The Same Morning as Always

Choi Dohyun. Twenty-three years old.

An orphan with a high school diploma. A perfectly ordinary convenience store clerk who'd spent the last year obsessing over a single streamer.

Yeah. That was my reality.

"Welcome."

"What's with the attitude? You greeting people like that?"

"No wonder you're stuck working a dump like this."

I'd never actually greeted anyone rudely, but whatever. I'd gotten to the point where I could just let comments like that slide. When I first started this job, little things like that used to cut pretty deep. But I'd been at it for a little over a year now, and after meeting every kind of person you could imagine, that sort of thing barely registered as cute.

"That'll be 5,300 won."

I'd ring them up, and once the customer left I'd restock the shelves, sweep the floor, or tidy up a display that had gotten knocked around. Repeat that enough times and an eight-hour shift would wrap itself up.

"Good work today."

The manager would come in to take over, and I'd head home. The same routine, every single day. I wasn't completely hopeless at the job — the manager had even suggested I try for a store manager position someday — but the work I actually wanted to do was something else entirely.

"Oh! Today's video came out pretty well."

Think Dayeon nuna will compliment me again today?

I wanted to become a YouTube editor. Of course, the reality was that I could barely keep myself fed, which meant I had neither the time to study anything properly nor the money to spend on learning editing techniques. So all I was really doing was taking the live streams of the streamer I loved and crudely cutting them together into fan videos.

"Man, I want a new computer."

Honestly, even talking about replacing my computer was a luxury I had no business entertaining. I hadn't even bought the thing. The internet cafe I'd been working at went under, and they handed it to me in lieu of my last paycheck. At the time I'd seriously considered just selling it off... but I couldn't. That was around when the hunger to edit got its hooks in me, and I fired up an editing program for the first time.

"Heh... I should just get some sleep."

A computer instead of money. I'd been pretty speechless about it at the time, but still. At least I had the thing now — which meant I could make fan videos, which meant I could keep dreaming. And I'd lucked into a decent boss, too. I was pulling full eight-hour shifts with weekly paid days off, and my hourly wage was better than most, so I wasn't losing sleep over living expenses.

By all accounts I should have been living without a care in the world. So why was my head so loud all the time?

I just want to live without worries, doing nothing but editing.

On a good computer. As a real, proper video editor. And if I could do it as the editor for Dayeon nuna — the streamer I loved — that would be even better. Sure, people said dreams and reality were different things. The moment a fan became an editor, the spark might go cold. But wasn't this the kind of thing everyone fantasized about at least once? Working beside the person you admired.

I tossed. I turned. I thrashed around with genuine effort, but sleep refused to come. Lately I'd had this feeling that I was getting older without actually doing anything. Someone might say twenty-three was way too young to be talking like that, but it wasn't, not really. I was a complete orphan — no parents to lean on, no relatives of any kind. I had another eighty years ahead of me, and for every last one of them I would have to carry my own life entirely alone.

Why eighty years alone? Come on. As if anyone would ever want to marry someone like me.

"...Please... just come already, sleep."

I had work tomorrow. Sleeping any later than this was honestly getting dangerous. I couldn't afford to get myself fired from a decent job over some pointless spiral. Right. Sleep. And then morning would come, same as always. A morning just like every other morning.

That was what I'd believed. That the same morning would keep arriving, over and over, and after eighty years of that I would finally close my eyes in some kind of peace. I'd been certain that was the life I was going to live.

"...Okay, what the hell is this."

A hologram window floated in front of my eyes. The kind of situation anyone would recognize from a game or a novel. The kind of situation I had never, not once, imagined would happen to me.

I'd awakened an ability. The status window had been unlocked. Anyone looking at this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would think it was something straight out of a novel or a comic, right? You awaken, you become a hero, you beat the monsters into the dirt — and just like that you get money, you get women, you get the whole world!

"Hold on — where are the monsters supposed to be in this world?"

The hologram window had thrown my entire morning into chaos, so I checked the news and searched around just in case the world itself had changed. Not even a hint of a monster. It was the same ordinary world as yesterday.

"So this isn't the monster-hunting kind. Hmm. Modern fantasy, then?"

Well, it wasn't like every awakening story needed monsters. There were plenty of modern fantasies where there were no creatures to fight — just the monster called the world, which you battled and beat so you could claim money, women, and everything else. Put that way, this might actually be the better deal. Suddenly awakening and then having to fight monsters? As if I could pull that off.

