Gawol (3)
It was a horrific misfortune.
There was no other way to put it.
The precise medical name was… what was it again?
People generally call it TS Disease.
An unidentified phenomenon that, one day without warning, rewrites a human body from the ground up. Calling it a disease hardly felt right — it was more like a devil's prank that arrived with no notice at all.
"You leave the country tomorrow, right? We came to take your mind off things a little."
"Your dad makes it sound so easy, doesn't he? We already got permission from your coach and the instructors — they said you'd never come out on your own. Even the coach said you practice too much and that it would be good for you to get away for a bit."
If I hadn't gotten into my parents' car that day, would everything have been fine?
No. That was never going to happen.
The drive out to the athletes' village wasn't short. They had carved time out of their busy schedules just to see me, and even then it would only last an hour at most. I couldn't betray that kind of devotion for a single brief visit.
My tragedy was no one's fault.
How could I blame my father for TS Disease striking him while he was behind the wheel? The agony of your body rewriting itself while you're still conscious — there was no way he could have kept control of the car.
So my father did everything he could.
What happened to me was an act of God. At least, that was how I chose to see it.
"Dahun's dad! What's wrong?"
"Ugh. My body… suddenly— Aagh, ghhh—!"
Of all places, we were descending a mountain road.
Father clung to the wheel with everything he had and groped for the brake. His efforts meant nothing. The car body lurched and bucked without rhyme or reason, and none of us had time to think.
While I sat frozen in panic, Mom threw her whole body over me.
Why would she do something like that? And where did that kind of courage even come from?
I still don't really understand what it means to be a parent.
The instant the car left the cliff and hung weightless in the air, the world seemed to stop. In that silence, out of all the countless things she could have said, Mom chose one last will:
"I love you, my son."
CRASH—!
I don't remember much after that.
The car rolled over and over, and the world flipped dozens of times. Roars thundered through the dark. Dizzying impacts slammed in from every direction. I think I tasted dirt in my mouth — or maybe the coppery tang of blood.
What I know for certain is that Mom's sacrifice saved me.
The wreck they found after Master's missing-persons report was closer to a heap of scrap metal than a car. They said the fact that anyone was alive at all was a miracle.
That was why I never saw my parents' bodies.
Please don't go look, Master begged me from my hospital bed, tears streaming down his face. How could I not understand? The moment a kind man like him made a request like that, it was obvious what had become of them.
Their faces would have been unrecognizable. They probably hadn't even been able to make the exteriors presentable. If I had looked at those two faces, the images of the mother and father I knew would have been painted over with something monstrous.
That was what Master had been afraid of.
But there was something Master didn't know.
I still had a faint memory — of a hand, torn free, still gripping the steering wheel to the very end. Even death couldn't pry my father's fingers off that wheel. So, apparently, the arm itself had simply been ripped away.
Naturally, I was the only survivor.
My parents' bodies alone weren't enough for identification. Inside the car, the only thing still breathing was a blood-soaked little girl, and no one initially thought it was me. They only figured it out because the clothes I was wearing looked absurdly oversized on me.
They said TS Disease wasn't contagious.
But that cruel devil, as if laughing at me, laid the same curse on me before it left.
When I opened my eyes, I had become a girl who looked maybe mid-teens.
"Very well. Per the patient's request, we will not proceed with the amputation. Daily life will be considerably inconvenient. Are you certain this is all right?"
"You said the chance of recovery isn't zero percent. Then I want to try walking, even a little."
"Understood. Someone will come by today regarding your new identity."
Mom had nearly succeeded in protecting my body — but not all of it.
From below my left knee to the tips of my toes, something had gone wrong mid-transformation. Hideous burn-like scars had formed, and the limb no longer functioned properly. If weight shifted the wrong way or any impact landed, pain like my body being torn apart would flare through me.
The doctor's recommendation was amputation. It was already as good as a corpse, he said.
But my own stubborn attachment decided to preserve that dead left leg.
And so the national kendo champion Han Dahun died, and Han Daeun was born.
A kid who had done nothing but kendo, stripped of his body — there was nothing left.
No. That wasn't entirely true.
There was the enormous hospital bill waiting for the treatment of my leg. A one-room apartment scraped together from my parents' inheritance and insurance money. And an outdated brainwave connector that my parents — who had been VR device researchers — had used for experiments.
"Maybe I should just throw this out. It takes up way too much space."
