Pizza
There's something funny about keyboard wars on the internet.
Ordinarily, if you raise an accusation, you're supposed to show up with evidence and press the point. Online, you can say whatever you want, pick whatever nit you like — and then the person you jabbed is the one who has to prove their innocence.
That's why, inside League of Champions, most players never admit they did anything wrong. The ones who plead their own innocence, who insist their gameplay was correct — those are the low-tier players. It's much easier not to lose a keyboard fight by tearing into someone else's flaws instead.
Of course, nobody actually wins. There's no logic on either side, and the only objective is to get under the other person's skin. Ah, but if you're going to make each other miserable in chat anyway, maybe that counts as a win-win.
So I had no intention of proving my household circumstances. There was nothing in it for me, and no matter how much that person ran their mouth, it wouldn't change a thing on my end. The only thing I bothered to think about was how to get under their skin as simply and effectively as possible.
Should I insult their parents right back? Well — in League of Champions, lines like "your dad's dead" or "your mom was beautiful" are basically greetings. Nobody's going to be seriously offended by that. Digging through their old posts to find a real weak spot sounded like a pain, too.
I didn't used to be this kind of person.
A month of playing nothing but League of Champions, where the only conversations I ran into were the ones cursing me out in chat, and this is what I'd become. For someone who'd spent their whole life studying, this culture was a little too stimulating. Maybe that was why I'd gotten so worked up and kept typing in the first place. Which, of course, meant I was permanently sitting in chat-ban.
While I was still turning it over, other people had already started fighting in my place. At this rate, had I even needed to think about it? Leave them alone and they'd keep roasting each other just fine.
And judging by the doorbell ringing outside, the pizza had arrived. There was no reason to pour any more time into this. I'd have a much better time eating another slice and playing another game.
That said — watching people fight in the comments on my behalf put me in a foul mood all over again. They'd been looking for someone to curse out anyway. Someone just happened to show up. They were using me, nothing more.
So the way to put this fire out was to give the person manufacturing accusations exactly what they wanted.
The gift cards had bought me a little extra lifespan, sure. But once the money ran out I'd have to die anyway, so it wasn't even a lie.
I left that one post and went out to get the pizza.
I was pretty sure I'd checked please leave it at the door and text me on the order form. Of course I couldn't actually read any texts, what with my phone being broken — but that checkbox existed for a reason. It meant they didn't have to wait for someone to come out. They could just leave it and go.
Ringing the doorbell once, fine. I'd give them that. But why were they ringing it again, like they were trying to hurry me up?
It spiked my irritation, but the delivery driver probably had their reasons. There'd been that news story about food left at someone's door getting stolen by a passerby, hadn't there? The customer and the driver had gone red in the face at each other until the police checked the CCTV and cleared up the misunderstanding. After something like that, maybe some people just couldn't rest until they saw the owner actually take the food.
So even when the doorbell rang a third time, I swallowed the annoyance and crawled to the front door. Better not to make noise between floors if I could help it.
"Why are they taking so long to— ah."
I only stood up once I'd reached the entrance, and opened the door to find the delivery driver holding the pizza, muttering irritably to himself. Well. Fair enough. I'd have been pretty unhappy too, waiting that long.
"Sorry I'm late. I'm missing a foot."
"Ah— n-no, not at all. You weren't late at all. I'm sorry. Please enjoy!"
Whether it was because he now knew why I'd taken so long, or because he simply couldn't bring himself to be rude to someone's face, the driver shoved the pizza at me like he was unloading it and bolted for the elevator.
Not that he needed to run. It wasn't like I could chase him on this leg. Didn't matter, really. As long as the pizza arrived in one piece, I was fine.
I hadn't even opened the lid and already the smell was incredible; my mood went generous all on its own. Toasted cheese and well-seared meat, thick in the air. I'd been getting tired of the flour-smell of noodles and the acrid bite of soup powder, and then a good smell this violent walked right up my nose. Of course it was addictive.
Same as when I'd left the room, I had to crawl to get back. A little jostling was fine as long as I kept things reasonably level — the pizza wouldn't spill. But there was cola in the bag, and if I went bouncing along with that, what did I think would happen? The carbonation would churn itself into a frenzy, and the second I cracked the cap it'd fountain everywhere. Then I'd have to clean it up, which was annoying enough on its own — and that would be the lucky version. If cola hit the keyboard, that sticky mess wouldn't come out easy. It might even kill the thing. I did not want to see that, so I worked both knees and one arm and crawled hard for the room, the other arm cradling the bag of pizza and cola like I was holding a child.
Just getting from the front door to my room was enough to leave me panting. I still thought it was worth it.
I only stopped crawling once I reached the desk. And so a quadruped — no, a tripedal animal — became a unipedal human. Honestly, quibbling over four legs or three, two legs or one, made me feel like I'd become one of those adults who obsess over numbers. Then again, I was an adult, so I was allowed to obsess a little. I had a feeling every League of Champions player was the same way. One point on an ally's score and the whole mood swung from joy to despair.
I sat in the chair and shoved the keyboard and mouse into the corner of the desk. In all the time I'd been gaming through cup noodles, I'd never once spilled anything on the keyboard. But the desk was cramped, and I wasn't about to set a pizza down on a slope made of keys.
Preparations complete, I was at last granted an audience with the pizza — and its countenance was radiant enough to call luminous. A circle of dough worthy of being called art. And then the meat, yes, but also the cheese and the onion, and all the toppings buried under the cheese with the tomato sauce. The thought that I was eating a real meal for the first time in ages put a lump in my throat.
At the same time, everything I'd done with my pride thrown out the window flickered past like a montage. The cane snapping. The phone dying. Traveling all that way to put the hack accusations to rest. Signing up for a community I'd only ever lurked in, just to beg for the things people had pledged. If all of that had been for the sake of eating this pizza, the one currently filling the room with a rich, savory smell — then it had been worth every bit of it.
But I couldn't just sit there staring at it, breathing it in, being moved. Pizza does not exist in this state forever. Sooner or later it would go cold and turn. If I wanted to actually have this feeling, I had to put it in my mouth.
So I picked up one of the pre-cut slices and put the corner in first. My mouth wasn't all that big, so the amount I could actually bite off wasn't much. It was still more than enough to savor it.
The nutty fragrance of cheese flooded my mouth the instant I bit down, and the salty-sweet bulgogi sauce danced through it. I was still busy being happy about a texture of meat I couldn't remember the last time I'd had when the other toppings, hidden underneath, started announcing themselves. Onion soaked through with umami-rich tomato sauce. Olives with that peculiar perfume. Mushrooms, even.
…And once I'd felt a happiness like that, a fact I'd been working hard to ignore floated back up, and the whole thing turned bitter again.
The reason I'd been able to keep choking down ramyeon even after I was sick of it was that it was still far better than eating a meal while getting hit. But the other way around — once this moment of eating pizza happily, by myself, was over — would I be able to put up with that wretched flour smell again, and eat ramyeon until I died…?
To forget the ugly thought that kept surfacing, I cracked the cola. Then I poured it straight down my throat.
The first carbonated drink I'd had since ending up in a woman's body. What should have been a pleasant fizz was, in a body with no tolerance for it at all, not just sharp but scorching — mouth, throat, all the way down.
"Khack— koff, koff…"
I coughed myself wretched. Even as I set the 1.5-liter bottle down on the desk with a thud, I swallowed instead of spraying it everywhere. Maybe because even this was still better than being choked.
At least the gloomy mood that had been trying to eat me alive was gone, wiped clean. That was enough.