Return to Reality
Losing was worse than dying.
That was simply how I was made. Whatever it took, winning mattered more than anything else. Maybe that was why, from the time I was small, they called me a walking disaster — always swinging, always in a fight. I never bothered to step aside from a fight that came looking for me.
The real trouble started when I was still in elementary school, the year my parents died in a traffic accident. A brother six years older than me, still in high school, and I were left to live alone, and I went properly off the rails — past troublemaker, branded a problem child.
My brother was nothing like me. He was far more complete, a person who shone, and he strained with everything he had to protect the only family he had left.
Had it even been a year since our parents died? Some kid I already didn't get along with threw them in my face. Naturally, I beat him half to death. In the moment I don't think I spared a thought for what would follow. I just swung. He lost both front teeth, and his nose caved in.
A disciplinary committee for school violence was convened, and the police came and went through the school. My brother, nothing but a high school student, was summoned to the principal's office and went down on his knees to apologize to the boy's parents.
Watching that back, I understood something for the first time. Sometimes there are fights you can never win.
The boy's parents clicked their tongues.
"This is why kids without parents..."
All I could do was clench my fists and choke the anger down.
On the way home that day, I apologized to my brother. He smiled and asked.
"How's school?"
"...Same as always. Boring. Not fun."
"Friends?"
"...Not really."
"I see."
How pathetic I must have looked. He was grinding himself raw through every kind of misery for my sake, and the sibling in question was perfectly at ease, whining about hating school. If I had been him, I would have been genuinely disgusted.
But he was different.
"Then think about another path."
"Another path?"
"Art, or sports. Something like that. You don't have to cling to studying."
It sounded reasonable enough, but our situation was nowhere near good enough for the arts or athletics. Put bluntly, we didn't have that kind of money.
"Gaeul. I want you to live happily. Anything's fine, so why not look for something you can truly enjoy?"
Something I could enjoy. Did a thing like that even exist?
"Or what about games? You're good at them."
"Games are just games."
"If you're really that confident, debut as a pro gamer."
"Mm..."
Games, at least, had almost nowhere for money to go, compared with the other paths. Frankly, one computer that ran well and you were done.
"Well. I'll think about it."
That was probably the first time I began to carry the dream of turning pro. I'd already had a certain confidence in games. The same hunger to win meant I tried to win there, too, no matter how. And once I had a concrete goal — pro gamer — my skill climbed without pause.
By middle school I was known even inside the game as a Heavenly Realm player, and in high school I was finally scouted as a pro-gamer trainee. The day I got the offer, my brother and I threw a modest little party, just the two of us.
Everything seemed to be working out. I thought all that remained was to keep rising — until the third day of life in the dorms, when I heard the game had died.
I opened my eyes.
The damp soaking into my skin granted me, the instant I woke, an overwhelming freshness. It synergized so beautifully with that all-too-vivid dream that I was terribly happy.
"...Of all things, a dream about then."
I muttered it and covered my eyes with an arm. Five years already. Back then I had come to understand, perfectly, what it felt like for the world to collapse.
It was true the game's popularity had been fading. I'd expected that even a pro debut wouldn't earn me enough to live easy for the rest of my life. But that it would die so emptily — who could have guessed? Disaster stacked on disaster, yet the decisive blow was the company's own bungling. Out of nowhere they launched a new game, boasting that they had made a masterpiece destined for the history books. As if the whole lot of them had gone mad, they abandoned the existing game completely and poured every investment into the new one. They missed the golden hour to fix it, and in the end the game collapsed.
And the new title? I don't know. I wish to God I did.
I sighed and sat up, stretched, and ran a quick check over my body. Fortunately, it seemed I'd gotten through the night without anything going wrong. I don't like the damp of a cave. As a place to sleep, though, this could stand beside a five-star hotel.
I lifted my wrist and checked the Watch.
Participant 28 is massacring.
As expected, the game kept going through the night. Let your guard down even a little, and you could lose your head while you were still off in a dream. Which was why, at some point, I had almost stopped sleeping deeply. The slightest presence, and every nerve snapped taut. In that light, it rankled that the dream I'd finally had after so long had to be of that last moment.
I chewed through what was left of the roast rabbit I'd salted the night before. Once that rough breakfast was done, I took up the spear I'd left by my head and started walking. It was time to move. I cleared the brush and branches I'd piled for camouflage and stepped out of the cave.
Dawn was just breaking. I looked up at a sky dyed in uncanny color. Beyond the dense forest, a pale fog had drawn close enough to see plainly. Wake even a little later, and I'd have been on the road to the underworld.
