The World's Finest Means of Conversation (3)
My head was a knot of too much information at once.
For now, I set aside everything about the virtual-reality fighting game Battle Mania. Marveling at a miracle of civilization I had never imagined could wait. Something more important demanded my attention: how, exactly, I was going to navigate the situation I was in without making a fool of myself.
I had a place to sleep, at least. A temporary roof. The relief lasted about as long as it took Hyeeun to tell me to change my clothes.
To be fair, there was nothing wrong with the suggestion. One look at what I was wearing made the advice perfectly reasonable. My white shirt had stretched until it was barely a shirt anymore, and my jeans were one hard tug from giving up entirely. That was the state of me.
Even so, asking someone who had been a man to put on women's clothes was close to impossible. I would rather have kept what I wore in the Heavenly Realm. Those white martial robes, cut in an Eastern style, and the pink belt had never looked all that feminine. And so I fell into the greatest dilemma of my life: was it wiser to change into some reasonable set of women's loungewear, or to dig in and insist on staying as I was?
"I'm sure there's something in the dressing room you'd like, Siyeon. Oh—unless…?"
What now? Why start with a suggestion and then sink into thought? She had a hand to her chin, and whatever came out of that pause was guaranteed to shove me even deeper into trouble. I was just about to change the subject, rude as it might be, when she spoke again.
"Right, wearing something someone else has already worn would feel a little strange, wouldn't it? Then I'll show you the dressing room that only has new clothes."
What did that mean? There was an ordinary dressing room, and then a separate dressing room where only new clothes were kept? To someone who had lived as an ordinary citizen, the sentence was incomprehensible. When people said dressing room, you pictured one. You did not picture two.
While I stood there unable to go one way or the other, Hyeeun suddenly took my hand.
"Look. These are about to tear as it is. Come on."
I could not refuse. I really did look like a beggar. When she tugged me along, all I could do was move my feet.
Under her kind guidance we arrived at a wooden door. It opened, I saw the inside of the dressing room, and I froze. A full-length mirror of astonishing size stood among waves of unmistakably feminine clothes. From that rolling sea Hyeeun returned with a single hanger.
"How about these? Comfortable enough, right?"
They did look comfortable. Did that mean I was truly expected to wear the black dolphin shorts hanging there? There had to be an ordinary pair of women's pants somewhere in all of this.
I couldn't get a word out, and she began showing me a white T-shirt that looked as if it would cling to every inch of me.
"Hmm… or would you rather something cuter? I could find you pajamas."
"No! You absolutely do not need to do that! Then I'll wear these, gratefully!"
My soul nearly left my body. I was already one breath from locking up completely. If she had offered me frilled pajamas on top of that, I would not have stayed sane.
The moment I refused, two hangers were pressed into my hands, and I entered a staring contest with the clothes. A person who had been a man needed a moment to decide whether wearing them was even permissible. I was still wrestling with the resolution of a lifetime when her voice came again.
"Ah, I'm sorry! If I stay in here, you'll be self-conscious. I'll wait outside, so just call me when you've changed."
This was a disaster. She said it and walked straight out the door, which meant my wearing these clothes had just become an established fact. Understanding that the water was already spilled, I swallowed my tears and peeled off what I had on. Eyes shut, I changed in a flash into the white T-shirt and the black dolphin shorts, then told Hyeeun, waiting outside, that I was done.
"Wow. They suit you so well."
She came back into the dressing room and told me, quite sincerely, that the clothes looked wonderful on me. I knew I was supposed to be happy about that. So why wouldn't the tears stop on the inside? Every bit of energy I had recharged with that fried chicken seemed to drain out of me at once. All I had done was put on women's clothes. If I got tangled up in one more complicated matter, I was genuinely going to pass out—and with that thought, a clever little stratagem occurred to me.
"Um, excuse me… I've built up a lot of fatigue, so I'd like to turn in a little early tonight. If there's somewhere I can sleep, could you show me…?"
It was an absurd excuse. I had no choice. If I didn't do at least this much, I was certain I would walk straight into another mortifying ordeal.
"Then it can't be helped. I'll show you to an empty room."
It worked. That ridiculous excuse actually worked. The alarm bells ringing in my head went quiet at last. Until she answered, my hands had been slick with sweat.
The two of us left the dressing room and walked toward the bedrooms, arriving before long at one set a little apart from the others.
"No one uses it, but the basics are all here, so sleep comfortably."
