Find the Value of the Function (4)
As soon as Choi Junseok stepped inside the house, he saw his mother with a flustered expression.
His sister didn't seem to have returned from school yet.
Even in a situation that could make anyone's soul leave their body, his mother fixated on the most random detail.
"Junseok, who is that woman behind you!"
"…"
Lee Nayeon gave a slight bow, acknowledging his mother's imposing presence.
Aside from Choi Junseok, Lee Jun-hui was the first person Lee Nayeon had ever greeted first.
Choi Junseok felt strangely reassured by his mother's usual demeanor and took off his shoes.
At the same time, Lee Nayeon, judging that there was no danger, quietly vanished.
"Oh my goodness! She disappeared!"
His mother's eyes widened in shock, but Lee Jun-hui quickly regained her composure.
"I'll explain everything slowly."
"I already heard the gist from the Player Management Agency staff just now."
"That'll make things quicker."
While they were chatting, the container door burst open and his younger sister, Choi Hye-ri, walked in.
"Mom! There were guys in suits outside… Wait, is that you, Oppa?"
Choi Junseok looked back and forth between his mother and sister, mouthing the question.
'She knows too?'
His mother quietly closed her eyes and nodded.
"Let's talk over dinner."
Choi Junseok was amazed by the Player Management Agency's information-gathering capabilities.
They had said they knew roughly what was going on with him, but his mother seemed to have heard almost every detail from them.
He was once again reminded of just how thorough the agency's intelligence network really was.
The news and broadcasts had only mentioned extremely limited information.
"I've never seen a government agency work this efficiently. It feels like they know almost everything about me."
In movies and dramas, government authorities were usually portrayed as incompetent in these situations, but the Korean officials Choi Junseok had encountered might be the most competent ones he'd ever seen.
They had pieced together his tower-clearing records and the fact that he was climbing one floor per day, mixing speculation with truth to track his whereabouts.
"After you told me you awakened but didn't register with the government, I started looking into it."
"…You figured out I'm that F-grade player from the news?"
"Yeah. Do you think I only see you once or twice a day? A mother can tell if her son is up to something just by looking at his eyebrows."
That made sense.
She was his mother, after all.
"It's not like you didn't know anything about players. You could've gotten government support, taken some classes, and slowly looked for work, but you went straight into the tower."
"You knew from back then?"
"It was just a guess."
Throughout their conversation, Choi Hye-ri had been completely indifferent despite the topic being about her brother.
"Hey, aren't you even surprised? I told you I'm that F-grade player from the news."
"So what? Should I give you a compliment or something?"
"Hey, don't eat that chicken. Put the jokbal down."
"Aish! The worst thing is giving something and then taking it back. Messing with someone's food is the most unfair thing ever!"
"That's enough, both of you."
Choi Hye-ri calmed down and looked at her brother.
"So… you're that Function guy?"
"Function? Me? Why Function?"
"You didn't know? You're pretty famous. An unknown F-grade, right? They took it from F(x)."
Though their words were casual, Choi Junseok could feel that his mother and sister's gazes had changed slightly from before.
Their eyes held clear joy and warm affection.
It was the look of people who had found hope.
He remembered the last time the four of them had raised their glasses together in the house before everything fell apart.
His father had worked as a C-grade player, literally bleeding to earn money.
Yet even then, Korea's insane housing prices made it impossible to buy a house without a loan, even with that money.
It wasn't an expensive house, but they had scraped together every last bit of cash, borrowed from everyone around them, and bought it anyway.
Then, as if the world were mocking them, a Magic Tower rose nearby.
Even the heavens were indifferent.
If the tower had risen directly on their property and caused damage, they would have qualified for government compensation.
But their house was in that ambiguous border zone where compensation wasn't recognized.
They were forced to abandon their home and leave.
All that remained were bank debts and money borrowed from others.
The only things they received were an emergency disaster relief fund of about one million won for a four-person household and the right to move into a refugee camp (a converted container facility).
'Who's mocking who?'
