The Relativity of Memories
What the hell.
How had things ended up like this?
All I’d done was go to the pharmacy and buy the medicine I needed.
“In that short amount of time, how did you decide to just move into our place?”
I asked Akira, who was sitting brazenly in our living room, a little awkwardly.
“I came all the way here because I wanted to see the leader’s face too. Unlike someone over there, lurking in the corner and staring like a creep.”
“...”
When I turned toward the spot Akira had indicated with her eyes, I saw Iris sitting in front of the kitchen table with the lights off, her faint glow shimmering in the dark.
Her face was buried in shadow, and the flash of those red eyes made her look honestly unsettling.
Even with Iris glaring at her as if she might devour her any second, Akira went on as calmly as ever.
“Leader, I’ll make sure I don’t cause any trouble. If I need to, I can even help pay rent...”
“Welcome to the new home, Akira. Where should I put your things?”
“...Huh?”
Both Akira and Iris looked utterly dumbfounded at how quickly my attitude changed, but I didn’t care.
How could I refuse if she was offering to help with rent?
And so, our household gained one more person.
.
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Right after the conversation ended, leaving Iris behind after she quietly disappeared into the master bedroom, I helped Akira unpack the things she’d dragged over and organized them in a corner of the living room.
She’d only brought a few simple changes of clothes, just like Iris, so there wasn’t much to do.
“All right, the luggage’s more or less sorted. I guess you’ll be sleeping on the sofa?”
“Where does Iris sleep?”
As I stretched out the stiffness in my body with a lazy yawn, Akira asked me.
“In the same room as me.”
“Ha, Leader, come on. Don’t joke around.”
“I’m serious.”
At my answer, Akira, who had been grinning and joking around, suddenly froze.
What now?
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I don’t know what you’re imagining, but I sleep in the bed and Iris sleeps on the floor. That’s all.”
“Uwaaa... You’re really saying that...”
Akira’s face twisted as if she’d heard something she absolutely should not have, and I snorted with amusement before tossing out a joke.
“What, did you want to sleep with us too?”
“You can do that?!”
Her eyes sparkled as she looked at me.
Something about the shine in them looked downright hungry, which immediately put me off.
“...I take it back.”
“Eeeh, why?!”
“Your reaction is making me uncomfortable.”
“No waaaay!”
Akira looked devastated, as if the sky had just fallen because I’d kicked her out.
The liveliness she’d been showing a moment ago vanished in an instant, and she wilted like a deflated balloon.
“I flew all the way here after buying a plane ticket just to see the leader...! Why...!”
Akira flopped onto the floor and teared up, wearing the face of a child whose candy had just been snatched away.
Man, this kid had really gone off the rails while I wasn’t looking.
Back in Solomon, she’d been the sort of dependable comrade you could trust to watch your back.
How had she fallen apart this badly? Honestly.
“Quit bawling so loud in the middle of the night. Wash up quietly and go sleep on the sofa.”
“Uuugh... That’s so mean, Leader...”
“Shut up.”
Thunk.
I gave Akira a light flick on the forehead, finally prying her loose from me after she kept clinging on without giving up, and went back to my room.
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.
And so, after the long, long night finally passed, the next day came.
“Hmm...”
“What is this, Leader?”
Early in the morning, I got out of bed and found myself staring intently at some random delivery box.
“Combat rations. The ones I ordered last time finally arrived today.”
“Ohhh, are those South Korean military rations?”
“Yeah. One of the viewers suggested it as content last time.”
Was the username VEX, maybe?
It had been a pretty decent idea, so I’d grabbed it immediately.
A war veteran reviewing South Korean military rations while doing a mukbang.
This stuff is gold.
While I was grinning to myself at the thought of making money, Akira, who had crouched down beside the box to inspect the contents, tilted her head.
“There are four kinds here? Are you planning to eat all of them?”
“Well... that does seem like a bit much, doesn’t it?”
As Akira had said, the Type 2 civilian combat rations I’d ordered came in four varieties.
Since each pack had over 1,000 calories, there was no way I could get through all of them.
Combat rations were made to replenish the calories burned in wartime, after all.
I had no intention of committing the absurd feat of stuffing myself with all of these, especially since they tasted worse than a normal meal.
“I’ll cook each one and just taste them. That’s all this content is meant to do anyway—figure out what they taste like.”
“Hee... Can I eat whatever’s left?”
“If you’re willing to handle the leftovers, that works for me.”
I entrusted Akira, who had volunteered to become a human trash can, with the honorable duty of finishing the leftovers, then headed back to my room to prepare for the stream.
