Chapter 168
Chapter 168
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 168
Chapter Title: Your Wedding (2)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A change of heart is almost always sparked by external factors.
For example, checking your bank account one day and seeing a paltry sum might make you think, ‘I’d better be frugal this week.’ Or belatedly realizing a deadline you thought was far off is now looming might make you think, ‘I have to get this done.’
In a word, urgency.
Only with it can a person finally prepare for change.
In the grand scheme of things, the reason for the change in Seo-rim’s feelings was no different.
Until now, Seo-rim had believed that no matter what, Yeon-ho wouldn't keep any women around him, and that romance and marriage were distant concerns. She thought that when the time came, she would be the one most likely to take that spot by his side.
That belief had changed recently.
There was A-yun, being called the boss’s wife, and Yeon-ho, who dismissed it as mere nonsense.
The situation wasn't unfolding as she had imagined.
Looking back, A-yun had always hovered around Yeon-ho.
Seo-rim was much the same, but in terms of their relationships, it was an undeniable fact that A-yun received a bit more of Yeon-ho’s personal protection.
A sense of shame. It wasn’t easy for Seo-rim to feel such urgency and jealousy toward the girl who had always been like a younger sister to her. But wasn't that shameful, petty feeling the very essence of human nature, neatly packaged away?
It was true.
Most people can never truly become adults.
They just get better at pretending to be one.
Seo-rim was one of those people.
And so, today.
“…Here’s the concept art.”
Submitting the key art for the DLC, Seo-rim looked at Yeon-ho.
A change was needed.
As she mulled over how to achieve it, she considered and discarded several ideas born from her petty heart.
“Hm? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Just wondering if you’ve gained some weight recently.”
In truth, he hadn’t.
He’d simply grown older, his sharp features becoming more defined.
In other words, he’d gotten more handsome (love is blind).
But how could she say something like that?
As she kept her mouth shut, Yeon-ho spoke nonchalantly.
“Guess life’s been good to me. The work looks fine. I’ll approve it as is.”
“Right, right.”
After the brief exchange of small talk, Seo-rim returned to her desk and let out a deep sigh.
She picked up her smartphone and opened the online community forum.
She hadn’t even realized she was doing it.
That’s how frightening human habit can be.
[Civil Servant: It’s so hard being envied just because I’m a public official… lol]
[H Motors: I get so pissed off at the small-fry company employees who know nothing about cars and run their mouths in front of me;;]
[KEPCO: I want to meet someone who will love me without knowing I work at KEPCO….]
It was the same scene as always.
Seeing the people wasting their lives so spectacularly today (unaware that she was one of them) made her feel a little more at ease.
It was then.
That Seo-rim saw the post.
[Civil Servant: I’m a teacher, and I find titles to be a fascinating thing.]
[It’s nothing major, but it just struck me as odd how the feeling changes depending on what you call the same person.
I have this junior from college.
She always used to call me ‘senior,’ but she just got assigned to the same school as me, and now she calls me Mr. Kim.
So I told her she could just call me ‘senior’ when we’re not at school, and she asked if she could call me by a more affectionate name instead.
So that’s what we settled on, but it still feels a bit awkward every time I hear it.
You know what I mean, right? The moment she started calling me that, I suddenly started seeing her in a different light.
It’s been a little difficult lately.]
[
Civil Servant: This dude’s got a terminal case of ‘that’ syndrome lol
KEPCO: Ugh, you creep… just go die.
H Motors: If you’re gonna make up stories like this, at least write about a forbidden love with a student lol]
She didn’t see the comments.
To Seo-rim, the post’s author, who calmly laid out his story in a measured tone, seemed more credible than the malicious words of those who had just been acting like villains in front of her.
‘Is he serious?’
Were men a species whose neural receptors were so severely damaged that simply being called by a certain name could make them see someone differently?
If that were true, Jin-gyeong should be thanking her.
Because Seo-rim, like some folk hero, had protected his neural receptors by not calling her older brother by the title he deserved (she called him ‘hey’ or ‘you’).
Anyway, putting such stray thoughts aside, she was done.
‘Oh…’
Seo-rim found herself convinced by the community’s opinion.
