The Medical DeathBed

Lee Hayan had spent the whole day playing with Lee Arang, the way she always did, and now she was watching her. Arang was smiling with quiet satisfaction over her own status window, and Hayan nearly reached out to stroke her hair before she caught herself. They might be friends now, but petting someone's head without permission was still rude, so she let her hand fall.

Even with item bonuses taken into account, the speed at which Arang leveled while swinging a weapon one step shy of endgame was monstrous. Hayan was a healer glued to her side, and still Arang's sense for a fight—the way she went after monsters—was extraordinary. At this pace, she could hit the level cap inside of three days. Legacy of Raid wasn't the sort of RPG that lived and died by level, so reaching max was manageable enough.

Beep! Beep!

A warning tone sounded before Hayan's eyes, and a warning message flared up.

The alarm rang when thirty minutes were left. Hayan had been about to tell Arang they ought to get going, and then she shut her mouth.

Something's off...

Arang, standing there as if nothing were wrong, noticed her looking and tilted her head.

"Something wrong? Oh—you're almost out of play time? Wow, it's already that late."

They had been playing for fifteen hours and thirty minutes. So how long had the Arang standing in front of her actually been in the game?

Hayan thought back over lunch and dinner. People simply cannot live without food, and water is no different. The thing you have to watch most carefully in a virtual-reality game is nothing other than malnutrition. In the early days, when there were no restrictions at all, VR games had arrived and a wave of players had come down with it.

Because of that, buying a connector now came with mandatory education, and a minor couldn't purchase one without a guardian. When you used a connector to enjoy a virtual world, the important thing was to keep eating, steadily, on a schedule.

Today, too, lunch had run a little late, and dinner had been pushed back because of it. Yesterday and today both, Hayan herself had been the one to log out first at mealtimes. The strange part was that Arang was already connected whenever she came back. Dinner had been the same.

Which meant Arang's lunch and dinner had both been shorter than Hayan's—and that meant her play time was longer.

But Arang definitely said she'd logged in an hour earlier than we'd agreed.

Hayan ran the numbers fast. She'd connected at ten in the morning, and it was three at night now. Subtract the logouts for lunch and dinner, and she had thirty minutes left. Arang had said she connected at eight. So how many hours was she on right now? She'd taken shorter breaks than Hayan at lunch and at dinner. Even if Hayan padded those breaks as generously as she could, Arang's time in the virtual world still came out to eighteen hours.

How is that even possible...?

The connector's sixteen-hour limit was absolute. Not even an illegal modification could change it.

So how is Arang standing right here in front of my eyes...? Don't tell me she isn't human...?

Hayan looked at Arang, who was blinking up at her with bright, round eyes. The cuteness was, admittedly, not entirely human.

But.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Can there even be an NPC who has a status window like a player and can operate the menu?

Absolutely not. They had even exchanged mail in the real world.

"Pink Berry? ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Pink Berrryyy~?"

"Ah—yeah. I'll head out first. We're meeting at nine tomorrow, right?"

"Yep, yep. See you in a bit~"

Arang turned toward the village with a light step.

"Arang!"

"Yeah?"

"You're not going to sleep?"

"Ahh~ I'm not sleepy yet! I'll play a little longer and then go to bed!"

"Okay. Got it."

Hayan said she'd log out first with what little time she had left, and logged out. Ten minutes had still been on the clock.

She didn't get ready for bed. She sat down in front of her computer. She barely used a PC anymore, but the machine was still alive for checking connector usage time, and for the various programs you still couldn't run inside the virtual world.

Seated there, she went straight to a search portal and looked up connector connection times. Nothing, as expected. No matter how she searched, a connector that went past sixteen hours did not exist.

"Ugh. But I saw it... Arang staying connected for more than sixteen hours..."

It wasn't a video. She had seen it with her own two eyes, and she had been right there with her. No matter how she added the time and added it again, Arang's connection ran past sixteen hours.

It existed. It had to. A connector that could keep you in the virtual world for more than sixteen hours.

But the internet had nothing. She was letting the useless minutes slip past when something occurred to her.

"Arang isn't connecting to the virtual world with a connector at all...!"

