Trouble
VR Center customer counseling room.
Because of the lingering unease left behind by the strange symptoms he’d experienced while gaming, Yeongho had taken a taxi to the center on a weekday, when the house would be empty.
“So when you’re playing VR games, things sometimes seem to move in slow motion, or you feel as if you’re mentally picturing something you shouldn’t be able to see physically. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Uh... yes. More or less.”
After saying it out loud, Yeongho worried he might sound like some kind of nutcase, and ended up stumbling through the rest of the conversation with a flushed face.
To his surprise, the counselor received his story without the slightest sign of alarm, as if it were no big deal.
“People with especially sensitive senses sometimes experience synesthesia when they connect to virtual reality. It’s uncommon, but not exactly unheard of.”
“Synesthesia? What’s that?”
“To put it simply, it’s when two or more senses merge into a single image.”
The staff member went on to explain.
Synesthesia was what you called it when one sense was shared with another. Seeing blue and thinking of something cold; seeing red and thinking of heat.
Those were representative examples of synesthesia that even ordinary people could understand.
It was said that when different senses linked up and created synergy, it was not, in theory, impossible.
“Sensory perception like that still depends heavily on concentration, after all. And you hear stories about it in the real world too, don’t you?”
“Like what...?”
“You know, stories about baseball players who, on a day when they’re in great form, say the ball coming at them looks bigger than usual, or that it seems to slow down so much they can even see the seams.”
“Ah! I think I’ve heard that one.”
“There are people who become more focused in virtual reality than they ever do in real life. Feeling a distant object appear magnified, or sensing the blade aimed at them slow down for a split second—that isn’t necessarily some bizarre phenomenon either.”
“Is that so?”
He was told that hearing a sound and then perceiving the surrounding objects more clearly was entirely possible, too.
In fact, the so-called sound play that let a gamer predict an enemy’s position and next move from footsteps alone wasn’t anything especially remarkable in itself.
For someone with unusually sharp senses, it was possible to take that one step further and have the entire scene rendered in the mind as an image.
“If you watch the pro leagues, you sometimes see players dodge attacks coming from their blind spots, right? And when you listen to their interviews, most of them say they did it by instinct.”
“Ah, right?”
He’d never watched a pro match, but he understood what the counselor meant, so he nodded vaguely.
“Extrasensory perception—what people commonly call the sixth sense. We actually get quite a few cases of people describing experiences like that in VR.”
“I see. Then it’s not something I need to worry about.”
He also brought up the headaches he’d felt the first time he used VR, and the nosebleed he’d had in real life, but the staff member treated those as nothing unusual, either.
“During VR experiences, the brain tends to become more active than usual, so until you get used to it, it can cause motion sickness, headaches, or nausea.”
“Hmm. That’s true. The headaches were only really bad at first, and later on it wasn’t even pain exactly—just a dull throbbing discomfort.”
“You did start using VR a bit late compared to most people, so you’re probably more sensitive to the strangeness of it than they are.”
It was like how some people got carsick badly while others didn’t, even if they rode in the same vehicle.
In the end, the conclusion was that there was nothing major to worry about.
The headaches would disappear as he grew accustomed to VR, and the nosebleed had simply been caused by fatigue building up during a long stretch of concentration.
I didn’t exactly play for so long that it counts as long-term, though... Still, while Battle Sense is active, I am concentrating at an extreme level.
Hearing that it wasn’t an abnormal phenomenon, even if it was rare, allowed Yeongho to shake off the worry he’d been carrying around.
After a few more exchanges, the consultation ended, and as Yeongho turned to leave, he scratched his cheek while remembering something the staff member had said half-jokingly at the end.
People who say they feel that kind of special sensation in VR are usually famous pro gamers. You must have talent in that direction too, sir.
“Talent... huh.”
He repeated the word aloud, mulling it over, then let out a small laugh.
It was the first time in his life anyone had ever told him he might be talented at something.
He still thought there was no way something like that could apply to him, and yet... when he considered his performance in games and the reactions from viewers, a tiny little what if? did begin to flicker in his chest.
Then maybe instead of this rotten office life, I could become a pro gamer... well, obviously not. But could I make money broadcasting like Choi Pinam does?
Various thoughts swirled through his head.
He mocked himself for being some old man talking about games and streaming as if he were still young, and yet at the same time, the idea that it might actually be possible kept growing in one corner of his mind.
* * *
“Yeonhui, if your counseling’s done, we should go get lunch.”
“Yes.”
“At a glance, you didn’t look like a kid. Was it a parent consultation again? Or equipment trouble?”
The people who visited the VR Center were mostly teenagers in their late teens.
Even if they were older, most were still in their twenties, so customers with a more mature look seldom came to the counseling room.
When middle-aged people did show up, it was usually to complain that their children were addicted to games.
Or they’d damaged something through their own carelessness and then made a scene, grumbling that they’d spent so much money on the thing and it broke too easily for what it cost.
“Neither, actually. This one was kind of refreshing.”
At the colleague’s question, the counselor gave a small laugh as she recalled the visitor from a little while ago.
Whether he’d been bored or truly delusional, he had at least come to customer service.
