I Shouldn't Have Done That

I'm a concept-obsessed casual gamer.

What that means is I'm a gamer who builds a concept to match my class, then plays for the joy of living it out.

Chat? Of course I typed in character. Even now, with virtual reality games on the rise and voice replacing text, nothing has changed.

A roleplayer who caves to embarrassment isn't a real roleplayer.

"Keep talking. I'm curious just how much of my wrath you can take."

So, as always, I dove into the new game as a deeply immersed fun-gamer, faithful to my concept—a knight with a demon dwelling in his arm—and…

"Logout."

"…? Logout."

"…???"

That was when I realized one simple fact.

I was screwed. No—I was fucked.

Whether you're a casual gamer, a hardcore grinder, or even just a light player—every gamer has at least one game of a lifetime. The kind that sticks with you, the kind that leaves a lingering attachment.

For me, that game was Legend of Heroes.

The game that came out in my teens was, put simply, a domestic Korean MMORPG for PC. It enjoyed massive popularity in its early days, only to collapse into ruin after most of the original development team left—a tragic title if ever there was one.

The main causes of its downfall included a gambling-adjacent cash shop item launched with the two-year anniversary patch, a new class that shattered the balance, a worldbuilding dump of random lore that stopped making any sense, and a management team that was circling the drain… but none of that really matters.

That a game once expected to last twenty years shut down its servers in five, and that I stayed with it until the end and greeted my twenties in the process—none of that matters either.

There's only one thing worth noting about Legend of Heroes.

The grudge of those original developers who had to watch their game crash and burn after they left.

"Dude, my heart is racing so hard. What do I do."

"Uh. Good luck?"

"I can't believe there's only thirty minutes left until launch."

Their grudge ran so deep that the original team—who went on to found a new studio, Deep Sea Pearl, and cemented themselves in the industry with hit after hit—eventually came back with news of a Legend of Heroes remake.

Nobody had asked them to. They bought the rights themselves and announced they would remake it anyway.

"I'm not dreaming right now, am I?"

"Yeah. Actually, you are dreaming. You'll wake up soon."

"So it is a dream…?"

"…I'm kidding. Of course it isn't."

"But this is just… too unreal."

And they weren't half-assing it either. They sharpened their knives and remade the game with real intent.

They changed the release format from online to package, and the genre from a dungeon-crawler action game to an open-world ARPG.

They even updated the platform for the times. Instead of a PC, you played it through a dedicated virtual reality capsule—and the game itself had been upgraded into a full VR experience to match.

At this point, even calling it the fever dream of a gamer still hung up on a dead title felt like an understatement.

"I'd almost rather believe it was a dream…"

That was exactly why, even thirty minutes before launch, I still couldn't find any sense of reality and kept rambling about dreams.

Legend of Heroes had been the first game of my life, the reason I fell into gaming at all, and something that even slightly shaped my career path.

And now that ruined game of a lifetime was coming back? Not just coming back—coming back as this ridiculously polished god-tier title?

Honestly, I considered it a mercy that I hadn't passed out from pure emotion. Happiness was overflowing.

"You're really something, still stuck on a game from fifteen years ago…"

"You only say that because you don't game… If you did, you'd understand how I feel…"

Ha. I hadn't even been this tense on the day the CSAT results came out. I hadn't felt like this even when my work got greenlit for overseas distribution.

My chest felt ready to burst. I watched the timer tick down and wrung my hands.

"What if the game doesn't live up to the hype?"

"Don't jinx it. I'll kill you."

Of course I knew that when your expectations climb this high, the odds of disappointment climb with them. I'd played enough games and been burned by enough games not to know that.

But still… but still…!

"Even if it's only half as good as the trailer, I'll be happy…!"

"Ugh."

"Aaaagh! Only two minutes have passed! When is twenty-eight minutes going to go by!"

"How should I know, you freak."

My friend, who'd come over to hang out during my meltdown, twisted his face. The complete lack of sympathy was very him—a pure non-gamer who never touched the stuff.

"And you call yourself a friend…"

"What else would I be if not a friend? Whatever. If you're going to be like this… why don't you do that thing you're good at?"

