Chapter 92
The story continues off the page
Floaties for Everyone
Swim lesson at the water park, and she's demonstrating on you
“Huh.”
I rest my chin on my hand and stare at the monitor.
The jagged graph reflects my mood.
Then, a white-haired back of a head peeks in and blocks the monitor.
“W-What are you looking at?”
“Move.”
Her horns completely block the screen. Kim Yang's distinctive perfume and hair tickle my nose.
“I-I’m ruined.”
“It’s not ruined.”
“W-We’re screwed.”
“I said we’re not screwed.”
“R-Really?”
“Could you move a bit? And stop shedding sheep wool?”
The stock charts are already enough to unsettle me, but this bored employee keeps badgering me.
“Hey, I’m not wool.”
And she still warns me to use the right way to address her.
“Then what is it?”
“H-Hair.”
“...But come to think of it, if you’re a sheep beastkin, is the only feature you have horns? What about fur and stuff?”
Aren’t they usually fluffy?
Especially since I’d just finished counseling a cat beastkin, I’d been wondering whether Kim Yang had any other features-.
Her face instantly turns red, and her hands frantically search for something to throw.
“S-Sexual harassment! Y-You! I-I’m really sending you to prison!”
“...How is that sexual harassment?”
“D-Die!”
Kim Yang hurls a ballpoint pen and curses furiously. I sort of understood why she was acting like that, but decided not to push it any further.
‘Haah, should I really quit stocks?’
Whenever things are even a little slow, I just start flipping through stock charts. Then I naturally end up wanting a cigarette, and if I smoke, I lose both health and money.
A vicious cycle where no matter what I do, it only ever ends in loss.
“Crap! Crap!”
Kim Yang, who’d been huffing and puffing, seems to have calmed down a bit and now grumbles as she looks back at her own screen.
She’s watching an idol dance stage, but I can’t help thinking she’s being way too obvious about goofing off in front of the boss.
“Kim Yang, at least pretend you’re sneaking a look.”
“...”
She glances at me, then tilts the monitor slightly the other way.
What a brilliant move.
“Just watch it openly.”
On the monitor, an ad is playing. Looks like she didn’t pay for the subscription.
- I thought it was over. But the sensation awakens one beat late.
- The fire went out.
- But the heat remained.
- The controversial hit that shook all of Cyber City!
- The boundary between taboo and emotion!
- The new film by master director Zeke Pulan.
- A romance that explodes in the quietest possible way!
- Overwhelming immersion, experienced through S.E.L!
- The feeling you believed wasn’t love.
- Let that residual heat seep into your senses.
- <Residual Heat>
- Seoul Cinema.
- Now playing to rave reviews.
“Oh.”
As I watch the trailer with interest, Kim Yang glances my way and frowns.
“Y-You like this kind of thing? A-a cheating movie?”
“What are you talking about? It’s because I know one of the actors.”
“A-actor?”
Kim Yang freezes on the screen where the actor appears. I point to the male actor with my finger.
“Mr. James. He was one of Miracle’s earliest clients. He came in when he was an unknown actor, then left after meeting a good match.”
“B-But a cheating movie?”
“He’s a pro.”
“R-Right.”
Kim Yang nods and watches the trailer again. I watch along beside her, and it feels strangely meaningful.
On the screen, he’s playing a protagonist tormented by a complicated situation.
“Back then, Mr. James said he was going to get married only because he was being pushed into it by his parents. There’s a matchmaking agency on the 6th floor too, but they wouldn’t take him. They’re incredibly picky there.”
“R-Really?”
“He happened to come to the 3rd floor, saw a Miracle flyer, and I matched him up at a bargain then.”
What a memory.
Back then, we only had the Basic membership tier.
In the middle of our conversation, a pink-haired head squeezes between us.
“Ooh? A movie! I’ve seen this before too!”
“Huh?”
“I won a convenience-store lunchbox coupon! Thanks to that, I got to watch a movie for free!”
Lenea says it proudly while holding a vacuum cleaner. It’s just one movie, but Kim Yang even gives her a little applause.
It feels like praising an old lady for knowing how to use a kiosk.
“Ooh. A-amazing.”
“Ahem!”
“W-What did you watch?”
“The theatrical version of Ttoribot! The Polar Penguin’s Counterattack!”
The event tickets were for kids, and a 1,902-year-old granny took one.
Well, as long as she enjoyed it.
“Watching it on such a huge screen was really amazing.”
Lenea is marveling at the theater, but unfortunately the trailer playing now isn’t that kind of movie.
“Can’t you see this? It says it was filmed with S.E.L.”
“S-E-L...?”
S.E.L. (Sensory Experience Link).
Simply put, it’s something like VR holograms, except it lets you indirectly experience a person’s emotions and experiences.
“This is completely different from a regular movie. How should I put it? It’s like directly tickling a person’s heart.”
In fact, that’s why only really huge productions are screened on the 3rd floor.
Since the 6th floor is extremely strict about technology leakage, there’s only one movie theater in all of Seoul that can screen S.E.L.
“In simple terms, the audience becomes the protagonist and gets to experience it vicariously.”
“Is that so? Then could I become Ttoribot too?”
“What would you even do with that?”
“...”
I leave Lenea alone as she seriously starts pondering what she’d do as a children’s toy.
Kim Yang seems to have become interested in S.E.L. and looks amazed.