The beginning of a tragedy.
This is why experience and discernment are so important in life.
***
Rewind was a monumental tower.
A monumental tower whose brilliance was made palpable by the achievements and treasures amassed by a heroic figure with an extraordinary ability (regression), a founding emperor who had walked a path of constant success.
Regardless of its inner workings, a newly erected tower is revered by the world.
And those who helped build it are praised as heroes of its founding era, their names becoming widely known.
Normally, once such a tower is complete, a vicious power struggle follows.
Who gets the higher floors of the tower, or who gets their name on the list of achievements and how much treasure they can claim—such incidents are arguably an inescapable part of human nature.
But fortunately, or perhaps not, the monumental tower called Rewind had none of that.
Above all, the tower’s master, Yeon-ho, had consolidated all power from the very beginning, making any infighting impossible. Besides that, the employees were too busy feeling their blood run dry just trying to get through the day’s work to even think about power struggles.
You could say that peace within the company was maintained by it being a sweatshop.
This structure was unlikely to change unless the company’s IPs started failing one after another or a succession issue arose.
Even then, the former wasn't a problem since everything was sailing smoothly, and for the latter, one would first have to question whether Yeon-ho was even capable of having children, let alone waiting for them to grow up. In conclusion, Rewind stood firm.
Thus, the curiosity of the vassals (employees) extended elsewhere.
If the number one was secure, who would become number two?
Typically, the people closest to being second-in-command would be Yang Gil-sang, the director of the business department who handled Rewind’s external affairs, or Myeong-gyu, the chief programmer whom Yeon-ho favored with blatant visibility.
But Rewind was different!
If there was an emperor, there must be an empress!
And everyone knew that the bastard Cheon Yeon-ho was not the type to meet women outside of work!
The most plausible scenario, then, was that one of the women who had been by his side for a long time would naturally develop a deep relationship with him. And those women were Seo-rim and A-yun (the dramatic duo was out of the question)!
Anyone who had worked at Rewind for a long time knew that both of them had feelings for Yeon-ho.
A-yun, for one, was obvious, constantly buzzing around Yeon-ho and blushing whenever someone teased her about him.
Seo-rim had revealed it to the company through a more peculiar route: a combination of a few suspicions and her fluctuating moods from day to day.
Whenever a post seeking relationship advice from a Rewind employee appeared on the community forums and was met with malicious comments, Seo-rim would become exceptionally prickly. You’d have to be an idiot not to connect the dots.
Even without that, Seo-rim’s recent reactions to Yeon-ho were certainly unusual.
It is said that a third party sees a romance most clearly.
Wouldn’t their judgment be more rational and objective than that of the involved parties, whose dopamine receptors were fried?
Only Seo-rim was unaware that her feelings were on full display.
Anyway, based on such circumstantial evidence, right now.
“What do you think those two are talking about?”
“I wonder. You don’t think they’ve spotted us?”
“Probably not.”
At an izakaya in Pangyo.
There, Yeon-ho’s first direct reports, Ji-seok and Ho-su, watched Yeon-ho and Seo-rim clinking glasses in a corner booth, their faces full of intrigue.
***
The human brain was not designed to handle multiple tasks at once.
In other words, multitasking was a self-abusive act that needlessly consumed brain resources. The proof was in the human tendency to lose focus on everything else when engrossed in a single task.
That was Seo-rim right now.
“I’ve designed the DLC with three main bosses and three sub-bosses, you know? But I think we could add about three more sub-bosses. Assuming a price point between fifteen to twenty-five thousand won, that seems most appropriate in terms of development time and volume.”
“Yeah, well…”
“Let’s make about three maps. We’ll need to pull in wardens and other mobs from the other Hells, so I want to focus on reprocessing them to fit into Hellic 4. Oh, and about the Cancer Bat. Come to think of it, it appeared in 1, 2, and 3. If it shows up in Hellic 4, wouldn’t it seem like a signature item for the Hellic series? You know, like the Moonlight Sword in Flare. We could make a small easter egg out of it.”
“Yeah, well.”
