The Last Logout
“Assistant Manager Kim, clocking out right on the dot again today?”
It was Assistant Manager Choi at the next desk, striking up a conversation just as I was tidying up before leaving. I nodded, roughly shoving my charger and wallet into my bag.
“Ah, yes. Heading out first, Assistant Manager Choi. See you tomorrow.”
The moment the farewell was done, I shut down my computer.
Anyone watching might have thought I was a man who lived for nothing but quitting time.
And they'd be right. I had waited for it. Desperately, even.
I escaped the office so fast that even the short wait for the elevator felt like a waste of precious seconds.
Twenty-eight years old. Assistant manager at a small-to-midsize company.
If you asked me to sum up my life, no words fit better than those.
Ordinary, if you wanted to call it that; unbearably dull, if you were being honest. I never caused any trouble at work, but I was hardly someone who stood out, either. My relationships weren't bad. I'd smile and exchange greetings with everyone, and at the occasional company dinner I'd even fill my neighbor's glass.
But there weren't many people I'd actually call a friend.
Meeting someone for drinks after work was rare, and the friends I'd text first on a weekend I could count on one hand.
Instead, I'd long had what was essentially my only hobby.
Gaming.
Fantasy RPGs in particular.
Leaning my head against the bus window, I watched the city darken beyond the glass. The red evening light lingering between the buildings had already faded, and dusk was creeping in among the gray roads and packed high-rises.
Another day no different from yesterday.
Go to work, do the job, come home.
Then, come tomorrow, go to work again.
A repetition of days with nothing special about them.
Maybe that was why.
Maybe that was exactly why I fell in love with games.
No claustrophobic canyons of buildings, no subway cars packed wall to wall with strangers. Just endless grasslands and towering mountain ranges, untouched forests, and a world where nameless monsters roamed free.
The vast world unfurling on the other side of the screen had stolen my heart so easily, even as a child.
As the bus swayed along, I pulled out my phone and checked the announcement for the patch that had gone live that day.
Ryu Origin.
The RPG I'd been hopelessly hooked on lately.
The graphics, the story, the worldbuilding, the lore—not a single thing about it was lacking, and it was highly rated among players for good reason.
The moment I got home, I took a quick shower.
Changed out of my suit into a loose t-shirt and comfortable pants, and settled into the seat in front of my computer with the ease of long habit. Only when my shoulders—stiff from a full day at the office—touched the backrest did I finally feel them start to loosen.
“Alright. Let's do this.”
I pressed the power button.
The computer booted up, and I moved the cursor over the familiar icon sitting on my desktop.
A moment later, the familiar BGM filled the room.
It's a little embarrassing to say this myself, but I was a gamer of some renown online.
From MMORPGs to single-player RPGs, I didn't much care about genre—if a new title came out, I played it, and I'd even made my name on a few server leaderboards. I took a certain pride in being better at games than most.
And yet the content I'd been pouring the most hours into in Ryu Origin lately wasn't boss raids. It wasn't hidden dungeons, either.
Fishing.
Don't people always say that the true endgame of any RPG is the life content—fishing, mining, smithing, herb gathering?
Not that I know whether anyone actually says that.
At least, that's how it was for me.
The fishing in Ryu Origin had an almost uncanny way of putting you at ease. The gently rippling water, the grass sweeping in the breeze, the sunlight shifting by degrees as time passed, the clouds reflected on the surface of the pond.
Simply sitting my character down and casting a line was enough to melt away the fatigue that had piled up over a whole day at the office.
I'd even caught myself thinking that someday I'd like to try the real thing. That says it all.
I naturally moved my character to my favorite fishing spot.
A wide pond.
Ringed by green trees and boulders.
The fishing line dropped long and glittering onto the calm surface.
Watching it, I felt something was missing.
“Ah—I should grab a can of beer for this.”
I got up and headed for the fridge, pulled out one cold can, returned to my seat, and cracked it open with a cheerful hiss.
Tsssh—the foam rose up.
“Ahhhh… now this….”
This is what poetic leisure is all about.
On the monitor, my character sat quietly, rod in the water.
I sank deep into my chair.
It was a nothing-special kind of hour.
I waited for the fish in the game to take the bait, sipped my beer now and then, and listened to the gentle BGM.
How much time passed like that?
My eyelids grew heavy, little by little.
Work had been a bit busy lately. Not enough to warrant overtime, exactly, but the tasks had piled up and I hadn't slept properly for several days running.
Once my eyes closed, they refused to open again easily.
“Ugh… no good.”
I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand.
“Thirty minutes. I'll just nap for thirty minutes and pick it back up.”
I couldn't even be bothered to walk to the bed.
So I left the monitor on, folded my arms on the desk, and buried my face in them.
In the game, the fishing went on without me.
I closed my eyes to the soft sound of water.
And before long, my consciousness sank down into somewhere deep.
Chirp—chirp chirp.
A bird was singing somewhere.
Water babbled and flowed, and threaded through it came the rustle of grass blades brushing against one another in the wind.
Shhhh—
How pleasant.
Birdsong tickling my ears.
The quiet murmur of water. A gentle breeze.
Ahh… this is nice.
Feels like the best therapy…
………?
In an instant, a small flicker of wrongness lifted its head from some drowsy corner of my sleeping mind.
Birds? Water? Grass? Wind?
In my room?
My eyelids trembled faintly.
My half-asleep brain, still fogged with sleep, sat frozen and uncomprehending. But the breeze brushing past my ears was far too vivid, and at the tip of my nose lingered that fresh, earthy scent of wet grass and soil.
It wasn't the air conditioner.
It certainly wasn't the game's BGM.
I slowly opened my eyes.
Dazzling light flooded my vision.
“……?”
A sky of endless blue.
Crisp, clear, and utterly cloudless, it stretched open before my eyes.
I stared at it blankly for a moment, then slowly turned my head to the side.
Green grass swayed in the wind.
Beyond it, a pond sparkled gently, holding the sunlight in its surface.
Shhhh—
The wind blew again.
Something—hair, apparently—tickled my cheek.
“What is thiiis!!!!”
I bolted upright.
From that moment on, the strange things came flooding in all at once.
First, my line of sight was absurdly low. It felt as though the whole world had suddenly grown larger.
The voice that had just burst out of my mouth was strange, too. Far too thin and high to belong to a twenty-eight-year-old man.
“…Huh?”
I looked around in a daze.
No matter how I looked at it, this was not my room.
No desk. No computer.
No half-finished can of beer.
All that lay before me was a pond glittering in the sunlight, nameless wildflowers, and trees swaying in the breeze.
My heart began to beat faster.
Where on earth am I?
The last thing I remember…
I fell asleep at my computer, didn't I?
That was when it happened.
Something entered the bottom of my vision.
“……”
I slowly raised my hand.
The fingers were slender.
The palm was small.
This was not my hand.
My gaze traveled lower.
Tiny feet. The hem of clothes I'd never seen before.
And cascading over my shoulders, something jet-black.
With a trembling hand, I grabbed it.
Hair. It was long.
Black hair spilled softly between my fingers.
For a long while, I couldn't say a word.
The wind blew.
The grass swayed, and small ripples spread across the pond.
The birds went on singing as if nothing at all had happened.
And in the middle of all that serenity, I alone sat frozen.
Slowly, I lifted my hand to my head.
Only one thought surfaced.
…Am I dreaming?
