The Employment Scam (1)
Here stands a man. Kim Ji-hyun.
From his high school days, he displayed an innate talent that set him apart. Throughout his school years, he swept up numerous awards in hackathons and project competitions.
Leveraging that impressive track record, he landed a job at a major game company, where he developed a masterpiece that critics said would have won GOTY if it had been on console.
After resigning, he founded a mid-sized studio called Blue Edge and worked as both lead designer and main director. With the game Project: Limbo, he finally claimed that coveted GOTY title.
Afterward, he poured every resource the company had into developing a massive AAA open-world MMORPG, staking his entire life on it. But then…
After carefully reviewing the resume and portfolio you submitted, we regret to inform you that we will not be moving forward with your application. Due to limited openings…
“Ha, fuck.”
Present day. Unemployed freeloader.
***
Why did Kim Ji-hyun, a man who had built a career in the gaming industry that no one could touch and who had ridden a wave of unbroken success, end up as a jobless bum?
Up until 2024, the game market had grown remarkably smoothly, aside from the MMORPG genre falling out of favor.
It wasn’t quite the golden age it had been during the COVID boom, but it was still a time when games of every genre flooded both PC and console, making gamers’ hearts race with excitement.
Blue Edge wasn’t some tiny outfit that would collapse after a single failed project. On the contrary, the company had been steadily expanding. Kim Ji-hyun’s name and market value had skyrocketed.
Even now, he occasionally became the source material for memes—forced to dance in videos when he’d never danced before, or sing songs he’d never practiced.
But the confidence he’d built during his glory days had allowed him to accept even those reactions with humility.
That was then.
“This… fuck… does this even make sense? How the hell did they pull this off? And more importantly, how can they release it at this price? There wasn’t even any warning. We never got any leaked info…”
2025. The year the VR capsule capable of connecting to virtual reality was released. And the year games built around that capsule began to appear.
After that? His career and company were completely wiped out, obviously.
The capsules were priced so low it almost looked like dumping. Games that no one knew when development had even started gradually pushed PCs and traditional PC games out of people’s rooms. In the blink of an eye, his name became a symbol of the old generation.
Even as his company was going under, he secretly held onto the hope that ‘Still, my name has value… surely someone will send a love call.’ But it never came. Not from a single place.
“Well, the development environment is completely different now, so…”
Of course, he had saved up a decent amount of money. Enough to live a comfortable middle-class life even if he retired right now. But before he was a developer or a director, he was a gamer.
Why had he turned down every lucrative offer from big corporations to join a game company in the first place? Because he loved games. At first, that was the only reason.
That was why, even though the tower he had painstakingly built had come crashing down, he couldn’t help but feel a deep fascination with the VR games that had kicked that tower over.
When the scam coin called Aincrad failed to launch in 2022 despite all the hype, how disappointed had the core gamers been? Of course, even back then Kim Ji-hyun had known it was nothing but a pipe dream, but disappointment was still disappointment.
But now…
While the variety of games wasn’t exactly limitless, the simple fact that people could experience things impossible in reality made hearts—including Kim Ji-hyun’s—pound with excitement.
You could wield a greatsword or other realistic weapons on a battlefield, showing off your martial prowess in one-on-one duels or massive free-for-alls. You could grab a gun and storm enemy bases in a world where the laws of physics behaved strangely.
You could fight off endless waves of zombies to build a survivor stronghold, or engage in hair-raising hunts against colossal monsters where life and death hung by a thread…
Fighting games, FPS, zombie survival, monster-hunting action. Genres that had existed on PC before, but now you could enjoy the thrill as if you were truly there. These games exploded in popularity and completely changed the trends.
After half a year of enjoying them purely as a gamer rather than a developer, Kim Ji-hyun had no choice but to admit it.
He was still young enough to not give up on his dreams just yet.
So he swallowed his pride and sent his resume to every single VR game development company. He didn’t even get a single interview. Not one.
…
But as the saying goes, even a mouse hole can let in sunlight.
Finally, one development company passed his resume.
Company name: Team Galicia.
Game in development: Galicia Online.
“It’s that shit game’s developer.”
It wasn’t something an unemployed man who had lost his job because of that very shit game should say, but it was the truth.
Galicia Online. A fantasy VR game set on the continent of Galicia, and practically the only MMORPG in existence.
Wow! A VR MMO! How could this possibly fail?
It failed. And it failed spectacularly.
Why? It wasn’t fun. Did any other reason matter?
Of course, if you looked at the details, there were plenty of reasons it was doomed. If you had to pick just one?
The excessive pursuit of realism that made gameplay ridiculously complicated.
