Sarang's Four Cuts
There are far too many things that prove Haven Online is another world entirely.
A planet built on the exact scale of Earth. This, that, and everything else besides.
Even if you set all those grand claims aside, people feel it the moment they log in. This really is another world, in and of itself. And so most of what you can do in reality, you can do in Haven too.
One of those things is the four-cut photo.
These days the four-frame photo strip is practically a required stop for anyone who wants to count as socially in the know. Even in Haven, a world of NPCs, shops where you can shoot them line the streets. The trend has gone so far that users would rather take their photos in Haven than in real life.
The reason is simple enough. They like the way they look in Haven more than the way they look in reality. Skip the filters entirely — shoot the face you've already sculpted into whatever you wanted, and it comes out prettier, handsomer. Even if it isn't a completely different face, a person's impression changes enormously with only a few small touches.
Which is why I had come to take four-cut photos with Lim Sarang.
"Uh..."
I'd made it here, but the awkwardness was unavoidable. The walk to the booth had taken about five minutes, and we had kept a dead silence the whole way. Even after we stepped inside I just stood there, with no idea what I was supposed to do. I wanted to take the lead, the way a man should, but you have to have been somewhere before to know your way around it. Four-cut photos were a first for me.
"This way..."
"Ah. Right."
Thankfully Lim Sarang caught my arm and drew me into one of the stalls. The little booth only made it worse.
She tapped the screen a few times and settled into a pose. Watching her, I stepped in at her side. Like a man. This wasn't even a blind date — it was one photo. No reason to freeze. And I knew perfectly well that standing here all stiff would make an even stranger picture. Getting ahead of yourself when the other person hasn't offered you a thing: that is the very portrait of looking pathetic.
I held my gaze straight ahead and eased half a step closer. Our shoulders bumped. Lim Sarang didn't pull away.
Of course. A celebrity. A professional the instant a camera was on her.
I glanced sideways. She was smiling bright, one cheek hidden behind her right hand. I tried a pose of my own and lifted my left hand into a V.
"Pfft. What is that."
"..."
The shame of having some deeply uncool part of myself caught out in the open. It was worse with a girl as pretty as Lim Sarang standing right in front of me. But there was no time to be embarrassed.
"...?"
Somehow her arm had already slipped in between mine. This was no token linking of elbows. She had tipped her body slightly toward me, and the press of her chest against my arm came through unmistakable. She had to feel it too. She even rested her head lightly against my arm as if it were nothing, and I hauled my thoughts back into line.
I may have been a guy who had never dated once in his life, but I wasn't the kind of fool who would misread something this small and start planning grandchildren. To people who lived like this every day, linking arms was nothing more than a light little pose for a photo. And Lim Sarang was a pro. She was only working for the best possible result in front of the camera.
I decided to give it everything I had, and I committed harder to the V.
Click.
The shutter sounded, and she proposed the next one at once.
"Let's make a heart."
"Huh? Ah."
She lifted an arm over her head into half a heart, and I made one over mine.
Click.
Then she unlinked our arms, turned, set her hands at my waist, and tucked her face into my chest while I held her.
"Uh— uh?"
I startled, and her utterly unbothered voice rose from just below.
"This is just how everyone takes them these days."
"Ah. I see."
Well, I wasn't about to complain. I slipped an arm around her shoulder and drew a V with my left hand.
Click.
I really had been exhausted today. I had spent a great deal of money for a single goal. Thinking of it as game money, I had thrown it around without a second thought, but it came out to tens of billions of won. And yet, in this moment, I couldn't remember any of it. It might as well have been yesterday.
The last photo.
"How should we take the last one?"
We had been pressed so close that I felt a little nearer to her than all the half day we had spent side by side had managed, and the words came out more easily. I looked down and met those large eyes. Too close, the thought came — far too close.
"Could you bend down a little and draw a heart for me?"
"Ah. Yeah. Of course."
Looked like a pose similar to the one before. Wouldn't the concept overlap? The thought crossed my mind, but I just did it. Same pose or a different one — what did it matter. We were closer now than we had been. It was only a photo, and still Lim Sarang was in my arms.
Until the East Sea's waters and Mount Baekdu...
