The Pervert of My Favorite Indie Game's Adult Version
My name is Byeon Tae-sung. Of course, my parents hadn't chosen it with that meaning in mind. My father had been an AV actor. He'd left Korea for Japan and climbed from the very bottom of the industry all the way to the top. The undisputed king of married-woman porn, the man they called Milf Hunter Byeon Gang-sik. I don't know how the rest of the world saw him, but to me he was more worthy of respect than anyone alive.
After retiring, my father married my mother, a Japanese woman who had been our neighbor. I was born in Japan and spent my early childhood there. Thanks to my father's truly exceptional bedroom skills—only to be expected from a former AV star—my parents' marriage was so passionate it sometimes felt like they might suffocate from pure bliss.
By the time I entered sixth grade, our family had to move to Korea to help with my father's side of the family business. Language wasn't an issue. My mother had become fluent in Korean while dating my father, and while my own reading and writing skills weren't perfect, I could communicate just fine.
The problem exploded from somewhere else entirely.
"Hi, I'm Byeon Tae-sung."
That single ordinary greeting, complete with my name, made every kid in class lose their minds.
"Pfft, he said his name is Pervert!"
"Pervert, pervert, pervert!"
"Quiet! Who told you to make fun of a classmate's name? Anyone who teases Tae-sung from now on is in trouble, understand?"
But even the teacher's stern warning couldn't stop the bullying.
"Pervert, don't come near me."
"There's a pervert here! Somebody call the police!"
It eventually reached the point where my parents and homeroom teacher had a three-way meeting that included talk of changing my name.
"Mr. Byeon, I know the students teasing him are in the wrong, but the name Byeon Tae-sung isn't exactly ordinary... Have you considered a name change?"
"...Tae-sung, what do you think?"
My father asked gently, stroking my young back with a warm hand. Those kind fingers made tears spring to my eyes. Hot tears poured down the face of a thirteen-year-old like someone grieving the loss of their homeland.
Was I crying because the teasing hurt? Because I was ashamed of being named Pervert? No. The reason I cried was pure rage.
If they want to call me a pervert, fine. I'll give them exactly what they asked for.
With a venomous glint in my eyes, I refused to change my name.
"I don't want to change it. Tae-sung is my real name."
My father burst into hearty laughter and clapped me on the back.
"Hahaha! That's my boy!"
Of course, our homeroom teacher was staring at both of us with a complicated expression full of dark thoughts and anxiety. After that incident, I worked hard to live up to the "pervert" part of my name that was proudly embedded in my full name.
The weapon I held in my hand was sex itself.
Having lived in Japan, I possessed encyclopedic knowledge of adult games, porn, hentai, and erotic manga. When it came to porn especially, I had every actor, costume, position, genre, product code, and amateur work memorized. Using that knowledge, I supplied the boys at school with all sorts of delicious material.
Obviously, if I could go back now I'd slap my younger self across the face and tell him to stop the crazy shit and just change his damn name. But the result was that no one ever teased me about my name at school again.
At some point, I went from being "the pervert" to becoming an actual god to all the elementary and middle school boys in the neighborhood—the God of Erotica who satisfied their budding sexual curiosity. Naturally, the girls and female teachers began treating me like a piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of their shoes, but that was an unavoidable sacrifice.
"Sigh... That really was a long time ago."
It was past three in the morning. The only light in the dark room came from the computer monitor. On screen, a game was currently installing.
Its title was Elysia Story Ver.R18.
Elysia Story? What's that?
Anyone hearing the name for the first time might think it was some obscure title they'd never encountered, and they'd be right. Elysia Story was my own personal little indie game—what I affectionately called my "favorite indie game."
I'd first discovered it a year ago, during my first university summer break. While I was lazing around the house with nothing to do during the much longer college vacation, an old middle-school friend sent me a message.
After some more pointless guy banter, he got to the point. He'd joined a game development club, and his senior had made something that needed testers. It would only take about an hour.
"A game? I don't really play anything unless it makes my dick twitch..."
I wasn't against normal games, but my tastes were very specific. Adult games. My passion for them burned so hot that I'd even joined translation teams. After clearing countless adult games, ordinary ones no longer gave me any thrill whatsoever.
In the end, moved by the club's pitiful situation, I agreed to test Elysia Story. That decision turned out to be the greatest choice of my gaming life.
Even though it was an indie title, the characters, illustrations, and world-building were all perfectly tailored to my tastes. When I asked my friend, he said the senior had even drawn every single blade of grass in the background himself. The game radiated an almost manic level of craftsmanship.
