Bitcoin Mining and LoL
It was 2009. I had turned three years old.
So this moment has finally arrived....
Becoming three brought a major change to my daily routine. Mining had been added to the schedule.
I'd be a sucker not to do this.
Bitcoin appeared in the world on January 3, 2009, and I became the second person after its founder to successfully mine it.
Only possible because it was the very beginning.
Now that Bitcoin had just shown its face, even ordinary people could mine it without much trouble. That was going to change in 2010, though.
That's when GPU mining shows up.
GPU mining was only realistic for regular people who already had a decent handle on the technical side. That much I could manage. If an ordinary person could do it, that meant I could too if I put in the work.
GPU mining stays viable through 2012, but...
2013 was a different story. That was the year specialized ASIC miners arrived, and the difficulty of mining on your own shot through the roof. From then on, electricity bills and equipment costs made it nearly impossible for a regular person to mine alone. Joining a mining pool became the standard way in.
From that point I'll just give up on mining and buy instead.
It wasn't a real problem. For someone who'd come from the future, not being able to mine Bitcoin was only a mild disappointment.
There's plenty of other things to eat. NVIDIA, Elon Musk's Tesla, and the rest.
There was more than enough to feast on.
I'm sick to death of being crushed by a lack of money.
Back when my mother from my previous life was still alive, I had to work three jobs. There was no other way to cover the insurance premiums.
And even that was only possible because we had a house.
If our family hadn't even owned that little 850-square-foot apartment in Gyeonggi Province, I couldn't have covered Mom's insurance even working three jobs. That was how much it cost to treat cancer.
They said overwork was the biggest cause.
This time would be different. Nobody in this family of mine was ever going to work themselves into the ground. I would make sure of that.
"Yena, what are you thinking about?"
"About you, Mom!"
Mom stroked my hair at that answer.
I've gotten used to this now.
At some point, turning on the charm for Mom and getting praised for it had settled into just another part of the daily routine. Of course, I wouldn't have bothered if there hadn't been a reward.
Act cute for Mom.
✓ Success
🎁 Reward: 0.01 Points
They said even specks of dust piled high become a mountain, didn't they? Clear today's mission a hundred times and, before you knew it, the scraps would turn into a whole point.
The most points I can get in a year is seven, tops.
On a lean year, around five. If I cleared the daily mission without missing a single day, that came out to 3.65 points. I could pick up extra from the monthly mission on top of that, but that one ran a bit higher on the difficulty scale.
Add a Friend.
🎁 Reward: 1 Point
Park Ha-jun was already more than I could handle, and now I was supposed to add another one....?
Not happening.
It wasn't as if anything terrible would happen if I didn't stockpile points right this second, so the decision was an easy one.
"Yena! I caught a dragonfly!"
"Ugh. Get that away from me."
I swatted at the dragonfly he'd brought over, and the moment his hand opened, it took off into the sky.
"I worked so hard to catch that...."
Seeing him slump like that, I felt my resolve soften.
"Sorry. But don't bring dragonflies in front of me anymore, okay? A good boy like Ha-jun can promise me that, right?"
"Yeah! Of course!"
The truth was, dragonflies were a kind of trigger. I'd been forced into a dragonfly mukbang in my previous life, so seeing one inevitably dragged those memories back up.
He's so innocent.
I wasn't sure if it was just because he was three, but this kid listened to everything I said and took my words at face value. That was pretty refreshing. I had never met anyone like that in my entire life.
Only Mom and Dad were ever on my side.
Wherever I went, I was the one who got left out. Of course I'd been carrying around a complex about that, but after meeting this kid, most of that inferiority had faded away. Some of it was still there, sure, but...
That'll disappear with a little more time.
In the end, time was probably the answer.
Time flew by. Before I knew it, the year was 2011, and I had turned five.
Already five, huh...
A strange feeling crept in. Time had seemed to crawl while I was living through it, but looking back now, it had passed surprisingly fast.
I did pack a lot into those years, considering my age.
For the record, my days looked like this: wake up and sprint to the computer to mine, breakfast, play with Park Ha-jun and eat lunch, a nap, more mining, play with Dad after he got home from work or watch TV as a family, then sleep. Not every day followed that script exactly, but most of them ran on that loop.
And now one more thing gets added....
"Yena, time for kindergarten?"
That's right. I was starting kindergarten. At this age.