She had handled the consultation by listing off similar cases and responding in a way that made him feel understood.
“Apparently he thought he’d awakened some kind of superpower while gaming.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Something about time looking like it’s slowing down? And being able to perceive the movements of people far away, like he’s drawing it out in his head?”
“Pfft! What is that, some old man with a delusion disorder?”
“I did hint that he seemed to have remarkable talent.”
At the sight of her colleague giggling, the counselor shrugged and went on.
“Seems like he’s heard a thing or two somewhere. You know how pro gamers or VR sports players sometimes talk like that, right?”
“Ah, right. They say the sixth sense exists in real life too. Like that pro gamer Chaser or Walnut, and that VR fighter who won silver at the Olympics last time?”
“Yun Hyeongtae.”
“Yeah, him. Those guys even came by our center lab for a day to do some experiment on... what was it, hypersensory ability? And got paid tens of millions of won for it.”
She hadn’t been talking about something that didn’t exist at all.
In fact, there were rare cases where pro players, when pushed into a state of extreme concentration, displayed perceptual abilities that were difficult to explain by common sense.
Debates over the sixth sense had been around since long before VR existed, and even now it remained an active research topic as scientists tried to explain the phenomenon.
“Still, those things only show meaningful differences among a tiny handful of people at the very top of any field.”
“True enough. But you never know, right? That old guy from before might have talent beyond that.”
“Pfft! I mean, I played along and humored him, but if someone really did have that kind of talent—”
At her colleague’s joking remark, the counselor shook her head and finished the thought.
“—then before long, they’d probably eat a world tournament alive in whatever discipline they chose and become famous.”
“Pffft! If that actually happened, that would be hilarious!”
* * *
“Dad! Behind you! Behind you!”
“Yeah, I know.”
As he answered, Yeongho spun sideways and swung his machete, sending the zombie’s head flying through the air before it rolled across the floor.
It was already day four since Yeongho and Sunhee had started streaming games together.
The story of Escape City was also approaching its final fifth chapter.
Viewer count: 1,214.
The average audience no longer dropped below a thousand.
Even after the first day, Choi Pinam kept dropping by from time to time with his own viewers in tow.
And, not fully understanding it himself, there had also been a steady stream of newcomers from some community site—something like a streaming gallery—where Yeongho was being introduced as a middle-aged man with absurd skill.
“Ah, thank you for the donation, Choi Pinam. Yes, I haven’t forgotten our promise.”
He’d originally refused the collab offer, thinking it was too much to go show up on someone else’s broadcast just because his daughter had asked him to.
But Sunhee kept nudging him from the side, saying it was a chance too good to waste.
And then there was his curiosity about what life would actually be like if your job was playing games on a broadcast.
In the end, he’d gone on Choi Pinam’s stream a little while ago and played games together with him.
Ever since then, Choi Pinam had been showing up during every broadcast, subtly pushing for Yeongho to come back again.
He’s being a little too pushy, so it’s kind of a burden... but maybe I can get help from that kid.
At first, he’d only wanted to learn about streamers because of his daughter’s future.
But lately, he himself had become deeply interested in the industry.
He felt a little ridiculous, thinking about a man his age poking around in game broadcasts, but he couldn’t shake the possibility that something might really be there.
Maybe next time I meet Choi Pinam, I should seriously ask him all sorts of things about streaming.
Of course, first he’d promised to help Sunhee, so he’d have to finish Escape City before he could set aside time for that.
“Wow! These buildings are huge! How are we supposed to search all this?”
“Seriously. Looks like we’ll be spending the whole day here.”
A massive research complex.
As expected of one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, it was packed with imposing buildings, and just touring the place looked like it would take forever.
As he climbed in a frenzy, Yeongho read one of the comments and tilted his head in confusion before speaking.
“Shortcut? What’s a shortcut?”
“Huh? You mean like a bob cut?”
Laughing at the father-daughter pair’s reactions, the viewers kept typing away with excited energy.
From the way they spoke, it seemed to be a method of moving quickly to the boss room, but there was something oddly loaded in the way they were hiding it.
Then came the mission.
As if unwilling to be outdone, a stream of additional notifications followed.
“Wow! These people are suspicious~ Just how hard is it that they’re doing this?”
With a few generous donors and dozens of smaller ones piling on, the mission total quickly shot past 10,000 coins.
It was the highest mission amount in Sunhee’s broadcast history.
“Uh oh... what do we do, Dad?”
“Hmm.”
At his daughter’s question, Yeongho stopped and spun the machete in his hand as he fell into thought.
Thanks to the machete he’d just farmed up in place of the entrenching shovel, close combat had become much easier.
He was still using a pistol as his only firearm and relying mainly on melee weapons, so from other people’s perspective, his loadout looked miserably bare.
But since he hadn’t really had much trouble this far, he doubted this boss would be all that different.
The viewers’ reactions were extremely suspicious, but what did it matter? At worst, he’d simply fail to claim the reward.
“Do you trust your dad?”
“Hehe! Of course I do!”
At the clearly meaningful words in Yeongho’s voice, Sunhee answered with all her energy and pressed accept on the mission.
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