The Ultimate Blue-Eyed White Men Descend Upon Us
Early summer. The arcade and PC bang were booming thanks to The Ultimate Blue-Eyed White Man, and every single mealtime brought the surreal sight of Yoo Seop bowing deeply in my direction. Or maybe it wasn’t early summer. Even indoors, sweat poured out of me like crazy. The way the male customers kept shooting me these strange glances was a little annoying, but they never said anything outright. I mean, if I were in their shoes and saw a girl my age sweating like this, I’d probably stare too.
“Can we please put in some air conditioning? I feel like I’m actually going to steam to death in here.”
“That’s gonna cost a fortune, seriously. We already have fans and it’s this bad? What the hell are we supposed to do in the middle of summer?”
Yoo Seop grumbled under his breath. I understood why—he was still traumatized by the insane price of air conditioners, which could eat up two months of an average salaryman’s paycheck. Still, we had to install them soon. If my memory served me right, 1994 was going to be recorded as the worst heatwave in South Korean history until the day I died in my original world. In a crowded space like this, the combination of body heat from dozens of people and the thermal output of dozens of computers was going to turn this place into a literal death trap.
“Even at this point, people are still coming…”
“Right? It’s good for us, but it’s honestly kind of amazing.”
Jeong-a nodded in agreement with Yoo Seop. Honestly, I felt the same. If it were me, I’d just stay glued inside my house. What, you think it’s no different from usual? Shut up.
“Eun-ji… hey… come look at this…”
Since we were making the rhythm game music here, I’d dragged Eun-ji along too. I felt a little bad about it. She was also getting quite a few stares from the guys, even if not as many as me.
“Let’s see…”
Eun-ji draped herself limply over me as I sat in the chair and slipped on the headphones. Her chest pressed against the back of my neck like a memory foam pillow, soft and—wait, what?
“You’re not wearing anything?”
“Wearing what?”
“…A bra.”
I didn’t want to say it too loudly, so I whispered it directly into her ear. For some reason, every time I spoke, Eun-ji’s body trembled. I hadn’t even gotten that close, but maybe it still tickled.
“…It’s too hot.”
Yoon I-seo had no idea that Lee Eun-ji was currently having some extremely intense thoughts while blushing furiously.
While Yoon I-seo and Lee Eun-ji were lost in their own little world of shared delusions, a very peculiar group had just finished their procedures at Gimpo International Airport and set foot on Korean soil.
“So this is… the country that owns FoxC?”
Three bearded, blue-eyed white men with absolutely imposing physiques. The ultimate blue-eyed white men had arrived…!
“Ned, you really shouldn’t say that in front of the person herself.”
“Huh? Why not?”
“Sigh… I really should’ve brought Richard along.”
“So what are we doing now?”
“We’re heading straight to… Seoul? Yes. We’ll stop by KUST and meet that Fox person while we’re at it. We’ll split up from Mr. Linux when we head over to Korea Telecom.”
“That person? Is Fox your friend?”
“Shut your mouth, Ned.”
Incheon Airport was in a bit of an uproar. The moment the trio stepped out, they were hit by the insane heat and immediately flagged down a taxi.
“It’s cramped.”
“You should’ve lost some weight, Ned.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Come on, stop fighting, you two.”
“Still, I didn’t expect this place to be tropical.”
“It’s in the mid-latitudes. What tropical? It’s not tropical.”
“You’re telling me this weather isn’t tropical?”
Faced with the worst heatwave of 20th-century Korea, even Yoon I-seo’s legendary chest had to take a backseat. The three of them were helplessly melted by the radiant heat pouring off their own massive bodies.
“We’ve arrived.”
“Can’t we just stay in the car? The second I step outside I feel like I’m going to turn into barbecue.”
“What choice do we have? I’ll pay, so just get out already. The lodging is right in front anyway. Go inside and lie down or something.”
The accommodation wasn’t far from Seoul Station. It was a decent value business hotel.
“In SimCity, building railroads in residential areas drops the quality of life.”
“If you’re going to build in a residential zone, you need to use subways to raise the stats.”
“Aha!”
Even while unpacking their luggage and taking a short break, their banter never stopped.
“So Mr. Richard, you’re heading to Korea Telecom?”
“Yes. It’s already late today, so I’ll probably go tomorrow.”
“In that case, shall we take a look around the city? I’m getting a bit hungry.”
“Sounds good.”
And so the trio’s Seoul exploration tour was decided. Somehow managing to adapt to the pungent garlic smell that kept assaulting their noses, they once again proved human adaptability. Eventually they stopped in front of a crowded shopping area.
“What kind of place is that to draw so many people…”
“If we go in there we’ll get crushed flat.”
