A Loser Gets Possessed

Loser. Shut-in. NEET. Room-bound wreck. Lonely outcast.

Those labels summed me up perfectly—they were my entire life in a handful of words.

All through my school years I was thoroughly, completely alone. Not a single friend. Whatever I did, I did it by myself. Even the families everyone else seemed to have never existed for me. The closest thing I could call family were the kids at the orphanage who shared my same miserable lot, and maybe the director who looked after us.

It wasn't because I was a delinquent or a troublemaker that I ended up isolated. Quite the opposite. I was pathologically timid—so timid that the moment anyone's eyes met mine I would stammer, "Ah, uh… th-that is… um…." On top of that my frame was abnormally small for a guy, all slender lines. Put bluntly, I looked pitiful and easy to push around. Thanks to that, the whole of my school life was spent as the personal punching bag for the scary delinquent crews—especially the worst of the girl delinquents.

"Hey, Han Siyul. Get over here."

"Eek… W-why…?"

"Ah, fuck, look at him hunching his shoulders like a scared rabbit. Makes me wanna just smash him. You gonna come or not?"

Every break they dragged me into a corner and unleashed pure violence.

"Look at that face with zero meat on it. Don't they feed you at the orphanage?"

The leader of the pack would pick a fight like that, then pinch both my cheeks so hard they bruised and stretch them out. Afterward they forced the leftover soboro bread they'd been eating into my mouth.

"Swallow every last bit. Spill any and you're dead."

They snickered at me choking and coughing, then piled on the cruel shuttle duties.

"Go to the store and buy us some chocolate milk. Here's ten thousand won. Keep the change for your own snacks, you bag of bones."

"Y-yeah…."

They shoved the bill into my hand while yanking and ruffling my hair like they meant to crack my skull open. Night after night I wiped away tears over that terrifying violence and extortion (them giving me their own money just to test me).

Ironically, the guy delinquents never laid a finger on me. They even greeted me cheerfully when we passed. If we ran into each other in a closed-off space like the bathroom, they would quietly step aside out of consideration for my loser personality. Looking back, those guys were pretty far from real delinquents. …Of course they still threw punches and shook people down without mercy when it came to everyone else. But with me, and only me, they were weirdly kind. Probably figured they'd get divine punishment if they messed with a pitiful kid like me. Even garbage thugs had a shred of conscience, I guess.

I survived that hellish school violence by keeping my head down like a rat, and when I finally became an adult the real world turned out far harsher than any high-school classroom. Even a guy who was too scared of people to leave his room still had to eat, so I screwed up my courage and tried day-labor construction gigs. But this scrawny body of mine was nothing but pure trouble there too.

"Hey, you piece of shit! You can't even carry half a bag of cement before your legs give out—what the hell am I supposed to do with you?! Get the fuck out of here!"

This morning was no different: a storm of curses and kicked off the site after half a day. I trudged back to my narrow, damp one-room apartment, collapsed onto the linoleum floor, poured soju from a plastic bottle into a paper cup, and downed it in one go.

"Khh… damn, that's bitter."

Half a day of bone-grinding work had earned me a measly fifty thousand won. I opened my phone, logged into the bank app, and transferred thirty thousand of it to the orphanage account where I'd grown up.

Anyone else would have clucked their tongue and called me a total sucker for donating when I couldn't even take care of myself. But I wasn't doing this out of some grand act of charity or a desire to become a moral saint out of a textbook. This was pure selfishness, a way to fill my own pockets.

Every weekend when I volunteered at the orphanage, the little snot-nosed kids would come running at me like puppies shouting "Siyul hyung!" and "Oppa!" Watching them gave me a twisted sense of vicarious satisfaction and comfort. An absolute scumbag move, really. At least… those kids shouldn't have to grow up like me. That was all I hoped for—that they wouldn't end up dripping with labels like loser, shut-in, virgin forever, and crawl around the bottom of society as a complete failure. Looking at their bright futures soothed my own gutter-level reality. Pure, ugly self-satisfaction.

"Yeah, I'm the sucker. Who else am I gonna blame? Gotta win the mental game somehow just to keep living."

I snickered and poured the rest of the soju into the paper cup. This gutter life of mine—I'd long since decided to fully immerse myself in the concept of "the nice guy who throws his whole body away for others." Without that shameless hypocrisy I couldn't have stayed sane in this unfair world.

Alcohol slid down my throat and my brain started floating pleasantly. Sprawled on the floor, I habitually opened my phone and scrolled through internet communities. That was when one game article caught my eye.

"Ah, that one…."

The article instantly dragged up old memories. A PC game with a classic modern-fantasy academy setup: gates opening in contemporary society, an artificial island built in the middle of the Pacific where awakened hunters from all over the world gathered to train. I'd watched a pretty famous streamer play it back then. The insane freedom, the way you could mash every kind of ability and trait together into wild, bizarre builds looked so damn fun that I impulse-bought it on a high. And yet I'd never played it even once. Because… I didn't have a computer.

Once I save up and buy a PC, this is the first thing I'm playing! I'd stuffed it into my library with grand ambitions, then got so busy scraping by day to day that I completely forgot it existed.

I staggered up and powered on the laptop that had been carefully tucked away in the corner of my desk. It wasn't like I suddenly wanted to play the game right that second, but the money I'd spent ages ago still felt wasted, and since it had popped into my head I figured I might as well fire it up once.

