Then the woman suddenly seemed to think of something and called out to someone.
“Eunha!”
Perhaps because the laundry shop’s name had left such a strong impression on him, Insu instinctively turned in the same direction she was facing.