Eventually my friend dropped out and the club disbanded, but my connection with that senior continued through email. I'd played the first part of Elysia Story. After that, the senior kept developing Part 2, Part 3, and even the concluding Part 4, asking me to evaluate each one.
By the final ending of Part 4, my tear ducts had exploded. I still remembered the look on my little sister's face as she stared at me like I was crazy while I sat there bawling at the monitor.
And that was where my happiness ended.
After tasting the complete Elysia Story, every other game felt like nothing more than the cover of an AV video glimpsed during the post-nut clarity. You know that feeling, right? No matter how much you stare at breasts or asses, nothing stirs. Zero excitement. That even applied to the adult games I'd once loved so much.
A whole year passed like that. Elysia Story remained my precious little indie game. I'd written several passionate reviews online praising its greatness, but aside from a few people, there wasn't much reaction. Some even asked if I was the developer myself.
"Fucking idiots..."
I couldn't understand why they wouldn't appreciate something this good, but in modern society where personal taste is respected as long as it isn't criminal, I couldn't force people to play it.
Today probably would've ended the same way—another lonely, meaningless battle on the internet—if my phone hadn't started vibrating.
It was past ten in the morning. While I was still rolling around in bed, a notification popped up saying I'd received an email. The moment I saw it, an awed curse flew out of my mouth.
"Oh my god, holy shit!"
"Tae-sung! I told you not to curse in the house!"
"S-sorry!"
I quickly apologized to my mother, sat up properly, and opened the email. There was only one address for which I'd enabled notifications.
The developer of Elysia Story.
"Hoo... calm down, Tae-sung..."
I steadied my trembling heart and opened the message. Its contents read as follows:
Drip. Drip. As I quietly read through the email, hot tears poured from my eyes that had been dry for the past year.
"Oppa, food's—"
My little sister, who had opened the door, froze the moment she saw me. It wasn't exactly a pretty sight—a man in his twenties clutching his phone to his chest and sobbing his heart out.
"Mom! Oppa went crazy again!"
"Hee-yeon! I told you not to curse in the house!"
"Then stop blaming me and come look at him yourself!"
"Byeon Hee-yeon!"
From outside the room came the sharp voices of my mother and sister, but none of it reached my ears. My heart was swept away by waves of emotion, like a sailor who had finally discovered a new continent after years of sailing.
"Thank you... sob, thank you so much."
To the developer who had spent a whole year preparing this patch, the only thing I could do was repeat my thanks like a madman.
The next day at three in the morning, I updated Elysia Story exactly as the instructions inside the file told me to. It was a shame that I wouldn't be able to use the previous save rewards, but experiencing the newly reborn adult version of Elysia Story for the first time wasn't a bad trade-off.
"Alright. Now I just have to wait for it to finish."
12%, 13%, 14%. My excitement rose along with the progress bar. For the first time in a whole year, my heart was truly racing. I hadn't even launched the game yet, but I already felt like I was about to get hard.
But contrary to my expectations, the patch took longer than anticipated. Even after thirty minutes, it had only reached thirty percent. It seemed overhauling the game's very foundation required quite a bit of time.
"Whatever. It's late anyway. I'll just go to sleep."
I threw my tired body onto the bed. The tension that had kept my muscles tight from excitement slowly melted away.
Right now, both my parents and my sharp-eyed little sister are gone.
My parents had gone to our relatives' house, and my sister was staying over at a friend's. It was the perfect opportunity, a gift from heaven to go along with the patch.
Everyone knows the proper way to play an adult game is with one hand on the mouse and the other between your legs.
"Haaam~ Tomorrow I can focus on the game without worrying about anyone opening the door."
After yawning so widely my jaw nearly dislocated, I followed my drooping eyelids into deep sleep.
About two hours after Tae-sung fell asleep, the patch finally reached 100%. At the same moment, the monitor began emitting a blinding light. But Tae-sung didn't notice any of it. In his dreams he was already happily playing Elysia Story Ver.R18, smacking his lips with a blissful expression.
Soon the light faded. And the Tae-sung who had been lying in bed vanished without a trace, as if he had been nothing more than dust scattered by the wind.
The man who had fallen into a sleep so deep it resembled unconsciousness lay upon a luxurious bed.
"Mmm... Is it already this late?"
The man frowned at the warm sunlight tickling his eyes, then stretched refreshingly.
"Breakfast? Not necessary. Straight to the game."
The moment he got up with a deadly serious expression, the man began searching for his computer. But he soon tilted his head in confusion.
"Huh? Where did my computer go?"
Finally realizing the situation, the man shouted with a dumbfounded face.
"W-where am I?"
Of course, it was an empty cry with no one there to answer.