Going With the Flow - 2
Kang Do-dam’s year had been nothing short of a miracle.
That miracle had begun at the start of the year.
Her floundering little VTuber channel had been pulled back from the brink by the prize money she won in the Live Future contest. From there, it had ridden the momentum all the way into the mainstream and grown into something with a respectable following.
Even that, by ordinary standards, would have been a miraculous success story. But it didn’t end there. The real dopamine hit came after that.
One day, the part-timer manager she knew as both a friend and a coworker told her the winning lottery numbers. Thanks to that, she ended up with 1.9 billion won in her hands. She’d said she hadn’t slept a wink the day she found out she’d won.
1.9 billion won.
It wasn’t just money.
For Do-dam, who had always wandered the streets searching for a place to stand, it was the first time she had ever been given the right to change something. With that money, she bought herself a place of her own.
A sanctuary no one could casually lay a hand on.
A place steeped in her memories and her past.
And the moment she first played there, the nine-year-old Do-dam who had once smashed boys to pieces in fighting games said goodbye through the haze of memory. It was no longer a distant recollection. It had become property.
And then there was the memory of being fifteen, the one that hurt most of all.
The pain of the day she learned the bitterness of defeat and the rules of reality beneath adults’ cold indifference. Even that, she had left behind inside the arena prepared through the Big Plan project.
“Waaaaah!”
The cheers still rang out vividly in my ears.
The Dodari cheering their lungs out for her.
Professional gamers praising her skill.
The people who received prizes and shouted their gratitude at the top of their lungs.
The border between fantasy and reality.
Inside it all,
Do-dam became a champion.
The nine-year-old kid who loved arcade games was now an adult who owned her own arcade, and the fifteen-year-old girl who loved games had been acknowledged by professional gamers.
Money?
The 500 million won she’d thrown in behind me had come back as 1 billion. In the end, she had gotten her hands on the 1.5 billion won that ordinary people considered financial freedom.
Memories.
Success.
An arcade.
Financial freedom, too....
She had achieved everything.
She had obtained everything.
But there was still one memory left.
The pain of being eighteen, alone in an empty alley, licking water dripping from a faucet and crying at the helplessness closing in around her....
That still remained somewhere in Do-dam’s chest.
Emptiness.
What came after having achieved everything was emptiness.
-What do I do now? How am I supposed to live from here?
That kind of....
Vague fear.
“...”
Did she burn through her life’s trauma and memories too fast, and finish the biggest goal of her life all at once, so now she’s burned out? And that made the sadness she felt from the closest point in her memory resurface.
That was as far as Do-dam had told me through her keyboard.
She and I stayed in the manager’s office until late at night.
Only the dim indirect lighting was on inside the room.
I spread out a blanket and lay down on it. My hips hurt a little from sitting in seiza while listening to her talk.
Beside me, I heard clicking.
Click.
Click.
Click.
“...”
“...”
At a distance where I could even catch her body scent.
Do-dam kept playing games. On the monitor, she was switching viewpoints nonstop with hotkeys and mouse auto controls. It wasn’t bravado. She really was processing the situation at lightning speed.
“...”
Maybe because she has to talk while streaming, so her concentration gets split.... Actually, she might be better at this than she is on stream.
The flashy camera movement and control.
Just watching her absentmindedly was pretty entertaining.
Fire watching....
No, if anything, maybe I should call it game watching.
“...”
If A-yeong heard me, she’d say I sounded like an old man.
Click.
Click.
Click.
“...”
“...”
While I was lost in that sort of game-watching daze, I heard a tiny, adorable sound from somewhere.
Grrrrr....
It was Do-dam’s stomach growling. It was long past dinner, so she looked hungry.
Especially since she skipped breakfast entirely and just threw together lunch with instant noodles.
And if I looked around, it seemed like she had been living on instant noodles for days. Aside from the medicine packets in the corner, all I could see were cup noodle containers and beer cans.
Grrrrr....
It was only natural that she was hungry.
I started thinking about what to eat.
What kind of food is good to eat at night? If I suggest something too greasy, it’ll probably be even worse on an empty stomach....
“...”
“...”
