VR Game
"Hah..."
A sigh slipped out before he could stop it.
As a father with a wife and children to support, he couldn’t help feeling utterly lost in the face of this situation.
- Manager Park, I’m sorry. I tried to talk them into it upstairs, but with your leg the way it is, you can’t exactly come in and work right away, can you? Still, you’ve got the experience, so finding another job shouldn’t be a problem.
Who could have guessed he’d be fired like this after working his ass off for that company for more than ten years?
Well, the reason did lie with him, in a way.
On the way home from work, he’d seen a little kid running after a ball that had bounced into the road.
Just before an accident could happen, he’d reflexively sprinted out and saved the child, but he hadn’t managed to avoid the car completely, and his foot had ended up crushed under a wheel.
The injury wasn’t especially severe, but naturally it had still meant a brief stay in the hospital.
And since he had to use crutches until his foot healed, his mobility was restricted.
"At the very least, they could’ve let me have a month. I’ve worked there for over ten years without even taking a real vacation... Hah!"
Since his job was office work, his actual duties alone wouldn’t have been impossible to handle with a foot injury.
The problem was that his company was one of those so-called shithole SMEs, and by the nature of such places, they had an obscene amount of miscellaneous work to dump on people.
He had to handle office work, run sales if needed, make deliveries, and even fetch and carry for the executives.
- As Manager Park knows, our company is trying to break into business with a big-name vendor right now. We need everyone working harder than ever, so we can’t exactly take a wounded man and send him into battle, can we?
"Hoo— Kim the bastard..."
His direct superior had been a little annoying, sure, but if they’d simply shared the outside work, there wouldn’t have been a problem.
The jerk just didn’t want any inconvenience for himself, so he was casting out the very man who’d supported him all this time.
And of course, the calculation was obvious enough: they’d recently decided to hire more experienced staff, so if he, one of the core workers, was gone, they could just grind the rest of the employees down harder.
And that was how, at the ripe old age of thirty-nine—still in the middle of his working life—Park Yeongho became unemployed.
Pretty soon I’ll be forty, and even if I work myself to the bone, why does life have to feel so unstable?
Life was never easy.
He had graduated high school, gone straight into the army, then, after discharge, ended up getting his girlfriend pregnant after dating her through a friend’s introduction and hurried straight into marriage.
Their relationship had been short, but they’d believed they loved each other deeply, so he’d never even considered any other choice.
But for a young couple in their early twenties, raising a child while keeping food on the table was no small task.
Worse, neither side of the family had been financially well-off enough to offer much help.
There had certainly been plenty of happy moments in building a family together, but because the hours of exhausting labor were so long, it had never been easy to get by on love alone.
Even while whispering that they loved each other, they argued more and more often once reality came crashing down around them.
Still, what could he do?
He knew his wife had given up a great deal too, and he knew better than most that she wasn’t the type to endure hardship quietly.
As the head of the household, he could only keep living that life with the weight of responsibility on his shoulders and endure it in silence.
"Anyway, this damn foot needs to heal fast if I’m going to look for work or do anything else."
It was bad enough that he was hurt; now he couldn’t even rest in peace.
He was glaring at his foot in a cast, his expression clouded with complicated thoughts, when—
"Dad! Come help me for a second!"
His head turned at the sound of his daughter bursting in through the door.
* * *
Park Seonhui, sixteen years old, a middle school student aspiring to become a professional broadcaster.
She was currently active on the streaming platform Ppajijik under the name Ttottoring.
"Seriously! How can she cancel at the last second like this? What, she suddenly decided to go out with her friends instead? What is that supposed to mean!"
The streamer she’d planned to do a collab with, roughly her own size in terms of audience and clout, had canceled on the day of the stream.
So Seonhui was slapping the desk with her palm, venting her frustration.
Since she was still a student, she only streamed for a little while after school, or briefly on weekends and holidays.
Even so, she was trying hard with the dream of becoming a professional broadcaster someday, which made the other person’s decision to blow up the schedule over some trivial excuse all the more disappointing.
"Ugh—! What am I supposed to tell the viewers? I already told everyone we were going to play with someone else today."
She had to turn on the broadcast soon, which meant she needed to drag somebody in, anyone at all.
But where was she supposed to find someone right now—
"Ah?"
Come to think of it, she did have someone.
The person she could mobilize immediately was right next door.
* * *
"Ttoha—! Welcome, everyone."
Her bright voice rang out as she smiled and greeted the camera—more precisely, the monitor.
From a little distance away so he wouldn’t appear on screen, he stared blankly at the sight.
I thought I’d heard Seonhui mention something about internet broadcasting before. Seeing it in person is... kind of strange.
Not just his eldest daughter, but even his youngest son—
Honestly, he didn’t really know how either of his children spent their days.
He was so swamped with work that he barely got to see their faces; usually, he only caught a glimpse of them when he got home.
