Welcome to My Arcade - 3
In a dark alley in front of Hongdae.
The street was full of drunks wandering aimlessly.
In a neglected corner where no one ever came, there stood an old arcade. It was a place packed with dust, the kind people liked to dress up as nostalgia.
Dodam was standing by the second-floor window there.
If she had been holding a cigarette, she would have looked like the heroine of a decent adult film. But since she didn’t smoke, she looked more like a child waiting for her parents.
Inside the arcade, where every light had been turned off,
she stared blankly at a business card.
….
A passing beam of light made the lettering on the card glint. The design was luxurious, but so severely simple that it reminded me of that man.
BigPlan Holdings Korea
Investment Director Seonwoo Taek
Dodam recalled what she had heard at lunch.
-If you could get investment on good terms, would you be interested?
….
Investment. Honestly, if anyone else had said it, I would have written it off as a multilevel scam or outright fraud and not even listened. But since it was the boss saying it...
An orphan, and a game addict at that.
There had been more than enough people in her short life who tried to swindle her. If she hadn’t been trained so brutally by online games, she would have been picked clean the moment she became independent.
So to Dodam, the world was a place with not a single thing worth trusting.
But...
Very occasionally.
Veeeery occasionally.
There were people who slipped through that cynicism and came close anyway.
CEO Baek Su-cheol.
The ABCD members, especially Aki.
And people like Seonwoo Taek and Dr. Jang.
People who were pretty trustworthy....
Seonwoo Taek ranked high among them.
The way he always carried himself said enough. Watching over her and Aki from behind, then stepping in at the right moment with money to help them out... he looked like some kind of “capitalist angel,” so much so that it felt unreal.
Of all the people I’ve met, this is the first guy who bought a convenience store building for a girl he’d never even met and turned it into a hideout. And he did it just out of kindness, too.... What is he, some north-country duke from a webtoon?
If she had been anyone other than Aki, whose attack power was about that of a mushy steamed bun, she would have been stripped bare all the same.
And besides.
From the moment he’d shared lottery numbers with her,
it was harder not to believe him.
The dream of an entire nation.
The scenario of a life turned upside down.
He had personally divided it up and shared it.
If you still didn’t believe him after that, then there was no one in the world worth believing. Someone who gives money out of kindness is a god. All the more so if he expects nothing in return.
Even if he had only helped as a side effect of being tied to Aki.
….
Anyway.
The reliable Seonwoo Taek had opened with that. And, as always, he had fished out a business card with a mildly vacant face.
-You already know that I’m the one making the investment, but I haven’t told you what kind of work I do.
-I’ve been wondering where the boss keeps pulling all that money from. Honestly, the way he spends it makes executives from big corporations look laughable.
-...As a private investor, I’m able to act flexibly, and that’s what makes the profits possible.
-S-surely you’re not doing something d-dangerous, right? Aki would probably be sad....
-....
At the words Aki would be sad, Seonwoo Taek had flinched for a moment. Then he quietly shook his head.
-It’s absolutely nothing dangerous. I work as a private consultant, mainly exchanging information with overseas investors and bringing them into suitable markets.
-What does that even mean?
-Think of it as being a kind of local guide for big overseas whales. There are plenty of people who want guides who are sharper and more flexible than the local firms.
-Oh, I get it now.
-Among those big whales, there’s someone interested in subculture... to put it bluntly, the VTuber industry.
-Huh? There are really people that strange?
-Yes, there are.
-Who is it?
-....
Seonwoo Taek had said this.
“Bigman....”
After muttering that name,
Dodam looked back out at the night view beyond the window.
….
So the Bigman who set the whole community buzzing was the boss’s boss.
The signs that painted the night skyline.
The countless letters on them came together and became a line of thought.
-The investment terms are simple. If you can keep to them, he said he’d support your first business with up to 200 million won.
“Just use it at least once for a VTuber broadcast.... Isn’t that too simple? Plenty of people would be willing to do that.”
-He left the judgment to me. And I thought this place was the best fit.
“Can I have him do that for me too?”
-Of course.
Seonwoo Taek had said,
-Out of everyone I know, you’re the VTuber who’s best at game streaming.
He had given tens of millions of won to countless VTubers,
and 200 million plus a project to her.
If you weren’t an idiot,
you could tell who he valued more.
….
Hah.
Well, damn.
When he put it like that, how could she say no?
The boss who wrote up the evaluation report probably just thought that way because he was watching Aki’s stream and happened to see me too, but still....
Dodam snickered and sent back her answer.