"Alright, alright... let's take a look first. So what kind of power did this body awaken, huh?! Status window, open!"

The messages that had been hanging in front of my eyes vanished, as if responding to the word status window, and a translucent rectangular panel rose up in their place.

"Editing and Planning...? Speed? And what's Charm?"

Editing, Planning, and Speed. No matter how I looked at them, those three had to be stats related to YouTube editing work. Speed was a bit broad, but raising it would probably feed into Editing and Planning and make those faster.

"Editing I get, but where did Planning come from all of a sudden?"

I couldn't pretend I wasn't a little disappointed that there wasn't anything more to it. But I couldn't stay disappointed either — these were clearly the exact stats I needed to achieve everything I'd been dreaming of, and my heart had started to pick up speed. Editing made sense. Planning, though. Why had that shown up alongside it? I just wanted to live as an editor. I wasn't trying to raise YouTubers or anything like that.

"Or... is it?"

Was the real endgame — buried so deep in my unconscious I hadn't even known it was there ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— that I'd start as an editor and eventually raise YouTubers with my own two hands?

Beep-beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep-beep!

"Crap, I'm gonna be late...!"

Awakening a status window was great and all, but this was not the time. If I showed up late, the person on the previous shift would have to cover for me, and that was a bad situation for everyone. I'd get ready, get to work first, clear out the morning rush — and then I'd sit down and figure this thing out properly.

"Have a good one!"

I greeted the customers in a slightly brighter tone than usual. The way my heart had been hammering since morning definitely wasn't just because I'd been slammed until a minute ago.

"Hahh."

The customers had finally thinned out, and since the morning commute was over, things would stay quiet until around lunch. I decided to use the lull to take a proper look at this ability. I'd seen the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠status window earlier, but I hadn't really examined it. So, first things first — the status window, one more time...

Name, age, gender — I didn't need to look at those. I'd opened it to check the actual stats, and... yeah. They were pretty grim.

"Planning's basically nonexistent."

If you figured that most games started you at a base of ten, the only stat that was even remotely respectable was Editing.

"Hmmm..."

It would've been nice if I could look at other people's status windows. The idea that a base stat was ten was just a game convention, after all. I was dying to know what a baseline even looked like in the real world.

Ding~

"Ah, welco...me?"

I'd been so absorbed in the status window that I didn't notice a customer walking into the store — and then I saw it.

"...Why are you staring at me like that? Is there something on my face?"

A status window bloomed into existence beside the customer — and not just a status window. Something called talents started showing up right along with it.

"Hello?"

"Ah, I'm sorry! No, there's nothing on your face...!"

Okay, that actually startled me. How many people had I seen on the way to work? How many customers had I already rung up? Nothing had shown up for any of them — so why was someone else's status window suddenly visible?

I was curious, obviously, so I kept sneaking glances at it... but was this happening because I had my own status window open? Did I have to keep mine up in order to see anyone else's? If that was the case, this was going to be a pain.

If it kept working like this, any day I opened my status window outside would turn my entire field of vision into a wall of translucent blue panels. But then, off to the side of the window, a line of text started blinking — as if the system had known I'd find this inconvenient and wanted me to notice that a separate pop-up option existed. Like it was saying, Yeah, I figured this would be annoying. That's why I made this feature.

"Huh... I see."

I flipped Individual Pop-up from OFF to ON.

"How does this even work?"

I figured I'd start by closing my own status window. The moment I did, something interesting happened. Before, other people's windows hadn't been visible when mine was closed — but the man's status window was still floating right there beside him.

"Oh, so that's how."

Definitely more convenient. If I could control the windows individually, I could probably even pull one over and look at it up close. I tried dragging it toward me, then poked at a few other things. Sure, to that customer I probably looked like a complete lunatic... but what was I supposed to do? This kind of thing, you figured out by messing with it yourself.

I learned I could pull a window forward for a more comfortable view, and that I could toggle the status windows of people even a little farther away. Only then did I start examining the customer's window properly.

"Drinking...? What's that supposed to be."

When most people thought of stats, they pictured Strength, Agility, Intelligence — that sort of thing. But the status window I'd gotten was displaying some pretty creative, original categories.

"So it shows stats tied to their talents?"

No matter how I looked at it, the talent Loves Booze lined up with the Drinking stat, and the other talent matched its stat just as cleanly. It seemed the window displayed whatever stats were connected to a person's talents.