A Commendable and Respectable Game
Commendable. Respectable. Impressive. Awe-inspiring.
Lately, those were the modifiers that had started clinging to Story of Top — the game to which I had handed nearly twenty years in one unbroken piece, from my elementary-school days straight through the prime of my youth.
It's not even multiplayer. It's a single-player game, and I have never seen a game this hungry for money.
You want one endgame piece like the Ascetic Sword? That's a car, minimum, gone. Make it yourself without spending, and just raising proficiency and gathering the materials takes two years at the least.
They treat users like we're complete fucking morons, and operations are a shitshow.
Nearly every bit of content is pure grunt work, and if you want to skip that grunt work you have to slam in money on the order of double an hourly wage, every single hour. Why are people still clinging to this commendable game?
A few people who didn't know the first thing about games liked to get on the internet and mock the whole thing, calling it oh-so-respectable to throw your hours away on a grind. I, though, found even those long hours of grinding it took to climb the Tower nothing but fun. That was how completely insane I was for Story of Top.
"King Remento's about due for a kill, so today I'll just chip away at fishing proficiency out at the Lake of Serenity..."
I was turning the day's work over on my tongue, in the very moment I meant to log in, when a gray notice window rose on the laptop screen.
4:00 a.m. — 4:00 p.m.
"...Wait. What?"
Maintenance, at its longest, was over by ten in the morning. Eleven, if they dragged it out with an extension. For this game to suddenly be down until four in the afternoon — don't tell me.
"An update?!"
If they were patching now, it would be the first time in nearly three years. Already buzzing, I stepped into the BC InsideStory of Top gallery.
"Six posts already."
Of course, they were all fixed nicknames I knew, and really only about three people taking turns writing them. They had nothing to do but this game either, so they were killing time posting on BC. I set my foot in that same current.
A comment has been posted.
A comment has been posted.
.
.
.
The moment I posted, the reaction came in hot. Looked like nobody had anything else to do.
"...Huh?"
Suddenly it was my fault? What kind of bullshit was that? I fired up the client and went into the Story of Top homepage, which I hadn't so much as opened in nearly a year.
To every warrior who has loved Story of Top, we offer our thanks.
"Uh...?"
The moment I saw that line, a displeasure I couldn't name surged up from the pit of my stomach. I didn't want to press it. I couldn't. The thought filled my head completely, and I simply closed the laptop where it sat.
KkaeTalk. KkaeTalk. The alert tone landed in my ear along with it.
In among the flood of curses, only one line stabbed into my eye.
"..."
For a moment, my breathing shook.
"No. That's — that can't be..."
I pulled myself together and opened the laptop again. This time I pressed the line that displeasure had kept me from pressing.
To every warrior who has loved Story of Top, we offer our thanks.
Over these past twenty years, a great many things have happened.
All the while, we have poured a great deal of effort into Story of Top....
The empty lies, the ones that didn't mean a word of it, I chewed straight through. Only the last line reached my eyes.
We're sorry, warriors.
As of March 1st, service for Story of Top will be terminated.
"..."
The moment I saw that line, my head rang blank. The world in front of my eyes went white, and for a second I even forgot how to breathe.
"Ha. Fuck..."
That single sentence was all I managed to get out. With one notice, the twenty years I had given became a scrap of paper. No — not even that. March 1st. Three days from now, even the data itself would be wiped clean.
That evening I put away two bottles of soju with nothing to chase them, and fell asleep.
A comment has been posted.
A comment has been posted.
.
.
.
I didn't learn until the next day that the post I'd written had been enshrined on the real-time best gallery as something to laugh at. I burned through each day on alcohol the same way, and then the day itself arrived. March 1st.
"Just sleep. What kind of goodbye is that supposed to be..."
I didn't even turn the game on. I fell asleep as I was, still drunk. I couldn't bear to watch, eyes open, the sight of my own life going under.
"Hey. Get up."
"Ah... Mom... just a little longer..."
"Mom?"
Hm? That isn't Mom's voice. Dad, then? But I don't have a dad. And Mom, two years ago.... Then who?
"You little bastard, who the hell are you calling Mom!"
"Ack!"
A brutal impact rode up my tailbone, and both eyes snapped open.
"Sleeping until this hour. You've really lost your mind."
When I pushed myself up, there was a beggar brat with a middle schooler's face, a full head taller than me.
Hm? Can "a middle schooler's face" and "a full head taller than me" even occupy the same world? The way the word "wisely" can't coexist with playing Story of Top, weren't those two a contradiction too? I was six-foot-two, and twenty-six this year.
"Uh..."
I lowered my gaze. What I saw was a small child's hand, black with grime.
Ah. So that's what this was.
This, at least, made more sense than wisely playing Story of Top. The kid wasn't tall. I had gotten short. In a word, I had possessed the body of a little beggar.
Mm-hm.
"Huh?"
"The hell kind of 'huh' is that, you little shit!"
"Ack!"
A fist came flying at my head. I couldn't even dodge it, and took the knuckle-rap square on.
"Get out there and beg already!"
I was driven straight out into the street.
"No, what the hell is going on?"
A wooden begging bowl lay sprawled on the ground, and the people passing by handed me furrowed stares in place of coins. I started analyzing the situation. In truth, there was nothing to analyze, and nothing that needed saying.
Fuck. Anyone looking could tell this was the Elia Kingdom.
The clothes on the people around me said as much. So did that revolting cut of Mikta meat they were hawking in the market. And more than anything —
"Whoa. It's even more insane in person."
— so did the tower, far off, driving upward as if it had never been told the sky had a limit. Where I stood was unmistakably the royal capital of the Elia Kingdom, the central stage of Story of Top. Which meant that right now, I had possessed beggar character A from Story of Top.
"Mm. No doubt about it."
A rather tidy conclusion. In the average web novel or comic, this was where a person wasted word count on cognitive dissonance — is this right, this can't be real — but I had none of that. A game-possession template I'd watched play out time and again had landed on reality; what was there to panic over? And it wasn't even some other game. It was the one I'd given my life to.
"Still. Is there no status window or anything here?"
I didn't go so far as to shout status window out loud. Not because I disliked the template. I'd just been turning it over, had even said "status window," and nothing had come up, had it?
"Do I have to phrase it differently? ESC, inventory, stats, S, I..."
I kept reciting whatever came to mind, but nothing rose in front of my eyes.
"Hah, fuck. None of it works."
I let out a sigh and looked at the bowl, which hadn't taken in a single coin. Carry it back like this, and that beggar bastard was going to beat me half to death again.
"Ah, I just want to lie down in a corner and scroll the galler—"
The words caught.
"Oh?"
A blue window, opening.
A familiar blue screen had risen before my eyes.