March 31st (1)
I stepped out of the subway and let the chilly air hit my face.
March was almost over and April was right around the corner, yet this so-called spring weather showed zero interest in showing up.
Tomorrow was April first and it was negative one degree Celsius at noon — was that even a real sentence? Had spring been an April Fool's joke all along? So the Republic of Korea only got winter and summer now? This was some real bullshit!
I trudged along, wearing my own fruitlessness like a badge. The people laughing and chattering away in broad daylight pissed me off just looking at them.
Fuck. Some of us can't even get our talents recognized and end up like this, while other people land jobs just for being young and "MZ" and go prancing around like that?
Wait a second. Today was a weekday. And they were out here laughing, linking arms, strolling around in the middle of the day?
Goddamn it! What kind of country is this!
I ground my teeth on the inside, but the face I presented to the world stayed proud. I refused to shrink even an inch.
At the very least, in tonight's ranked matches, I planned to completely bury the pathetic reality of who I was and become an irreplaceable carry machine on my way to Diamond I.
For the past two weeks I had poured in enough effort to shit blood just to climb out of Gold and Silver and break into Diamond — and because of that, my job hunting had shrunk down to one hour a day.
...Okay, that was a lie. I had hit Diamond a full week ago.
But the words "Diamond V" had offended me so deeply that I threw everything into pushing that number up to 4, then 3, then 2. So job hunting went from one hour a day to thirty minutes, from thirty to fifteen, from fifteen to five, and today...
"I'll do it after I finish ranked~"
I hadn't done it yet. Yet.
There were still twelve hours left in the day. As long as I did even one minute within those twelve hours, it counted, right? Right? Flawless logic.
Anyway, I was about to keep trudging along... when...
The atmosphere around me felt strange.
...?
Why was everyone craning their necks upward? What were they looking at?
"What the hell is that..."
"Drones? But how are the letters that huge..."
"Whoa, look at that! It's moving in real time! How many drones did they even use!"
"Maybe they're projecting it with beams?"
"In broad daylight with zero clouds? Yeah, right."
What on earth were they all staring at and murmuring about? Curiosity got the better of me, and I tilted my head back too.
And I saw it.
Huh? What. Eleven, fifty-nine, and fifty-four... no, fifty-three, fifty-two, fifty-one... the numbers kept changing. What did that mean?
...Ah. A clock! Hours, minutes, seconds! There was a clock's time floating up in the sky!
But why?
"Drones, maybe?"
Even as I said it, I rejected my own theory. Drones couldn't form letters that massive.
Well — if you mobilized a disgusting number of them, maybe. But look at the seconds side, still ticking down... look at that! It had already dropped into the forties. How do you make something that fluid? Even piloting hundreds of drones in real time would barely cut it!
Lights? In the middle of the day? With almost no clouds?
The problem was that if it wasn't drones... there was no common-sense explanation for how a giant digital clock's numbers were hanging in the sky.
Ugh, look at those people. Going nuts taking pictures on their phones. What, did they think some tourist attraction had dropped in—
"Holy—!"
"Mom!"
Aaaagh! What the hell was this eardrum-shattering volume all of a sudden!
I clapped both hands over my ears on pure instinct. I genuinely thought my eardrums had burst. The problem was that the voice seemed to ring out from every direction at once.
If I were the only one who could hear it, people would write me off as a lunatic — but this sound, much like that moving clock in the sky, seemed to be something every single person could hear.
"Ugh! My ears are gonna fall off!"
"Is this an emergency broadcast? I didn't hear any sirens..."
"What is this, civil defense?"
People threw out every wild theory they could invent, scrambling to make sense of the unidentified voice.
Me? I didn't have the bandwidth for any of that. My head was spinning — where was I supposed to find the energy to figure out who was blathering at us?
Huh? Timer? That clock ticking down in real time?
But a timer... what happens when it hits zero?
The eardrum-splitting voice bellowed that absurd content straight into our ears until it buzzed.
