The Fresh Newbie and the Toxic Veteran (1)
All right. Let me lay the situation out, one step at a time. First and foremost, I am a newbie who has only just set foot in the virtual reality game Battle Mania. Skill hardly enters into it. I made the account today, and that is a plain, undeniable fact.
After that, I ran into a pack of know-nothings who sneered at the Fighter class, and somewhere along the way I ended up in a thoroughly enjoyable scrap with a toxic veteran who was only pretending to be kind.
But here was the problem. What had gone so wrong in the middle of all that for this window—identity completely unknown—to pop up and greet me? What was this message, apparently written by an actual human being, doing on the translucent blue pane floating in front of my eyes?
Nothing in my common sense could account for it. For a moment I even wondered whether I had hit a bug, and the thing was nothing more than an error window.
I was still busy denying reality when I watched something unbelievable unfold in real time.
A chat window, they called it. I knew that program, NateOn—what was the name—and this seemed like the same sort of thing. NateOn was a chat program, so the guess could not be entirely wrong. Come to think of it, that other one, BuddyBuddy, had supported games as well.
I was turning over that distant past when something flickered through my mind.
Wait... don't tell me this is the chat window I used to see on Paprika TV...?
I had seen it, clear as day. When solo broadcasters played games, people typed into a chat window kept open beside the screen, and the broadcasters talked with that chat as it rolled in live while they carried on with the main show. Turn those memories over long enough, and I arrived at a single conclusion. The conversation in the window floating before me now had to be something like a personal broadcast's chat.
But... does that even make sense...?
In the old days, the game and the chat window were two separate things, so each broadcaster had their own trick for getting both onto one screen. Were today's virtual reality games telling me the game itself now came with a built-in way to broadcast? And before that—why was a broadcast even on? All I had done was press a button before I played, because I wanted to save a replay...
Ah. Maybe...
That had to be it. While I was poking through the settings to record a replay, I had slapped the confirm button and blown right past the thing. The world certainly had gotten convenient. I never dreamed the bar for starting your own broadcast would fall so low.
And then a mechanical chime, different from the one before, rang out. Tiriring—
A chat announcing that 10,000 won had come in. Uh... that did not look like the play-money you spent inside a game. Most games used a unit that was not the same as real-world currency. Add every piece of it together, and the conclusion was obvious. I had just been given real cash. Literal cash. A fortune of 10,000 won.
That person was truly watching me play. I had only meant to leave a replay behind, so why was this happening? Regardless, now was no time to sit around regretting what I had already done.
"Ah, thank you...? Seems the feel of those hits carried through on the broadcast, too."
Thanks came first. However lost I was, one fact had landed cleanly: someone named SoldierEditor had donated 10,000 won in cash. A sigh of relief slipped out of me simply because I had managed the bare minimum of a response.
No wonder they say you cannot see an inch in front of your face. Not in my dreams had I imagined I would mix up the replay-save button with the live-broadcast button. Even so, I could swear that anyone playing a virtual reality game for the first time after coming back to South Korea in ten years would have done the exact same thing.
Amid all of that, zlzonchongjabi—the one I had driven into the ground and knocked cold—twitched, as if he were coming around. Right. This was a game. I had sunk so deep into it that for a split second I thought, well, he is dead. The shock of the blow had been so enormous I had actually let myself believe it.
A moment later the gunslinger hauled himself up on one knee and started brushing off the dust.
"Wow, but there isn't a single mark where I hit him. Incredible..."
I said it under my breath. The sight in front of me was just that strange. Beat an ordinary person down like that, and broken bones would be the least of it. I was still thinking so when he suddenly started closing the distance in long strides.
"Hah, one more round! Best of three is the rule, everybody knows that!"
The nerve of him. Not a flicker of shame on that face as he demanded a rematch. I could hardly believe it. And best of three, of all the things to invoke. Well—back when the famous Steel Fist was all the rage, best of three really had been the standing rule, so he was not completely wrong. I simply had no desire to grant it. He was telling me, a person who still had zero skills, to drag the match back out and make it ugly. If that was not a liver leaping clean out of a belly, I did not know what was. A man like this, I could drill him with advice all day and still not be sure he would ever turn out human.
