Why Are You Going This Far?
Change course to north-northwest.
“Found her?”
“No, we haven’t.”
“Why not?”
“The rain washed away the traces…”
“I know that much. Why?”
“She’s a vicious bitch. We’ve got more than twenty headless members now.”
“I saw that too. But why?”
“Corpses turning up in sectors where no signal came means she spotted the stealth agents and blew the flute before they could even—”
“I can figure that much out myself. I’m asking why you still haven’t found her.”
“……”
The Black Reaper glared at the blameless stones on the floor.
The reserve Celestial Reaper—or more precisely, the Celestial Reaper’s son—gave the Black Reaper’s cheek a few light smacks.
“Hey. Do your job properly. This is five hundred gold taels we’re talking about.”
“……”
“If I fail a five-hundred-tael mission, how am I supposed to show my face to the leader? What am I supposed to tell him? ‘Oh, Leader, we cast the Heavenly Net, but the target suddenly vanished, so we failed.’ Is that it?”
The Celestial Reaper’s son kept patting the Black Reaper’s cheek.
“No, I’ll go say this instead: ‘Leader, these brats are completely useless. They can’t even send a signal or maintain stealth. The Black Reaper Squad never used to be like this, but ever since you took over it’s turned into total garbage. Can’t even catch one woman, lost five hundred gold taels, and our men are dropping like flies.’”
Leader, just how the hell did you raise your son?
The Black Reaper swallowed a sigh.
If the man treasured the only son he’d managed to have after turning fifty, he should have shaped him into a proper human being first. Yet the image of the Celestial Reaper—his godfather who had taken him in—holding his hands and pleading earnestly rose in his mind.
‘That boy has a straight heart even if he acts like that. He’s just lost his mother and is wandering for a little while. Do me this favor. If this job succeeds, the talk about succession should quiet down. I’m truly asking you.’
The Black Reaper swallowed his boiling resentment.
For the sake of the godfather he loved.
If this damn brat was chosen as successor, he would leave the business entirely.
“……I will commit every resource we have.”
“Good. Go yourself, Black Reaper. Stop lounging around here and get your feet moving. What are you going to do, sit on your ass just because you’ve lived a few years?”
----
Trap. Ambush. Signal. The more they moved, the more they lost. In that case, wouldn’t it be better not to move at all?
Cheong dug a small tunnel at roughly head height inside the pit. Her hand, wrapped in inner energy, scooped out the dirt wall as easily as if it were clay. A memory suddenly resurfaced.
Wow. If I’d had martial arts back when I did serious construction work, I might have become the military’s top ace—way beyond battalion or division.
Or maybe not? There are excavators, after all. What could one person’s hands do?
Still, if she had wrapped inner energy around a shovel, she could have torn through soil, rocks, and tree roots without breaking a sweat.
That was how she created the small tunnel. She kicked the excavated dirt toward the entrance and piled it up roughly. She left an air hole because they would need to breathe, so she didn’t seal it completely.
The problem was Jin Jangmyeong’s condition. The girl’s already cold body was shivering violently. Even though the tunnel was pitch-black with not a single ray of light, Cheong could clearly picture her lips turning blue.
Cheong pulled Jin Jangmyeong into a tight embrace. Truthfully, she was cold too. Her stamina was drained from all the rolling, impacts, and wet clothes, and holding a freezing child made her feel like she might actually freeze to death.
Still, if it felt cold to her, maybe it would feel warm to the kid?
Fortunately, Jin Jangmyeong’s trembling gradually subsided. Overcome by exhaustion, the girl fell asleep. The faint, slightly hoarse sound of her breathing filled the space.
Does this kid have pneumothorax or something?
Cheong’s mind grew hazy. Now that the tension had eased, every kind of pain came flooding in at once. Strangely, it felt like a good thing. She couldn’t tell whether she was awake or asleep anyway—eyes open or closed, it was all the same darkness. Whenever she briefly regained consciousness, she only wondered if she had dozed off.
Then a small whisper slipped through the dark.
“……Why are you going this far?”
“What do you mean, kid?”
“You could have just abandoned me and run.”
“I didn’t know it would turn out like this.”
“What didn’t you know?”
“I figured they’d chase us if I grabbed you and bolted, but I never imagined they’d lay traps everywhere and play so dirty. Those fucking bastards—I won’t let them get away with this. Once I get out, I’ll—”
“If you knew?”
“Huh?”
“If you knew it would turn out like this?”
“I would’ve left you behind, probably. So you don’t need to feel sorry or anything. We’re in this mess because I was stupid.”
“……”
The voice fell silent. Then it asked again.
“Even now, you could hand me over.”
“At this point?”
Cheong snorted.
“I did kill a few of your people, but everyone’s just trying to survive. If I said ‘let’s be nice and let it slide,’ you think they’d happily agree?”
“But.”
