23. She Really Is a Crazy Bitch
23. She Really Is a Crazy Bitch
***
I sat up in the capsule-type connection device and shook my head dazedly.
"I'm seriously tired."
Even simple movements left my head feeling foggy, which was strange. Today I felt more exhausted than usual, too.
So I tried to think about what I'd done today, and the only thing that came to mind was the fact that I'd briefly gone out.
Maybe even that unremarkable outing had put some kind of strain on my body, because this fatigue pressing down on my whole body felt different from the tiredness I'd felt playing Another World a few days ago.
It also felt like my body had unconsciously tensed up just from being under other people's gazes.
To be this tired from just that—it made me newly curious how this body had even managed to live.
"...I should start exercising."
Muttering that blankly, I flopped down onto the bed.
Whump.
The bed sank deeply under my body weight, and I savored the soft sensation wrapping around me.
There was no need to go to a gym or anything like that. The exercise needed to build basic stamina wasn't anything that impressive anyway.
I thought I should start working out bit by bit starting tomorrow, but then a question suddenly struck me.
"No matter how you look at it, isn't this too frail?"
Was this current body the strange one, or had my Black Ark body been the strange one?
It felt worse than when I'd first fallen into the world of Black Ark—too bad to dismiss as just poor fuel efficiency.
"Whatever... I'll just exercise."
Let's start working out tomorrow. Even as I thought that, I ended up lying down on the bed anyway.
I slowly raised a hand to tidy my disheveled silver hair, but then thought—shouldn't I do some shopping...
I didn't know whether I'd be going out often in the future, but there were a few things I'd thought of while I was out today that I needed.
Click.
I pressed the PC's power button and dragged myself out of bed and into the chair.
"...When the body gets weak, the mind really does seem to get weak too."
I muttered blankly, fiddling with my own cheek. This level of fatigue should definitely be bearable, but my eyelids kept drooping shut.
It felt like, as I'd been living a comfortable life, even my baseline for endurance had gradually lowered without me realizing it.
What I was trying to buy now was a few pieces of clothing to wear outside and some hair dye.
Even so, I figured rotating through identical designs of shirts like some kind of color game was a bit much, and my silver hair color was too eye-catching and bothered me.
Actually, I should have stopped by a salon and dyed it while I was out, but regretting it now was already too late.
Since this world was what it was, I figured hair dye must have advanced to some degree by now.
Thinking I'd order and then sleep, I browsed through sites through my hazy consciousness. Given how my eyelids kept drooping like this, I could already see myself waking up late tomorrow afternoon if I fell asleep now.
"Elmarket and Rocket Mall..."
I opened familiar websites and roughly searched for sites categorized as shopping malls.
A women's clothing site and a general shopping mall site. I opened them in separate windows.
First, I slowly started searching the women's clothing site.
As I picked out pretty clothes from the selection, a rueful laugh escaped me.
"..."
Even while choosing clothes, I couldn't quite grasp the reality that I was picking out clothes for myself.
In the world of Black Ark, there was no need to dress up, and even if I tried, it was all just equipment items anyway.
Armor with all sorts of bonus stat options attached, belonging to Mythic or Legendary grade.
I wore that kind of thing almost every day, so it felt less like dressing up and more like wearing clothes for their performance.
But now that I was actually buying clothes, it finally sank in that I was choosing clothes for myself.
Like, I really am a woman now.
"Still, it kind of feels like playing dress-up."
I let out another rueful laugh, but kept adding clothes that caught my eye to the cart one by one.
Starting with light fabric t-shirts, considering it would be summer weather for a while, I added several short-sleeved tees. If the design looked decent to my eyes, I added it to the cart without hesitation.
Financial burden? That didn't exist in the first place.
The 2.7 billion won in my account had actually grown even more from interest when I checked this morning.
The one benefit granted to me when I was suddenly sent to this world. In a way, it was a bigger benefit than anything else.
Money.
It did feel as though they'd grudgingly handed over the silver I'd earned, but at this point I was just glad they'd given me anything.
I clicked through various category filters and picked out clothes that fit my measurements.
And for bottoms—no matter that I'd become a woman now, skirts were a no—so I added several pairs of pants to the cart as well.
As I added things without much thought, the number icon on the cart had already passed 20.