She replied almost immediately.
Boss: Understood. I’ll get started right away, tomorrow. If you have any detailed requests, leave them here immediately. I’ll help make sure the construction is finished within a week.
“!”
Wow, that was fast.
The boss really was a phantom, vanishing by day and night alike.
Too fast, and Aki will be sad....
Flashing to the east.
Flashing to the west.
Please, at night, move a little more slowly.
So that no girl has to call a boyfriend her boyfriend.
Dodam chewed on her own nonsense and giggled.
“Heehee.”
That was how Dodam dealt with everything.
Because...
….
Whenever she got serious.
She was always the one who lost.
So she always gave up and laughed it off.
“Heehee....”
What did it matter?
She had gotten so much out of this.
“Even if I’m not someone’s favorite, being favored by a big whale like Bigman is pretty damn good, right?”
A mysterious capitalist hiding his identity.
And she was the apostle who had received his first mission.
Honestly, it was fucking cool.
She felt like she might pee a little.
No, she already had.
Drip, drip.
Money was invincible,
and the person giving money was a god.
…Maybe from now on I should be praying to “Bigmen.”
Dodam looked back.
The inside of the old, shabby arcade was full of dust. The CRT screens of long-abandoned cabinets flickered weakly, and the break room, with its blankets strewn about, smelled like a senior citizens’ center.
How should she renovate all this?
The budget was 200 million won.
More than enough, almost absurdly so. Even if they did a major remodel and modernization, money would still be left over.
….
Still, I want to leave the break room alone for some reason. It feels like it has a priest’s smell on it. Sleeping there makes me feel at ease.
Okay.
Keep the break room as it is and skip the remodel.
Dodam sent her request like that.
*
In front of the convenience store’s outdoor table,
I reviewed Dodam’s list of requests.
Her wishes were clear.
First, she had a sharp idea of what kinds of titles she wanted and what the overall direction of the arcade should be. And because she had already experienced the place herself, the things that needed fixing were obvious too.
I wrote them down on a notepad.
....
-No particular game theme.
-Modernize the facilities as much as possible.
-Use a blue color theme for the interior.
-I want the second floor separated with a partition wall.
-I want the break room to be used as a separate room.
-I want to keep a few classic machines too.
So it’ll be something like an experience center where people can try all kinds of games? Separate out the break room so she can hide away and mess around with whatever she wants.
As I organized it, the concept became clear.
It felt like I’d been handed a “Big Plan proposal.”
So if I put my mind to it,
I thought I could finish it within next week’s weekdays.
….
Did that kind of sense carry over from the previous cycle too? Or was Dodam’s planning ability always that good?
Honestly,
it didn’t matter which.
In the end, her ability was still her ability.
Just looking at how she was already setting the direction toward something she’d want to use in a broadcast. Maybe she’s instinctively internalized a planner’s mind.
While I was organizing those requests,
A-yeong spoke from beside me. She had been in the break room, but at some point she had suddenly appeared sitting next to me.
“Oppa.”
“Yes.”
“Do you happen to know someone called Bigman?”
….
For an instant,
my heart pounded hard.
Because I remembered the previous cycle.
-Thank you, Bigman. Thanks to you, I was able to live while dreaming.
And because I could feel that memory had disappeared.
….
But I calmed down soon enough.
Bigman was gone.
And Seonwoo Taek remained.
The “Bigman” A-yeong was talking about now was not the me from the previous cycle, but the false god I had created this time around.
Even if Bigman disappeared,
Seonwoo Taek would not disappear.
When I thought of that,
my chest settled.
….
From now on, for the people close to me, I can leave “Bigman” as an illusion and approach them as Seonwoo Taek. Then I won’t disappear.
Silently making up my mind,
I nodded.
“Yes. He’s someone I work with.”
“Eh?! R-really?!”
“Yes. He uses an alias at the moment, but he’s fairly well known among overseas investors.”
“W-wow.... I was just asking because he’s been getting really famous lately.”
….
A-yeong’s eyes widened.
“I was going to ask if you knew him too because there’s someone who gives 1 million won to every VTuber broadcast.... Wow, it’s crazy.”
“I see.”
“Yeah. It’s weird that you know someone like that angel.”
“An angel?”
They had called me a god,
but this was the first time I’d heard that.
Actually, if you think about the phrase “angel investor,” A-yeong’s metaphor is pretty accurate. I’ve been thinking it since the previous cycle, but her instincts are better than I expected.
Strictly speaking, instinct was also part of intelligence. I began to think that A-yeong might have a highly developed area for handling emotion.
