The Sponsor of the Returnee Gallery

I had an epiphany. I grasped the truth of the world.

Yes. It hit me all at once, out of nowhere.

The world does not reward hard work.

Nothing changes just because you put in effort.

What good is power or wealth, really?

Just lounging at home already makes me feel like the whole world is mine. There is no reason to go chasing after more.

It is not that I refuse to work.

It is simply the truth. Mm. Exactly that.

And while I sat there, enlightened, the chat on the monitor of the computer I had splurged on last week kept scrolling without pause.

Hmm… looks like I got matched with someone who doesn't know the game.

Having grasped the truth, I was no mere mage — I was a sage itself. Something this trivial was not going to make me angry.

I gave a little snort of a laugh and kindly set them straight.

Just like that, a game we had been winning handily flipped into a reverse loss, and the word Defeat filled the screen as if to mock me.

I was sad.

My first game in ages, and I ran into a psychopath the moment I queued up.

"Still a weird game even after twenty years."

Judging by how little it had changed, it was clearly a legendary title.

They say mental illness is contagious. I quietly shut off the computer, and beyond the darkening screen I caught a glimpse of blue eyes and hair tied back in a single bundle.

Had it gotten a little bigger since I last looked?

Even so, it probably hadn't gotten any smaller.

"But has it already gotten like that?"

Even twenty years later, it still didn't quite feel real — the fact that while I was in another world, not a single moment had passed on Earth.

As if everything I had lived through over there had been nothing but a dream.

Well. Of course that wasn't the case.

It had already been twenty years since I was born in Korea. A (former) witch who had more or less shed the medieval trappings and fully marinated in modern life.

Worrying over things long past did not suit someone who had awakened to sage mode.

I rested a hand on my chest.

"……They got bigger."

Having lived my first life as a sharp-featured man, these soft lumps of flesh still felt awkward — but I was used to them by now.

"I wish my height would grow a bit, though."

I had sworn this life I would become a two-meter giant, after all.

Anyway, that wasn't the important part.

"It really looks exactly the same."

I had clearly been reborn, and yet my face was identical to my past life's. The only real difference was that my eyes slanted downward a little, making me look gentler.

If I couldn't be a sharp-featured man, I at least wanted to be a sharp-featured woman…

I prodded at skin pale enough to look bloodless from never seeing sunlight. Back then, one look at my face and people scrambled to get away. On Earth, that almost never happened.

Part of it was that I barely went outside, so I didn't get much of a sense of it. And besides, there were quite a few people in a similar situation.

I lifted my gaze to the holographic text. The Gallery had occupied a corner of my vision since I was little.

Back then I was the only one in it, so I used it as a notebook while practicing Korean I hadn't written in a long time.

I hate to put it this way, but these days it had basically become an international refugee camp of a community.

Twenty years ago, the sudden appearance of the tower Babel threw the world into upheaval.

In the process, nearly half of humanity died or went missing. And every time it happened, power was granted to a portion of humanity in the form of an Awakening.

They called it the Great ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Awakening. Or the Great Ruin.

Because every time people died, hope was born.

Truly a terrifying age. People dying, and we still make wordplay out of it.

In a world like this, of course you get psychos even in games. Sigh…

I let out a pitying breath and clicked into the Gallery. Modern, user-friendly community UI filled my vision.

Lively as ever today.

Compared to real-world communities the numbers were small, but considering the presence returnees held on Earth, this place was enormous.

Among those who went missing when Babel appeared, some were swept into dimensional rifts, lived in other dimensions, and eventually came back. Those people were called returnees.

Mm… except I never went through any of that. The tower went up, I came to, and I was just dead. That was it.

Maybe that was why the system had given me the Returnee Gallery but refused to treat me like a returnee at all.

"Status."

The system command Awakened used to call up their status windows.

Most of the system was dead like that.

Still, there were plenty of upsides. The best one: tower clearing — mandatory for every Awakened — did not apply to me. If they had forced me to climb, I would have no-showed, so that was a relief.