I figured that was enough and started searching for hair dye to change my hair color.
I couldn't help but be surprised.
"Why are there so many kinds?"
Hair dyes with names I'd never heard or seen before.
Bambi Brown... Tangerine Brown... Plum Brown... Baby Brown?
'What is all this?'
I scrolled down and looked through the options, but to my eyes all the colors looked similar, yet each dye had some flashy name dividing it into different types.
Brown was brown. Why did that one color alone have more than ten different variations?
"...No, first I need to figure out what the easiest dyeing method is."
I shook my head blankly and searched for "easy-to-use hair dye types."
After searching on a major portal site and in the shopping mall itself, several types of hair dye came up.
From there, I prioritized how each dye was used over its other features. If it looked too difficult or annoying to do alone, I'd set aside a day and go to a salon even if it was a hassle.
When I looked into how to use the dye, it was surprisingly simple.
"Aren't salons going to go out of business?"
It was so convenient that was my first thought the moment I saw it.
Even if I tried it alone, I could dye my hair in about an hour.
The method was to leave a little moisture in my hair, then spread the dye evenly with the included comb.
Basically, I just had to leave it for 30 to 40 minutes and then clean it off. Done.
"Color... just brown, I guess."
Honestly, I'd considered going black, but after checking my face in the full-length mirror standing in one corner of the room, I changed my mind. The face reflected in the full-length mirror looked mixed-race to anyone—not Korean—so I thought black might actually stand out more.
So I typed "subtle hair color" into the search bar, and brown was the color that came up most often.
Among them, I picked a dye called Beige Brown. Even the name sounded understated, and the color itself looked as ordinary as it got. With that, I added the dye to my cart.
Then I clicked on the cart.
—Total order amount: 1,124,423 won.
After paying the full amount by card, I was about to close the site when my hand stopped.
Then I opened my bookmarks and went to the "Another Level" community.
I had bookmarked a few other communities too, but for some reason, the site where I'd first been accused of being a cheater and cursed out caught my eye.
I'll sleep without looking at today's hot topics.
'No way I can resist that.'
The moment I clicked on the Another Level site, I quickly scanned the posts at the very top.
Unlike tweetie, this community guaranteed anonymity, so I was thinking about maybe scribbling a comment or two as I looked over the post titles.
But then...
"...?"
After absently checking the titles of the posts at the very top, I blinked blankly.
Had I done something again without realizing it? I found myself mentally retracing my day.
All I'd done today was go outside, come back, and turn on Another World.
After that, I'd just slaughtered newbies and raised my tier.
But somehow, my name was at the top of the Another Level site again.
— [Full TXT of the conversation about meeting the crazy bitch and Rin in real life.]
— [The crazy bitch who stomped 1v3 says: The user named Rin is on my level. Declaration.]
— [The crazy bitch's recent NewTube status.JPG lol]
— [GIF of the crazy bitch using the Crescent-Moon Weight]
"No, what the hell is this 'crazy bitch' supposed to mean..."
Had they really started calling me something that nasty just because I'd slaughtered newbies and shot up the tiers earlier? For a moment, my heart sank.
But when I actually looked closely at the titles, the story was different.
Every single one of them had my name—Rin this, Rin that—to the point where I couldn't help but agonize over which one to click first.
Then eventually, I just clicked the post at the very top.
I clicked on the post titled "Full TXT of the conversation about meeting the crazy bitch and Rin in real life."
The first thing I saw when I opened the post was—
A screenshot of a woman I'd never seen before, seemingly in the middle of streaming.
"Is she a celebrity?"
The woman in the screenshot was strikingly beautiful—enough that the thought came to me the instant I saw her.
— [Full TXT of the conversation about meeting the crazy bitch and Rin in real life.]
Author: PleaIsMyLove
(Screenshot of the crazy bitch in full makeup)
I wrote out everything the crazy bitch said below.
......
- I met the user named Rin today.
- Ah, no, I actually met her! Not in the game, but in real life!
- It's true that I met Rin completely by chance. Honestly, I approached her without thinking things through, and after I messed up, I ended up meeting her almost as if I were being dragged along. Um... I can't go into detail, but I really did meet her.
After reading a few lines like that, I couldn't help but be dumbfounded.
"No, what is she talking about?"
It seemed like a woman I'd never seen before was saying on stream that she'd seen me.