That was a precious talent for an artist. It was why her performances could move people’s hearts.
And somehow that...
somehow...
….
Hm.
Maybe I was overdoing it a little, getting this far just from one vague thought.
….
It might even have been a little embarrassing, the kind of doting thought people made fun of.
When I was thinking that,
A-yeong smiled brightly.
“It’s kind of funny that Bigman believes in people for no reason and just throws money around... and it’s fun too. He feels like a prankster angel who came down from the sky.”
….
“If it were me.... I think I’d be so moved that I’d cry when I saw an angel like that.”
“Is that so?”
A-yeong pressed her palms together and closed her eyes. She looked almost as if she were praying.
“Of course! More than the 1 million won itself, what a huge comfort it is to have someone believe in you as a fan. If the amount got any bigger than that, it would be terrifying, but it’s not some absurd, meaningless number either. It’s just a huge amount that lands right in your heart.”
….
Ten billion won in support might have been too much.
Glad I gave the money as a lottery prize this time.
I clutched the ten-thousand-won bill in my pocket for a moment. Then I said,
“By the way, A-yeong.”
“Yeah?”
“Did things go well with your work?”
“Ah!”
A-yeong sprang to her feet.
Then she grabbed my hand tightly and flashed a wide smile. The warmth in her palm spoiled the answer before she even said it.
So the negotiation went well.
But I didn’t cut her off.
I just wanted to hear her voice.
A-yeong said,
“Yes! The president said we should move forward properly! I did it the way you told me, and at first he looked all ‘Huh?’ but he loosened up right away!”
“Is that so? Good.”
“When I told him I’d give them 300 million won and we should prepare for the live show by July.... everyone at the company was shocked and went ‘Whoa!’ They were all calling people everywhere like crazy.”
“You must have been very tired.”
“Huh? No.”
….
A-yeong laughed.
“My heart’s still pounding like crazy. I’m excited! Want to hear it?”
“Hear what?”
How was I supposed to hear a heartbeat?
That question was answered.
Right away, by A-yeong stepping closer.
She took one step forward.
Then leaned her body toward me. Her warm body heat flowed across the sweet air, and her yellow hair swayed like curtains, filling my field of vision.
Like a yellow star.
Almost touching.
Almost not.
….
Thump.
Thump.
Really.
Little by little.
I could hear it.
….
….
A-yeong pulled back slightly, then hurriedly gave me a mischievous smile. Her face had turned red. Even she seemed to think she’d gotten a little too close.
“Heh, hehe.... Yo, you heard it, right?”
“Yes.”
“Anyway!”
Looking embarrassed, A-yeong took a few quick steps back. Then she folded her arms and put on a proud pose.
“I-I, I became the project lead for the Summer Live!”
….
“A, actually....”
….
She looked on the verge of tears.
“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
….
I clapped quietly.
“Congratulations.”
“Hehe.”
An awkward laugh,
yellow starlight,
and a vague warmth drifting through the night.
At last, I could smile a little too.
“That’s good.”
The destination of Big Plan “A.”
It was the process of a girl becoming the owner of a dream.
Though one cycle had passed, and many things had happened, only now had she finally stood up not to prove herself to anyone else, but for the sake of her own dream.
Money,
dreams,
heart,
negotiation,
responsibility,
everything was wholly A-yeong’s.
For that reason,
Bigman had exited the world.
I had seen that,
and I wanted to keep protecting it from here on.
….
At least as far as the Summer Live is concerned, no matter what happens, I need to make sure A-yeong’s plans aren’t disrupted.
Then all that remained was...
to believe in just how far our prankster can draw people in. That’s all.
*
A blue sign was going up.
D-GAMERS
It matched the blue exterior of the freshly painted building. And the latest cabinets and machines were being installed to fit that clean image.
Murmur, murmur.
-Please check the screen!
-Is the wiring connected properly?
Dodam and I watched the busy scene from the side.
“It went through without a problem. I’m glad it finished faster than expected.”
“Because enough money got deposited. That’s why. Money is invincible.”
In that state, Dodam lifted her “new phone.” Then she threw back her head and roared at the sky.
“Kyaaa! I worship you! Bigmen! Thanks for believing in me!”
….
“You even sent the company equipment support budget!? Is there ever been such a merciful god!? From now on, Bigman and I are one!”
….
“Big-Men!”
Listening to the revived “prayer” once again,
I made a vow inwardly.
….
This time, I absolutely need to be careful not to turn a phrase into a trend.