But Do-dam didn’t move. She just kept her neck thrust forward and her back bent, fixed on the laptop screen sitting on the cheap dining table.
Click.
Click.
Click.
That’s an environment guaranteed to give you a turtle neck.
Her posture was strangely unbalanced.
The dining table had been some cheap thing picked up off the street, but her gaming laptop and mouse were brand-name equipment worth several million won. That imbalance seemed to sum up the current state of Do-dam herself.
She owns 1.5 billion won and her own building, but she won’t replace her chair and desk...?
I spoke to the hunched-over Do-dam.
“Do-dam.”
“!”
She coughed once before answering. Her voice sounded hoarse from not opening her mouth in a while.
“Yeah? What?”
“Does your back not hurt?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“What about your neck?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“I see.”
“...”
Do-dam nodded and went right back to the game.
Click.
Click.
Click.
“...”
Remarkable.
The stamina of a twenty-one-year-old....
Was I like that at twenty-one too?
“...”
I’ve been stuck at twenty-seven through regression for so long I can’t even remember what my early twenties were like.
By now, the memories from before my regressions had grown hazy. I couldn’t remember my childhood at all, and even the winter and spring of when I was twenty-seven were no longer clear.
Did I even serve in the military? I never saw a discharge certificate.... What were my family like? There aren’t even any contacts in my phone....
Faintly, like a dream.
I only remember that a man named Seonwoo Taek had once existed.
“...”
Still.
I didn’t think I’d been sturdy at twenty-one either.
Not if I looked at my body now.
I wasn’t exactly the type to exercise hard, after all.
I stared blankly at Do-dam’s back.
“...”
Still, if she keeps gaming while hunched over like that, she’s going to suffer for it someday. She’s not the type to eat properly, either, and she drinks beer pretty often, so she’s probably a little buzzed too....
Right then, I remembered the sound of her stomach growling from earlier.
“!”
Ah.
Right.
Food.
I spoke to Do-dam.
“Do-dam.”
“Huh?”
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“Nuh-uh....”
At that exact moment, Do-dam’s stomach rumbled again.
Grrrrr!
As if telling her not to lie.
The sound was clearly louder than before.
Do-dam froze.
“...”
“...”
Then she tilted her head slightly and said, “I guess I’m kind of hungry. I didn’t have much of an appetite. Weird. Maybe it’s because I drank a little beer earlier?”
“If you stay empty for too long, sometimes you stop feeling hungry altogether. Drinking in that state only makes your stomach feel heavy.”
“But I did eat snacks with it.”
“That doesn’t count as a meal.”
“Mm....”
Do-dam nodded.
“Then should we get ramen? Duryeong-nim, cough! What are you eating? Same thing as before?”
“...”
I shook my head. Then I reached for my wallet and phone from the suit jacket I had taken off earlier.
“Let’s go out to eat instead of ramen.”
“Go out? That’s a pain.... We can just eat ramen, cough! Right?”
“...”
“I haven’t even washed my hair.”
“...”
I’d noticed that from the smell since earlier.
Kind of smells like a dog that got caught in the rain.
There were probably hygiene issues.
But if that was her lifestyle, I had no choice but to respect it.
Still....
“...”
If she keeps living and eating this irregularly, she’s going to end up with some kind of stomach illness in a few days. Ramen probably isn’t good for her throat injury, either.
I looked at the cup noodle containers, beer cans, and medicine packets scattered around the manager’s office. It was the kind of room that made it obvious the person living here had no idea how to manage her own body.
If she has a wound on the mucous membrane of her throat, the medicine probably includes antibiotics.... And you really shouldn’t take those on an empty stomach.
Seeing all that, I decided we needed to go out first.
So I said, “I’ll go buy a hat.”
“?”
Do-dam looked at me with round eyes.
“A hat?”
“If the reason you’re hesitating to go out is because your hair’s bothering you.... I’ll buy you a hat. We should get out and eat something first, at the very least.”
“Duryeong-nim, you’re hungry?”
“Yes, I am.”
“...”
After hesitating for a moment, Do-dam rubbed her palm over her bobbed hair. Then she sniffed it and let out a disgusted “Eugh.”