I scrolled up and looked at the screenshot of the woman again, but she was definitely someone I didn't remember.
Should I call her sexy? Even without showing much skin, she gave off that impression—a woman who looked to be in her early twenties.
The feeling that I'd seen her before was probably just from celebrity articles I'd glimpsed in passing. Her appearance was definitely striking.
And even when I searched my memory, wondering if I just couldn't remember, I definitely had no memory of meeting a woman like that.
If anything, meeting a beauty like that would be hard to forget.
Actually, the only women I'd met in this world were my younger sister Seoyun and the Yoon Sua I'd met during today's first outing. There was no one else.
"...Yoon Sua?"
Thinking that, I blankly clicked on the screenshot to enlarge it and examined the woman again.
Yoon Sua. Yoon Sua. Yoon Sua.
I repeated the name, trying to overlay her appearance.
She wasn't really someone I wanted to remember...
A female college student with clean, refined features. If there was one unusual thing about her, it was how into games she was.
Someone I wouldn't see again. That was exactly the image I had of her.
Even comparing her to the woman in the screenshot I'd opened in a separate image window, she clearly looked very different from my memory.
To the point where it was hard to see them as the same person.
They say makeup can make a woman unrecognizable even to her own family... and I knew that, but.
"But still... isn't it hard to say this person is the same as that Yoon Sua woman?"
She looked so different that it was hard to imagine that refined-looking college student styling herself this dramatically.
Then suddenly, my conversation with the woman named Yoon Sua came to mind.
'Is that all?'
'Then, do you happen to know... the crazy bitch?'
'I was wondering if you knew about the user called the crazy bitch.'
I'd wondered why the woman named Yoon Sua kept going on about "crazy bitch" this and "crazy bitch" that.
'Fuck, this bitch is actually insane.'
I felt my head go light without realizing it.
Then I hurriedly clicked on the other hot topic posts to check their contents.
"She didn't say anything about my real appearance, did she?"
I muttered that while anxiously rummaging through all the posts with uneasy eyes.
I really hated the idea of people finding out that my real face looked the same as my character.
I still needed time to accept this world.
Surely she hadn't gone that far. I hurriedly checked.
"Hoo."
Only after going through most of the posts did a sigh of relief escape me.
I'd thoroughly checked most of the hot topic posts and highly recommended ones, and fortunately, there was nothing about my real appearance or anything related to the real me.
If anything, Yoon Sua had been so vague that the person she described barely felt like the real me.
While checking the posts, I kept getting a strange feeling.
—Plea had told Rin her nickname, but Rin had acted as if they had no idea who Plea was.
—Content that seemed to be complaining that the nickname the user named Rin had given her was wrong, so she didn't know how many times she'd sent friend requests to the wrong person.
"...I did give her the wrong nickname."
I muttered blankly, feeling a bit odd.
Considering how much attention Yoon Sua had baited, she hadn't actually leaked any information about me. What she'd said was barely different from what the community already knew.
Then a hollow laugh escaped me.
— [The crazy bitch who stomped 1v3 says: The user named Rin is on my level. Declaration.]
One of the hot topic posts was a video of Yoon Sua playing Another World and making remarks about me mid-game.
—At the very least, Rin is on my level. That's honestly how it feels.
"What's her intention with this..."
No matter how I looked at it, it felt like she was hyping me up way too much.
While going through the hot topic posts, I opened another window and searched for Plea, and the woman named Yoon Sua was quite famous.
To the point where I now understood all those looks she'd given me at the cafe—introducing herself as "Plea" and gazing at me with expectant eyes.
She was a famous streamer that any Another World player would know.
On top of that, Challenger Tier and currently ranked 8th.
She was a top-ten ranker even within Challenger Tier.
For me, who was only just beginning to grasp how popular Another World was, the rank of 8th was so high it didn't quite register.
If anything, it felt unreal.
"Yoon Sua, this person is just..."
And while I'd definitely been surprised at first because these were hot topic posts about me, once I actually read them, there really wasn't much to them.
If anything, I wondered why someone as famous as Yoon Sua would bait this much attention as if she were interested in me.
"Does she want me to watch her stream or something?"
And the more Serin looked at all of it, the more she got the strange feeling that Yoon Sua was deliberately trying to get her attention.