The 10,000-Hour Rule
"Hey! Kim Taehyun likes Lee Jieun!"
"Dude! We said we wouldn't tell!"
A secret poured out in trust—and immediately betrayed by a close friend.
In an instant, Taehyun went from the quiet kid in class to the pervert who was into girls. His classmates howled with laughter. Overwhelmed, he fled.
That humiliating moment in elementary school rewrote the course of his life.
—People terrified him.
Afraid of being mocked, he kept his mouth shut. Middle school was the same. High school, too. Naturally, he never made friends. He was always alone.
If a stranger so much as asked him for directions on the street, he would flinch and bolt before he even realized what he was doing. The fear had hardened into a full-blown phobia.
With severe social anxiety like that, a normal life in society was never going to happen.
So Taehyun shut himself indoors and turned his eyes to two-dimensional worlds instead.
Hunter Hunting Academy.
The game that left the deepest mark on him. An open-world RPG where you gathered companions and cleared monsters from inside the Gates. Getting to fight side by side with adorable student allies—what could be more fun than that?
And when Taehyun finally hit ten thousand hours of playtime, a single email arrived.
"……?"
It certainly had.
He never imagined he would end up inside the game itself.