Let’s say you needed deer hide. After catching the deer, you had to remove the internal organs, tie it to a tree with rope, make the initial incision, peel the hide using strength and body weight, remove the flesh and fat, salt it, tan it…
Even if you were just clicking buttons on a keyboard, mouse, or controller, you’d get sick of the boredom. But having to actually move your body to do all that? Your body would hurt long before your head did.
Of course, there were a tiny handful of cult-like players who enjoyed that kind of tedious process, but the vast majority would just go “What the hell is this?” and run away.
As a game, it was an utter failure. As a medieval life simulator, however, it was a product of deranged obsession.
The number of people who had been ground down by it was impossible to even guess. Anyone with a shred of sanity wouldn’t take a job at a company like that or jump into developing a game like that.
But Kim Ji-hyun was not sane.
His game motto had always been: If there’s something you can do, do it right now. If there’s something that looks impossible, keep going until it works.
So after replying that he would attend the interview, he stayed up for several nights creating a portfolio along with a proposal outlining ways to improve Galicia Online.
I can fix it. I can turn it into a god-tier game. If it’s me, I can do it!
***
Kim Ji-hyun’s passion began to fade slightly the moment he saw the building where Team Galicia was located.
It wasn’t even in Pangyo—it was somewhere in Gyeonggi-do. A run-down building that looked at least thirty years old, completely unfit for a cutting-edge hyper-technology industry like virtual reality development.
“…Is this a scam?”
For a moment he wondered if he had really fallen this far, this desperately. But rather than turning back, he decided to at least confirm the reality with his own eyes.
The elevator didn’t even work properly, so he climbed the stairs to the fifth floor, panting the whole way.
Fortunately, it didn’t seem like he had come all this way for nothing.
Hanging on the door was a banner that looked like something you’d see at a fantasy inn. And engraved on it were the words Galicia.
If this technology was really made by kidnapping aliens or something… then the location… probably doesn’t matter…
With that final drop of self-justification, Kim Ji-hyun pressed the doorbell.
Creak. Squeak.
The iron door, which looked old enough to scream in protest, opened. And the person who appeared was…
“Ah, you must be the visitor.”
“……”
Hair that seemed to sit on the border between silver and white. Red eyes so vivid you wondered if such a color could even exist in reality—maybe she was wearing colored contacts? And… a tiny girl so small he had to look down to see her properly.
“Hello! You’re Kim Ji-hyun, here for the interview today, right? Come, come, have a seat over here!”
“……”
Is this for real? No matter how he thought about it, it didn’t seem right.
“Oh! First, could you please sign this?”
Kim Ji-hyun stared at the white-haired little brat who suddenly shoved a nondisclosure agreement at him, wondering what the hell this preschooler’s true identity was.
…
After finishing a bizarre interview where the interviewee asked more questions than the interviewer…
“Is this really okay…”
With a complicated expression, Kim Ji-hyun signed the contract.
In truth, it had been inevitable.
The emotions he had felt the first time he witnessed a VR game—excitement, thrill, and…
I want to design a game like that… No, at the very least, I want to be part of its development…!
Desire. That was the driving force that had brought him to this place.
And on top of that, the very existence of the capsule—which modern science should have made impossible—meant that at some point, Kim Ji-hyun had begun to half-believe the absurd things Elisha was saying.
After all, it made more sense to think his company had gone under due to a disaster on the level of a natural catastrophe rather than because he himself was incompetent.
So.
Let’s just get fooled for now.
A suspicious contract that demanded his soul as collateral? Sure, as long as he could make a god-tier game. He could lose his soul for that.
Was this how Faust had felt when he was seduced by Mephistopheles?
“Hehe.”
“…?”
At the stupid-sounding giggle, Kim Ji-hyun looked up to see Elisha smiling even more ominously than before, beaming brightly.
“Mr. Kim Ji-hyun, can you see this?”
The girl’s slender finger pointed to a clause in the contract. One he hadn’t paid much attention to.
Party B is obligated to perform duties while maintaining the appearance requested by Party A.
It wasn’t that unusual. Some stuffy development companies required suits instead of casual clothes, so he had simply brushed it off. Elisha smiled mischievously and looked him up and down.
“As expected, the god of RPG games should be a goddess!”
“?”
Bang!
Kim Ji-hyun’s body was instantly enveloped in light. And then…
A strange sensation suddenly washed over him. His chest felt suffocatingly tight, as if it would burst.
Something heavy seemed to weigh down on his shoulders, making them stiff. His arms and legs felt slightly weaker than before.
“What the fuck.”
A curse slipped from Kim Ji-hyun’s mouth. But it wasn’t the tired, masculine voice he was used to…
It was a delicate, feminine tone.
“What the hell is this, fuck!”