I tried to think of nothing but the shot, dragging up the national anthem to keep my head clear. Linking arms had been bearable — only her chest against me — but now we were pressed together from chest to legs, and I couldn't give the camera anything like my full attention. I stared at the lens as hard as I could and waited for the click. The countdown was dropping.
A contradictory wish: this felt good, and I wanted it over fast. The moment the 1 ended, I smiled.
Smack.
"...!"
Warmth against my cheek — and then the click. The last shot was done.
What was the biggest reason people could say Haven Online, linked as it was to reality, was another world?
The number of users? No. No matter how many people play a game, if the game and reality stay separate, a game is still just a game. Some of the players will insist it isn't a game at all but another reality, and ordinary people will not grant them a single nod. Why? Because it isn't reality. If it changes nothing in the real world, how can it be another reality?
Haven is different. There is already nowhere in the world that does not carry Windy's name. Windy Distribution. Windy Foods. Windy Electronics. There is even a Windy Four-Cut.
"Wow. This works too?"
"Yes. You can go to a Windy Four-Cut in real life and print them."
"No way. Can I print some?"
"Of course. We said we'd each take one."
"Still, you're a celebrity, Sarang."
"Come on. Before I'm a celebrity, I'm your fan, Siwoo. I'm going to print these in real life and keep them too."
We split the four-cuts in Haven first, one sheet each. Then, once I'd heard we could print them in reality as well, we stepped outside.
"..."
"..."
The closeness we had found in that sealed little space turned awkward again at a startling speed. The feel of her lips on my cheek at the end — it hadn't been a quick press and gone. She had stayed there a good five seconds.
Just me reading into it, right? Popular people simply take their photos that way. I didn't assign it any special meaning. I had received a gift, in a way.
"Then I'll really get going."
"Ah. Are you heading to the dungeon now?"
"No. I shut the stream off, so I'll probably go tomorrow."
"Pfft. All right. Are you okay? Want me to come on tomorrow and explain it with you?"
"No. If you show up for no reason, I think they'll drag you into the hate too, Sarang. I'll handle it."
"If you need me, just say so."
"Yeah."
I waved as Lim Sarang walked away. My chest itched. Was this what it felt like, that fluttering almost-something before anything had a name?
"She really is pretty."
I'm a man too. The feeling of her in my arms was still coming back, fresh as ever.
"Ha."
It had been a happy day. Tomorrow worried me a little.
"Tomorrow's me can deal with it."
I logged out with an easy heart.
I left the house at once, went to a Windy Four-Cut, and printed the photos. The commercial streets around the tower were built up enough that it was a five-minute walk.
"Whoa."
They looked so real I would have believed we had taken them in the actual world. People were always saying Lim Sarang's Haven character was identical to real life, and I hadn't touched much in customization either, so it might as well have been a photo from reality.
"Heh heh."
Back home, I popped my phone case off and slid one in against the back. A four-cut photo inside a clear case. Plenty of people carry photos like that, but mine was special.
"I'm probably the only person walking around with a four-cut of me and Lim Sarang in his phone, right?"
Not that I carried my phone anywhere anyone would see it. I washed up, lay on the bed, and turned on the TV. On an ordinary night I would have put on Lee Yeonju's live stream, but today I opened a video channel instead of a streaming site.
Dozens of videos came up, sorted by views. I started autoplay from the top.
"Whoa."
A Lim Sarang nothing like the girl I had seen in Haven sang and danced across a stage. The face was clearly the same, and yet the atmosphere belonged to a completely different person.
"She's cool."
A pro. I couldn't say which of the two was better. The Lim Sarang who sang was cool as a professional. The one in Haven was cool in her own way, as a gamer enjoying the game.
"I'll have to pay her back later."
She had helped me as a fan, and we had taken the photos together, but looking at the result, if she hadn't been there for today's perfect setup, more than a few screws would have been missing. The auction-house trades I could have bought with money anyway. Some of those low-level items, though — no amount of cash would have gotten me those.
"Heh heh. Heh heh heh."
Tonight I would sleep deep and dream a long dream. Before bed, I posted a notice.
Comments from all kinds of viewers piled on in an instant, but I ignored every one of them cleanly and lay back on the bed.