The plummeting property values needed several more zeros added to even begin to describe the loss.
That was partly why he hadn't immediately reported to the government and volunteered.
He still couldn't forget the conversation at Incheon City Hall with his father, and what the official had said.
- Sir, if someone's house gets swept away in a flood or a landslide buries their car, does the government compensate them?
His father had brought up the obvious point.
- But you still issued an evacuation order!
- No, sir. It wasn't an order. We provided guidance. Living there is your choice. How could we infringe on your freedom of residence?
- You're not even fixing the broken sewer system. How is that different from telling us to leave?
- Well… if something happens and someone dies, we'd be the ones in trouble, so we gave the procedural guidance. For related inquiries, please contact the waterworks authority.
- Can't you do something? My family of four is about to end up on the streets. My daughter is a high school student right now. You're telling us to live in a container during such a sensitive time!
The official let out an obvious sigh.
- Sir. If the government compensated every case like yours… there'd be no standard for who gets help and who doesn't. Besides, if the government compensated everything, why would insurance even exist? You should have gotten insurance.
That was how the officials behaved.
His father's words about becoming a credit delinquent and being unable to get a jeonse loan fell on deaf ears.
It was the first time Choi Junseok had seen his father speak so humbly to someone.
They weren't even selected as beneficiaries for the national disaster relief fund.
Even if all that could be chalked up to an unavoidable natural disaster…
The real problem was that it wasn't just that.
His father climbed the tower as if trying to avenge the plummeting property values, filled with rage.
Even the day after getting injured, he didn't rest and kept climbing.
He never took a day off, even after returning from the tower.
Two jobs, three jobs, even four.
As if the tower's appearance and the crash in housing prices were somehow his fault.
He even picked up smoking again, something Lee Jun-hui had quit when she got pregnant with Choi Junseok.
His hands were so worn from rough work that his fingernails were all cracked, and he would wrap each finger in bandages and take painkillers to start his day.
With a body that exhausted, his father climbing the tower until the day he died might have been a fate that was already written.
One day.
Choi Junseok's father, Choi Hyeon-cheol, called him over and offered him a cigarette.
It was the first time that had ever happened.
That day, Choi Hyeon-cheol let out a deep sigh that he had never shown in front of the two women.
Even that sigh was mixed with cigarette smoke.
"Junseok, no matter what happens, you have to protect your mother and sister."
"What's with you all of a sudden? Don't act so dramatic. Like you're about to die."
"Hey. Who's dying? That's just how a man's life is."
"That's a pretty dangerous statement in this day and age."
His father smiled bitterly and continued.
"Hey. A man should be able to take responsibility for his wife and children. You know?"
"Ha, that's such an old-fashioned thing to say. Don't you know 'sub-male' is trending these days?"
"Sub-male? What's that?"
"It's the opposite of 'super-male,' apparently."
"If you're a sub-male and still a man, you should act like one."
Choi Junseok chuckled at his father's words.
"Hey, why are you laughing? Isn't that just the natural order?"
"Yeah…"
"Ever since Homo sapiens started walking on two legs. That's been a man's virtue and role."
"There goes the old man philosophy again. Take care of your body, Dad. Don't worry about Mom and Hye-ri."
His father lit another cigarette, as if agreeing that was fair.
The sound of insects and the starlight above filled the silence.
After catching his breath for a moment, his father spoke again.
"I'm sorry, Junseok. You gave up on the university you wanted to go to because of me."
"It wasn't because of you. I just wasn't good enough at studying."
"I know that's not true. I'm sorry."
"There's nothing to be sorry about. If I'd studied well, I would've gotten a full scholarship anywhere. The problem started with me not being good enough."
"Junseok. A man's life can be this pathetic and futile."
The tip of his father's cigarette glowed red.
His insides were probably burning just like that.
The ashes curled and scattered in the wind.
"I can rebuild this family. I'll take responsibility. So don't worry."
"I'll help too."
"You punk. Just take care of yourself."