The reason someone who knew nothing about VR didn't throw the connector away was simple: it was a trace of my parents. That was all.
Still, I was curious about the machine filling up my room, so I tried logging in once — and that was the start of a life as a gaming shut-in.
Maybe this, too, was a twist of fate.
The device my parents had been developing was meant for people with disabilities or severe paralysis. Unlike modern connectors that scan both brainwaves and physical motion, this one was a radical piece of hardware that acted directly on brainwaves alone.
It seemed to have been built to gift people an ordinary daily life, not a game — and of all things, I fell into gaming.
By now the connector was practically mine alone. Because I wasn't using it for its intended purpose, there were side effects.
Ordinary gamers can only set their sensitivity — more precisely, their Sensory Synchronization Rate — up to thirty percent. Mine, on the other hand, will not drop below seventy.
It did nothing for game performance, and I couldn't lower it, so all I got was pain — extreme, unrelenting pain.
Because it was still in development, I couldn't use streaming software or replay features. And if I switched to a newer device, I couldn't move Gawol properly at all.
That was why I could never become a streamer or a pro gamer.
I had thrashed and clawed at every possible path. Neither one was open to me.
A body without a single use.
But I couldn't quit the game.
Inside it, the keen senses and physicality of my old self — the self who used to train for tournaments — came flooding back. While I was moving like that, reality didn't cross my mind for even a second.
I simply couldn't let that feeling go.
The heretic of Infinity Black. The nightmare of streamers and pro gamers. An assassin who killed targets for money — Gawol had already been building that notoriety for two full years.
"Huuuh."
When I opened my eyes, it was midday this time.
What had I done last? Gone to the convenience store, eaten ramen. Then my mood soured and I just came home. Climbing the stairs had been so exhausting that I'd fallen asleep the moment I got in.
Thinking about it, that was kind of a waste.
I should've just eaten it. Every drop of that ramen broth was money.
How important could my mood possibly be?
Still, this body had excellent fuel efficiency. I'd never managed it properly, so I couldn't say for sure, but if I had, the physical specs would have been considerable. Even living like this absolute mess, I never caught so much as a cold, and in-game I didn't fall short of my athlete days.
If not for the wrecked leg, it would have been a blessed physique without exaggeration.
Proof enough: I still wasn't particularly hungry.
I'd just clear my head a little and log in to play.
On the monitor, Sulpang was deep into a heated stream. I took a sip of cola and unmuted the audio.
"No luck at all today. Can one accessory really be this hard to drop?"
"Thank you for the donation from Sulpang'sFolli— wait, NOOO! It's not that bad! My hair is still thick, okay? And Gawol — you just have to accept that one. What can you do? It's not like she's coming back, right?"
Mm. Sorry, but I am coming back.
When I hunted for fun, I usually avoided killing the same person back-to-back. But when a job came in, like now, the rules were different. If I only killed the one I was paid to kill, it would look suspicious. I had to pick a few convenient streamers and take them out alongside the real target, so no one could tell who the actual mark was.
It wasn't exactly mandatory… but, well. It was fun.
Anyway, this round's winner was Sulpang.
I'd had my eye on him for a while. Decent baseline skill. A thick fanbase that would howl loudly enough to make excellent gossip. Enough seniority in a siege guild that he had more enemies than he realized. And, well — his reactions when he died were entertaining. Good hand feel.
I flipped through a few more streams and settled on about three sacrificial lambs.
Good. Rough location lock complete.
Sulpang happened to be near where he'd last logged out, so I'd kill him first. The rest I could hunt down in order. A simple route sketched itself out in my head.
The streamers mid-broadcast would insist they hadn't done anything wrong — but I was just as innocent as they were.
Except you all shine.
I'm stuck down here in the deepest gutter, and you're up on a glittering stage showing yourselves off to your hearts' content. You're doing freely the things I can never do.
The only difference between us is that one of my left feet is crippled.
Is that such a crime? I could have been good at this too. Even if I failed, it should have been my failure.
So… I'm allowed a little payback, aren't I? It's not like anyone actually dies.
I—
I have reasons to hate streamers.
I lay down in the connector and shut the door. System messages appeared.
Launching Infinity Black.
Welcome back, Gawol. Thank you for returning.
Already, my heart felt at ease.
The half-finished cola belonged in the fridge. And I belonged inside the connector.
Feeling my body transform into Gawol, I slowly closed my hand around my weapon.