Speak Your Wish
"Hah—hff... what the hell was that."
Han Jae-min tore off his gear and dropped into his chair.
The stream had auto-switched from the VR feed to his computer.
What just happened?
Even back in reality, it took him a long moment to process. A tiny girl, barely five feet tall if that. And the matchmaking, he was certain, had been set to rookies. And yet... he, a player inside the top ten percent, had lost? Without managing a single thing?
"Hey, guys—was I the only one who felt that? Right? That was seriously not okay."
Hacks. That was what Jae-min thought—and what he had no choice but to believe. What newbie on this earth beats a Diamond the instant they spawn in?
"The character creator was decent, I'll give her that. Disgusting Netkama bastard. What's a grown man hiding behind a loli girl avatar even doing?"
By the way she talked, by the way she moved—Jae-min simply could not believe that something so cute had been hacking. Without an instant of hesitation, he pulled up the Dive website and reported the user.
"Bye-bye, hacker bitch. Bet you don't last a few matches before the ban lands."
Dive Corp was already notoriously touchy about unauthorized programs.
Nothing controversial happening lately, either—works out great, actually. Time to farm some outrage off this.
Han Jae-min was just settling in to film his humiliation video of Cheok Wol in earnest when he opened the replay—and the chat window suddenly erupted into a blizzard of profanity.
"Hey—Manager! Manager, get rid of them, now. What is with these worm bastards?"
Jae-min's face crumpled. His mood had been well and truly wrecked. Red censor bars slashed through the chat one after another, but the flood showed no sign of slowing.
Did someone drop my coordinates somewhere?
This had to be a hostile streamer siccing their viewers on him. The trouble was, he'd made far too many enemies over the years to pin it on any one of them. To get a read on the situation, fast, Jae-min dove into the Hunter Gallery.
"Wh... what is this."
Since when had this been getting covered?
While Jae-min was still standing there dumbstruck—
Bzzzt—
a message came in from his dedicated Dive operations manager.
"Hold up just a sec, guys. Urgent call."
He opened the message, and this was what it said:
"What?"
He was already mad enough to chew glass, and now he was supposed to swallow that? Jae-min had already ruled, conclusively, that Cheok Wol was a hacker.
What would an operator know? Unreal.
Having actually lived as a hunter, Jae-min knew exactly how ridiculous this was. In this world, there was no shortage of things a scrap of data couldn't explain. Hell—weren't hacks, by definition, things that strolled right past security like that?
"Whoa—guys, you know what Dive just hit me with?"
To broadcast this outrageous injustice far and wide, Jae-min switched to subscriber chat and announced:
"They're saying it wasn't hacks?"
"You have got to be kidding me."
Jae-min bared his fury without a filter.
"I'm dragging this to the bitter end, guys. It wasn't hacks? Then fuck it—if this isn't hacks, I'm quitting Dive, for real."
Somewhere along the way, the fact that he had booted up Dive in the first place to smurf on rookies had slipped clean out of his head. All that remained was the righteous mission of posting an educational beatdown of a hacker and milking the outrage.
"Do you like that teddy bear that much?"
"Love it!"
"You don't know what anything else is called, but teddy bear sticks..."
"'Know nothing'—what nonsense is this?"
Cheok Wol blinked.
"I saw such things in passing. Everything here, that is."
"For that... you really didn't seem to know much of anything, though."
"How to use them, I may not know. But the sights themselves are not strange to me."
At some not-particularly-pleasant memory, Cheok Wol hugged the teddy bear—nearly as big as she was—tight against her chest.
Ji-eun, hands on the wheel, spared a brief glance at the sight.
"'Not unfamiliar'—what do you mean?"
"...I was merely startled to find them here as well, that is all."
Cheok Wol looked out the window.
"Things that existed only in the Infinite Corridor existed here too, you see."
"Ah—"
The colossal tower known as the Corridor. Every floor of it ran on a different theme—and anything at all might be waiting on any given floor.
The first floor's theme was 21st-century Earth? That's a rare variant... she might have witnessed some hideous future.
A twenty-first-century dystopia. If that was it, Ji-eun could finally understand why Cheok Wol despised the Corridor so thoroughly.
"The teddy bear is— a thing I have never seen in any Corridor, you see."
"...So that's how it was."
Cheok Wol hoisted the teddy bear up high. The moment she'd first returned to this world, her gaze had snapped, instantly, to the teddy bears clutched by the children passing in the street. Of all those countless objects, it was the one and only thing her eyes had never seen before. She had wanted one—she just hadn't expected to have it in hand this quickly.
And it was all thanks to keeping such a capable believer.
"You have my praise! My first believer! You have delivered your first tribute most splendidly! Speak—what is your wish?"
"...Mm. That you, Returnee-nim, keep streaming and build yourself a stable life?"
"Streaming? I am finished with it!"
Cheok Wol's cheeks puffed out.
"These days I cannot stand so much as the hwe of Hwe-rang, the Corridor! Which is why I no longer eat hwe—raw fish—either!"
