Heartache
After logging off with Taeyang, I climbed out of the capsule.
"Ugghhh... I'm so tired..."
Virtual reality games are all fun — that isn't the problem. The problem is how completely wrecked you feel afterward. Stay in even a little too long and your whole body goes stiff. Mine isn't a particularly good capsule, either; there's barely enough room to lie down, so you can't even shift in your sleep, and everything locks up. That's why I have to work myself loose like this.
Crack... crack...
"Augh..."
I really should have bought a bed-type instead of a chair-type.
...Not that I could have. Bed-types aren't covered by the government subsidy.
Smack. Smack.
I slapped my cheeks to drag my scattered focus back together. I was exhausted and desperately sleepy, but I still had work to do.
I sat down at my desk and powered on the laptop. The ancient secondhand machine whirred through its boot sequence, and I picked up my drawing tablet and stylus, getting ready to work.
The one thing I could do — the only thing I'd been doing since I was little, and the only way a girl this clumsy, with no knack for part-time work, could make money after moving out on her own.
Drawing.
Today I just needed to finish the coloring, so I grabbed the pen and opened the illustration software.
Scratch, scratch. The sound of the stylus dragging across the tablet filled the room.
Today's piece was a streamer's channel banner. For broadcast illustrations — assuming I transfer the copyright along with the file — I charge around six to seven hundred thousand won.
Once I finish the coloring, send it off, and get paid...
...it'll all vanish again into rent, maintenance fees, the phone bill, groceries.
"...Should I cut back on food?"
The first thing you always think of trimming is food, of course. Lately I'd been eating at Daddy Touch or the campus cafeteria, but I probably needed to go even cheaper. If it came down to it, I could pack lunches. Or just skip meals.
If I graduate and land a stable job, will things be a little better than they are now?
I don't know. I'm too busy to even picture that far ahead.
These days, the only times I actually enjoy myself are when I'm playing Ellmo with Taeyang, or when I'm with my junior.
Come to think of it, my junior's name is Taeyang too, isn't it? Yeon Taeyang.
A what-if flickered through my mind. What if my junior was the Taeyang I knew from the game?
But I folded that thought away neatly. It was too much of a stretch.
Elysion Sermo is the most popular virtual reality RPG in the world. Even granting that the player is a Korean who speaks Korean, even granting that the username is Taeyang — leaping from there to "therefore Taeyang and my junior are the same person" is a stretch too far.
And besides, my junior is incredibly good-looking. He has that celebrity face that makes you think he'd never touch a game in his life. Would someone like that even play? Ellmo might count as a mainstream title, but he doesn't seem the type. And even if he did, I can't imagine he'd play as hardcore as Taeyang does.
What I do know for certain is this: both my junior and Taeyang treat me as I actually am. Not for my looks, not for my gender — just as an ordinary school senior, just as one more newbie player.
"Hehehe..."
I feel like my real self only comes out when I'm with those two. I'd thought it earlier, too — being with them is the only part of my life lately that actually feels good.
I was sitting there grinning to myself, turning the two of them over in my mind, when—
Thunk.
The laptop screen went dark.
"Ah... it died again..."
This wasn't a once-or-twice thing, so I wasn't all that shocked. These days, work programs even have a recovery function if they crash, so aside from a brief reboot there isn't much damage.
But this time, it was worse than I thought.
I mashed the power button. I clicked and clicked. I kept plugging the charger in, unplugged every device I had connected — mouse, drawing tablet, everything.
"Uh... huh? Why won't it turn on?"
Nothing. It wouldn't turn on.
...The laptop had finally reached the end of its life.
"I really... I really hate this..."
I hated that the deadline was only a day away. I hated this laptop that had died on me, meaning I'd have to get it repaired or buy a new one. I hated myself, sitting here with my livelihood hanging by a thread over something like this.
I hated all of it. Every last bit.
The good mood I'd been in plummeted straight into the abyss, and all I did was get up from the chair and go to bed. I didn't want to feel this awful any longer. I didn't want to think about how to solve this exhausting problem.
Right now, I just wanted to sleep. Toward a dream where I didn't have to worry about anything at all.