“From the sound of it, it seems like some kind of sports event. Shall we go take a look?”
Kim Jeong-jun was pretty good at Tetris. He had placed well in the tournament held before the club was disbanded, and while he got tired easily during direct competition with others, he was confident that he still produced solid results.
But what the hell was with the enormous foreigner sitting next to him?
Watching the man—who apparently did nothing but eat and play Tetris—display skills that defied common sense, Kim Jeong-jun was left completely speechless. It wasn’t just the speed. When a piece didn’t seem to fit, the man would rotate it mid-air and somehow teleport it perfectly into place. At that point, Jeong-jun simply stopped thinking.
“I won!”
“Can I try too? It looks pretty fun.”
His companions were here too! One bearded, fat-nosed foreigner—and then another—showed up, and they started rotating in to challenge him. Just as Jeong-jun was falling into despair after two straight losses, the crowd suddenly parted like the Red Sea.
“Sunbae, what are you doing over here again? I heard three foreigners with great… builds showed up and came just in case.”
It sounded like something weird slipped out, but it was probably just his imagination. Yep.
“…Who are you?”
“I’m Yoon I-seo, the original creator of this game. Nice to meet you.”
“I-seo…? From FoxC?”
“Yes, that’s me. And you are…?”
“Oh holy shit, the Holy Mother has descended before these poor little lambs!”
“Goddammit, Ned! I told you not to pull that crap in front of her!”
Leaving behind the man called Ned, who looked like he was about to burst into tears of reverence, one of the others stepped forward first and offered a handshake.
“Richard Jones, Manager of Overseas Sales at UK Telecom. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Uh… why don’t we move somewhere else to talk? There’s quite a lot I want to discuss…”
This was bewildering. Why on earth were these people here? No, why had people who should’ve been fiddling with keyboards back in England come all the way to our country—and to our arcade, of all places?
“Ah, I haven’t introduced myself yet. Linux developer, Linus Torvalds.”
“Pffft?!”
Wait, why are you here? You’re not even British.
“Mr. Ned over there said he was coming to the country that owns FoxC and was looking for people to come with him, so I tagged along because I wanted to meet you. Haha. I never imagined you’d be like this.”
“Th-that’s… um… not at all…”
I had a lot I wanted to say, but I held it in.
“By the way, what brings you all to Korea…? You didn’t come all this way just to see me, right?”
“That’s partially correct.”
“…Pardon?”
“Everyone except me is here on vacation. In my case, I’m here to discuss business with Korea Telecom.”
What a sincere young man. Unlike the other two, he gave off a very favorable impression. His looks were like an unscratched lottery ticket—there was real potential underneath. If he lost some weight, he’d probably be quite handsome.
“Well, instead of boring business talk, how about we play some games? Tetris was really fun.”
I wanted to say the chair might break if he sat on it, but I held back. Nah, it probably wouldn’t actually break. In the end, even after the arcade’s closing time of ten o’clock passed, I asked Yoo Seop to let us stay until midnight. We kept playing Tetris until the chair finally gave up under the gravitational force of their massive bodies and one of its legs snapped. Only then did the arcade close for the night. Yoo Seop was crying again today.
The next day, Linus was sitting next to me giving unsolicited advice on the server code.
“No, you can’t load the signal directly here. This is the most vulnerable part.”
“But that would increase response time by several dozen times. If I add encryption and security code here, the speed will drop noticeably.”
“No matter what, it’s too vulnerable.”
“Then how about we make the program run a security check every time it executes a command internally?”
“…”
Linus was a man with an incredibly strong sense of pride. Once we moved on to the rhythm game program I had prepared, his backseat driving became even worse.
“The response time won’t come out right here!”
“It’ll be fixed if we optimize it from this side!”
“…What exactly is going on here?”
The argument disguised as a discussion continued until Richard, who had just finished his work, stepped in to mediate. Surprisingly, the end result wasn’t half bad.
For dinner we had samgyeopsal, and as a late-night snack we went to Hangang Park to enjoy the night view while introducing them to Korean chimaek. The British people especially made such a huge fuss while eating that I was confused at first, but then Linus said, “These guys only ever get to eat that godawful fish and chips, so this is how they react,” and it finally made sense. Coming from England, a country full of culinary atrocities, their reaction was understandable. I more or less got it. Of course, given their builds, they were all experts at eating delicious food.
And just like that, the next day they boarded a plane and went home.
“Huuu… Holy Mother…”
Ned left in tears, spewing every possible fanboy comment imaginable. According to Richard, he was already particularly extreme even among the Nervous Lee fandom, but he hadn’t expected it to be this bad. And so the three-day storm finally came to an end.