“You’re a hostage now. If things go south, I’ll put a blade to your throat. Ah, my Wolgwang-geom. I paid a fortune for that thing. Anyway, they say there’s a river around here. I’ll demand a boat, hand you over, and escape.”
“……”
After a long pause, the child spoke again.
“The Yangtze River.”
“Huh?”
“It’s called the Yangtze. They said it’s the longest river in the world.”
Late, as if remembering, Jin Jangmyeong added, “Mom told me.”
“That’s funny. The longest river is the Nile.”
“The Nile?”
“But does the Nile really exist? Here, I mean? Do any of the things I know actually exist in this world? That salt lake—I wanted to see it before I died……”
“……What are you even talking about?”
The child spoke once more.
“……Why are you going this far?”
“Didn’t you already ask that?”
“Aren’t you scared of dying?”
Cheong changed the subject.
“Kid. When you wake up from sleep, you’ve turned into an insanely handsome man.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just go with it. Let’s say it’s a dream. But you never wake up from it. When you’re there, you get hungry, you get sleepy after eating, and it hurts when you get hit. So is this really a dream?”
“……Then it’s not a dream.”
“But there’s this status window—no. Um… yeah, some ghost-like thing keeps following me around. It follows me and says the same thing over and over. ‘You are currently dreaming. This is a world inside a dream.’”
“Then… it is a dream?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
Cheong bit her lip.
Every time she went to sleep, she imagined waking up inside her comfortable studio apartment. A production worker who had fallen asleep at her desk would groggily open her eyes, see the newly created character on the monitor, and let out a small laugh. With that dirty feeling, she might delete the game, or shrug and keep playing. Even if she was suddenly brought here and suddenly sent back—well.
That was why Cheong had lived wildly. She did whatever she wanted and said whatever she wanted. In a world where it wouldn’t be strange to disappear at any moment, why would she need to watch her behavior?
So Cheong never held back. There was no reason to save money. What was the point of desperately saving to buy a house and stack it full of gold if it would all vanish when she returned?
Of course, this world was undeniably real. Cheong never saw it as a dream.
If only that damn status window didn’t exist.
The status window always reminded her that she was an outsider. A being that did not belong to this world. It told her not to forget that she was a game character.
What happens if I die? Do I just die? Does a game over screen appear and let me retry? Or will I return to the monitor?
If she was brought here without reason, it wouldn’t be strange to be thrown out without reason. But if she was brought for a reason?
If some transcendent being had thrown her here with a purpose. Then, once that purpose was fulfilled or became irrelevant, what would happen to her?
“……Are you okay?”
Cheong forcibly anchored her slipping mind. This was no time to have a breakdown.
“Of course. Totally fine.”
“You really are okay, right?”
“A little squirt like you, worrying about someone else?”
Cheong forced out a smile. Not that it mattered in the dark.
In the end, the problem was people. Was a life of simply eating, sleeping, and shitting truly living as a person? In the end, people lived with other people.
Because it was too lonely. Because loneliness was unbearable, they made friends, and because they were outsiders, they eventually left. Not wanting to be hated, they accumulated good karma and played the good guy. And then they ended up meddling like this.
“Hey.”
“What.”
“But why did you bring me along?”
“It’s my decision. Why do you care?”
“Isn’t there a reason?”
“Well. If I had to pick one person, the only innocent one was you.”
It was really that simple. If she had to choose one, of course she would side with the innocent. Scammers and child sex offenders were all the same anyway.
“Pure Yin Body or whatever. Our kid didn’t beg to be born that way, shouting ‘I’m going to have a Pure Yin Body! Pure Yin Punch! Pure Yin Punch!’ She just ended up like that. What sin is there in something you had no control over?”
The words were as much for herself as for the girl.
Is playing games a sin? Is making a female character a sin? It just turned out this way. What could she have done?
“But… Mom. Dad, too……”
“Sorry to say this, but your mom’s a scammer. Honestly, one thousand gold taels makes her a pretty big scammer even among scammers.”
“But Mom and Dad did it for me.”
“Did you ask them to? Did you say, ‘Mom, please commit fraud for me. If you don’t, your daughter will die’? You didn’t, right? So what sin do you have? None. Innocent. Case closed. No objections allowed.”
“But those people……”
“Even if they sell their sob story, they’re still active criminals—child sex offenses, kidnapping a minor, the whole package. They’re the worst bastards under heaven. Tell them to go eat shit.”
Cheong spoke firmly.
Jin Jangmyeong squirmed inside Cheong’s arms.
“Can I really think that way?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Really, really?”
“Sure.”
“Really, really, really?”
A thought suddenly occurred to Cheong and she frowned.
“Now that I think about it, you’re sixteen. What’s with that? Are you enjoying acting cute? Don’t tell me you secretly like being treated like a kid?”
“……What are you on about. Ugly.”
“I never said it out loud before, you know?”
Cheong let out a small laugh.
“Actually, you’re not one to talk either.”