So Bored I Could Die
My head was spinning.
The reason I'd suddenly decided on a trip to the PC room was simple.
I'm so bored I could die.
For an adult who'd already lived through everything life had to offer, life at an orphanage was... beyond dull and tedious. It bordered on outright torture.
I wanted something stimulating—alcohol, cigarettes, that sort of thing—but I figured a PC room would be acceptable enough.
"A-yeon. Make sure you don't forget to check your messages, okay?"
"Yes."
I swallowed back a yawn as I answered. Maybe it was because my body was young, but the primal urges seemed to hold a stronger grip over my flesh. Still, my brain craved dopamine even more, so I decided to just tough it out.
Pure Orphanage sat on the outskirts of Seoul. Outskirts were relative, though—this was still Seoul, and the neighborhood had everything you could need.
...Why are the prices like this?
I couldn't quite walk past a bakery that filled the air with a savory, toasty aroma, so I stopped to look from outside for a moment. One loaf of bread would have cost me my entire PC room budget for the day. It really drove home that I was broke.
It was funny, a ten-year-old already talking about being a beggar—but the reality of having nothing but two green bills in my pocket was hard to believe. Especially since I had no way of earning money right now.
My smartphone buzzed. I checked the notification—a text from Yun Hyeon-mi reminding me to check my messages—and sent back a halfhearted reply.
I thought it was a bit much, fretting over a simple outing to a nearby PC room... but then again, if I were her, I'd probably worry too about a ten-year-old kid going to a PC room alone.
Well, I wasn't really a kid.
As I walked those unfamiliar streets, I spotted a building nestled between quiet alleyways with barely any foot traffic.
Hmm... this should be quiet enough, right?
I'd been living in this body for a full month now. I'd learned that I drew adult attention wherever I went, so I had no intention of walking into a popular neighborhood PC room and hogging the spotlight.
The PC room.
A space thick with a decadent atmosphere, where curses flew from every corner and the smell of cigarette smoke never faded. That was my childhood impression of them, at least.
I was looking forward to it... but I guess even here, it's 2026.
The interior was far cleaner than the building's exterior suggested, and I walked down the corridor carrying a mild sense of disappointment. As expected, my appearance drew glances here and there—I didn't exactly fit the place—but I paid them no mind and headed for a corner seat.
Creeeak...
Even my light body made it scream. I couldn't even guess how long this chair had been holding down this spot. Corner seats getting worn out from overuse was pretty much an ironclad rule. Same went for the keyboard and mouse.
But... my torso was shorter than I'd expected, and the viewing angle was awkward.
"Ugh!"
I tried to raise the chair as high as it would go, but even that didn't work properly—my body was too short and I didn't have enough strength. In the end, I had to get up and adjust the chair properly before I could comfortably reach the keyboard and mouse.
Click click.
A sensation that was both familiar and strange. So even in this parallel world, G Company mice were the standard. You could call it a kind of retro aesthetic, I supposed.
Sitting in a PC room in this child's body, booting up the most popular game—dopamine suddenly surged through me. With a flutter of excitement, I turned on the computer and smoothly finished creating an account.
And then.
"Holy crap..."
I marveled at the fact that even under the popular games tab, I didn't recognize a single title, and for the first time in a while, I sank deep into the world of the internet.
Yun Hyeon-mi, a life guide at Pure Orphanage, was nursing a headache for the first time in a while.
A-yeon isn't answering...
Kids often pooled their allowance to go out—to PC rooms, cafés, board game cafés, and the like—so failing to check messages on time was common enough. But Han A-yeon had changed so noticeably of late that Yun Hyeon-mi had been keeping a particularly close eye on her.
Thinking of the original Han A-yeon—quiet, easily swayed, and timid—it was hard to call any form of self-assertion an entirely negative change. Still, she couldn't help worrying more.
"I'll be out for a bit."
Yun Hyeon-mi left her post with a colleague and headed for the PC room where A-yeon was supposed to be. After cutting through a commercial building and wandering a slightly secluded side street for a while, she found it.
Is this the place?
A PC room with a grimy signboard and stairs whose tile edges had cracked and broken. She'd wondered why A-yeon would skip the PC room the orphanage kids usually frequented for somewhere farther away—and it turned out to be a place this rundown. The cigarette butts piled in the drain right by the entrance and the reek of stagnant water made quite the impression.
"Ah..."
As an educator, was it really all right to allow a child into a space like this? She set the rising doubt aside for the moment and went down the stairs to find Han A-yeon.
The sight of people hammering away at keyboards under dim lighting, lost in their games, was deeply unfamiliar to Yun Hyeon-mi—she'd only been to places like this a handful of times as a kid, tagging along with friends. She stood there surveying the room for a moment, then noticed the staff member at the counter eyeing her with curiosity. She started walking, searching for A-yeon.
It wasn't a large PC room, so she found her quickly enough in a corner seat. Small as she was, her appearance was so out of place here that she was even easier to spot.
"Haa."
At least she hadn't gotten into any kind of accident. Relieved, Yun Hyeon-mi decided she was going to scold her properly this time and started toward her.
