Wanna Come Along?
It was Friday evening.
A call from Lawyer Kim came in on my phone.
Ping!
“!”
Thank goodness.
It seemed there hadn’t been any trouble.
Team Leader Jung is the type who’ll follow principle to the letter as long as you offer a price that makes sense, so...
“....”
Since it had always been a company run under a figurehead anyway, it seemed they adapted quickly as long as no one tampered with the business direction.
Team Leader Jung and Studio Romance.
Thanks to that unusual relationship between the investor holding the reins and the unofficial affiliate, I’d ended up profiting in a strange way. A very strange kind of profit, too: the preservation of the VTuber market.
No one else cares about it. It’s basically a benefit that only matters to me.
Still.
Things had gone well.
I finished saying goodbye to Lawyer Kim.
Then I looked at my phone and muttered, “Please take care of me again this time.”
In the end, I’d signed with Lawyer Kim Min-su again.
In this loop, I’d already built Bigman as a ghost, so there was no need to put him forward as a proxy chairman. Instead, I’d placed him in the role of negotiation representative to fill the gaps in my own manpower.
In the previous loop, I relied on him a lot to run the corporation. This time, I’m leaning on him as my negotiator. It’s hard enough finding someone this diligent and this tight-lipped.
Of course.
I planned to reward him generously again in this loop, too.
With that thought, I was just about to put my phone away.
But then another message came in.
Ping!
It was from Doctor Jang.
“!”
I opened the messenger again.
It was a photo Doctor Jang had sent.
He was wearing a plain but elegant shirt. With a shy expression, he was eating breakfast on a London street alongside a cheerful, laughing girl.
I knew the girl’s face.
He’d shown her to me in the previous loop, speaking in a voice heavy with regret.
A granddaughter? And the one who took the photo must be his daughter.
His expression was a little awkward.
But he looked happy.
Don’t regret it.
Somehow, that single line echoed faintly in my head. Doctor Jang’s words always seemed to linger in my mind. But they didn’t torment me anymore.
His words had steadied me.
On the last day of July, because I’d followed them, I was here now.
“....”
Yes, sir. I’ll do my best so I won’t regret it.
That was my answer.
Then I tucked the phone into my pocket.
And looked ahead.
Inside D-GAMERS, with the shutter rolled down.
Dodam and Ah-young were playing one of the latest rhythm games in the corner of the arcade. Ah-young, especially, looked thrilled as she pounded on the cabinet and smashed the notes falling across the screen.
To the rhythm I knew so well,
Ah-young’s hands moved busily.
Da-da-da-da─!
The screen flashed like a rainbow,
and Ah-young’s smile shone bright and sparkling.
“Hehe, it’s fun playing this again after so long. It used to cost 100 yen a round at the game center, so I could never play much. You don’t get this feeling on PC...”
“Enjoy it as much as you want today. With the shop owner cheat, we can set it to infinite play.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Just stack up the thousand-won bills you already have and play. When they run out, open the board and take them back out.”
Dodam jerked her chin toward the side.
Sure enough,
a pile of thousand-won bills was stacked there in neat bundles.
Ah-young laughed when she saw them.
“Aha-ha! This feels so unfamiliar. Being able to play this freely at an arcade.”
“Nothing weird about it. The previous owner’s son did the same thing.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Despite having totally useless hands. The boss used to let him stack up 100-won coins like a mountain beside the machine and play as much as he wanted. I was jealous. Back then, having infinite retries until you cleared the song was power.”
“I see...”
“But I overcame it with control.”
“Control?”
“I cleared the whole thing with a single 100-won coin. While that punk burned through more than ten coins. Those defeated eyes staring at me... I could still eat a full bowl of rice thinking about it.”
“Aha-ha! What even is that!”
Ah-young burst out laughing again.
Because of that, her hands slowed and the notes started slipping past in droves.
They were gradually approaching game over.
But neither of them cared.
They could just do it again.
“Whoa?! This pattern is hard...!”
“Looks like we’re cooked. Let’s rerun it fast.”
Just a few rounds in,
both of them were already brimming with ease.
....
The orphanage and the child welfare home.
Not exactly a privileged environment.
Their childhoods.
Back then, even enjoying a single round in an arcade must have been a luxury. And once they became adults, chances to play at arcades would have practically disappeared.
What they’d lacked as children had floated unresolved, then vanished beyond the reach of memory. But now, here, it had been found again and filled in.
With smiles like they’d inherited the whole world.
“Hahaha!”
“Heehee...”
It didn’t matter whether they won.
It was enough just to play.
It was, quite simply, a dream.
....
Games are dreams...
Dreams bring people together.
So then.
This time....
....
While I was chewing over that thought, the girl who owned this space of dreams turned around.
“Boss! Boss, aren’t you playing?”
“!”
“Don’t worry about people coming because of us. We already put a huge sign on the door saying we’re closed, and there’s a secret back exit behind us. If we sneak out that way, no one’ll notice.”
Dodam grinned with a heehee.