Choi Junseok looked up at the sky, feeling awkward, and changed the subject.
"The stars are really clear these days."
"Yeah. Maybe the tower is blocking the moonlight."
"Can you see stars from the tower too?"
"No. Well, some places you can."
"If it's dangerous, just stick to the lower floors, Dad."
"Is there anything in this world that's not dangerous?"
"…"
A brief silence fell.
His father slowly exhaled smoke and continued.
"Until now, I thought I'd lived without a single regret. At least toward the woman I chose, my children, and my parents—I lived so I could look up at the sky without shame. I thought that was the right way for a man to live."
His father looked at Choi Junseok and gave a small smile.
But that smile looked so sad.
"But lately, I've been starting to feel a little ashamed."
That was the last conversation Choi Junseok had alone with his father.
Only after Incheon Magic Tower had taken his life and destroyed their family's future did it finally disappear.
His mother couldn't bring herself to use the life insurance payout to pay off the house debt.
For a while, he hadn't seen his mother and sister looking this bright.
It might have been the expressions his father had wanted to restore until his very last moment.
"Hey, Oppa! Plinsa, as in Player Inside. You don't know that internet forum? You must've heard of it even before you were a player."
"Of course I know what it is."
"Anyway, when you scroll through YouTube Shorts, Function-related content keeps popping up. You really didn't know?"
Player Inside.
Commonly abbreviated as Plinsa, it was an internet community.
All kinds of information from various fields—tower strategies, recruitment posts, tips, training methods—were posted there.
He hadn't bothered to sign up to protect his identity.
More accurately, he couldn't.
To register, you had to prove you were an Awakened, which required attaching a government-issued player certificate for verification.
"The fact that you're called Function first spread on the internet."
"…"
"Anyway, you're really hot there."
"In a good way?"
Choi Hye-ri nodded as she took a huge bite of chicken leg.
"They say you restored the crumpled pride of F-grade players in one go?"
It wasn't hard to understand.
Had the world ever paid this much attention to F-grades before?
In reality, if you included C through F grades, they made up 70% of all players.
They were the absolute majority in player society.
They formed the sturdy backbone and mid-tier of the towers, yet society was surprisingly indifferent to them.
At the same time, they were the ones who had experienced all kinds of mistreatment in player society.
In just two days, clearing the third and fourth floors consecutively.
The world had been burning with all sorts of theories and conspiracy theories about why the F-grade player had gone silent.
"Oppa, look at this."
Choi Hye-ri searched something on the internet and immediately handed it to him.
It was a captured post from Plinsa that had been circulating online.
The screen clearly showed the pent-up frustrations of lower-ranked players who had always been treated like leftovers among the higher ranks.
"This is from two days ago?"
It was right after Choi Junseok had cleared the first and second floors with unprecedented records and shocked the world.
Plinsa had also caught fire.
"You're excited. Really excited."
Even as Choi Junseok said that, one corner of his mouth was curling up in a smile.
Having experienced being treated like leftovers while working as a porter, he was glad they could laugh and relieve the stress of climbing.
"So does that mean my son is going to hit it big?"
"Hit it big… I guess so."
Surprisingly, the two of them seemed to accept it without difficulty, perhaps because their father had been a C-grade player.
"Anyway. You didn't even mention your rank. And you didn't say anything about registering with the government either. But you said you climbed, so I wondered if maybe… I didn't think it would actually be true."
Honestly, he'd been a bit careless.
"Well, that's how it is… I'll finish the rest of the story later."
"Alright. Be careful… Don't make any decisions today! Think it through carefully! You know that, right?"
There was a trace of anxiety in his mother's expression that hadn't been there before.
He didn't need to ask what scene had flashed through her mind.
"Ah, of course. Don't worry."
Choi Junseok grabbed the doorknob with his father's resolve in his heart.
The key to resolving all that resentment was in his hands.
'Now then… what should I tear into first?'
The corner of Choi Junseok's mouth slowly rose.
It was finally time for him to slowly debut in the world as a real player.