Nostalgia (2)
What on earth is this all about? When I first opened my eyes, all I saw was a small, peaceful single-room apartment. The indifferent scenery outside the window created the illusion that everything I had experienced until now was nothing more than a dream. The destruction of the world, the tutorial… the encounters with people and those horrific experiences all began to feel like nothing more than a fleeting fantasy. Just as that thought was about to take root, a voice rang out to silence the chaos.
A new mission has arrived.
4th Floor - Trauma
📍 Theme: Overcoming
📍 Difficulty: A
📍 Description: Forgotten times from the past. Someone has recreated your past within the tower. Overcome the trauma that lingers on the far side of your memories. The moment your future takes a drastic turn, the door to the 5th floor will open.
🎯 Mission: Overcome Trauma
⏳ Time Limit: 30 days
🏆 Reward: Constellation Contract
💀 Failure Penalty: Death if you fail to succeed within the time limit.
Even with the mental protection skill called Quick Understanding, a fleeting hope swelled inside me that this could all be a dream. If the system message hadn’t appeared, I might have given in to the temptation to simply enjoy this peace without thinking about anything. No… there were probably people who would deny reality even after seeing the system. That was how precious our ordinary lives had become, and those unfamiliar memories had turned into something we could never return to.
It seemed the rabbit had emphasized “This is the 4th floor of the tower” before we entered for exactly this reason. If you lose focus, you die. The failure penalty was death. They had at least given us a generous thirty days, but once we actually started working on the mission, even that might not be enough.
“By the way…”
Only now was the full mission content sinking in.
“What does ‘overcome trauma’ even mean?”
Truthfully, I didn’t have anything that could really be called trauma. Or, to be more accurate, since my life as a whole hadn’t held many happy memories, it was more fitting to say I didn’t have any particularly unhappy ones either.
“…Should I start with the small things one by one?”
In other words, the biggest problem facing me right now was that I didn’t even know what my trauma was. To find it, I needed to look back on my life around the age of twenty.
My eyes drifted to the smartphone charging neatly in the corner. I wasn’t sure whether a phone from a non-real world would actually work, but I picked it up anyway and tapped the screen with a faint hope.
It lit up.
The display came on as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It felt even more awkward since it was a device I’d used eight or nine years ago, but I ignored the strangeness and checked the calendar first.
August 3, 20XX — Summer
Schedule — 12:00~20:00 Convenience Store ……
The habit of keeping records that I had developed to take care of myself—since no one else would—proved useful once again. My schedule consisted of nothing but part-time jobs all month long, but thinking back on who I was at the time, it wasn’t strange at all.
“Then let’s start with the convenience store…”
The 4th floor mission was to find my trauma and overcome it. If I simply lived out my old routine, perhaps something would reveal itself.
“Mmm…”
After arriving at the convenience store, I suppressed the rising awkwardness and greeted the man sitting inside.
“Hello… Manager?”
“Ah, is that you, Siin?”
A middle-aged man in his fifties whose receding hairline had widened his forehead. Back then I had only cared about working and getting paid, so I had never paid attention to his appearance. Seeing him now, he had a gentle, warm face.
“Time already flew by like this…? Huh? You’re a bit early today, aren’t you? Heh heh, you’re usually so punctual. What’s the occasion?”
“Ah…”
Memories of the past resurfaced. It was true that back then I had lived more like a machine than a human. A student who was indifferent to relationships and kept to his schedule with mechanical precision. Of course, that personality had been shaped in part by the bullying I suffered in middle and high school, but now I wondered if I really needed to have lived so rigidly.
“I just felt like getting some fresh air today.”
“Well, that’s unusual… Still, I’m grateful you came early. Today’s my late-born daughter’s birthday. I was going to ask you to come a little sooner but felt bad about it and kept quiet.”
The manager broke into a wide smile at my words.
“It’s a bit early, but I’ll leave things to you today. I’ll make sure you get the extra pay.”
“Yes, understood.”
With that, the manager took off his convenience store uniform and left through the door.
A perfectly ordinary day.
And so I returned to my past routine and lived through it.
The players who had climbed to the 4th floor were each spending time within their own pasts. A returned daily life, a world and people they met once more. However, not every player was enjoying peaceful days like Kim Siin.
“……”
Han Gamin, who had just entered the upper grades of elementary school. She had decided not to hate her past anymore, but she now realized that had been a complacent thought born from never imagining she would actually return to it.
Crash!
