Chapter 10
But what kind of otome game is this?
At first I thought it was just because they felt sorry for me.
With all the janitors gone, I was stuck alone in a tent corner, just sipping drinks and spinning empty glasses.
In a world where people were scarce, it wouldn't have been hard to blend in if I really wanted to.
But I made up my mind to treat myself like an outsider.
Look at this.
“You know, this scar came from when I almost got sliced by the claws of a monster called Serpent. It flipped half the city upside down that day.”
“Me? I was flying a fighter jet once and nearly rammed straight into a monster called Balokta. The electromagnetic field went haywire when it flew by, everything on the gauges went dark. I opened my parachute, but when I looked down I saw it with its mouth wide open. Thanks to that, I set the world record for freefall.”
“Mine is even wilder. I popped out of a monster called Basilisk right before a tank blew up inside the tunnel it was digging. Ever since then, just seeing lights makes my hands shake. Haha, PTSD? Who the hell has time for luxury like that? Being alive is the real treatment.”
Hah. What kind of lives are these people actually living?
People who dodged monster claws, fell from the sky, and leaped clear of exploding tanks were all laughing together.
Humans who had lasted until retirement age in this world.
Not just dead weight, but actual survivors who had beaten the monsters at their own game.
Listening to them made my head spin.
I was the guy who had only served a year and a half in the army, come home, and spent his days eating rice and playing games on the computer.
Not the story of some manly hero, just a rice-eating human NPC.
This wasn’t the difference between popular and unpopular kids, this was on the level of Tet and Egon.
So I sat there sipping my drink alone, until she came over.
Ha Min-ah.
Ah, she’s probably pitying me and offering to drink with me.
I thought that with genuine sincerity.
Goddess, hero, whatever nickname they gave her, she had them for a reason.
A symbol of humanity and a good person to boot.
She might actually do something like this.
Stay with me for a bit, give a nice laugh, and then go back to her group of heroes.
I believed that.
…But she didn’t.
“S-skeleton mask?!”
“Young man… could it be you were actually at the scene where the Belial Bird appeared?”
“Yes? Ah, no… I just lived in that apartment building.”
“!!”
“Whoa, you’re amazing! You saw a Disaster-class monster but you’re still going to work after only a week!”
“…Well, I have to work even if I’m not sitting still. As long as my body is fine, I have to keep moving.”
“This guy is totally—”
“A real one! A civilian with a mental state that isn’t normal! Aren’t you going to hammer a stake in him?”
The glasses clinked one after another.
Captain Ha Min-ah moved her seat next to me, and the whole table started vibrating around her.
The remaining teachers gathered around us too, even the heavy-drinking legend soldiers.
“Hey, there’s a newbie here!”
“Oh~ First time meeting you, I’m Seunghwan. You’re young but you seem fine.”
The Cognitive Dampening Mode had wiped out any suspicion of “who is this guy?”, but now there was plenty of curiosity about “what the hell is this guy doing?”
It was already too late to sneak away.
So I just gave a vague answer: “Civilian, went through a monster attack last month.”
“Belial Bird? That’s a Disaster-class monster! You saw one for real?!”
“This guy, did he get the hero treatment? His willpower is rock-hard!”
…Please, no more of this, please.
The teachers’ reactions only got more heated, and I forced myself to keep smiling as the dark hero Bone Mask.
That was when Ha Min-ah’s eyes changed.
“Seunghwan.”
She looked straight at me.
“So… you saw him too? The ‘man in the bone mask’ who appeared together with the monster in that apartment complex.”
My throat went stiff for a second.
“…Ah, well. I was just running away, so I don’t really remember. Maybe… I didn’t see it?”
Haha.
I couldn’t exactly say “that’s exactly what happened.”
If the hero said it himself, that would mean he was just another YouTuber self-promoting, not a real hero.
So I just gave a dry smile.
But Ha Min-ah’s gaze wasn’t curious, it was glowing with something closer to certainty.
She stared at my face for a long time, too long, like she was fitting together forgotten pieces one by one.
And then her mouth opened.
“Seunghwan… I think I can guess the identity of the man in the bone mask.”
“Huh? Eh, really?!”
“Bone… mask?”
“Oh, right, you mean the hero cosplayer from those YouTube channels the kids watch lately?”
“No. I saw him with my own eyes. He wasn’t a fake hero. He was the real one.”
