Chapter 5
Chapter 5
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 5
Chapter Title: Horror Action
-----------------------------------------------------------------
For the past two nights, I'd barely slept.
The reason was that Han Seo-rim, who had left saying she'd think about it and get back to me, still hadn't contacted me.
We had definitely exchanged numbers.
I had even confirmed the call went through right in front of her, so there was no mistake.
So why hadn't she replied yet?
Should I wait longer?
No, what if she's decided to just ignore me?
Perhaps because my worries deepened, my hands were soon caught in a loop of typing and deleting a text message.
*Ping!*
A message arrived at that very moment.
[Let's meet and talk.]
It seemed she had made her decision.
The time was two in the afternoon.
[Have you eaten?]
[It's two o'clock. Of course I've eaten, right?]
Such a curt refusal.
[Let's meet at the campus café.]
I immediately packed my things and left the house.
* * *
The campus café was quiet.
Exams had just ended, so students were mostly off campus.
It wasn't bad. We could talk in peace.
“Over here.”
From a corner table, Han Seo-rim rested her chin on her hand and waved me over.
As I approached, she greeted me.
“It’s been two days. You don’t look like you’ve been doing well… why are your eyes so dark?”
“I was working on the design document.”
“You’ve got it bad.”
Han Seo-rim let out a dry laugh.
“Your passion is world-class, I’ll give you that. I commend you.”
“Thank you for the compliment.”
Even as I replied, my mouth felt dry. This prolonged moment of suspense was not pleasant. I had no desire to maintain this tension.
I asked directly.
“So, have you made a decision?”
“You’re impatient.”
“I figured it’s best to get straight to the point. Aren’t you busy?”
“Fine. I’m not a fan of long-winded small talk either.”
Han Seo-rim shifted in her seat. She crossed her legs and folded her arms.
I seem to recall hearing somewhere that this posture signifies rejection…
“For now, I’m in. It seems like it’ll be a good experience.”
So much for trusting books.
‘Success…!’
My fists clenched on their own.
I barely managed to stop the corners of my mouth from turning up.
But I couldn't stop the excitement from creeping into my voice.
“That’s a wise decision…”
“But.”
Han Seo-rim cut me off with a wry smile.
An unsettling one.
“…Yes?”
“I have a condition of my own. Since I’ve agreed to take the job, I’ll do my best. But there’s something you have to promise me.”
“What is it?”
“My time is very precious to me. More importantly, I’m driven by my interests. I guess you could call it a tendency for ennui; I get bored easily. If I lose interest, let me quit anytime.”
I froze.
I looked her straight in the eye, trying to discern her true intentions, but unfortunately, I had no mind-reading abilities.
There was, however, one emotion I could read.
Sincerity.
“…That’s an unconventional condition.”
“Not confident?”
Not confident?
I didn't know what she was getting at, but that was ridiculous.
If I wasn't confident, I wouldn't have even started.
“Fine. That’s not going to happen, so it’s basically like there’s no condition at all.”
It would never get to the point where such an outcome was even possible.
Presenting a subpar product and getting a subpar response—I had enough of that in my past life at the company.
I had no intention of ever feeling that horrible again.
“I hope you can back up that confidence with skill, junior.”
“Of course.”
Han Seo-rim extended her hand for a shake.
As I stared at it, she added another word.
“Let’s work well together?”
It felt strangely new. After all, she hadn't taken my hand two days ago.
Of course, I didn't dwell on the sentiment.
“The pleasure is all mine.”
I took her hand and shook it.
Whatever the case, one problem was solved.
The art director recruitment was a success.
* * *
Seo-rim was in a pretty good mood.
—Let's start tomorrow. Please bring some simple drawing tools. A digital tablet would be best, if possible.
That’s what Cheon Yeon-ho had said as they parted.
She liked his straightforward personality.
It also struck her that the work ahead wouldn’t be so boring.
Of course, she’d have to wait and see how things actually turned out.
A dry laugh escaped her.
‘I’m trying all sorts of new things in my life.’
Game development. She'd never imagined she'd be doing something like this. The world worked in mysterious ways.
‘A tablet, a sketchbook, and a pencil. That should be enough.’
After some brief preparations, Seo-rim slung her bag over her shoulder and left her house.
When she arrived at the school, Cheon Yeon-ho was waiting at the main gate.
“Have you been waiting long?”
“No, I just got here myself.”
“We’re going to be working together, so feel free to speak casually. I’ll call you senior, too.”
“Alright, let’s do that.”
He agreed so quickly.
Usually, people felt awkward at first even if you told them that.
As she was thinking, Cheon Yeon-ho asked nonchalantly.
“What?”
“…Nothing.”
“Really? If it’s nothing, then it’s fine. Anyway, follow me.”
Cheon Yeon-ho turned around.
He led her to the club building.
“A club?”
“Yeah, we need a place to work.”
“You’ve prepared all this?”
“I set it up yesterday.”
He inserted a key into the padlock, and the door opened.
It was a small room.
Inside the hastily cleaned space, two computers sat side by side, and the bookshelf against the other wall was completely empty.
“It's not an official club that gets funding. More like a small group that's just borrowing the room.”
“Ah, okay. Well, it doesn’t really matter.”
‘It’d be a good place to come when I want some quiet,’ Seo-rim thought as she sat down in a chair.
Then she asked.
“So, what should I do now?”
It was an obvious point, but Seo-rim was a complete novice when it came to game development.
In fact, she was a novice to the entire genre of games.
She had read the design document Cheon Yeon-ho gave her, but with that alone, she simply didn't have the foundational knowledge to grasp what she was supposed to do.