A green glass bottle spun through the air and shattered against the wall, spraying shards everywhere. The faint remaining scent of soju spread sharply, stinging Han Gamin’s nose and making her frown instantly.
“You fucking bastard! Where the hell did you go?!”
The person who had thrown the bottle at her was none other than her father. The point she had returned to was one summer day, only a week after her mother had finally given up on enduring his violence and left the house.
“Damn it. Of all times…”
It was the worst. Mission or not, this was the period when she had felt the most lonely and miserable. She had faced many hardships and adversities in her life, but if there was a time she truly believed she could never endure, it was now.
“Fuck! If you’re not going to school, then get out there and find your damn mother!”
She loathed the devil known as her father. On days he didn’t drink, he only radiated hostility without raising his hands, but the moment alcohol touched his lips, his fists flew. Watching this blood relative who had been fired from his job for drunk driving yet still kept drinking made rage boil up until her vision went red.
With her small, childlike hands, she grabbed a tiny bag.
Overcoming trauma. She still didn’t know exactly what the tower wanted from her, but she wanted to escape this place as quickly as possible.
She flung the door open.
But Han Gamin had completely forgotten one crucial fact. The timing of her mother leaving the house unfortunately overlapped with summer vacation.
The only places an elementary schooler who ran away from home could go were a neighborhood playground or a friend’s house whose parents came home late. But Han Gamin had been an exceptionally clever child from a young age, and that hadn’t changed much even now that she was older.
“Whoa, it’s cool in here.”
A familiar bank standing along the main road. Han Gamin stepped into the bank not far from home and gulped down water as if she were a construction worker, enjoying the blast of cool air conditioning.
“Just as I thought, this is way better than a dirty playground with no AC.”
Besides, no one in the bank would scold an elementary student for sitting there a long time. Everyone was busy with their own work; why would they bother a quiet kid who wasn’t causing any trouble?
“By the way…”
Han Gamin glanced around discreetly. An old woman consulting with a teller. A lady who quietly entered, took a number ticket, and the small child trailing after her. She couldn’t make out the exact content of the murmuring conversations, but as she quietly watched the scene, only one thought came to mind.
“It’s so peaceful.”
How long had it been since she last felt this kind of peace? After visiting that game company for a college liberal arts assignment and encountering a monster, had there ever been a single moment where she simply let time drift by in a daze?
“…Tsk.”
Han Gamin blinked back the tears threatening to spill and emptied the remaining water in her paper cup. What had happened had happened. This was a daily life she could never return to. There was no point in clinging to lingering attachments.
She stared blankly at the bright fluorescent lights on the ceiling. What exactly was she supposed to do? What was her trauma, and how was she supposed to overcome it?
“I wonder what that ahjussi is doing right now?”
The face of a strangely tall man floated into Han Gamin’s mind. A person whose past was impossible to imagine. Someone who seemed almost abnormally calm and intelligent—did he really belong to the same species as her? By her standards, he was close to a role model. Smart, decisive, and if he believed something was right, he would never bend his will no matter what happened. And on top of that, he was even ridiculously handsome…
“…Have I lost my mind?”
No one had said anything, yet Han Gamin’s face flushed red. She shook her head vigorously to clear her thoughts. She had only been curious what kind of trauma someone like Kim Siin might be facing. That was all. Knowing that might give her an idea of how to solve her own situation! It wasn’t like she had any dirty thoughts or anything…
BANG!!!
“Eek! That scared me!”
The moment her idle thoughts stretched too far, a noise loud enough to assault the ears erupted from inside the bank. Han Gamin instinctively lowered her posture and whipped her head toward the source of the sound.
“Why won’t it work?!”
A student sitting across from a bank teller was shouting at the top of his lungs. Since his back was turned, she couldn’t see his face, but his school uniform made it easy for Han Gamin to guess he was a high schooler.
Ah, that guy.
Han Gamin had been about to sit back down but instead stood up quietly and moved to a seat where she could hear their conversation. She remembered seeing this student occasionally while resting at the bank in the past. Back then she had been scared of the older high-school boy yelling and hadn’t paid much attention, keeping her distance. But now she was curious why he came to the bank almost every day to throw these tantrums.
Then.
“…Huh?”
The moment the student turned his head in frustration, she saw it. A familiar face. She obviously wouldn’t have recognized it back then, but there was no way she could miss it now. The high schooler demanding something from the bank employee was Park Jocheol—the same person she had met at that game company.