Iris had long since gone out for a morning walk around the neighborhood.
Thanks to her tidying the bedding before she left, I didn’t even need to clean the room.
I took the combat rations out of the box, carried them over, adjusted the camera angle, checked the microphone, and then sat down.
“Hmm...”
Because I’d gotten rattled in the last stream and bailed in a hurry.
The viewers must have been pretty confused.
What kind of reaction would I get if I turned on the stream now?
Concern?
Complaints?
Curiosity?
“...What’s the point of worrying about it now?”
The damage was already done.
Running away from the stream while fretting about it by myself wouldn’t solve anything.
In the end, I had shown everyone my mind breaking down in real time, then ended the broadcast before I could fix it.
All I was doing now was finishing what I’d failed to wrap up then.
“Screw it. Let’s do this.”
I took a deep breath and clicked the button to start the broadcast.
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“Hmm... thankfully, your complexion looks much better.”
When Seong-hyeon’s stream came online two days after he abruptly ended the broadcast in the middle of a game stream after showing strange signs, viewers surged in as if they’d been waiting for the exact moment.
As worried messages poured in from all directions, Lee Ji-yul, who was lying on the bed in her studio apartment and watching the stream on her phone, joined the flood as well.
It had been a lazy weekend morning like any other, and she’d been idly scrolling through random streams to kill time when a tiny, obscure broadcast caught her eye.
The thumbnail happened to show the face of a white-haired man she’d recently met at the convenience store—where she’d successfully gotten his number afterward—and Ji-yul entered the stream on instinct.
Unfortunately, that was the day Seong-hyeon was playing the MILSIM campaign, and by the later part of the broadcast, after she saw how completely wrecked his face had become, she sent a worried chat.
“Are you sick or something?”
“Thank you all for worrying about me. Two days ago, I got too caught up in the game and exhausted myself, so I had to end the stream in a hurry. I’m sorry for ending it without any warning.”
He explained the situation briefly and apologized for the abrupt shutdown, and fortunately the viewers’ reactions were mild.
“Nah, as long as the streamer’s healthy, that’s all that matters.”
“We thought you might’ve been sick, so we were worried...”
“That’s a relief... I thought you were really hurt.”
PTSD, was it?
Thinking of the mental anguish that nine out of ten war veterans supposedly went through, Ji-yul felt her shoulders relax with relief.
Clap.
In the meantime, Seong-hyeon, who had been chatting casually with the viewers, clapped his hands once to draw everyone’s attention.
“I think I’ve explained things enough, so let’s get started on today’s content.”
-bouncing-bouncing-bouncing-bouncing
-bouncing-bouncing-bouncing-bouncing-bouncing
-Is the big one coming?
-Combat rations?
Ji-yul watched the stream screen with curiosity just like everyone else, and when Seong-hyeon pulled something out from under the desk, she recognized it and smiled.
“That’s combat rations, isn’t it?”
Back when she’d spent so much of her life grinding through military service, those were the rations she’d swallowed with tears in her eyes just to fill her starving stomach during brutal training.
It should have been a bad memory, but because so much time had passed, the taste of those combat rations somehow felt faintly nostalgic.
“Today, as promised, we’re going to try South Korean military rations! These are civilian Type 2 rations, and I’ve got one of each variety ready.”
-Here it comes!!!
-Haha, I knew I could trust you
-Combat rations really do bring back memories...
-If you eat those instead of chow in the barracks, there’s nothing better than that
-Maybe that’s just because the mess hall food is worse than the rations?
-That tracks
-For real
If the sight of combat rations after so long had stirred up memories of military life in Ji-yul, she wasn’t the only one; the other viewers’ reactions were explosive too.
That mysterious force of memory bias, impossible to explain, stirred up the nostalgia buried in everyone’s minds.
-Ugh, gross
-It’s dog food!!!
-Streamer, are you sure you can handle this...?
-Look at the PTSD switch going off in the veterans lol
-Aaaah, my head
-LMAOOOOO
Of course, not everyone reacted the same way.
“Which one should I try first... I’ve heard the beef bibimbap is supposed to be the best?”
Watching Seong-hyeon mutter to himself on the broadcast screen, Ji-yul smiled softly.
He picked up the beef bibimbap, which she remembered as the tastiest of the bunch, and after a moment’s thought nodded as if he’d made up his mind.
“What the hell, let’s give it a shot. It can’t kill me, can it?”
And just like that, Seong-hyeon’s first mukbang began its opening act.