24. Trying Out a Weapon Called the Crescent-Moon Weight
24. Trying Out a Weapon Called the Crescent-Moon Weight
***
"..."
When I opened my eyes blearily, the now somewhat familiar ceiling came into view.
I stared at it, just blinking vacantly.
The lethargy filling my body seemed to tell my drooping eyelids to close again, but the sunlight coming through the window was already hot against my face.
Even if I wanted to keep sleeping, the warm sunlight tickling my face made it hard to stay asleep.
I'd slept with the air conditioner on, so the muggy weather hadn't left me feeling gross, but my body still wasn't in good shape.
Someone once said that starting anything is half the battle.
Right now, just getting out of this bed felt like half the battle by itself.
"Ugh..."
Groaning like a zombie, I forced myself upright.
I was feeling firsthand what it meant for my body to feel like it weighed a ton.
Thinking back on why I was so exhausted—
Yesterday's first outing was one reason, and playing Another World hard enough to strain my garbage body was another.
On top of that, scouring the community for practically every post related to me with that already exhausted body had taken a lot out of me. Maybe because I'd pushed my tired body too hard, even just sitting up right now was a struggle.
Click.
I turned on my phone to check the time: 5 p.m.
"...I slept for fifteen hours straight?"
A sigh slipped out before I knew it.
I forced myself up and shuffled to the bathroom, but even I could feel I had no strength at all.
Serin splashed cold water on her face, then stripped off her clothes and took a quick shower.
As she dried off with a towel and changed into light clothes, she finally felt a bit more awake.
"The deliveries all arrived, apparently."
From the texts she'd glimpsed while checking the time, most of the items she'd ordered last night had been delivered in the early morning.
Since it was 2031, she figured delivery systems had advanced further. Then again, delivery had already been plenty fast in the previous world, so same-day delivery almost felt expected.
Click.
She picked up her phone and tapped through the messages. Only a few clothing items had arrived later, around 2 p.m., rather than in the early morning.
Click.
She opened the front door and hauled one large box and several smaller ones inside, grunting under the effort.
Riiip.
Fwip.
She tore open boxes and packaging, checking only that the clothes were in good condition and that the items matched her order, then tossed them into a corner if everything looked right.
Whoosh.
Flick.
"So the clothes are all here, more or less."
Serin stared blankly at the hair dye in her hand. The sleek packaging made it look expensive.
"...I can just put on a NewTube video and follow along."
With that thought, she searched NewTube for a hair-dye tutorial and played one with a high view count.
"Subscribers, if you just follow along, it's really not hard..."
Relying on the sound of the NewTube video, Serin spent the next hour or so fumbling around with the hair dye.
......
Serin, who had been cautiously eyeing her reflection in the mirror, turned the hair dye over in her hands, examining it from every angle.
Maybe I'd missed some warning or special note.
"Is this product defective, or is the pigment just weak?"
At first I'd thought that might be it, so midway through I'd used what felt like an excessive amount of dye.
But.
Even looking at my reflection now, I couldn't quite understand.
The figure in the mirror was, in itself, alien.
Not that my appearance was unrealistic, or that I didn't look Korean at all—no, it was literally alien.
Right after I'd dyed it brown—
The brown had suited me well enough. After that, I'd done some light stretching to work on my stamina, then turned on the PC and browsed major websites to catch up on news and what was happening in the world.
Yeah, up to that point, there had definitely been no problem.
Until I'd absently turned my head and caught sight of myself in the mirror standing in one corner of the room...
Not long after dyeing it, the brown pigment in my hair had visibly faded.
And here and there, silver strands were starting to show through.
At first I thought I just hadn't dyed the middle sections properly.
But less than an hour after dyeing it, my hair color was changing on its own. I'd checked several times; there was no denying it.
Even now, my reflection showed hair mixed with brown and silver—a bizarre color that was worse than if I hadn't dyed it at all.
"...?"
As I smoothed down my hair and then grabbed at it roughly, I couldn't even begin to guess what to call this phenomenon I was experiencing.
"This is just... defective dye or something, right?"
That was what I thought. And I didn't want to dig any deeper.
Because otherwise it made no sense, so I had to think of it that way for now.
Hair reverting to its original color on its own—I'd never heard of such a thing.
For now, I decided to treat the dye as defective.
Immediately after, Serin picked up the dye and tried again, but gave up before long.
***
7:21 p.m.
"The stream's starting soon."
After all her fumbling with the hair dye, Yoon Sua's stream time had crept up before Serin knew it.
Her handle on tweetie was Plea.
And the reason I was deliberately remembering her stream time was because I needed to approach her too.
As recently as yesterday at the cafe, I'd assumed I'd never see her again. It turned out she was far more famous than I'd expected.
Her interest in me did not matter much by itself. What mattered was that she knew who I was in real life.
Judging by the trending posts, Yoon Sua already seemed to have figured out that "Rin" was me, so hiding it was pointless.
The community posts I'd checked yesterday hadn't included detailed information about me, but there was no telling when she might change her mind and talk about my real-life identity on stream. That made her a risk.
So before that happened, like it or not, I needed to talk to her.
"But how do I even start a conversation?"
I muttered blankly as I opened the tweetie site and logged in.
From what little I'd looked into yesterday, Yoon Sua was a big-name streamer averaging over ten thousand viewers.
Even if Yoon Sua was interested in me, would she even notice if I went into her stream and typed in chat?
"...Ha."
As I sighed and mulled it over, a notification for Plea—Yoon Sua—appeared in my following list. I'd followed her in advance.
I moved my mouse cursor to enter her stream, but before that, the stream title appeared.
—[Trying Out the Crescent-Moon Weight]
Seeing the title, I let out a hollow laugh without meaning to.
"Why not just title it, 'Come watch Rin'?"
Maybe her viewers or other people would see it differently, but to me, Yoon Sua's behavior was just absurd.
The worry I'd had about how to start a conversation felt pointless now.
Honestly, I was a bit puzzled about why she was so fixated on me, but I also felt like I didn't need to think that deeply about it.
Click.
And so Serin clicked on Sua's stream.
***
After turning off her stream and checking the community, Sua let out a small laugh at the site, which was in an uproar just as she'd expected.
The Another World community site was practically plastered with posts about me and Rin.
She didn't know whether that woman named Serin had seen it, but she planned to keep baiting attention for a few more days.
It was four minutes before Yoon Sua was due to go live.
She was exchanging whispers with an Another World user she was friendly with.
—[Gosu: why are you being so frustrating? just put it in the stream title like i said. rin you fucking loser, fight me]
—[Plea: stop talking shit lmaooo]
She did want to fight the user named Rin, but she couldn't just act recklessly like the user named Gosu suggested.
More than anything, it didn't fit her stream style, and she'd even met Rin in person—she didn't want to turn that into a one-off relationship that ended after a single match.
—[Gosu: ugh, whatever. that's why your life's no fun, always worrying about streams and shit]
—[Plea: maybe the fun part that's lacking is your rank? aren't you 31st now? lmaooo]
—[Gosu: lmao bullshit, I told you my rank only dropped because of that abuse issue. you think i'd lose to you?]
—[Plea: yeah, I don't bother with anyone below 20th~]
They chatted like usual.
Ding!
When the one-minute-to-stream alarm sounded, she hurriedly typed in chat.
—[Plea: anyway, if you want to fight me, get to at least 20th first]
Without waiting for a reply, she left the chat window.
Before pressing the Stream ON button, she checked her appearance in the mirror on one side of the room.
She checked that nothing looked off.
She pressed the "Stream ON" button.
"Hey~ Plea-lings! It's Thursday, July 29th, and the stream is starting!!"