Something went ping in her head.

"No—what am I even saying? I'm so tired I'm talking nonsense."

The only way into a virtual world was a connector. Getting in with something that wasn't a connector didn't make any sense.

"Wait, though. Arang playing for more than sixteen hours doesn't make sense either."

She wiped connector out of the search bar and searched for the virtual world instead. She hadn't hunted this hard for a thesis back in college. She kept digging, and in a place that had nothing to do with the virtual world she found a paper that mentioned it.

"Why is there something about the virtual world in a medical paper?"

Hayan bought it on the spot, for a painful sum. It was an expensive paper, but the pairing was so wrong that she purchased it as if she were possessed.

Reading the medical paper—in English—she found the hint she had been chasing. It described an attempt to use a connector to grant an easier death to people on the verge of dying: people in such horrific pain that they could no longer keep a normal mind, people on whom even narcotics had no effect.

A connector was, at base, a choker. It blocked the signals running through the spine at the neck, the user entered through the connector, and that was how they moved inside the virtual world. Because of that, there were reports that patients could not feel pain arising in the body, and that they had held on to their minds. Starting from those reports, medicine had collaborated with a connector company to build a special connector made for medicine alone.

It was not called a connector, the way the device everyone used now was called a connector. It had a formal name of its own, and the name was a little strange. A medical deathbed. It did not suit a connector at all.

"The MDB was built with no connection-time limit, in collaboration with the connector company Maskble, to give rest to patients near death on whom even narcotics had no effect...?"

Hayan immediately started searching for whether an MDB existed in Korea. The answer was in Maskble's year-end report.

"Seoul Asan Hospital...? It's really in Korea? And there's exactly one? No way..."

I slept well, and I was just about to work the controls from the bed I had set up myself so I could play Legacy of Raid again today, same as always, when someone knocked on the hospital-room door.

Oh, right. Now that I thought about it, today was a checkup day. I messaged Pink Berry first and told her I would be logging in late.

Ever since I had come to, I had been getting regular exams, on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the grounds that no one knew when the illness might come back. My body was missing nothing but its arms and legs. I was healthier than anyone—past healthy, with senses that felt downright transcendent—and it drove me crazy that I was the only one who knew it. I could tell them not to worry, that I was fine, and not a single person believed me. When I said I didn't want the checkups, my parents and Anna looked ready to cry, so I promised I would keep getting them.

I turned on the television in my virtual room. Only a virtual world could manage a screen that enormous, and on it was the inside of the hospital room: a deathbed unit the size of a refrigerator, and me, lying on the bed joined to it. Uncanny, no matter how many times I looked. A virtual world really was the best.

That aside, the me lying in the deathbed unit looked genuinely pitiful. Was it because I had no arms or legs?

I lifted both arms, closed my hands into fists, and wiggled my toes. They moved just fine. Not merely fine—freer, smoother, and faster than my old body ever had. Of course, the moment I left this virtual world it would be uncomfortable and hard, but I had a big, beautiful deathbed unit anyway. Medical technology delivered every nutrient perfectly, and there was no waste to deal with, so I had no reason to leave. In other words, even without arms and legs, I had no particular reason to be uncomfortable, and no reason to be sad.

I had this virtual world! Heh—

The pretty voice of a doctor in a pure-white coat came in through the deathbed unit. Speaking of which, did this hospital hire by face? The first time I saw her, I thought she was a celebrity.

Thanks to my parents, a woman doctor of exceptional skill—one of the very best in the country—was looking after me. The frightening part was that she was not my only attending physician. How rich did a family have to be for this to be possible? Then again, they had given me a hundred million won in pocket money and even obtained a deathbed unit when only five existed in the whole world. Yeah. My family was the best.

"Yes. I slept well."

"No."

Mmm. That was a little inconvenient. Still, for my parents, who were spending money for my sake, I nodded.

"Yes. I'm ready."

My vision drowned in pitch black, then flashed, and the pure-white ceiling of the hospital room filled my eyes. It felt like waking from a long sleep, and I tried to stretch—

Oh. Right. No arms or legs.

I had forgotten, after two days in the virtual world. I wanted to get back to Legacy of Raid already.