And in a way it made sense. From the system's point of view, I was just an ordinary person who had never Awakened.

Tap.

As always, I went lurking through the community. Maybe because everyone in there was ridiculous, this place was far more entertaining than most dopamine farms.

Ding!

A notification floated up in midair. The alert tone for a returnee stream I had been enjoying lately.

Short title, but the viewer count shot up into the hundreds in seconds.

How could it not? Humanity's first Floor 97.

Ah — in the Returnee Gallery, except for Impossible difficulty, no one used the word "tower." Too many people had scraped by in other worlds only to be forced into tower clears and die. And the lower floors were just too easy, besides.

Anyway, clearing something like that up to Floor 97 was an enormous feat. And Cheonma had been back less than a year. She barely rested, tore through the tower, and outside a few exceptions she punched through floors like a highway.

The polar opposite of a rested-to-death youth like me — a born workaholic.

And more than anything…

I looked at Cheonma's face on the stream preview. Black hair falling to her waist, a build you would never take for an adult. The baby fat still clinging to her cheeks made her look even younger.

In a word: extremely cute.

The fact that only I could see that form filled in a little dopamine of its own.

For anonymity and protection, the system let streamers alter their build, voice, and so on. Of the available options, Cheonma had chosen the form of a two-meter-tall middle-aged man.

Maybe that was the look Cheonma-chan actually wanted to project?

Most of my system was dead, so I could see clean through the mosaic. Thank you, System-nim!

The moment I joined her stream, her gaze flicked toward the sky. It almost felt like she was looking at me.

"You're here. Then we begin the rest of the clear."

She snapped her eyes away and started walking.

There were enough people who had been waiting for the stream that the complaint chat wouldn't stop.

They all knew each other's nicknames, so a little pseudo-clique was forming in chat.

"This floor only needs the boss cleared, so we head straight to the boss room."

Of course, Cheonma-chan was not the type to care about any of that.

Cheonma seemed to be worrying about the same thing — her pace quickened. Watching her, I thought:

That way's the opposite direction…

She wouldn't get lost, but the area she would have to search was enormous. Forcing herself to comb through all of it felt stupid, and personally I preferred a fast pace.

So I set my hand on the error-riddled chat window.

Obviously yes.

Cheonma's eyes went wide — a rare sight.

"Ah. Thank… Grateful."

She corrected her speech in a hurry.

The reactions were pretty funny. I hated attention, so I kept it as short as possible, and the chat still lost its mind.

I couldn't even set a nickname, so it sat blank. Coins didn't exist for me, so the only way to sponsor was by spending mana. And the kind of mana the system could strip away did not exist in me.

I was a mage, and a (former) witch. Someone who moved and ruled mana — not someone it got taken from.

Still, I burned through a fair bit of mana for that.

Around Floor 97, transmitting mana was no longer easy.

"However, this much was well within what I could resolve alone."

The two-meter giant narrowed her brows as if mildly annoyed.

"Yet a technique that pinpoints a location in an instant is worthy of praise. Come to me, and I shall grant you further chance to display that skill."

On the inside, though, Cheonma's face was bright red. Truly perfect ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠AI correction ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from the system. Even for Cheonma-chan, a two-meter uncle blushing was a threat to ocular health.

No nickname, which only made it stand out more. A sponsor whose donation amount never showed.

And in that moment, sponsorships started popping off one after another.

At their sponsorships, Cheonma snarled and roared with a wager in her voice — and then windows announcing mass bans popped up one after another, leaving only the sound of her clicking her tongue.

"Vile scoundrels."

Flustered, I closed the chat.

Benefactor this, benefactor that.

They were just people who got bored and unsubscribed. Every time I sponsored, they came trailing after me like this, and the pressure was killing me.

……Maybe it was because they were the ones I used to mess around sponsoring when I was little and bored. I didn't exactly dislike it, but…

On the last chat I saw before closing, I couldn't help but agree.