"Hey, You're Not Human, Right?"
"Hey. You're not human, right?"
"What are you talking about?"
"How does your heart rate stay at 70 with a horde of monsters marching right past your eyes?"
Sea grumbles, flicking her gaze back and forth between the smart watch on her wrist and my screen.
"It's going up because you keep freaking out."
"No, seriously. How am I not supposed to jump when you shove your face in mine out of nowhere?"
"That's why your character keeps dying. Just stay put in the corner."
We're recording footage for this smart watch-linked game we got sponsored for. The gimmick is that if the player's real heart rate spikes, the monsters sniff it out and come charging. I'm keeping mine steady in a relaxed pose, slipping past the monsters quietly. Sea's already bitten the dust three times on-screen, and her lips are pouting like a duck's bill.
"Ugh, this is so frustrating. Why do I keep dying alone?"
"That's why I told you to watch me and learn."
"God, you're so annoying. Try getting wrecked yourself for once."
The grumbling girl suddenly presses right up against my back. Then she slips her cold hands straight down the back of my shirt collar.
"Ack, that's cold! Hey, what the hell?"
Her icy fingers clamp down on my nape.
"Oh? Yoon Dojin's heart rate is climbing. 85... 90."
"Cut it out. The monsters are coming."
I try to pull my neck away, but her hands stick like glue.
"What's the point of hiding if I'm just gonna call them all over?"
Sea brings her lips right up to my ear.
"Dojin, you gotta run quick."
Her lazy whisper dumps hot breath straight into my ear. Ice-cold hand on my neck, scorching breath in my ear—it's enough to drive anyone insane. My body twitches, breath hitching on its own.
"Hey, back off a bit."
"Why? Your ear's burning up right now."
She grazes my earlobe with her lips and blows again. My wrist watch buzzes like crazy.
"Whoa! Yoon Dojin just broke 120!"
Sea claps and cackles. Right then, the monsters on-screen all whip their heads around. They come charging at my character from every direction like maniacs.
"Hey, they're all coming! I can't see!"
I mash the controller in panic, but it's too late. The screen floods red as monsters swarm my view.
"Damn it. You totally ruined it."
"Mine was boring anyway since I died first. Way more fun dying together."
I'm left gaping in disbelief when she casually scoots over and plops down beside me.
"Let's go again. I'll actually help for real this time."
"Your 'help' is what scares me most."
"No, really. Follow me."
I half-doubt her but trail her character into a dark forest path. Not long after, a massive white wolf blocks the way, snarling viciously with fangs bared like it's about to rip us apart.
I'm tensing up to back off when Sea taps her watch screen.
"Says this is the petting motion for taming wolves."
No sooner does she say it than she leans right into me and thrusts her watch hand over my head.
I jerk back in surprise, and she furrows her brow.
"Ugh, hold still. Gotta pet it."
"You're taming the wolf in the game. Why's your hand going for my head? Can't you just wave in the air?"
"Air doesn't register well with the sensor. Needs real texture, I guess."
Sea presses her smart watch hand down on my head and starts stroking gently.
"Hey. Am I a dog now?"
"Shh, look. It's actually working—the wolf's obeying in-game."
Ridiculous as it sounds, she's right. The snarling beast flops belly-up on-screen, all docile. Red heart emojis pop up over its head. Tail wagging happily, it looks just like the neighborhood pup.
Her hand slides from my hair to my ear, warm and slow. Even knowing it's a joke, the tepid touch dries my throat.
"Our Dojin's got such nice fur. Makes me wanna keep one for real."
Sea gazes straight into my eyes with a drowsy smile.
A few days later, the game ad video we shot finally goes up on the channel. Views skyrocket almost immediately after upload—probably thanks to our last one finally hitting ten million.
"Dude, today's view spike is insane."
Sea stays glued to her phone screen, sprawled on the bed. I nod, refreshing the live comments on my tablet.
A prize event link from the sponsor sits pinned under the video. Tens of thousands clicking it at once is clearly overwhelming the page.
That's when it blows up.
"Huh? Why won't this load?"
Sea frowns and taps the screen repeatedly. The loading spinner just spins... then the event page goes white and dies.
Comments flood in with complaints about access issues. Things turn ugly fast—suspicions that it's a fake link and they never planned to give prizes anyway.
Right as the vibe sours, Sea's phone blasts a ring. Incoming: ad rep. She picks up on speaker, looking dazed.
"Sea, we're so sorry! We're trying to fix it, but the page is totally down!"
The rep's voice cracks like she's on the verge of tears. They clearly didn't expect this traffic.
"Our team's all over it, but it'll take at least two hours."
"Two hours?"
"Yeah... so, super sorry, but could you set the video to private until it's back up?"
Sea's face hardens at "private." The views were exploding—killing the momentum now would tank the whole ad.
Comments on my tablet grow nastier by the second.
"Private? Uh, that's..."
Sea bites her lip, lost. She'd just been boasting she'd take care of me with channel revenue. Seeing her shoulders slump, I can't just sit back.
I reach out to the frozen girl.
"Hey. Gimme your phone."
She hands it over, baffled.
"Huh? Who..."
"Sorry, can I talk to your sysadmin?"
The rep stammers, thrown by the new voice.
"Wh-what?"
"You said two hours? I can fix it way faster. You seeing the comments turning toxic? Pulling the video now kills the ad dead."
A sharp gasp from the other end.
"Y-yes! One sec!"
Clattering footsteps and frantic shouts follow. Moments later, a rough, breathless man's voice takes over—some ops guy sweating bullets to fix this.
"Hello? You say you can recover the page...?"
No time for chit-chat.
"Just hand over admin access first."
Keyboard clatter cuts off abruptly.
"Admin access? We can't just give that to an outsider."
Expected pushback.
"We're swamped here—don't mess around."
"I'm a student studying this stuff. It's a simple bottleneck—main server crashed under waitlist overload. No ingress splitting, right?"
"Yeah, but we're pinpointing the cause..."
"If you wanna trash the event, keep talking. Give me access—I'll patch it quick."
Silence, then murmurs of hurried orders. I switch to speaker and fire up my laptop.
> Initiating breach protocol...
> Admin access granted via temp key
> Scanning internal structure... Bottleneck at main DB ingress
> Deploying load balancer — splitting traffic to idle servers
> Compressing HD popups | Cache layer added | ACCESS STABILIZED
Luckily, the code isn't a tangled mess. Classic case: single DB flooded by tens of thousands. I recall the server load-balancing algo from my scholarship project—filters traffic upfront to handle hundreds of thousands per second without lag. Prof raved it was production-ready.
With access, I slap a temp barrier on the clogged pipe, splintering traffic across empty servers. Compress those bandwidth-hogging HD images on the fly to lighten the load.
"Done. Sea, try loading it."
She taps her pad cautiously. Exactly five minutes later...
"It opens! Holy crap, it's working again!"
The rep's shocked yell blasts through the speaker.
"We've been chasing ghosts for an hour!"
"Added front-end cache to ease DB load. Traffic's dispersed—should hold."
"Thank you so much. We'll keep the event going."
"Yeah. Please do."
I hang up casually. Sea, who's watched the whole thing, nudges my shoulder.
"Hey, Yoon Dojin. That was kinda cool just now?"
"Eh. Just stuff from a school project. Knew the basics."
I shrug and close the laptop. Tension snaps, dumping heavy fatigue. Short burst, but eyes burn from focus. I rub my stiff neck and exhale.
Sea sneaks closer, perching on the edge of her single bed. She pats her thigh.
"Brain fried? C'mere."