"What?"

"You know. That… concept thing?"

"I already built it."

"You're insane. You already built it?"

What, did he think I'd been sitting around doing nothing this whole time? A concept isn't something you finish in a day.

Sure, some people slap one together on the fly and roleplay off that, but not me. Maybe it was the theater and film major in me, but character research was genuinely important.

"So what did you do?"

"Uh, well, the appearance is like this."

Thank god I'd drawn the reference images while working out the setting.

I grabbed the e-notebook that had been rolling around on the couch. The seven-year-old device slowly woke its screen.

"Whoa, holy shit. What the hell is this…"

And the image that appeared was this:

Parted at the crown—silver-white hair on the left, black on the right.

Skin so pale it looked less bloodless than corpse-like, nearly ash-white.

Heterochromia: gray on the left, a dull reddish-gray on the right, with the highlights stripped out so the eyes looked as dead as a fish's. Heavy dark circles for free.

"You've lost it. The custom is actually insane."

My personal doctrine has always been that roleplaying starts with the look.

I took my friend's reaction with pure delight. Someone might say this was pathetic for a man in his thirties, but I was spending my own money on my own fun—why shouldn't I be unashamed? And roleplaying wasn't the kind of hobby that hurt anyone else, either.

"What's with the hair?"

"That's the setting—he's been tainted by a demon's power."

"Are you serious. And what's a demon's power supposed to be?"

"Ah… the class name is Demon Knight."

That was easier to understand with the official lore, so I pulled up the page.

"Oh…"

"I actually considered starting as a priest… but the first time I played, I picked Demon Knight."

Personally, priest was more my taste, but if I was going to resurrect the memories, I might as well do it the same way as back then. I was going to multi-run it anyway.

"And the cooler the class, the better it is for roleplaying."

"You're insane. That's hilarious."

My friend, who'd been snickering through the explanation, zoomed back out from the face to take in the full body again. The character's complete figure filled the e-notebook screen once more.

"But can you actually recreate this as-is?"

"Should be fine."

Looking at games these days, this level of customization was practically standard. And the original Legend of Heroes had been praised as a god-tier game partly because of how free its character creation was—if the developers had any sense at all, they would have included it.

"I also picked the outfit from the ones you get with the Deluxe Edition."

"You paid even more real money?"

Come on—if a few tens of thousands of won more got you the OST, the art book, and in-game outfits, and those outfits were provided for every single class, wasn't that an absolute steal?

You could even equip them from the moment you started, and there were tons of options.

I looked at the character reflected on the notebook screen and smiled with satisfaction.

An eyepatch covering the right eye. A black long coat with a red cross embroidered on the back, the hem split into three tails. A gauntlet worn only on the right arm. Matte black leather pants and knee-high military boots… and, hard to see but there, the bandages wrapped under the top.

I'd assembled the provided images and drawn it myself, but it was still a perfect ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠concept. You couldn't live and die by coolness any harder than this.

"Does this even go online?"

"It does, sort of. Just not in the real-time social sense of an MMORPG."

From what I knew, if you connected to the internet and queued for matching, you could party up with up to four people. Even then, it only really covered boss co-op and PVP.

Proof that the developers had been thoroughly burned by online games.

"So other people can't even see you? And you still bought all that?"

"My friend. Other people's eyes have nothing to do with roleplaying."

You didn't roleplay to show off for an audience. You did it because throwing out lines you'd never say in your right mind—under the cover of anonymity—was fun in itself.

I flashed a thumbs-up and a bright smile, and my friend clutched his stomach and rolled. I had no idea why he reacted like that every single time when this wasn't my first or second go-round.

Was this the difference between a roleplayer and a normal person?

"Ugh. You absolute freak."

"I'm spending my own money on my own stuff. What's your problem?"

"Okay, fair, but…"

My friend flipped the screen back to the Demon Knight's official lore page and studied the last line carefully.

"The game already hands you a personality in the official text. What's the point of roleplaying over that?"

I heard that and just sat there for a second with no reaction. What was the point when the official setting already locked it in? Ha. I hadn't planned on saying this much.

