A Phone or Something More Urgent?

Still, the keyboard hadn't broken.

Apparently the cola hadn't soaked all the way down into the internal parts. The only real annoyance was that, while every other key was fine, anything near the Enter key came out sticky every time I pressed it.

That much I could live with, I figured. I barely typed in chat anyway.

Except the second I finished cleaning the keyboard, I suddenly had a reason to chat.

She must have messaged me while I was wiping down the keyboard.

It wasn't as if we were close enough to have any reason to call on each other this urgently. Watching her ping me like that, I almost started to worry that something had actually gone wrong.

Ah. If something had come up, it was probably money, wasn't it? Nothing else would make her reach out to me like this. Maybe it was about the cash Kancho had given me. A hundred thousand won wasn't exactly pocket change.

The human heart really was a petty thing. When I'd first received that hundred thousand, I'd wondered whether it was even okay to take that much. The moment I thought I might have to give it back, I suddenly wanted to ignore Celesty entirely.

But I couldn't quite bring myself to. If ours had been a purely online relationship, maybe. Once you'd actually seen someone's face, though, it got a lot harder. Sure, we'd both been wearing masks at Kancho's Studio—but the fact remained that we'd met in real life. We weren't complete strangers anymore.

I knew full well that everything my parents had taught me had been a performance. And yet those lessons had still become part of the person I was. In the end, it didn't look like that was going to change anytime soon.

So I sent an apology along with my reply—and what came back made me freeze.

Was I okay? Had she installed a camera in my house or something? It sounded exactly like she'd seen me choke. But Celesty had never been to my place. What, had she stuck a bug to the money? It was either just politeness, or a coincidence.

The reason Celesty had asked me that wasn't a wiretap, and it wasn't a coincidence either. It was because of the post I'd written earlier in a fit of temper.

As far as I'd been concerned, it was a joke on the level of I'll put your name in my suicide note and kill myself. I was only now realizing that, depending on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠who read it, it could sound like I was genuinely about to die.

On a hunch, I refreshed the League of Champions community board—and sure enough, other people had caught the blast radius.

I didn't even need to read the contents. It was painfully obvious they were about me.

The funny part was that DoReMiMiserable was still happily posting hit pieces on me. The person I wished would just stop stirring up trouble was wandering around just fine—while people who had nothing to do with me were the ones losing their minds.

In the end, if only to put those people at ease, I had to write one more post.

The second I posted, DoReMiMiserable's comments landed immediately. Not one—three of them, like they'd been queued up and ready.

At this point I almost had to wonder whether I'd screwed this person over in some major way. Had they gotten wrecked by me in-game at some point? Yeah… thinking about it that way, I did feel a little guilty. I held grudges against people who played like assholes too. Of course, that didn't mean I'd ever try to harass them in real life over it.

Even when other people told them this was basically stalking and to cut it out, DoReMiMiserable doubled down and started making unreasonable demands.

Prove it by showing them my wreck of a house, and then they'd believe me? That was enough to make anyone tilt their head. Poverty was a weakness, not a weapon. There was zero benefit to me in proving anything, so I couldn't understand why they were demanding it. And whether they believed me or not wasn't my problem in the first place.

…Come to think of it, the fact that I was even paying attention to comments like that probably meant I was already dancing to their tune. That put me in a foul enough mood that I decided to be a little difficult on purpose.

The funny thing was, it actually worked. My reply must have pissed them off badly enough that they went straight to insults—no, wait. They'd been insulting me from the start.

But then the mood of the thread started drifting in a strange direction.

I genuinely could not understand why these people wanted to look at someone else's house so badly. The whole point had already gone sideways. It ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had started as nitpicking over whether I was actually poor, and somehow mutated into just show us your place.

Either way, I had no intention of doing it. Why on earth would I film my house and show it to strangers? I didn't particularly want people seeing how filthy it was either.

I'd thought I was being clever, dangling a phone as bait—but I didn't need a phone anyway.

It was true that living in Korea without a phone was extremely inconvenient. Most verification ran through your phone; I'd nearly been unable to redeem the gift cards myself because I didn't have one. But I'd already figured out how to use gift cards without a phone. And if I was just going to game until I died, what exactly did I need to verify?

So I wrote one last post and hit leave community.

Keeping at it here was only going to mess with my head. There were plenty of decent people, sure—but a few weirdos latching on was exhausting enough.

In the meantime, Celesty's whispers had stacked up in a long column. She'd kept talking to me the whole time I was absorbed in the community board.

Yeah. This was the kind of thing that mattered more than a phone.

Something to stand in for my leg. Honestly, even a pair of crutches would have been more than enough—and they were offering a wheelchair on top of that. I was more glad than I wanted to admit, and at the same time it made me uncomfortable. A few tens of thousands of won wouldn't cover it, and they were still putting their own money in to buy it for me.

When someone put it like that, turning it down would have been rude.

Really—when we'd parted ways at the studio, I'd been sure I'd ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠never see them again. You never did know how the world worked. I hadn't expected we'd end up meeting like this a second time.

So, without a word, I started typing out my address.

…Thank god the Enter key was sticky.

If it had registered when my pinky brushed it, my home address would have been broadcast to everyone watching. I'd known Celesty was streaming, and I'd still almost slipped—I answered with my face burning. It was a genuine relief we were talking in text instead of face-to-face or over a call.