After arriving at kindergarten, I looked around and let out a sigh.
"Haaah~"
"Yena, why are you sighing? Mom said if you sigh you'll get wrinkles. So don't sigh. Not if you don't want to get old fast!"
"Yeah, thanks for the great advice."
He wasn't wrong. Sighing didn't do me any favors. But sometimes you just had to sigh, consequences be damned, and this was one of those times.
I'm supposed to spend all day with a bunch of five-year-olds? At my age?
That was asking too much. I was an extreme introvert, after all.
Six hours with this many kids...
Nine in the morning to three in the afternoon.
Haaah~ Nothing I can do about it.
You can't live a life doing only the things you like. I decided to accept reality.
"Yena! Let's go on the slide!"
"Sure."
The one silver lining was that none of the other kids were coming over.
Is it because the two of us are already playing together?
That peculiar psychology where people want to talk to you if you're alone, but won't bother inserting themselves if you're already occupied with someone else. Of course, it wasn't long before I realized that thought had been a miscalculation.
The first day passed without incident. That was typical. Among little kids, a stranger's appearance tended to put everyone on guard. But that wariness didn't last more than a day — partly because they figured out I was just another kid like them, and partly because of that natural friendliness children have.
"You guys wanna play with us too?"
"No—"
"Yeah!"
Hey. Why are you deciding that on your own.
"Wooooaaaah!"
"Stay right there!"
"Freeze!"
And that was how I ended up playing freeze tag.
If it's come to this, I'll show them what an adult can do.
Nothing grand. I just planned to dig into the rules and exploit them.
"Freeze."
"Ah! I almost had you and you froze again!"
Typical of kids who were only five, the freeze-tag rules were full of holes.
There's no limit on how many times you can freeze.
For the person running away, that was basically a cheat skill. You just had to freeze whenever you were about to get caught.
This is why you shouldn't have invited us to play.
I pulled the strategy out when the kid who'd invited us was "it," and I'd already been running it for a solid five minutes.
Alright. That's probably enough.
Going too hard on the revenge felt a bit much. This kid had purely wanted to play together. There was no ulterior motive, no malice. He was five years old. Sure, kids can be cruel, but that usually starts applying around upper elementary — the age of criminal-adjacent little terrors. It didn't apply to five-year-olds. These kids didn't even have a concept of what a "mean" act was.
"Got you."
"Ah."
I'd gotten caught while lost in thought.
Oh well.
I'd just have to be "it" once. But in that moment, I saw it. The kid who'd caught me was smirking.
"Pfft."
This little shit?
Calm down.
I was not about to get into a serious fight with a five-year-old after thirty-five years on this earth.
"Noob~"
"Just you wait. I'm coming for you."
He snorted a laugh at that and took off running. I couldn't hold back. I charged after him, and since the playground was a limited space to begin with, it wasn't long before I was right on the verge of catching him.
"Freeze!"
"Hoo."
"What? Hurry up and go catch the other kids!"
Fine. I'll deal with you later.
What I didn't know at the time was just how terrifying children's ability to learn could be. I ran to catch the others. I couldn't catch anyone. There was a reason for that: every last one of them had adopted my tactic. Freeze right before getting tagged. The effect was devastating.
"Freeze! Haha! Yena, freeze tag is so fun!"
"Is that so?"
He probably didn't mean it that way, but even Ha-jun was using my own strategy to mess with me.
"You little..."
I glared at them with ice-cold eyes. A five-year-old girl glaring, however, apparently posed zero threat. Every last one of them was grinning, busy casting their best catch-me-if-you-can.
In the end, it took a full ten minutes before I finally, barely, caught a single one.
December 4, 2011.
This was a historic day. The day League of Legends launched in Korea.
Wait. Is it actually historic....?
Well, that wasn't important, so let's move on.
I created a LoL account and logged in.
I'm going Challenger.
To achieve the Challenger dream I'd never reached in my previous life, I claimed a reward I'd been holding onto.
Add Gaming.
Heh. A D? Time to spend those points.
I dumped all seven points into Gaming.
I smiled at the sight of Gaming jumping to B in an instant. For reference, B was ordinary pro level. But with LoL having just launched its Korean service, that alone was enough to call it a disaster for everyone else.
I smiled.
This is going to be fun.
A game you always won couldn't help but be entertaining.