Chapter 108
Chapter 108
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 108
Chapter Title: Growing Pains (1)
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The video began with the sound of cheers and trumpets.
A knight with a stoic expression walked majestically down the main road of a massive castle, flanked by dense crowds who watched him with awe-filled gazes.
"That's the Hunter."
"The most feared face of all!"
"Ah, he's the one who will behead every sinner!"
Behind the murmurs, *thump!* A drumbeat echoed.
The screen faded to black as the sound of a violin began to play.
When the screen lit up again, it showed a courtroom.
The same knight was on his knees, facing the judges.
A man with a solemn face spoke.
"Sentence him to death!"
And so, the once-revered knight was pushed off a cliff.
The somber music soon faded, and from the darkness, a clear, gentle melody began to spread.
"Hello? I'm Miso!"
A smiling woman extended her hand.
At that moment, the music swelled as if bursting forth.
The screen flashed through a rapid succession of scenes.
"I never wanted to do this!"
The farmer's outrage.
"Was I not devout enough?"
The priest's anguish.
"I want my child to be different from me."
The blacksmith father's regret.
Following them, countless voices and faces flickered past, adorning the journey of the masked knight.
At the end, the video showed him and the empire once more, standing before the grand imperial castle.
The screen faded to black again. As the title [Identity] materialized on the monitor, Miso's whisper played in the background.
"You know? A smile… it spreads."
The trailer ended.
"Ha, didn't it turn out great?"
Yang Gil-sang laughed heartily, pleased.
I nodded as well.
"Not bad. It has just enough of what's necessary..."
"And it's fun to speculate about!"
Yang Gil-sang cut in, looking particularly satisfied.
This had been his general reaction ever since playing the game during its recent test phase.
He himself had become a fan of the game, growing more passionate about his work.
It was a good thing.
And something to be grateful for.
I brushed off his reaction and reviewed the upcoming schedule.
‘The main game is almost complete.’
The story part only had the final chapter's combat QA left.
Most of the functional aspects had been resolved; we were now polishing the boss fight's combat balance and details.
In the midst of it all, I had an experience that made me realize just how much the company and I had changed.
It was the public's reaction.
We had only released a single trailer and revealed a few elements like mod support, yet the response was quite enthusiastic.
It probably meant our reputation had grown to the point where any game we made was considered highly anticipated.
It would be a lie to say there was no pressure.
But it was certainly encouraging.
The support and encouragement of others had a strange way of fanning the flames of confidence and passion within a person.
It made me want to do even better, and that passion was ultimately being channeled into the task at hand: the final polishing.
"Change the angle here. This is a one-hit kill pattern that only appears once during the entire fight. The sense of pressure..."
I didn't miss a single detail.
From the mechanics leading up to the pattern and the methods to counter it, to breaking down each motion second by second, we examined everything, which led to many good ideas.
But we couldn't just cram everything into a single boss fight.
I pondered how to recycle ideas that had been discarded due to length, pacing, or a sense of incongruity, and as a result, we ended up revising the previous boss fights as well.
"...This won't do. Let's go over everything from the beginning, one by one."
May was the month of meetings.
We poured manpower into revising and re-revising, trying to package the now-unveiled final product as beautifully as possible.
It was grueling work.
I was reminded that no matter how much you tried to provide for employee welfare, crunch was inevitable in the final stages of development.
Since games are ultimately made by human hands from start to finish, the quality of the game and employee welfare were so perfectly inversely proportional it was almost laughable.
"Just a little more. We're almost there."
That was all I could say.
Fortunately, the employees were following along well.
The entire company was in that state of mind.
The desire to make this thing a masterpiece was far stronger than with our previous games.
It was likely because so many of their own ideas had been incorporated.
For now, everyone was united in their hope for the moment when the systems and plans they had personally implemented would be unveiled to the world.
Just as that work was nearing its end,
Myeong-gyu casually asked.
"By the way, is the sound for the final battle not ready yet?"
I nodded.
It was mid-June, and the overall balancing was being finalized.
The final chapter was still being tested in silence.