"Hmm... repairs are going to run you about seven hundred thousand won."
"What? Why would it cost that much...?"
"It's simply reached the end of its life. You'd basically have to replace the whole unit."
"Then... the files inside, are they...?"
"Those we can preserve. But if you're replacing the laptop anyway, you'd be better off just copying the data onto an external drive. You could pull the hard drive, sure, but if you're getting a new machine, you'd just end up throwing this one out later."
"Then how much would an external drive be...?"
"The laptop doesn't have much storage to begin with, so fifty thousand won will do it."
"Fifty thousand won... All right..."
In the end, I paid fifty thousand won, walked out with an external drive that held everything that had been on my laptop, and came home.
The real problem started now. Buying anything to eat was obviously off the table for a while, and money would keep draining out through rent and the phone bill. On top of that, I had to put together a new laptop.
I could manage it on installment, maybe — but midterms were coming up, which meant I had to study. Which meant, naturally, that the hours I could spend on commissions would shrink.
Faced with a situation that had no way out, I ended up sinking down in the middle of the street.
"What do I do..."
...Cut my game time and my sleep, and put those hours into commissions and studying. Then find a part-time job I can do on my days off, and make a little more money.
If I do that... if I just do that...
Drip... drip...
The tears came pouring down. It was too much. I couldn't breathe.
My family isn't well-off. If anything, we fall on the poor side. But my parents wanted me to grow up properly, and I wanted to live up to that, so I made it all the way to university.
The problem was tuition.
Seonghan University is, without question, one of the most prestigious schools in Seoul. But Seonghan is a private university, and that meant tuition — plus a housing deposit so I could live on my own.
At first, I didn't want to go to Seonghan. No — I wanted to go. I just wanted to give it up. Because my parents would have to spend the money they'd worked so hard to save, just so I could enroll, come up to Seoul, and live by myself.
So I thought about taking a gap year, or going to a national university with a lower admissions cutoff...
My parents chose to support me.
I couldn't put up even the slightest resistance in the face of their smiles. I wanted to lean on that warmth, that steadiness.
And so I chose Seonghan University, and at the same time, I made a vow. That this would be the last time I held out my hand to my parents. That from now on, I would live on my own strength. And that, at the end of it, I would repay them.
After I started college, I avoided anything that might cost money. Freshman trips, orientation, opening mixers, end-of-semester parties, year-end parties, drinking gatherings of every kind — I didn't go to a single one.
Dating? I couldn't even spare the attention for something like that.
The only things I could still enjoy were the hobbies I'd always had, the ones that didn't cost much: drawing, and games. When I got a capsule, I bought the cheapest budget model that qualified for the government subsidy. The laptop, too, was one my dad had used years ago and passed down to me.
I poured every effort I had into it, and the world was still a hard place to live in alone. I got fired from part-time jobs for having no knack for the work. I got sick, or something broke, and money went out the door. There had been something truly terrifying while I was playing, too, and it had worn me down terribly.
I held on and held on, and the situation only kept getting worse.
The commissions that had finally started picking up through word of mouth were going to take a hit because of today's delay. The game that had become fun again was something I'd have to cut back on. And on top of that, I'd have to go looking for whatever part-time work even a girl with no job sense could do, and work even more.
It was so unfair I could cry.
This wasn't the hardest thing that had ever happened to me. There had been plenty of things harder than this. I had gritted my teeth through every last one of them, and things had finally, finally started to get a little better — and of all times, this had to happen now, dragging everything back down again. That was what hurt so much.
"Hic... hhng..."
This is the street. I don't want to be the kind of attention-seeker who sits on the sidewalk leaking tears. I know perfectly well there are any number of people who have it far harder than a girl like me, whose situations are far worse.
But the fact that all that effort, all that holding on, had led to this — that was what had me sitting in the street crying like the heroine of a tragedy.
Embarrassment and guilt pricked at me, and I was forcing myself up off the ground, trying to leave, when—
"...Senior?"
A voice I knew from somewhere.
"Junior...?"
It was the one person I absolutely did not want to see me like this.