Hello, I'm a Beggar
Until just a month ago, I had never realized how blatantly obvious people's stares could be.
Because of that—though hearing this might make an elder cough up blood in scandalized outrage—I had grown downright miserable at making eye contact when talking to someone.
Whenever our eyes met... I couldn't help but feel it all too vividly. Exactly where their gaze was wandering.
Beep.
Keeping my eyes cast downward, I set the armful of daily necessities I had been clutching onto the checkout counter: half a dozen cup ramens, two bottles of water, and a promotional four-pack of canned beer.
"..."
Anticipating the part-timer's next words, I fished a worn leather wallet out of my pocket.
Even while living as a deadbeat bum for the past month, I had learned quite a lot about myself. Setting aside my appearance for a moment, there was, first and foremost, my official identity.
"...Could I see your ID, please?"
Just as expected. I slipped out the plastic identification card tucked inside the wallet and handed it across the counter.
Age 20. Baek Ihyeon.
A brand-new identity sharing only my original family name, with everything else completely foreign. When I first saw my natural golden hair and pale eyes, I had briefly wondered if I was somehow of Western descent, but she was, thankfully, a Korean citizen.
It sounded cliché, but humans truly were creatures of habit; by now, I had grown reasonably accustomed to this identity.
Glance. Glance.
Alternating glances between the barefaced photo on the card and my actual face, the clerk scanned the barcode on the beer bundle without any further suspicion. When the customary question of whether I needed a plastic bag followed, I gave a brief nod, grabbed the oversized plastic sack, and scurried straight back home.
"Phew..."
I had always been socially awkward, but lately, it felt like it had spiraled into something far worse.
Without even bothering to unpack the rest of the groceries, I snatched a single cup of instant noodles from the bag, tore open the seasoning packet, and poured in boiling water. During the three-minute wait for the noodles to cook, I idly glanced away from the small kitchenette, my eyes falling upon a state-of-the-art gaming computer that looked completely out of place in this dilapidated studio apartment.
A familiar room. An unfamiliar body.
If this was my current reality... then couldn't gaming be considered my dream?
"...Dream."
I rolled the word around on my tongue, savoring its strange novelty.
What a sparkling, radiant word it was. That went for the dreams you had while asleep, but even more so for the aspirations you held for your future. In a way, dreams were like stars in the night sky—visible to everyone, yet impossible to reach with a simple outstretched hand. Then again, who in this world didn't harbor a dream?
The old me had kept one close to heart, too.
"A professional gamer."
People who made a living solely out of playing games.
Every talent was a blessing, of course, but an ambiguous, middling talent could sometimes be pure poison.
...That had been my story.
In Path of Night—or Pae-O-Na for short—my talent had been fairly outstanding. Just "outstanding." The kind of talent that barely scraped into the top three hundred on the leaderboard... wasn't nearly enough to make it as a professional. I had managed to become an academy trainee, but it never panned out.
Why hadn't it?
There had been a time when I spent entire days agonizing over it, cursing my lukewarm talent, but I no longer dwelled on it so deeply. I probably just wasn't good enough. Or maybe my effort had fallen short.
Once I abandoned my aspirations of going pro, I devoted every waking hour to theory-crafting and build research. Seeing players who had achieved the dream I gave up on using the builds I developed in official tournament matches gave me a profound sense of vicarious satisfaction.
"Heh."
...Earlier, while waiting in a queue that dragged past sixty minutes, had I called myself a pioneer?
It wasn't mere self-consolation. I wasn't wrong. Because not only had my body changed, but I was currently about two years in the past. Which meant my builds hadn't become mainstream yet. Around this time was right when I had been grinding practice day and night to pursue pro play. Naturally, it was a time before I had ever laid hands on build research.
My cutting-edge techniques hadn't been rejected by the era; they were simply too far ahead of their time.
"Still, though..."
Stirring the softening noodles with my chopsticks, I glanced at the monitor. Just on the off chance, I had left the matchmaking queue running before heading out to the store. Yet nearly two hours later, the client was still sitting in the lobby. Even for a weekday afternoon... wasn't this a bit much?
"Tsk."
Swallowing the bitterness welling up in my throat, I picked up the cup ramen and chopsticks and settled down in front of the computer desk. At that exact moment, the phone in my pocket buzzed.
"Ah."
What had I just said? That dreams shone bright? But ever since I chased that dream and gave up, I've had to pronounce that word a little differently.
My dream wasn't a shining beacon; it was a crushing debt. And let me tell you, that debt weighed heavily.
For a while, my sense of reality had been so numb that I hadn't fully grasped it. Checking my remaining bank balance sent a sudden jolt of raw anxiety coursing through my chest. Come to think of it, right around this time was when the independence resettlement grant I had received upon aging out of the orphanage would be running dry.
"...Ah."
It wasn't as if I hadn't considered the usual easy-money shortcuts—stocks, crypto, and all the rest. The second I confirmed the date upon waking up here, of course I had furiously dug through my phone for information.
Unfortunately, my fate—or God, if one existed—was brutally merciless. It seemed the world I had opened my eyes to was some sort of parallel universe. The stocks I had once regretted not buying didn't exist here, and neither did the cryptocurrencies I had kicked myself for ignoring.
"Uwaaagh..."