* * *
Rewind's sound department was isolated from every other team in the company.
This was true spatially, and the team's nature was more akin to a private workshop than a corporate department.
It couldn't be helped.
A-yun, the sound director, was a fresh college graduate who had just entered the workforce this year.
In other words, this was the first year the sound department had hired a new employee, which meant that until now, the sound booth had been A-yun's personal space.
As such, the team atmosphere was still awkward.
It wasn't that they were wary or guarded with each other, but more that they hadn't had enough time to grow close.
More than anything, A-yun's position was the cause.
A founding member of Rewind, yet also the youngest in the company.
She had always been adored and doted on wherever she went, so managing people was a difficult task for A-yun.
That was the superficial reason for the delay in the sound work, but there was a much bigger problem.
"Umm... I'll just do this myself..."
Sometime ago, when expanding the sound team, Yeon-ho had told A-yun something.
"It'll be very different from before. Managing people means you have to unite those who think differently from you under your vision."
A-yun was only now beginning to understand what he meant.
Unbeknownst to herself, A-yun was special.
From the moment she had her first lesson until now.
No, her directing ability had been far beyond the ordinary since her past life, even before this one began.
After all, wasn't her talent something Yeon-ho himself had described as 'a skill that would have already made her a master, had it not been for me in her past life'?
Considering she had received love calls from top-tier game companies around the world after rapidly climbing the ranks following her separation from Yeon-ho, it was a statement without a hint of exaggeration.
That became the problem.
"Team Leader, this part..."
"Umm..."
A-yun couldn't understand her team members.
‘Why can they only do it like this?’
There were clear instructions.
Use this sound as a base and add effects in this manner.
The BGM uses this chord as its main theme, so find a sound that fits it.
In A-yun's mind, these weren't difficult requests.
Just listening to her team's work, she could think of dozens of better sounds in her head.
‘Why do they make it sound so bland?’
Her team members just couldn't do it.
What was perfectly natural for A-yun to do was an incredibly difficult task for her team.
The poison had burst.
It was a poison that even Yeon-ho hadn't anticipated.
"I-I'll just do this one, too..."
In his past life and his current one, Yeon-ho's sound had always been A-yun alone, so he had never assigned her any team members, a fact he was unaware of.
It was a mistake born from Yeon-ho's ignorance.
He needed to ask himself a question.
Going back to his past life, was it possible for one person to create and review all the sound for a single game?
Coming to this life, was it possible for a female student who had just started learning music to create all the sound for a game?
Was it possible for a single student, who had just entered college, to create all the sound for a massive AAA game and receive worldwide acclaim?
Needless to say, it was absolutely impossible.
In any normal context, such a thing could never happen.
The reason it became a reality was singular.
Because Jo A-yun was just that exceptional.
So great was her talent that she needed no one's help; in fact, anyone's help would have been a shackle.
Such talent possessed one particular characteristic.
"E-everyone, you can go home...!"
Solitude.
She felt a profound solitude from a gap she could neither expect others to understand nor understand herself.
But she couldn't voice it.
Those people were brought in by Yeon-ho, and besides that, A-yun was too young and gentle to say anything harsh to others.
A-yun was still too inexperienced to navigate the world wisely.
In the end, it was a rupture.
Like a sane person in a world of the one-eyed, A-yun felt a sense of unease in all her surroundings.
She felt as if she was doing something wrong.
Her team members wore awkward expressions before forcing strained smiles and packing their things.
A-yun saw it all.
For some reason, her chest felt tight.
To put it in a word, it was this:
A-yun was festering inside.
* * *
June was drawing to a close.
After countless revisions, the game's balancing was complete.
The life skills and housing content had also been confirmed as a foundation for mods, so we decided not to delve too deeply into them in the main game.
There would be no more major changes to the game.
I could finally breathe a sigh of relief, and it was around then that I noticed something strange.
Jo A-yun's behavior had become suspicious.
"A-yun..."
"Ah! I left my headset...!"
At first, it was puzzlement.
"Jo A..."
"Ah! My phone...!"