And because his wife, who worked as well, spent her days off tackling the pile of housework that had built up, the whole day would vanish before he knew it, leaving him no real time to sit face-to-face with the kids even on weekends.
He could hardly remember the last time he’d had a proper conversation with his children.
So when he’d heard his daughter’s request and explanation, he had felt flustered—but also, strangely, a little excited.
"That’s right. Today we’re going to play Escape City, which I mentioned last time."
Watching his daughter chat with her viewers, he shifted his gaze to the monitor itself.
He was standing far enough away to stay out of the camera frame, but his eyesight was decent, so reading the chat log wasn’t difficult.
- Isn’t Escape City basically an adult game? I heard it has some pretty brutal scenes too.
- Nah, the default is adult mode, but there’s a youth mode too.
- There’s a lot of censorship, so it looks kind of lame, but the actual gameplay isn’t that different.
"Ah! Yes, that’s right! I’m not an adult, so I have to play in youth mode. Even then, it’s rated fifteen and up, and I just barely made the cutoff since my birthday already passed!"
- Wow, you really are young.
- A real middle-school girl playing Escape City? This is the first time I’ve seen that.
- Do you even know how to shoot a gun?
"A gun? I’ve never actually touched one, but it’s a game, so I’ll manage somehow, right?"
- Escape City is basically a near-pure realism mode game, though. It’s brutal as hell lol.
- lol, you’re going to panic, throw the gun away, run crying, and get instantly killed.
"Hah! You’re going to regret saying that. I, Ttottoring, am a middle-school girl blessed by the heavens with talent!"
- hahahahahaha
- Ttottoring? You’ve got no talent~
- We’re just here to watch the cute little performance, that’s all. Who expected a serious skill stream here, lol
The viewer count hovered around thirty, rising and falling a little.
He didn’t know much about streaming, but the fact that that many people had gathered just to watch his daughter felt impressive.
I’ve never seriously thought about the kids’ future before. But broadcasting... if Seonhui really wants to do this with all her heart, I should look into it properly at least once.
- Wait, didn’t you say you were playing with someone today?
- With who? Is it a girl?
- Are we getting a collab with a big streamer?
- Ttotto-baby doesn’t have those kinds of connections.
- She probably just called a friend or something.
"Ah, yes. We do have a guest helping out with today’s stream. Now, please welcome him with applause! Clap clap clap!"
After focusing on the rapidly scrolling chat, he realized at her gesture that it was his turn to step out. He hurriedly moved over to her side.
- Who is it?
- Probably another streamer.
- ??? Who are you?
- I have no idea...
"Hello. I’m Park Yeongho."
At his greeting, everyone typing in the chat reacted with confusion.
- Who’s Park Yeongho?
- Is he streaming somewhere else besides Ppajijik?
- I thought she’d bring a school friend, but it’s some random middle-aged guy.
- Wait, I thought it was x, not y.
- Park Yeongho? I feel like I’ve heard that name before.
- It’s such a common name, though lol. I even have a friend named Yeongho.
The chat grew more animated as Seonhui continued explaining.
"He’s my dad."
- What? lol
- Oof;;
- Dad x, father o
- Come to think of it, you do kind of look alike lol
- No way she’s streaming with her dad? That’s not an easy setup;;
- She’s still a student, so I guess that makes sense lol
- They must have a pretty good relationship, huh~
- But he looks really young.
At that last comment, the corners of his mouth twitched upward slightly.
He wasn’t the kind of man who’d hear “handsome” wherever he went, but because his skin had always been naturally clear, people did often tell him he looked young for his age.
In fact, he really was on the younger side for a father of a sixteen-year-old, since he’d married early.
It was probably part flattery, but there were plenty of people who asked whether he might still be under thirty.
When he said his two children were both in middle school, people were always shocked.
- Manager Park must really take care of his skin. What, are you trying to get attention from the female staff even though you’re a married man?
Damn it. Just hearing Kim the manager pop into his head ruined his mood.
He shook away that disgusting face from his thoughts and looked back at the chat.
- A pleasure to meet you, sir... ah, would I get arrested for making a joke like that?
- Clank clank
- Brother-in-law!
- You people are insane lol. He’s a middle-school kid, remember?
- So just an adult then?
- He is an adult, though.
- But is your dad any good at games?
"Ah, well, my dad at games is... um..."
Seonhui was speaking while watching the viewers’ reactions, then abruptly closed her mouth and looked over at him.
Meeting that gaze, Yeongho gave an awkward smile and scratched his cheek.
VR games, huh. Are they that hard?
He had played all sorts of games when he was younger, but these days people didn’t play with keyboards, mice, or controllers the way they used to.
This was an age where almost every game took place inside a virtual world called VR.
And after marriage, Yeongho had spent every waking moment so busy that he had never once experienced VR for himself.
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