A Fun Game
"Manager, you didn't happen to bring any Starlight Lotion, did you?"
"Ah! Sorry! I completely forgot I was supposed to buy some yesterday."
"Honestly... please make sure you have it ready next time."
"I'm sorry!"
Kim Jia had been ready to tear into her manager, but she had known him a long time, and she knew just how desperately he had been trying to get his hands on Starlight Lotion. She let it go. The bigger reason was simpler still: there was a spare bottle in her handbag. She had taken to carrying one everywhere, just in case something like this happened.
"Hm~ hm~"
Makeup used to devour a great deal of time, but once Starlight Lotion appeared, that time shrank dramatically. A single application left her skin as soft and downy as a baby's, so all she really needed was a light touch of eye makeup, lipstick, and the rest of the cosmetics that actually showed.
"Where on earth did something like this come from?"
Kim Jia could not stop marveling at how uncanny the lotion was. Plenty of mysterious goods had appeared after the gates opened and monster byproducts began to circulate, but byproducts this good for the body were rare. The price was a drawback, yet for a celebrity whose career lived and died by her skin, it was hardly a fortune. Models, who had to coat themselves from head to toe, often went through several bottles at once—partly because each bottle held so little.
"Unnie, how did you even manage to buy Starlight Lotion? I tried ordering it online, and they said it would take weeks."
"There's a place that sells it on the side. I got friendly with the owner of a cosmetics shop, and even then I barely managed to get any."
Other celebrities used it too, but the problem was not the price so much as the tiny supply. It took so long to obtain that some people simply went without. A few others kept going to dermatology clinics, because applying Starlight Lotion every single day cost more than regular skin treatments. Even so, the effect was undeniable. On days that mattered—award ceremonies, film festivals—you had to use it, and so the lotion vanished from the shelves the moment it appeared.
If it had a flaw, it was that your skin returned to normal the moment you stopped applying it. That single fact let the doctors in dermatology breathe a sigh of relief. At least the world would still need them. Ordinary people without that kind of money still took most skin troubles to a hospital, and only when a condition was beyond what a clinic could fix did they swallow their tears and save Starlight Lotion for a special day. For now, its effects still left a little to be desired. Even so, they were extraordinary enough that it sold out everywhere it went.
After applying the Starlight Lotion that had already become part of her routine, Kim Jia brewed a cup of Starlight Green Tea and drank it before heading into her next broadcast. It was a routine she favored. Once she was on air, ad-libs and good ideas came to her far more easily. Carrying her own personal tea bags might have looked odd, but ever since Starlight Green Tea appeared and its price shot up, it was rarely stocked in public places. A day's supply vanishing overnight was the baseline, and a few shameless people walked off with far more bags than they could drink themselves. If you wanted the tea outside, you had to bring your own. Fortunately the packaging was well made, so it was not much of an inconvenience.
I received a new phone. Bora handed it over with firm instructions to carry it properly from now on. Haru came in partway through and tried to teach me how to use it, but I already knew everything, so her lesson was useless. When I understood it all after a single explanation, she stroked my head and said I was amazing. I had been using phones for decades. It would have been stranger if a little time had made me forget how they worked.
I was fiddling with the phone, killing time, when I turned on the computer to see how the game I used to play had changed.
Icarus. A blockbuster MMORPG, the kind of online game that no gamer who touched games at all could claim not to play. Then again, online games demanded either money or time, and back when I was poor my gear had never been anything special. It had still been fun, so I tried to log in.
I typed my ID and password.
Account does not exist.
Huh. Now what?
The solution came quickly enough. All I had to do was register. I entered a familiar ID and password, finished the phone verification, and logged into the game without hesitation. I made a cute little character, set her appearance, and then stalled at the next step. I had to choose a name, and that process was harder than anything else.
After a long deliberation, I hammered at the keyboard and settled on one. The character's name was HanaBoraHaru.
It was a game I had kept thinking about, so I sank into it without a moment's pause. The feeling did not last. That is simply how games are. Leave one alone for a few months and you miss it desperately, but the moment that longing drives you to log in and play for a few hours, the interest cools right off. It was inevitable. In my case I had already raised a character once, so grinding the same leveling-range monsters only made it worse.
Doing something I had already done meant I could not call it fun even as a polite lie. But the real charm of this game was the raids and PvP that opened at a certain level, so I endured the boredom and kept playing. Even so, progress crawled. I had no choice but to resort to a forbidden art. With the feeling of drawing a hidden blade, I pulled the debit card from the desk drawer.
Bora had said that, through some contract or other, royalties were deposited into the account linked to this card. I did not know the details. I had only been told that if I needed to spend money, I should use this. It was not a credit card, so if I used it long enough I would eventually hit a limit. Credit cards had limits too, but there was still something uneasy about them, which was why she had given me a debit card instead.
I entered the cash shop, tossed everything I needed into the cart, typed the card number on the payment screen, and checked out cleanly. A text arrived saying several million won had been withdrawn, but I did not particularly care. It was a card she had given me to use. What did it matter if I spent it however I liked?
"Yahoo!"
The pace was on another level from before. As if I had strapped on a booster, my character's growth was dazzling. If I had known it would be like this, I would have dumped money into the game ages ago. Maybe it really was all that cash. Before much time had passed I had hit max level, and I leaned back in my chair and stretched until my joints popped.
These days games were designed so you could reach max level easily. The problem came after that. I paused my hunting and wandered through town, and there I spotted a character wearing an avatar so extravagant it made mine look plain. I stopped dead, lost in the sight of that splendor. Then I started typing.
According to that user, it was an avatar you could obtain at a hellish probability by combining the expensive avatars sold in the cash shop. Once, I would not even have dreamed of it. Now I had a magic card. Once I had confirmed how the synthesis worked, I walked into the cash shop without hesitation, pulled the card out again, and charged more cash.
A million won or so ought to be enough, right? But I had taken a Korean game far too lightly, and I was doomed to a crushing defeat.
"Not even... one?"
I had burned through a million won and had not so much as glimpsed the shadow of a hidden avatar. I needed nine pieces in total, and after investing a million won I had not obtained a single one. I thought I might cry. Stubbornness took over. I opened the cash shop again and charged five million won. Payment alerts kept flying into my phone.
This time my luck was better, and I got four pieces. I kept rolling the gacha, and before I knew it the world outside had gone dark. I could not even say how many tens of millions of won it had cost, but I managed to complete every piece of the hidden avatar except one. Drained, I shut off the computer, turned out the lights, and lay down on the bed.
I had only just gotten into bed when Haru came in to say good night.
"Hana, sleep well!"
She still dropped by from time to time, but once it was past ten and I was asleep, she stopped coming in, afraid the sound of the door would wake me.
"Mm..."
Even lying in bed, sleep would not come. The game I had just been playing kept flickering in front of my eyes. Is this what game addiction feels like? I forced my eyes shut and tried to drift off, but it would not come. In the end I got out of bed and turned the computer back on. I had to see this through tonight.