Human... Extinction Game? What kind of batshit prank was this now?
"What?"
"A game?"
"Extinction? What the hell does that mean? Is someone launching a nuclear war?"
"S-someone call the police!"
The street erupted with other people's outcries from every direction, but nothing could block out that enormous voice boring into our ears.
That middle-aged lady over there... call the police? You think the cops can stop this? A sound loud enough to blow out eardrums and a timer counting down in real time from the sky? If they could handle that, they never would have earned the nickname "po-lice" in the first pla—
Ah, fuck! Don't just slam in with a voice that huge!
...Wait, what? How exciting? Are you fucking kidding me?
How dare you use the kind of phrasing I'd only ever seen on those garbage promotional flyers back when I was getting worked to death in the military?
No — more importantly... what the actual fuck did that voice just say? Something was going to spread? Zombies? A virus?
It was loud, the phrasing was infuriating, and the content itself was the kind of nonsense that made you scrunch up your face in disgust.
Even so, there was no way to shut out the voice drilling into our ears, so everyone had no choice but to stand there scowling and swearing while they listened.
Myself included. Fuck!
What — the hell — kind of — bullshit — was this!
The world was ending? Zombies were going to overrun everything? And on top of that, monsters from other worlds were invading? A survival game?
When did I ever want any of that? When did I ever wish for this? I asked for a job, sure — I never said everything could go fuck itself and die!
...Did I?
No. No. Get a grip. Snap out of it, Jeong Hoon!
Why the hell was I getting rattled by this kind of brain-dead nonsense? This was obviously some boring nationwide hidden-camera prank!
That, uh... right! That bastard who sent an emergency disaster text to the entire country back in March sometime — this had to be his handiwork!
I had no idea how he'd put up countless drones to make a real-time clock in the sky!
I had absolutely zero clue — not even a speck of one — how he was "whispering" loud enough to blow out the entire nation's eardrums!
But it was definitely that guy. Or maybe that woman! The important thing was that this was all the government's fault! Government, wake up! President, step down!
...Had my rambling gone on too long? No — I'd simply been given the room to ramble. That voice, which deserved to be boiled alive like a train engine, had gone quiet for a moment. In its place...
"W-what is this supposed to mean!"
"The world's ending? Is someone actually starting a nuclear war?"
"Oh, come on! That cult nonsense... wait. Is this a cult too?"
"Ah, that Justice... whatever-it-was that's been famous lately?"
"Yeah. The J-something! Those cultists whose leader got arrested — isn't this their doing?"
People seized on the gap in that enormous voice to start spouting their own theories all over again.
Hearing them, a thick wave of existential exhaustion hit me. Ah. What riches and glory was I even chasing, standing here like an idiot caught in some nationwide hidden-camera stunt? I should just hurry to a PC bang and queue for ranked—
"Aagh!"
"Kyaa!"
"Oh my god, my ears!"
Ah, shit! Give us a warning before you come back in! You're going to rupture my eardrums. Fuuuck!
The eardrum-threatening volume was the same as ever, and the content was still bizarre. But that last line snagged on something in my mind.
'We're not trying to serve a trash game'... what context did that even come from? Did I miss something? Am I context-blind?
I had never heard a more infuriating voice and manner of speaking in my life. Setting aside the fact that you couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman — that grating tone and delivery made me want to slap whoever was talking clean across the face and crack their skull until it made a hollow thunk.
The content was garbage too. Their face was definitely garbage-looking as well. Guaranteed!
The godawful mouth-drumroll finally ended, and the voice cheerfully invited us to look up.
What? The sky? Without thinking, I lifted my head again.
Huh? That logo... that was insanely familiar... wait!
"Ah, that logo... I've seen that before!"
"Huh? Where have I seen that..."
"You don't know? That game — the one that came out like ten years ago..."
Among the crowd, the person who spoke the game's name out loud was me.
"Brave Saga... Online?"