“R-Reviews are good. Sh-Should we go watch it?”
Since only works that have already succeeded in Cyber City get screened on the 3rd floor, there’s actually no chance of stepping on a landmine.
“Watch what?”
But the price is the landmine.
“Do you know how much that costs? One viewing is 100,000 won. 100,000 per person.”
“M-Meeh?!”
Why is she so shocked all of a sudden?
Is she reacting because I said she didn’t have anything sheep-like earlier?
“It’d be a little cheaper on the 6th floor. But since you’re watching it on the 3rd floor, it has to be more expensive.”
Think of it like customs duty.
Especially expensive equipment like S.E.L. probably comes in as rentals rather than purchases.
“I-It’s too expensive.”
“Right? Better to just watch it later when it comes out on OTT. It’s not like S.E.L. is that amazing.”
For the record, I’ve never experienced it myself either. The reviews were all good, though.
I just shrug it off, that’s all.
If I’m happily eating jajangmyeon, do I really need to sample the sweet-and-sour pork too?
It would only make my tastes more refined.
Just then, a message came from Raichen.
- Raichen: Counseling Room 1.
- Raichen: A customer is going in.
A guest seems to have arrived in the lobby.
I immediately tapped Kim Yang on the back and jerked my chin toward the lobby.
“Go.”
“D-Don’t dump it on me.”
“I said go. Don’t you want your salary?”
“Ah! B-Boss. Y-You sent my salary wrong.”
“...”
“The salary before the promotion. D-Do you want to die?”
Kim Yang clenches her fist, pulls her face back, and starts winding up for a headbutt.
“It’s because it’s automatic transfer. I’ll add more.”
“M-More. Now. B-Boss, get going.”
“Damn it.”
Can’t be helped.
It was my mistake sending the salary wrong.
“V-Victory!”
“Yay!”
Leaving the two happy ones behind, I headed to the consultation room to greet the next customer.
* * *
The next day.
As part of my morning routine, I smoked a cigarette, checked the stocks, and cursed a few times.
I sat back down and started reading the news, but another curse escaped me.
[Breaking: Suspicion grows over a real-life relationship between <Residual Heat> lead actors James and Nellivaesa.]
“What bullshit.”
Do you have to bait people this hard?
The James I know is too timid to ever do something like that.
Those reporters have gotten good at stealing my mouse clicks.
If I know it’s clickbait and still can’t help clicking it, then this reporter is really good at his job.
- Evidence has surfaced that James and Nellivaesa, stars of the controversial hit <Residual Heat> that shook all of Cyber City, have been maintaining a private relationship since filming ended, causing growing fallout.
.
.
.
- Given that both are married to other people, this suspicion is spreading beyond a simple dating rumor into an adultery scandal.
“What the hell.”
Why is this even bait?
The comments below are just as explosively reactive.
- So it wasn’t acting lol
- Isn’t that because it was filmed with S.E.L.?
- Then do the people who film with it all go around killing people, cheating, and fighting too?
- I don't even have a wife, let alone a girlfriend, and I get to vicariously experience adultery? I have to go see this.
- LOL going to watch it right now.
- Isn’t this just noise marketing?
- Sold out for a week solid, fuck.
“Wow.”
I’d heard that you never know what people will do, but I didn’t expect this much.
Just reading the people’s critical comments is enough to pile on stress, so I shut it off.
“Tsk.”
Leaning back in my chair, I look up at the ceiling. I’d just smoked a cigarette a moment ago, but now I have that strange feeling of wanting another one.
Of course, it wasn’t an article definitively saying it was adultery.
But the evidence listed as “circumstantial” is pretty unpleasant.
“Sigh.”
Human emotions can’t stay hot forever. If you see someone attractive, you can waver.
Because there are times when emotion can’t be controlled by reason.
But that still shouldn’t be acted on, should it?
“Bitter.”
In the end, I stood up again.
The fact that the couple I set up was turning out like this.
The dull discomfort wouldn’t go away, so I headed back outside.
“S-So. I had nowhere else to go-.”
When I came down to the 2nd-floor lobby, Lenea, who was cleaning, and Raichen, standing in the lobby, were greeting a guest with confused looks.
The guest had a very familiar face.
A white-and-blue martial arts uniform.
Neatly tied hair.
A sword at his waist.
And the emblem of the Namgung Family.
“Mr. Namgoong Yeon?”
It was Namgoong Yeon, who is currently living in Cyber City.
The moment he saw me, he greeted me with a fist-and-palm salute.
“Boss! C-Could you spare me a moment?”
“Huh? Suddenly?”
We’re not even the kind of place that does relationship counseling, but Namgoong Yeon cried out in a hurry, his face crumpled.
“I-I just can’t-! I just can’t see Miss Jessica!”
“Why? Last time I saw you two, you looked crazy about each other.”
I’d seen couple T-shirts in my life, but that was the first time I’d ever seen couple martial arts uniforms.
They’d gotten matching couple uniforms on their own and were dating under the pretense of teaching Jessica martial arts, and the sight of it was unbearably irritating.
“Something... Something makes me feel like I did something terribly wrong!”
“What did you do wrong?”
“No way! I am steadfastly devoted to Miss Jessica! But... but that was the problem!”
That?
“Residual Heat! Ever since I watched that damn movie, I can’t bring myself to look at Miss Jessica because of the guilt!”