Thanks for the compliment, but…
Before that, the moment Ha Min-ah said she “knew” my identity, my mouth went completely shut.
The teachers’ reactions were mixed.
These people had grown up in a world where superpowers and hero associations were basically turned off, so they survived only through military training, tactics, and equipment skills.
Most of them were skeptical of the “hero story” or just dismissed it as bar talk exaggeration.
But Ha Min-ah was different.
Her gaze felt like it was piercing straight through me, and only then did I understand.
Why the Cognitive Dampening Mode had reacted so strongly to her.
“This person… really knew me from the very beginning?”
The nickname “Goddess” definitely had a reason behind it.
With the alcohol in the tent getting thicker, Ha Min-ah continued in a quiet voice.
The laughter and clinking glasses from the teachers sounded far away.
“The identity of the man in the bone mask is…”
“Identity…?”
“Definitely a person with incredibly upright conduct in daily life and excellent self-management!”
“……”
I revise my earlier thought.
Separate from the Cognitive Dampening Mode, I’m pretty sure even I would die before my identity could be exposed to this woman.
“In my opinion, he’s probably in a high position like a corporate executive or a senior officer in the military when he’s not hero-ing. Someone who carries huge responsibility and is a true elite.”
Wait… not at all.
I was just the guy who earned money playing games and stealing rice, the classic rice-obsessed salaryman A.
“And when he has free time, he pushes his body in ways we can’t even imagine!”
Training or whatever, my entire exercise routine was just breathing and completing daily mobile game quests ten times in a row.
But Captain Ha Min-ah’s eyes sparkled with such clarity that the alcohol didn’t even touch her, and she spilled out something completely different.
Like a kid who had been carrying a fantasy for years suddenly getting to play it for the first time.
“And inside the mask there must be… an incredibly handsome face. Or maybe he had a glorious wound from fighting a monster and had no choice but to wear the mask!”
No. No way.
The face in the bone mask right in front of Captain Ha Min-ah was exactly that.
A completely average Korean male face.
Not handsome, not ugly, the type you pass by even as a fresh army recruit: “Ah, just some guy.”
But I swallowed that remark.
She might dump reality’s ashes all over it, but I couldn’t do that to a pure fantasy she was holding onto.
Finally I stayed silent.
Any parent who spilled Santa Claus’s secret to their child?
Tonight, in front of this woman, the “man in the bone mask” would remain hidden.
“Okay. Yeah. That… sounds like a good idea.”
I lifted my beer glass slightly and gave her an extremely shallow, dry smile.
Inside I was sighing: “Sigh, this is going to become such a pain later,” but I hid it from my face.
A night breeze blew past the tent.
Under the lights of the street stalls, a certain crack and a very small alliance were forming between the two of us at the same time.
That moment.
[Main Heroine ‘Ha Min-ah’ has successfully interacted above a certain threshold with you.]
[You can activate Dating Sim Mode.]
[Activate?]
“…Dating Sim Mode?”
“Huh? What?”
“Ah, no. I just… made it up.”
A semi-transparent window flashed in front of my eyes.
Too absurd to stop, my mouth moved first.
Dating Sim Mode in this world where monsters were eating people alive?
But… yeah, thinking about it, it made sense.
When I was digging through the mode packs, the gallery uncle’s words came back.
“This game has no romance. So add a dating mode. While farming monsters, flirting with the girls is the ultimate fun!”
So I put in the “Mihot Mode” I bought with half serious half joke.
Honestly… it was just for side dishes.
But if this actually came true?
[Dating Sim Mode has activated.]
[Explanation: Getting beaten by monsters all the time but unable to date means life is too empty. During war, having kids anyway ㅇㅇ]
“Who the hell made this mode.”
That was accurate, but why did it feel so damn convincing.
But the real problem wasn’t that.
A new tab opened under the window.
───
Name: Ha Min-ah
Job: Army Captain
Background:
In her childhood, she witnessed her mother being devoured alive by a monster.
The shock caused her to lock herself in her room for three years, but she read in the diary left behind: “I want to protect the world” and enlisted in the military.
Currently, her father is still strongly against her decision.
Expected survival period: 98.21% chance of death within 3 months
───
“Ugh, damn.”
Romance my ass, this was fucking dark.
This wasn’t a dating simulator, it was a death forecast simulator.
I unconsciously lifted my glass.
I needed to escape reality with something other than alcohol.