Another day had begun, in the middle of a battlefield where you survived until you were the last one left.
Yes. I had entered the world of that damned new game. Five years on, I was still here.
Four days had passed since the war began. Of the sixty-six participants, only four were still alive.
One of them, an old man with a beard, walked slowly through the forest. He never took his hand from the sheath at his waist, advancing while he watched his surroundings with care. He had come this far himself because he'd learned an enemy was within five meters. His sword had already drunk a great deal of blood and grown very strong. What mattered was that it was still hungry, with no sign of stopping.
Sharp eyes flicked left and right. Had they already fled the spot? If not...
In that instant, a wretched scream tore across the quiet forest.
"Gyaaah!"
It came from nearby.
The old man stopped for a moment. It might be a trap meant to lure him. But it was also the best chance to cut the enemy down by one. If the fog kept closing in, the battlefield would have no choice but to shrink, and if several participants were left in a narrow space, too many variables would appear — variables he could not control. Fewer rivals, and sooner, was simply better.
In the end he headed for the scream even knowing it might be a trap. Above all, he was confident he could win no matter the situation. He ran forward without hesitation.
When he reached the source of the sound, he clicked his tongue. A step too late. A man had collapsed against a tree — a corpse, chest blown open, blood pouring out. No wound but that piercing through the chest. Killed in a single strike? From the size and shape of the hole, it looked like a spear thrust.
Then a voice drifted from behind him.
"Lucky me. You actually came because you heard a real scream."
"You were aiming for me on purpose?"
"Obviously."
A woman's voice, cold and mocking. There was an ease in it with no tension of a fight to be found. But the old man was the same. Caught from behind, he wasn't flustered in the slightest.
"I'm sorry, but you'll have to die. Still, thank you. You took one down for me, so once I finish you and the one who's left, the victory is mine."
"Hm? Oh — you haven't checked yet? It's just the two of us."
"...What?"
When he had checked, before the scream, four had still been alive. Did that mean that in the brief moment between hearing the scream and reaching this place, she had killed the other one as well? Even if all four had been nearby, and even if the last of them had been coming this way after the scream just as he was — could anyone kill an opponent in so little time? That survivor ought to have been skilled enough to last until the end.
The old man set his carelessness aside and resolved to fight at full strength from the start. More talk would only hand her the pace of the fight. He put strength into his legs, ready to begin at once.
Now.
He kicked off the ground, lunged, and twisted his body to read his opponent fast. At last he could see the woman who had been at his back.
Fine black hair, pale skin. Sharp eyes with the whites showing beneath, and a mole under the left one. Everything about her gave off a cold, decadent allure. Her clothes matched the impression — black, for the most part — and in her hand was a single long spear, smooth and plain in form. It was a face that could unsettle plenty of men. That didn't matter now.
The moment the old man saw her, he couldn't hide his dismay. No matter how he looked, he simply could not find an opening.
"What are you doing?"
She asked it, indifferent, then added,
"If you're not coming, I'll come first."
The instant he saw her charge, he understood who the winner of this war would be.
A complete monster.
I looked at the old man's corpse — the head gone — and then looked away. The only person left alive on this battlefield was me. I had become its victor.
A notification rose on the Watch at once.
"Congratulations, my ass."
The Watch's alarm went on.
Finally. At last. I had waited only for this day. A full five years had passed before I barely managed it.
"Yes."
State your wish.
"...Let me return to the reality I came from."
Your wish has been confirmed.
The wish I had wanted so badly, granted this emptily. I was confused enough to wonder if I was dreaming. But it wasn't a dream. It was unmistakably real.
Soon my body was wrapped in bright light and began to rise into the air. Swept up in joy, I shouted it with everything I had.
The world washed white, and at some moment I lost consciousness.
When I came to, rain was pouring out of the sky. I barely managed to lift my head and look around. What caught my eye was a sign, gaudy in that unmistakably Korean way. I had never imagined a sign like that could move me.
I really had returned to the present. I was out of that damned game's world.
Was it because my heart was too full? Or because I had lain unconscious in the rain for too long? For some reason my body wouldn't listen. I couldn't get up.
No. That wasn't the problem. There was only one reason I couldn't move.
I felt someone walking right beside me and snatched their ankle.
"Kya! Wh-what!? A homeless person? Or — don't tell me... a zombie!?"
"...Hungry. Food."
"Oh. Just a homeless person."
Why the disappointment. Did you want me to be a zombie?