“For that, it would be good to have the Cancer Giant from Hellic 1 as well. Yeah, hiding it as a hidden boss under the Azure Warden would be fun. Or maybe we could have it appear in response to a specific gimmick, just like in Hellic 1, and add a jump scare element… No, is that going too far?”
She knew that even when they went out for drinks, they would end up talking about work.
And she knew that Yeon-ho was at his most talkative when he was planning.
It was too late to wonder how a person could be so consistent; she had known him for too long.
So, pushing aside all other worries, Seo-rim focused on one thing: how to get that one, specific word out of her mouth.
From that moment on, Seo-rim’s brain was no different from that of a scribe who had encountered forbidden knowledge.
Her mind had no pre-existing mental barriers to withstand the queasiness, shame, and confusion that came with a single, two-syllable word.
Thanks to that, she just gaped.
Seo-rim opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish.
Yeon-ho, oblivious, just kept talking about planning.
“But the highlight is definitely the final DLC boss, the confrontation between the protagonist and himself. I’m worried about this setup. The monstrous protagonist needs to be able to roughly mimic the original’s signature execution moves… but figuring out how to determine who has the upper hand when they use the same martial arts is really tricky…”
Seo-rim gave a half-hearted reply, “Yeah, well, I guess so.”
Her brain had already been consumed by that word.
She had stared into the abyss for too long, and her mind had become tainted.
A series of such moments passed.
At some point.
“…Seo-rim?”
Seeing Seo-rim’s vacant expression, as if she were lost in a void, Yeon-ho tilted his head.
“Hm, have you had too much to drink?”
At those words, a lightbulb went on in Seo-rim’s head.
‘Blame it on the alcohol?’
If she said she did it while drunk, wouldn’t it be somewhat excusable?
Yes, she would just see his reaction once and then decide whether to use this tactic or not.
‘Let’s do it. Let’s try.’
But how does one act drunk?
Seo-rim, whose only drunken habit was falling asleep, knew nothing about acting intoxicated.
Should she just stumble and lean on him?
Or maybe slur her words?
It was worth a shot.
“Buuuh…”
“…?”
Yeon-ho’s expression hardened.
Seo-rim’s sanity screamed.
The brakes slammed on.
“…rdock. Burdock root. It’s delicious, isn’t it?”
“All of a sudden?”
“It just came to mind. I’ve been craving vegetables lately…”
Was it her imagination, or did she hear a faint sigh of ‘Aah…’ from somewhere?
Seo-rim avoided Yeon-ho’s gaze.
Regret and relief washed over her simultaneously, and in that precarious balancing act, regret slammed on the accelerator once more.
“By the way. O…”
The brakes slammed on again.
“…h, say can you see?”
“?”
“When was the World Cup again?”
“…It was last year.”
“Wow, I can’t believe I missed that too…”
Yeon-ho’s expression was starting to turn strange.
Seo-rim knew that look.
Pity.
He was looking at her with pity, of all things!
A wave of nausea churned in her stomach, but she held it back.
If she cursed now, she’d just become a person with a pitiful drunken habit!
‘How on earth do I do this?’
The word must exist in the world because people use it, so why couldn’t she?
A feeling akin to self-pity welled up inside her.
Her sense of urgency grew a little stronger.
In truth, she didn’t really need to say the word at all.
The biggest problem was that she was the only one who didn’t know that, but Seo-rim had no friends to tell her.
In moments like these, Seo-rim’s ‘friends’ wore the mask of anonymity, capable of proclaiming falsehoods as truths for a moment of fleeting pleasure!
And so, a standoff.
Like two beasts sizing each other up before a territorial dispute, Yeon-ho began to scheme for a way to send Seo-rim home, while Seo-rim began a desperate struggle to utter a single word.
However, not all standoffs lead to conflict.
*Ping!*
A single message, one that arrived on both their phones simultaneously, brought their thoughts to a screeching halt.
[Gil-sang: The wedding is only two weeks away! Is there anyone who can’t make it that day?!]
Only then did the two of them look at each other with blank faces.
“…Ah, right.”
“Gil-sang’s wedding is soon, isn’t it?”
Yang Gil-sang, the balding, nerdy otaku.
His train bound for married life was just around the corner.