"Ahaha... streaming doesn't have to mean the Corridor, you know. Nobody's making you set foot in Dive."
"But the moment a stream begins, yesterday will surely come back to me."
Cheok Wol shook her head.
"No."
But—streaming was the only way she'd ever truly find her footing in this world.
Ji-eun, who had watched Cheok Wol for three months now, knew better than anyone what would happen if Cheok Wol tried to hold down a normal life. It simply would not do...! The cute face might carry her for a moment, but she'd be weeded out of any workplace before the week was out. Streaming, though, was another story entirely. In front of a camera, Cheok Wol's sheer strangeness became an overwhelming asset. So Ji-eun turned the problem over in her head, and decided she needed to start arguing in Cheok Wol's own language.
"Returnee-nim. You keep calling me your believer, don't you? Why is that?"
"The 'gods' of the Corridor all kept believers of their own. This body was envious for so long... but with a form such as this, I could never obtain a proper one."
...What on earth is she talking about?
Cheok Wol's vocabulary was still, as ever, beyond Ji-eun.
Screeech.
Ji-eun parked without mishap and led Cheok Wol up to her one-room studio apartment. Cheok Wol had been grinning ear to ear ever since the purchase—clearly the teddy bear had put her in the best of moods. Never mind that the gift had cost a full two hundred dollars, and the wound to her wallet was deep.
"Eeheehee!"
The instant they were home, Cheok Wol flung herself onto the bed, crushed the teddy bear in her arms, and rolled around with it, wild with joy. Ji-eun sighed and let a faint smile through. Watching her treasure it this much made the thinning wallet worth it, somehow.
The card installments still have a while to go, so next time something even nicer... no. Focus.
Ji-eun collected herself and held something up for Cheok Wol to see. Her YouTube subscriber count.
"See this? Your very first stream, and you gained a whole three thousand subscribers."
"A paltry three thousand? If I willed it, slaying three thousand men would take me less than a minute."
"..."
By now she should have been inured to it, but every so often the sheer absurdity still stole the words right out of her mouth. Ji-eun was still searching for the winning argument when—watching Cheok Wol bury her face in the teddy bear—the perfect idea struck.
"Returnee-nim, think it through carefully. The more believers you have, the more tribute they'll send—mountains of things you love, like that teddy bear."
"Hmph."
Cheok Wol wore a sneer.
"Have you not made this speech before? You take this body for far too great a fool. I streamed, and what arrived at my feet? Nothing. My conclusion stands: cyber-believers are of no use to me. In truth, I knew it from the start!"
"The donation—remember? That voice."
"Yes. I remember."
"You do know each one of those buys you one Pokémon bread, right?"
Granted, it runs a touch short, admittedly.
There seemed no need to be that precise, though. Cheok Wol's small frame gave a jolt, and she raised her head just slightly.
"Keep collecting those, and soon you'll be buying new teddy bears. You'd be obtaining whatever you desire with your own hands—which, I'd say, makes it tribute of the highest order."
"..."
"No, no! Don't run off to stream just yet! Nothing's set up—strapping into the VR right now would be pointless!"
"What?! My believer is a liar. Did you not command me to stream!"
Cheok Wol bristled, sulking at full volume.
...Truly, keeping up with this person's moods was a full-time job.
"First of all, that earlier stream was only bait to catch your interest. If we're doing this properly, there's a great deal we need to settle."
"Then settle it."
"...Mm. For starters, your streamer name. Things were such a rush earlier that it got registered as some randomly generated English string, and that really won't do."
"Streamer name?"
"The name you go by on stream."
"My name is Cheok Wol!"
For reasons she couldn't quite name, Ji-eun yearned to deliver a single knuckle-rap to that head, but she barely restrained herself.
"Streaming under your real name isn't recommended. It's not unheard of, but for you, Cheok Wol-nim..."
Honestly, the name's a bit...
...It wasn't a bad name, exactly. It just clashed with Cheok Wol's image in certain ways. Cheok Wol looked, after all, like a beautiful girl with silver hair and jade eyes.
"What is this? If a person's name matters so little, then simply take mine. This body takes pride in its own name."
"Ahem—please don't. This is strictly a streamer name, not your true one. Care to try settling on one?"
As though the question merited no deliberation at all, Cheok Wol answered at once.
"Throughout Heaven and Earth, Yua Alone Is Exalted—Strongest in All the World, Cheok Wol."
"Yua! That's a perfect fit—it even sounds like a name for a little kid!"
"WHAT?! Where have everything before and after gone?! Do it over! A different one!"
Naturally, Cheok Wol loathed it.
"Then I'll just switch your name to Yua—"
"Ha? I said I refuse, believer!"
"I'll buy you two Pokémon breads."
"...Two?"
"If you hate it, I won't."
Cheok Wol, caught weighing her options—
"Mm."
She nodded.
Simple as ever, I see.
And so, Yua sold her name for two Pokémon breads.