Then, it became disconcerting.
"A-yun..."
"…!"
Finally, it was a definite sense of wrongness.
After going through that process, I realized that Jo A-yun was avoiding me.
I couldn't help but wonder why.
Was she worried I would scold her for the work being delayed?
If so, it was a needless worry.
I would simply push back the release date; I had no intention of interfering with A-yun's work environment.
The second possibility that came to mind was a slump.
That was something I should help with.
So, I went to find A-yun, intending to at least talk to her.
But for some reason, whenever I visited the sound team, A-yun was not at her desk.
"Where did A-yun go?"
"Ah! She was here just a moment ago!"
It seemed she wasn't skipping work.
Where on earth could she be? I sighed, and after a day or two of this, on the third day,
she wouldn't even answer my calls. I was starting to get stressed out myself, and I finally resorted to a drastic measure.
"Sunbae, are you going to work out... wait, are you leaving for the day?"
"Yeah, let's skip the workout today. I have to go somewhere."
"Oh? Okay."
I canceled my workout with Han Seo-rim and left the company.
It was the time when all the employees, except for the programming and QA departments in charge of debugging and verification, were starting to head home.
I looked at the sound team.
Jo A-yun was already gone.
It was in that moment.
That I felt something was wrong.
‘Leaving right on time?’
It was quitting time, so it was natural to leave.
And the sound department wasn't a team you could just force to work overtime anyway.
More than any other element of game development, their work relied on momentary inspiration and creativity, so I had no intention of compelling them to work late.
My sense of unease didn't stem from that.
The team members' demeanor, their expressions, and the atmosphere within the booth amplified my feeling of wrongness.
‘No one…’
Not a single person was cleaning up their work.
No, there weren't even any signs that they had been working in the first place.
More fundamentally, there was no communication among the team members.
Wasn't it normal?
When it's time to go home, you could at least say "good work" to each other.
Without even that, the sound team members silently left their seats, treating each other like strangers who happened to get on the same subway and get off at the same station.
Usually, when a sense of emotional dread spikes, a moment of clarity that confirms it is correct soon follows.
I went to the sound booth after all the employees had left, and I realized the source of my anxiety.
‘It shows no signs of use.’
The office was so still, it was clear that none of the employees had done any work all day.
There was no warmth, no feeling of life.
‘Has it been like this the whole time?’
It was possible.
The sound team's space was isolated enough that no other team in the office could easily see inside.
Then what on earth had been happening here?
As I thought about it, my heart began to pound heavily.
I wasn't angry.
Strangely, I was overcome with the certainty that I had made some kind of mistake.
The image of Jo A-yun, who had been constantly running away from me lately, flashed in my mind.
My feet were already moving.
I got into the car I rarely used and started driving.
The damn traffic jam filled me with frustration, and after a little over an hour,
I arrived at Jo A-yun's home.
And there, I saw her.
"Huh, uh...?"
Jo A-yun, just about to enter the main gate of her apartment building.
My heart sank.
A-yun's eyes were dark underneath, and her face was haggard.
I was only now realizing how she looked.
Jo A-yun's eyes widened as if they would tear.
She began to step backward, looking as if she was about to flee into the apartment building.
The words came out on their own.
"Wait."
*Thud.* A-yun froze.
Seeing her fidgeting anxiously, I felt a sense of urgency and added,
"...If you run now, I'll cut your internet."
...Realizing why I'd say something like that at a time like this, I was reminded of how scary habits can be.
It was probably not the most appropriate choice of words.
And,
"Uuuu..."
The reason A-yun was on the verge of tears was probably not because of what I'd just said.
I approached her carefully, one step at a time.
Jo A-yun hung her head low.
I could see her fingertips trembling.
Through her bangs, I could see her eyelashes were wet.
Finally, A-yun spoke in a trembling voice.
"I-I'm sorr..."
Her expression was so pitiful, it told me one thing for certain.
"I'm so sorry...!"
The person who needed to apologize right now was probably not Jo A-yun.
"Hiccc...!"
...It was probably me.