Tap. Taptaptaptap.
But the dazzling mouse work and the frantic clatter of the keyboard made her freeze mid-step.
That's...
Rune Breaker—the AOS game that had taken the country and the world by storm. Even Yun Hyeon-mi, who had nothing to do with games, knew of it well enough. Glancing below the monitor, she saw the government-issued smartphone sitting there alone, provided through state support funds.
"Ahem."
She cleared her throat just loud enough to be heard, already thinking through how to scold and soothe her, and waited for A-yeon to turn around.
But—
Click. Taptap.
All that was added to the cacophony of game sounds filling the PC room was the quiet clatter of a keyboard. A-yeon never turned around.
Had she been too quiet?
"Ahem!"
She tried again, louder. Same result.
"A-yeon?"
Calling her name directly changed nothing either. With a growing sense of disbelief, she stepped to the side and looked at her face. A-yeon's eyes were locked on the monitor as if trying to bore a hole through it.
It didn't feel like she was deliberately ignoring her. It was something else—complete immersion, the kind that shut out every sound around her.
Only after the character that seemed to be A-yeon's finished slaughtering the enemy team and the victory screen lit up did she finally move.
"Mmh... nn..."
Stretching with pure satisfaction, she locked eyes with Yun Hyeon-mi.
I'd always thought of myself as reasonably talented at games. Talented enough that no matter what group I joined, people would say I was good. That was about the extent of it. No matter how deep I dug into a game, I could never hold a candle to real talent.
In that sense, Han A-yeon—or more precisely, this body—was the owner of a monstrous gift.
The improved eyesight and hearing I'd been feeling indirectly, I'd chalked up to the side effects of a younger body. The heightened senses overall, the same. But as time went on, I could feel that my cognitive ability and reflexes themselves were on another level. I mean, I could snatch flying mosquitoes and fruit flies out of the air with one hand.
Anyway, most games share a similar structure, and the control schemes even more so. So adapting to Rune Breaker—the game that held the number-one market share in real time and excelled in mass appeal—wasn't difficult.
No, it was easy. Almost as if my brain's processing capacity had expanded.
How good was I? A complete newbie who didn't know her own skills, the enemy's skills, or even the standard play patterns was getting rave reviews from the other team.
Is this what a talent monster feels like?
To be precise, it was only possible because I had game experience I shouldn't have been able to possess—but it was still incredible.
I pushed into the enemy base, destroyed the rune that served as the win condition, and was about to stretch in pure satisfaction.
But then—
"T-Teacher?"
Yun Hyeon-mi had appeared beside me, letting out a soft sigh as she gently stroked my hair.
It's a question everyone wrestles with at least once in their life.
What am I going to do with myself going forward?
Get a job anywhere the moment I'm old enough? Study hard, go to university, land a respectable career?
Given that I was still only ten, the most ideal path would be to start studying diligently from now on.
...Honestly, if there was an easy and fast route, it would be remaking the creative works from my original world here. Music, movies, dramas, novels, webtoons—that sort of thing.
I couldn't claim to remember every fine detail of the settings, but the fact that I, a guy who loved games more than anything, still remembered them meant they were works that had already succeeded with the public. The odds of success would be pretty high, wouldn't they?
...I'll think about it later.
I wanted to get out of this uncomfortable orphanage right away, but I had plenty of time, and just as many opportunities.
The reason I was thinking about all this now was simple.
"Did you rest well over break?"
Summer vacation was over, and it was time to go back to school.
Elementary school... I'm really an elementary schooler.
I turned in the vacation homework I'd finished ages ago and returned to my seat. Back left corner. For someone actively trying not to expand unnecessary human relationships, it was the perfect spot.
Was it weird for a mere elementary schooler to already be thinking about social dynamics? Honestly, my own elementary school memories were nothing but running around like a maniac.
Being a boy would have been awkward enough—being a girl was something else entirely. As I'd already learned at the orphanage, I simply could not understand the sensibilities of kids this age, especially girls.
So I'd planned to just quietly blend into the background.
"A-yeon!"
"Huh? Oh, uh, yeah."
But of course, the girl sitting next to me struck up a friendly conversation.
I'd snuck a look at the documents at the orphanage to dig up whatever personal information I could, and learned that the original Han A-yeon had been timid and easily swayed.
Sneaking peeks at files just to learn about myself was a pretty sad state of affairs, but anyway—I hadn't expected to have zero friends, so I'd planned to keep my social circle as narrow as possible and carefully dig my well one scoop at a time.
I already found making friends a chore. Performing the emotional range needed to get along with kids this age was close to impossible. And if, just if, the real ten-year-old Han A-yeon ever came back someday, I couldn't go around doing anything reckless.
But an appearance that seemed to win people over wherever I went kept tripping me up.
"No way! You finished all your vacation homework?!"
There was the boy who called out in a loud voice, and then—
"A-yeon, did you see the new episode of Ultimate Pretty-Pretty Erina?"
...there was the girl asking me about something with a title so dizzying it made my head spin.