I answered with a half-hearted brush-off, and that was when his face went red and purple and he started to yell.
"You not hearing me?! Ah, fine...! If you don't know how to reset the room, hand over host first!"
Now he was flailing at entirely the wrong thing. I believe the world has a word for this. Lunatic. You could not let your imagination run that wild unless you were properly insane. I decided to offer the pitiful fool one last piece of advice.
"Quit seal-clubbing. Right now. It only costs you. You're kicking away the very steps you need to grow."
Short, and to the point. The cheap pleasure that went by the name of seal-clubbing was worth far less than throwing yourself at a real wall and growing on your own. He went blank for a second, then started to wind himself up all over again. Hmm. Maybe he simply could not accept what I had said.
Still, I had said what needed saying. I opened the settings and reached for the button labeled Return to Central Plaza. In that instant he tried to shout something, but white light had already swallowed me. I saw his mouth open and nothing more, and I came back unhearing to the fountain in Central Plaza.
Sigh. I had been as kind as I knew how, and he still kept reacting like that. Which meant he would absolutely chase me all the way here and kick up a fuss in Central Plaza. An ordinary stalker, you drive off with your fists. Someone who is purely, simply insane is nothing but a headache. Nothing else for it, then. For now I would clear out and leave him time to think for himself. And if a little time to reflect did not improve him, I could always beat the lesson in later.
With that settled, and with the broadcast chat still open, I made one last announcement before I quit the game.
"Thank you for watching. That guy might follow me and make a nuisance of himself, though, so I'll end the stream here."
The moment the words were out, I opened the settings. This time I read the label properly, and only then did I press End Game. A low whir rose, and the world in front of my eyes began to go black. The instant I judged I was back in reality, I pulled off the helmet and climbed out of the capsule.
"I ought to have a cup of green tea..."
One cup of green tea. Nothing I knew settled body and mind better, and I would need it after the shock of that newest wonder of the age: internet broadcasting. I was on my way to the kitchen to steep a tea bag when the front door burst open.
I looked over, and there was Hyeeun, silver hair flying, rushing toward me. She looked badly rushed. What could put a look like that on her face? She stopped in front of me, gasping, so I was the one who asked.
"What's wrong? Did you leave something behind at the house?"
"No!"
It came out so sharp that I tensed before I could help it. I had never heard Hyeeun raise her voice like that. Something more than small had happened. I set my face and met the moment seriously.
"You pressed that live broadcast button while you were playing Battle Mania just now, didn't you?! I definitely saw the alert on my phone!!"
"Ah, yes... was that a button I wasn't supposed to press...?"
Don't tell me. The old nightmare, where you opened the internet on a feature phone and the charges detonated in real time. The thought pulled me tight. I was living on her kindness. What if I had just made her spend money for nothing?
But Hyeeun shook her head—no, that was not it—and then said something I never saw coming.
She was worked up. Her breathing came so hard and fast I half thought she might collapse. What had knocked the calm out of her? While I was still wondering, she staggered toward a chair in the living room—the same table where we had eaten chicken yesterday.
The only thing I could do was make her the green tea that settles a racing heart. I got a paper cup, drew hot water from the purifier, and dropped a tea bag straight in. A short while later, once the steep had turned the water, I set the cup in front of Hyeeun and sat down across from her so we could talk.
"Drink that, and you'll calm down a little."
"......"
"Anyway, you said all that for my sake, right? I'm sorry for worrying you. I don't know what I'm supposed to do about this..."
Hyeeun heard me out and took a sip, and her face seemed to ease, just a little. To think that Hyeeun, bright as anything only yesterday, would come to this. It meant the matter was no ordinary one. Once she calmed down, she would explain more carefully why she had said it, and somewhere in that story, surely, was the reason she lived alone in a house this large. The look on her when she spoke to me had been all too much like someone carrying a trauma.
I waited, quiet, for about ten minutes. At last, Hyeeun began to speak.