Oh, and for the record, this laptop wasn't something I bought. The landlord's daughter from the building had handed it over not long ago, saying she didn't need it anymore.

"Oppa, this is the one I was using, but I don't need it now. Would you like it?"

She'd offered it with a shy smile. When I actually took it, it turned out to be a scratch-free latest-model gaming laptop still practically in its box, looking brand new… but whatever. She was offering something she didn't use—refusing with a clueless "No, I couldn't!" would have been the rude move.

Anyway, I connected to the store on the snappy laptop and installed the game that had been rotting in my purchase history.

"Huh?"

I tilted my head at the install window. That brand-new DLC from the article was already sitting in my library.

"Why is this here? I don't remember buying it…. Did I grab some deluxe edition back then or something?"

Alcohol had put my brain on strike, so thinking hard felt like too much work.

"Eh, free is free. Absolute win."

Installation finished and I launched the game. A majestic BGM rolled as the title screen appeared; I immediately hit the [New Game] button. The screen darkened, then the core of the game—the windows for allocating stats, traits, and abilities—popped up. You used starting points to distribute base stats and combine powers.

"Uh…? What the hell. Why is everything locked?"

I frowned while scrolling the mouse wheel. Every useful trait or flashy ability was blacked out and locked. All that was available were bland, unimpressive basics like [Slight Strength Increase] or [Mana Sensitivity]. Worse, only a single slot each for traits and abilities was even open. Obviously you had to clear multiple playthroughs or specific challenges to unlock the rest.

"Ugh, what a pain. With games like this the whole fun is locking in a concept right from the start and messing around."

Without hesitation I alt-tabbed and searched for game cheat programs. Downloaded the file, clicked apply, switched back to the window… and every locked trait and ability blazed open with radiant light. The single slots multiplied into several.

"Okay, nice. Anything fun looking… oh?"

My eyes locked onto one particular category while scanning hundreds of powers.

"This is perfect for a full 'sacrifice' concept, isn't it?"

Thinking about it, even in real life I donated my hard-earned daily wages to the orphanage every month and got called a sucker for it. But my pitiful real-world good deeds never earned praise—usually just got ignored—whereas "sacrifice" inside a game was a completely different beast.

"If I carve up my own flesh to save others, they'll worship me like a god here."

In the game at least I could twist this sacrifice keyword to the extreme and enjoy watching everyone freak out and scramble over my noble(?) self-destruction. Not that game NPCs would ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ever react with that kind of vivid emotion….

I unhesitatingly slotted the full three-piece Chain of Causality set into the slots the cheats had expanded. Of course, using a skill once and actually dying for a game over wouldn't do, so I needed the bare minimum insurance to stay alive.

"Oho…?"

Staring at the windows, a perfect broken combo assembled itself in my head. Recover HP with Super Regeneration; if the wound is lethal enough to kill me, tank it with Death Delay and then regenerate again… wasn't this basically infinite power?

"Theoretically, anyway…. I've never actually played the game so I don't know. But eh, it'll work out! Anyway!"

Thinking optimistically, I was about to fill the remaining slots when one more bizarre ability at the very bottom caught my eye.

"…That feels super sketchy…."

The description gave me a weirdly uneasy vibe. It reeked of suspicion, but the name itself was still "Immortality," right? I decided to grab it as yet another insurance policy. It didn't even cost points, so pure profit.

With abilities roughly set, I moved to the next tab—the Traits ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠window. This was where you decided the character's constitution and passives. First thing that jumped out was a penalty trait that dumped a huge pile of points on you.

"Oh, picking this gives me that many points? To deal damage with Retribution I need a body that gets hurt easily anyway, so this is pure synergy and pure profit."

The description looked a little extreme, but with Super Regeneration and Immortality I figured it wouldn't matter. I checked the trait sitting right next to it as well.

"Hmm… I don't know how the pain system is implemented in-game, but for the concept of getting beaten and torn up constantly I'll definitely need this."

After stubbornly slotting Pain Reduction too, every last point evaporated. There were zero points left to distribute into the basic stats window. In the end strength, vitality, mana, and all the other physical base stats were mercilessly locked at the absolute bottom value of 1.

When every choice was finished, the finalized character status window glowed brilliantly on the monitor.

Every stat at 1, traits of Fragility and Pain Reduction. But the abilities were packed with Super Regeneration, Death Delay, Immortality, and the full Chain of Causality—an utterly bizarre character was complete.

All right. Let's start this thing.

I moved the mouse and clicked the long-awaited [Start Game] button. The screen transitioned and a loading ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠gauge began to fill.

"……"

Staring at the loading screen, my enthusiasm suddenly drained right out of me. Typical of this kind of game—spending forever daydreaming every setting and tweaking the character status is the peak of fun; the second the build is finished and you actually try to start playing, interest plummets.

Tsk… maybe just do it tomorrow. I'm dead tired.

I scratched the back of my neck, debating whether to shut the laptop and go to sleep. That was the exact moment it happened.

Wooooom—!

The laptop cooler suddenly spun up with a roar like it was about to explode, and a blinding white light so intense it threatened to burn my eyes blasted out of the monitor.

"Uh…? Wh-what…!"

I couldn't even manage a proper scream. My vision flashed pure white, and then my consciousness plunged straight into pitch-black darkness.

Inside the narrow one-room after that brief chaos had passed, only the latest-model gaming laptop still roaring without its owner and an empty soju bottle rolling on the floor remained, utterly alone.