Had she realized for herself that she smelled like a rain-soaked dog?
“Whoa, what is that smell? Cough. I haven’t washed for three days and it’s legendary.”
“...”
A moment later, she brought her palm back to her nose.
“Ssshhh. Hmm....”
“...”
Was she thinking it was weirdly addictive?
Do-dam repeated the motion a few times, then seemed to suddenly remember I was there. She tucked her hands down and rolled her eyes.
“...”
“...”
Fidgeting, she soon spoke in a small voice. Even in the dark room, a reddish tint was visible on her cheeks.
“T-then get me a hat.”
“Yes. I’ll be right back. Is there anything you’d like to eat?”
“I dunno. I can’t really think of anything right now.”
“...”
I sorted through the menu in my head.
Given Do-dam’s irregular habits and her indifference toward food, I figured the moment I suggested anything healthy, she’d probably refuse.
And since her throat is hurt too, anything spicy would probably make it worse.
After a moment’s thought, I made a suggestion.
“Let’s go get seolleongtang.”
“!”
Do-dam’s expression brightened.
Grrrrr!
Her stomach, too, seemed to approve of my decision.
*
After finishing a late meal at a shabby little seolleongtang place, Do-dam belched while pulling the baseball cap I’d bought down over her head. Her head was so small that even the smallest size had needed to be adjusted.
“Ugh!”
“...”
“Sorry, I just got too into the food.”
“It’s fine. That’s a natural bodily function.”
“I’ve passed through this area plenty of times, but I didn’t even know a place like this existed.... Cough! Wow.”
“I only found it by chance myself.”
“As expected, the west and east are all flashy and stuff, Mister Hong.”
“...”
Do-dam and I stepped out of the alley where the seolleongtang place was located. It was near Hongdae, so as soon as we came out onto the street, people started appearing all around us.
Yellow streetlights.
Neon signs flashing in every color.
Music released this year was playing out on the street. The brake lights of passing cars left red afterimages behind them. It felt as if all those colors were trembling wildly across a black canvas.
Do-dam suddenly said, “This is weird.”
“?”
“Just coming out at night like this. Even though I’ve been coming here for over ten years, it still feels kind of fresh.”
“Is that so.”
“Yeah.”
Do-dam smiled.
“This is the first time I’ve ever walked here with just the two of us like this.”
“...”
“Weird, huh.”
“I suppose so.”
“Yes, yes, so des.”
“...”
And so we went back to the arcade.
Do-dam gave a crooked smile in front of the main entrance. She fiddled with her baseball cap and wiped her hands on her clothes for no real reason. Then, in a small voice, she said:
Her voice was still rough.
“Thanks for today. I just wasted your time for no reason. You must be busy too, Duryeong-nim.”
“It’s fine. Except for Mondays, the rest is yours to manage.”
“And I’m slacking off in there....”
“That’s not what this is. If your body isn’t in good shape, you should rest until you can get back up again.”
“...”
Do-dam said, “Back up again, huh.”
“...”
“I don’t know. I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. Cough. I’ve never really done anything except play games my whole life.”
“...”
“Ah, of course I’m definitely doing the July live stream. Cough! Aki is pouring her own money into it.... She’s preparing everything.”
“...”
“Anyway. Thanks. For coming. For listening to me....”
“...”
“Take care.”
“...”
Should I just wait like this until Do-dam got up on her own?
She’s the kind of person who doesn’t even take care of her meals properly.
If I just left her like this, wasn’t that basically the same as lazily abandoning her?
For some reason, what she’d said earlier came back to me.
-Just coming out at night like this. Even though I’ve been coming here for over ten years, it still feels kind of fresh.
What Do-dam needed was....
Maybe something like that fresh feeling.
If she’s burned out because the painful memories of the past were repaid all at once through the achievements of the present.... then maybe what she needs is to build up the memories she’ll need to keep living.
If that would help Do-dam’s life....
Then I should do my best right now.
That thought came to me.
I shook my head.
“Do-dam.”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s go.”
“Huh? Where?”
“Anywhere.”
“...?”
Do-dam slowly tilted her head.