The Call
When she opened her eyes, it was half past one in the afternoon.
Her days had been sliding later little by little since the CSAT ended, but today she'd slept in later than usual. Not that it mattered. She didn't have anything she needed to do today either.
She picked up the phone tossed beside the bed. Cheongram Gallery alerts, a game-update notice — and sitting above them, two messages from Mom.
The texts had come in at ten that morning. She thought it over for a second, then sent a reply.
That was the end of it. Applications could wait until the score report came out. It wouldn't be too late then.
She was about to set the phone down when she added one more line.
"Classic Mom."
She climbed out of bed, washed up in a half-hearted rush, and stuck a triangle kimbap in the microwave. Chocolate milk in hand, she sat down at the computer.
She opened DiscoChat. Nammisae was the only one in the voice channel. What was he even doing in there by himself? She didn't particularly feel like joining just to find out.
Instead of launching Marblecraft, she skimmed the general channel first.
Peaceful.
She checked Cheongram Gallery too. With the CSAT over, it wasn't nothing but admissions talk the way it used to be — games, college, the occasional earnest post about what everyone was going to do with their lives, and guests already pretending they'd gotten in before the score reports were even out.
She was tossing a few comments into the usual fights when a DM notification popped up.
☆.
A glance at the bottom right of the screen said it was already past four in the afternoon.
…Gallery-lurking is a terrifying thing.
She sent the reply and went back to Cheongram Gallery. Not long after, a DiscoChat call alert appeared in the upper right of the screen.
☆.
She hit decline without a second thought. A message arrived at once.
What?
The call came through again. She hovered the cursor over accept and hesitated a moment.
…It's not like I have anything else to do. She could keep browsing the gallery during the call, and if it got truly annoying, she could just hang up.
She checked that the mic was off and answered.
"Hello?"
☆'s voice came through at once. It was still a woman's voice, natural enough that a voice changer was hard to believe.
"Sayu?"
A brief silence.
"You're really going to keep talking only in chat?"
"It's way too awkward if I'm the only one talking."
☆ laughed, small and quiet.
At first she'd wondered what the call was even for, but no matter how long she waited, nothing resembling an actual point ever showed up. What she'd eaten that morning. How CaffeineAddict had sent her some weird photo the other day. All of it was empty small talk.
Half-listening, she opened the game launcher and started browsing the sale list.
"So then he just sends that out of nowhere. I seriously thought he'd lost it."
"Is that so, what?"
The hand on the mouse stopped.
"What did I just say?"
She dug back through the last few seconds. She'd caught the part about CaffeineAddict sending a photo.
…No idea what came after that.
"You weren't listening."
"That's the same as not listening."
It felt a little unfair. The voice had been coming through the whole time. The words just hadn't made it into her head.
"Then focus on me."
This time ☆ laughed outright. She didn't sound particularly offended.
Sayuri took a sip of chocolate milk and kept scrolling the sales. The call went on as it was.
"Nammisae's always been like that. He was the same the last time I met him."
"Yeah. I saw him a few times at the academy this year."
"Not really, just… with a few people. I've seen Caff a few times too."
It was more or less the answer she'd heard before. CaffeineAddict, Nammisae — everyone seemed to meet up in real life more often than she'd thought.
She never had. A full year of the academy and Cheongram Gallery, and she could say with pride that she was a clean user who had never once done an offline meetup. People she met online, she met only online. She'd always thought that was obvious. She didn't even know what they were like in real life. Why would she need to see their faces?
☆ kept going on about other people. Then Limit's name came up.
"Oh, Limit — that kid used to game a ridiculous amount—"
The sentence cut off.
What?
"Yeah."
☆ moved on as if nothing had happened. Sayuri didn't press.
After that ☆ talked on by herself, and whenever something seemed worth answering, Sayuri typed it. When she'd first picked up, she'd figured ten minutes at the outside. By the time she checked the clock, forty minutes had already gone by.
"Hey, Sayu."
"You're really not going to let me hear your voice?"
That again.
"Because I'm curious."
"It doesn't work like that."
She stared at the monitor with her mouth shut, then touched her throat once with her hand. Pressing the button to turn the mic on wasn't hard, but…
"Ah — ah, hello?"
A clear, thin voice rang through the room. The mic was off, of course, so ☆ never heard it.
If she heard this voice, how would she react? First she'd ask if Sayuri was a girl. Then she'd ask why she'd hidden it all this time. And once ☆ knew she was a girl, it would spread through the DiscoChat server in no time. From there to the gallery wouldn't take long either. It would only turn into a hassle.
"So when are you going to let me hear it?"
"Later when?"
"For real?"
"Promise?"
The sheer nerve of it pulled a laugh out of her. Well. She might let her hear it someday.
"Ooh."
☆'s voice brightened, unmistakably. Was this really something to be that happy about? Even if you called it a promise, it wasn't much of one. All it would take was turning the mic on once, sometime. And that sometime might never come at all.
Around the time the call passed an hour, ☆ went to get some water. While she waited, Sayuri put on a Nutube video. A little later the voice came back through the headset.
"I'm back."
The video audio stacked on top of the voice, louder than she'd expected. She paused what she'd been watching.
"Did you wait?"
"You are seriously the worst."
"You could've waited a little."
This person asks for strange things sometimes.
As the call crept toward two hours, she started to wonder when ☆ meant to hang up.
"Why?"
"Am I annoying you? Do you want to hang up that badly?"
For a few seconds, nothing came through.
Is she mad?
Then ☆ burst out laughing.
"Sayu, you are seriously too much."
Even so, she didn't hang up first. It wasn't as if the call was getting badly in the way of anything — and "anything," at that, was only unproductive internet surfing.
A little more time passed that way.
"Ah, I should shower. I've got to head out in a bit, so I'll go first."
"You're really just letting me go."
"You could tell me not to go."
"Fine, whatever. See you later."
And with that, the call ended.
The voice that had gone on for more than two hours vanished, and the headset went quiet all at once.
"It's quiet…"
The room had been just as quiet before the call. If it felt stiller now than it had then, that was probably only in her head.
She stared blankly at the dead call window for a moment, then started the Nutube video again. A man reviewing a game came on, and the inside of the headset was noisy again in no time.
Ding.
Not long after, a new notification appeared. This time it was Limit.
The moment she read it, her hands were on the keyboard.