She explained her situation, and a reply came back immediately.
“First, you need to draw the illustrations.”
“Illustrations?”
“It’s about creating the external design of the game. It’s the foundational step for visualizing the game’s setting, characters, and enemies. Of course, I’m not expecting you to design everything from scratch. I’ll give you the rough sketches, and you can interpret and draw them in your own style.”
Cheon Yeon-ho handed her a file folder of bundled A4 paper.
Seo-rim took it and skimmed through it.
She froze stiff.
“A bit gory, isn't it? Sorry if you don't have the stomach for it. But I need you to do it.”
“It is horrifying.”
Mostly, the drawing skill.
Seo-rim’s expression was one of sheer astonishment.
She could say with absolute certainty, swearing on her life, that she had never seen drawings this bad before.
She looked up at Cheon Yeon-ho's face and saw not a hint of shame.
‘Does he not know how bad he is at drawing?’
No, he said he was hiring someone because he couldn’t draw, so that couldn’t be it.
‘Still, this is too much.’
It was at a level where she couldn't even tell what he was trying to depict.
Seo-rim paused for a moment in thought.
Most people would.
Faced with someone who had no objective sense of their own drawing ability, they would refrain from saying anything harsh out of politeness. Or they would think, ‘Well, he hired me because he can’t draw,’ and quietly struggle with the work.
But Seo-rim wasn’t one to hold back such comments.
“My five-year-old cousin could draw better than this.”
“Your cousin must have a rich artistic sense.”
“I’m saying you’re a terrible artist.”
“It’s true, so I can’t argue with that.”
How could someone be so brazen?
As she stared in shock, Cheon Yeon-ho finally added more.
“Does it matter if you can’t tell from the drawings? I’ve added annotations to everything.”
“You did, but they’re so abstract. What in the world is ‘skin as blue as a frozen soul’ supposed to mean?”
“I need that kind of abstraction, which is why I made you the offer.”
“Did I get myself into something weird?”
“Don’t worry, you’re in the right place.”
Cheon Yeon-ho pulled up a chair and sat across from Seo-rim.
He hummed for a moment while looking at the file, then finally spoke.
“I’ll explain the general atmosphere. It’ll be easier to draw if you have some background knowledge.”
“…Fine, lay it on me.”
The moment she said that.
Cheon Yeon-ho’s gaze instantly deepened.
It wasn't as if he were imagining something, but rather his face went blank, as if he were recalling a memory from a certain point in his past.
A strange feeling washed over her.
“This place is hell. A hell that imprisons sinners who receive excruciating punishments.”
His voice began to echo softly.
“There are many kinds of pain. Among them, this place deals only in physical pain.”
Seo-rim translated Cheon Yeon-ho’s words into images on the canvas of her mind.
“The setting is inside a giant organ. It squirms and shifts, and its color is closer to a dark brown than pink. …Yes, the color of a cancerous lung. That would be the right way to describe it.”
This one was easy to picture.
A manga Han Jin-gyeong had read when they were young had a similar scene.
It was a story about a protagonist exploring the inside of a giant snake’s stomach.
“The space is divided into perfect cubes. The way to move between spaces is to squeeze your body into holes in the walls of the room. They look like assholes.”
“…”
It was unpleasant, but the image was certainly clear.
There was a classic movie with a similar setting.
A story about people trapped inside a cube that changes its configuration at regular intervals.
“There are two types of beings in this hell. The suffering sinners, and the wardens, who creatively demonstrate new ways to inflict pain at every moment.”
“What do they look like?”
“The sinners all look like they’re sick. It can’t be helped. They’re people who died from illnesses because they didn’t take care of their bodies. They failed to prevent preventable diseases. All for a moment of pleasure.”
“Like alcohol or cigarettes?”
“Or even more severe things, like drugs or self-harm.”
“…Okay. Go on.”
“The wardens have blue skin, just like I noted. They have no expressions. Their eye sockets and mouths are sewn shut. They see nothing and say nothing. They can’t even hear, because nails have been driven into their ears. They only torture. They’re mechanical. And in fact, they’re close to being machines.”
Should she picture a serial killer from an old movie?
The image of a mechanical torture expert began to form quite vividly.
What would be good… Yes, making them lanky would be better.
He said the genre was horror, so that would be more terrifying.
Having come this far, Seo-rim could now understand what Cheon Yeon-ho's drawings were meant to represent.
‘They are intuitive, I guess.’
Setting aside the atrocious skill, the intuition itself was good.
Having sketched a rough image in her mind, Seo-rim opened her eyes.
Her eyes met Cheon Yeon-ho’s, and she asked.
“The wardens are the important ones, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought so.”
Seo-rim smiled.
From her perspective, unable to fully grasp the design document, that was the only conclusion she could draw.
Cheon Yeon-ho had focused his description on the wardens more than the sinners.
The genre was horror.
In a horror story with a grotesque murderer, the typical goal is to escape the ruthless and terrifying monster.
This game would be the same.
After all, she had seen her brother, Han Jin-gyeong, play horror games, screaming his head off all night.
Feeling a little proud of herself, Seo-rim said.
“I guess I should make them as scary as possible. Since the player has to run away from them.”
With this level of understanding, maybe she had a knack for game development.
She thought so, but her assumption was spectacularly wrong.
“What are you talking about? The warden is the protagonist.”
“…?”
Seo-rim’s expression went blank.
Yeon-ho simply added one more thing.
“I told you, it’s an action game. A horror action game.”
They were still words she couldn't comprehend.