She called it an unused room. For a room nobody used, it was remarkably neat. A white bed, a dresser beside it, and a mood lamp cast the place in a cozy glow. Still, there was no need to ask about that. What mattered most was laying this exhaustion-soaked body down for a proper sleep. I wanted the mental shock of women's clothes cleared away as quickly as possible.
I bowed to Hyeeun at a perfect ninety degrees, then stepped inside. The moment she closed the door behind her, I flung myself onto the bed, arms and legs spread wide.
"Still, I'm lucky I didn't end up sleeping on the street the moment I got back to South Korea…"
Being a woman was already unfair enough. If, on top of that, I had been covering myself with newspaper on a park bench… Yes. This was far better. So tonight I would sleep deeply, and tomorrow I would wake up and start planning what came next. I couldn't keep being a burden on Hyeeun forever.
With that resolve, I drew the blanket up to my chest and closed my eyes.
A day passed.
Sparrows were chirping, warm sunlight poured down, and the hour was noon. At the same time, I was turning over the conversation I'd had with Hyeeun that morning.
She did say she was stepping out for a bit. And she told me about Battle Mania…
Early that morning, Hyeeun had said she was going out. The stalker was nothing to worry about; I had already taken care of that cleanly. Even so, she had left without eating a thing. I had meant to thank her for taking me in by treating her to breakfast, and I had missed my chance. I would have to think of some other way later. What mattered right now was Battle Mania.
As for why the subject had come up at all, the explanation was simple. A man, by nature, is supposed to feel his heart lift at the words fighting game. Hyeeun had also remembered how interested I was in the capsule machine, and she had gone so far as to say that if I got bored alone in the house, I was welcome to enjoy it. That was why I had asked her how to create a character and how the game was actually played.
Wait a second… if that thing is in this house, then that means…?
Hyeeun played Battle Mania too. Which made this a two-birds situation: I could kill my boredom and, at the same time, gain something new for the two of us to talk about. Satisfied that my judgment was flawless, I sat in the chair built into the capsule and put on the helmet.
A low hum rose as the machine came to life. The capsule sealed, and the world in front of my eyes changed.
She said I had to start with customization. And I really can't change my gender…
A shame. If I could have, I would have made myself a man. I accepted reality soon enough and, through the window that had appeared, began setting the clothes I used to wear in the Heavenly Realm: a white outer robe with an Eastern feel and a pink belt above, culottes below. The appearance options looked complicated, so I simply made the face identical to the one I had now.
Once the look was set, a window asked me to create a nickname. I couldn't use my real name as it was, so I took Siyeon—at last, a lotus blooms—and named myself Baekryun, white lotus. Even I thought it was well chosen.
Customization finished and the nickname set, a window asked whether I wanted to run the tutorial. I hit skip the moment I saw it. Some of what the tutorial would have taught me, I had already heard from Hyeeun, and the rest I had looked up on the computer in the living room.
White light bloomed. When it cleared, a plaza opened around me, centered on a white fountain.
"God, look at how far my score dropped. What kind of Ranked Match steals this much just for losing?"
"Right? If you hold around a fifty percent win rate, your score ought to creep up at least a little. I swear those high-tier freaks ground their whole lives into this."
"If the freedom wasn't this high, I'd have dropped this shit game on the spot. For real."
There were people everywhere, dressed in every color imaginable and armed however they pleased. I saw someone who looked like a medieval knight, Japanese-style ninjas and samurai, even a mage carrying a staff. Listening to those three, though, I became certain of one thing. If they were calling it a shit game, then it was, without a doubt, an ultra-cosmic god-tier game.
You pick your class at the Class Selection Center, and then you have to make your own skills.
The reason you could only create skills after choosing a class, I had been told, was simple. If people were free to invent anything, you would end up with grotesque nonsense like a warrior firing guns or a mage swinging a katana. In short, it was to prevent the balance from collapsing entirely.
The people around me had started staring. I didn't particularly mind. I had been through the same thing in the Heavenly Realm, where more than a few had looked at me—one of the rare women who fought bare-handed—as if I were some kind of curiosity.
Hmm. Let's see. At this rate, I'll adapt right away.
I tried a light jump, just to test it, and it felt hardly different from reality. Which meant the years I had spent suffering in the Heavenly Realm were about to work in my favor. A Fighter who had come out of that world ought to teach people the true romance of the Fighter class. And since I had finally gotten my hands on a proper fighting game, I would show them what a real man looked like.
Buoyed by that excitement, I broke into a run toward the wooden building that housed the Class Selection Center.