It was like the smile of a blue flower hidden behind a white flowerpot. Rough at first glance, but viciously, unmistakably pure.
“Shutting the door and getting to experience the arcade with a free pass is the kind of luxury you can’t just feel anywhere, you know.”
....
I shook my head.
“I’m fine. I have other things on my mind, so I don’t think I’d be able to concentrate.”
“I see. What a shame.”
Then Ah-young looked over here.
“Concentrate? Oppa, are you focused on the game?”
“Yeah, yeah. He’s crazy good at games.”
“Rea-ally...? That’s unexpected. You don’t seem like the type to do this sort of thing, oppa.”
“This is the guy who absolutely wrecked me in a fighting game.”
“Meh... chaku...?”
Suddenly hearing a familiar foreign-sounding word, Ah-young looked at Dodam with complicated eyes for a moment, then turned back to me. Her gaze was full of curiosity now.
“So you’ve been on your phone this whole time?”
“No. I got a message from Doctor Jang...”
“!”
The moment she heard Doctor Jang’s name, Ah-young and Dodam both scurried over here.
“How’s Doctor Jang doing?”
“Last I heard, he’d gone to London...”
....
I showed them Doctor Jang’s photo.
Both Ah-young and Dodam let out gasps. It was because he looked so different from the shabby old man in the bucket hat they remembered.
“Whoa, so this is the power of the lottery? Doctor Jang looks totally transformed into some rich old man. Chopping meat first thing in the morning is insanely cool.”
“Dodam...”
“Ah, sorry. Come to think of it, ‘like’ isn’t the right word. He is a rich man. He won the lottery, after all.”
....
Ah-young murmured blankly, “Come to think of it, yeah. We did win the lottery, didn’t we?”
“It’s been a little over two weeks, and you’ve already forgotten? Ah-ki-chan, I’m disappointed in your memory issues.”
“I’ve been busy with pre-live preparation these past few days...”
“Ah, right, right. So the one with the memory issues was me. This is going to fill the Dodawiki with ‘Incidents and Controversies’ entries.”
“Dodam...”
“Deheh.”
Dodam stuck out her tongue in an exaggerated way and thunked her head forward. With that old-anime-style gesture, Ah-young folded her arms and shivered.
I looked at Ah-young and said, “Then should we grill some meat?”
“Meat?”
“Yes. Since it’s been a while since you came by, Ah-young, I thought we could all eat together.”
“Sounds great!”
Ah-young nodded. With the motion, her yellow hair swayed under her baseball cap.
“Then...”
“W-wait a second...!”
“?”
Dodam hurriedly waved both hands.
She scrubbed the teasing off her face and broke into a light sweat.
“S-samgyeopsal inside the arcade is a little much, don’t you think...? As the shop owner, I must beg you to reconsider. Isn’t there a saying about wise people considering again? So maybe we should think this through a little more... wait, am I running out of stock here?”
....
I didn’t really know what she was talking about,
but it seemed she’d misunderstood.
“Not in the arcade. I was planning to eat at the convenience store. In a closed space like this, the smell would be one thing, but there’d also be fire risk.”
“I-I see. I’m glad Boss is a sensible person...”
Ah-young looked at that and laughed again.
“Dodam talks weird.”
“That’s because I’m an ideal woman.”
“Oh, come on...”
“Ah-ki-chan, could you please take your eyes off my chest?”
And so, after a few twists and turns,
we tidied up the arcade and slipped out.
Dodam locked the door herself with the key and lowered the shutter on tiptoe. I’d tried to help, but she said she wanted to do this part herself.
Rattle
Clack!
Dodam pressed her palms together above her head.
“S-sorry!”
“?”
Ah-young tilted her head.
“Sorry for what?”
....
Dodam said, “Actually, that was fake. I meant to say ‘Bigman.’”
“Dodam...”
Despite the steady stream of nonsense coming out of her mouth,
Dodam was wearing an unexpectedly serious expression as she prayed.
Like a girl seeing a god for the first time.
Desperately
Earnestly
“Thank you... thank you so much. Mr. Bigman.”
....
....
She smiled and said, “Bigman...”
Then she turned to look at me.
“Prayer over! Now let’s go eat!”
And so we left the back alley and headed for the convenience store.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Clunk!
“!”
In a tiny one-room dwelling in a mountain valley in North Chungcheong Province, Baek Hyang, an elderly woman in a white hanbok, opened her eyes in the middle of meditation. There had been a strange sound coming from the chest behind her.
Clunk!
....
She opened the small wooden chest.
Then she rummaged inside with her hand.
Before long, her white fingers drew something out.
A bundle of the Five-Colored Thread.
It trembled faintly and glowed with a soft light. She hadn’t taken it out once in decades, and yet the Five-Colored Thread was already tied to someone lost in the world by a connection that had already been made.
....
Then that meant someone had already taken this before.
Baek Hyang let out a low breath.
“Regression.”
She opened the door.
In the dark night sky, a single star was shining.
Looking at it, she thought,
....
It will be needed.
This.