Why beat around the bush in a situation like this? I was a penniless beggar.
And worse: a high-school-educated, unemployed, freeloading, gaming-addict orphan bitch.
"Haah..."
In such dire straits, why on earth had I bought that expensive beer? Regret weighed heavily on me, but rather than wallowing in self-blame over past mistakes, I urgently needed to find a way out. Fortunately, this body required barely any food to function. If I survived on a single pack of instant ramen a day...
"A month, at most..."
With zero income, that single month was essentially my remaining lifespan. Under normal circumstances, I would have drifted toward day labor on construction sites or picked up convenience store shifts. But the current me possessed a stick-thin frame and pathetic physical strength. On top of that, I had developed something bordering on severe social anxiety...
"I am totally screwed."
Muttering desolately to myself, I stared at the monitor screen. The glowing client of Path of Night.
As I blankly took in the screen amidst my bleak circumstances, the memory of the day I hit the wall of talent and abandoned my pro dreams suddenly resurfaced. A bizarre day that was both my past and my future.
On that day, I had curled up alone in bed and cried. The word "surrender" tasted so mournful that I curled into a tight ball. I loathed myself so deeply for having banked on lukewarm talent to forge a career path that I wept endlessly.
And yet...
Looking back, gaming had been the single thing in my entire life that I had ever truly loved. Who could possibly blame someone for trying to make a living doing what they loved?
"Ah."
Someone could. Me. Only me.
"You dumb bitch..."
I scratched vigorously at my head, heaping blame on myself. My radiant blonde hair floated up into the air for a second before settling back down. It was still an awkward mop of hair to call my own, but ironically, that detachment allowed me to observe myself from a third-person perspective.
...Let's assess the situation.
I had no money. In a ruthless capitalist society, that was a fatal problem. Even living like this, life could be enjoyable at times, and a cold beer made it even better... but enjoying even such modest comforts required a baseline of cash. So, to resolve this crisis, what could the current me actually do?
"...Mmh."
Manual labor? I'd be lucky if anyone even hired me. Part-time jobs? I'd be fortunate not to get fired on day one. Actually, even if I was incompetent at the work, they'd probably keep me standing at the counter like a decorative mannequin. Yet pathetic as I was... even in this dire situation, my very first thought was, I don't want to.
"...Pae-O-Na."
In the end, it always came back to games. The only thing I was good at. Or more accurately, the only thing I could do. The ideal scenario would be going pro, but for someone who had already given up once—someone who had experienced that crushing despair—the mere thought of trying again was an overwhelming psychological burden.
"Then what else is there...?"
Fortunately, there were quite a few ways to earn money through gaming. The most prominent route was working as a "dark gamer," grinding for in-game currency and items to sell for real cash, but Path of Night didn't have an auction house.
"...Streaming."
Excluding illegal activities, only one option remained. The odds of success were about as slim as finding a needle in a desert or tracking down a specific stranger in the heart of Seoul. I knew that. Yet, whether judged by internet tropes or my own objective appraisal... beating those microscopic odds shouldn't actually be all that difficult for the current me.
"Haaah..."
Spinning my desk chair around, I caught my reflection in the small hand mirror sitting in the corner of the room.
"Ugh."
Honestly... it really seemed doable. I already had a certain degree of notoriety in the game, whether positive or negative. Turn on a webcam, act cute, and pander to the faceless masses across the screen, and making a living seemed well within reach. Female players in Path of Night were rare enough. A top-tier, insanely cute girl gamer was practically a mythical creature.
Except...
"Uuugh..."
It was so, so agonizingly difficult to stomach. Just imagining it gave me goosebumps. In the first place, I hated the idea of exposing a face that I hadn't even grown comfortable with to a crowd. And just picture it: some random, anonymous man cooing over me, going, "Awww, who's a good girl? Look at you go!"
"Gross."
I'd rather have them cuss me out. Wait, maybe "rather" wasn't quite the right word. Should I start streaming with a designated punching-bag concept, then? No, that wasn't the flavor of toxicity I craved.
Doing nothing wrong... completely unintended... and yet getting flamed and cursed at anyway. That was what gave me genuine pleasure.
Of course, I knew full well that beggars couldn't be choosers in my current predicament...
"Ughhh."
I knew myself best. Forcing myself to cling to something I despised would never last long.
"For now... let's just do a test broadcast."
In the end, half out of escapism and half out of groundless optimism that maybe I could pull it off, I opened the streaming platform's website.
"I need to check if the broadcast even works properly, anyway..."
Even to my own ears, it was a pathetic excuse, but my hands moved swiftly across the keyboard. First, create an account. Next, set the handle. There wasn't much need to deliberate here.
Using the very handle that had branded me as an infamous figure in Path of Night wasn't entirely devoid of calculation. People were naturally drawn to weirdos over skilled players, and they swarmed to flame someone far faster than they ever gathered to offer praise.
"H-Hmph."
So... wasn't this killing two birds with one stone?
Click, click.
Searching for quick guides online, I finished setting up the broadcasting software. The computer was practically my only true friend, so despite a few stumbles, the configuration didn't take long.
Webcam input: disabled, of course. Microphone: muted.
Only the client screen of Path of Night and a dead-silent chat window filled the broadcast view.