I twitched my lips the way an otaku does when a normie casually asks about their hyperfixation genre.

Calm down. Get too excited and the newbie panics and runs. So gently… gently…

But what the hell even was "gently." How were you supposed to do that.

"You just picked a fight with secondary interpretation. Bring it. I'll teach you about secondary interpretation right now."

"No, I misspoke."

"What the official setting gives you is a sharp, volatile temper and the goal of killing every demon, right? Hey—but 'sharp' means different things to different people, doesn't it? And this guy even has the setting that a demon who murdered his family is living in his arm, yeah? So think about it. Was he born with a rotten personality, or did the demon in his arm make him rotten?! That's where the difference in interpretation kicks in right there!!"

"Okay, okay, I was wrong."

"What if he's so on edge because the demon could run wild at any second, and that constant tension is what made him abrasive? What if the reason he acts sharp with the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠people around him is to push them away so they don't get hurt because of him—or more precisely, because of the demon inside him? Then how soft is the inside of that guy, huh?!"

"I said I was wrong."

"And that interpretation is exactly the foundation of my concept! Iron exterior, soft interior! A character who acts tough but is soft inside, who has trauma, who pushes people away and is desperately lonely for it! The kind of guy who basically holds up a sign saying, 'I have a tragic backstory, I've been hurt'!"

"Please spare me."

"Spare you from what? I haven't even started yet. I've still got more. There's a reason for everything beyond just the half-and-half hair—even the way he's wrapped up head to toe!"

"Aagh."

"Ah, I even prepped lines—want to hear them?!"

"No, I'm good, I'm good!"

Why did he ask and then backpedal. He didn't have to backpedal. He should have just listened more.

Look at the setting I poured my soul into—hunting down old footage, dissecting the trailer class videos frame by frame!

I grabbed my fleeing friend, sat him down in front of me, and started explaining.

He only wore a gauntlet on the right because he hated his own arm so much he couldn't stand to look at it. The eyepatch covered the eye that had changed, because he couldn't bear to see the altered pupil—details too granular to ever surface in the game itself.

"You deranged otaku bastard…"

After I talked nonstop for a full twenty minutes, my friend clapped his hands over his ears and shook his head like he was thoroughly done.

"Hey, I'm not that far gone. I'm not an actual otaku."

"To a normal person, the second you drop hundreds of thousands of won on a game, you're an otaku."

"Ugh."

Couldn't argue with that one.

"God, you're exhausting. Whatever. I'm heading out."

"Already?"

"Your precious game starts in five minutes, you insane otaku."

"Ah."

Right. After talking for over twenty minutes, having less than five left was only natural.

"Anyway. When am I hearing from you again?"

"The Full Dive I prepped this time is a three-day run."

"I still haven't forgotten the last time you said four days and then went dark for ten."

Full Dive was a function that let you keep playing for twenty-four hours or more without eating or sleeping.

The dedicated solution and nutrients it required were expensive enough that you couldn't use it lightly—and there was the downside of cutting yourself off from real-world relationships—but when you wanted to sink into a game, its performance was unmatched.

Of course, being locked in a capsule that long also meant the post-game crash was brutal; you needed about a day just to recover.

Last time, I'd done four days of gaming, one day of rest, then another four and another rest, and ended up gone for a solid ten days.

"Dunno. You contact me first. I'm not starting."

"Yes, sir."

"And cut back on the gaming a little. You're going to wreck your body."

"Yes, siiir."

I'd gotten thoroughly chewed out by family and friends that time, so there wouldn't be a repeat. As for wrecking my body… the whole point of that expensive dedicated solution was to prevent that, but I didn't bother talking back.

I was grateful ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for the concern. Even more so for the friendship that made time to come see me knowing we wouldn't meet for days.

Click.

I stared at the closed front door for a moment, then turned around.

This time, no matter how fun the game was, I was stopping at exactly three days. A resolution to get my act together came as a free bonus.

Ding!

If I'd known that resolution would be smashed to pieces by forces beyond my control, I never would have turned the game on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the first place.

No—setting everything else aside, I should at least have left the roleplaying alone.

The opening cinematic began—no. It drove itself straight into my mind.