Chapter 5
Where am I? Who am I?
It's a little cold because the sun hasn't risen. The wind is blowing, too. My right ear itches.
What does “cold” mean? What about wind? Which way is right?
“Ah... hello?”
A girl shyly greets me.
Her pure, long, straight hair, befitting a girl who seemed barely twenty, fluttered in the wind.
Her cheeks were flushed red, perhaps because of the chilly weather.
“You. You? You... yes, you—who are you?”
“Huh...? Haha, that's right, I haven't introduced myself. I'm Seol-ah. As you can see, I'm a gamer just like you.”
“Gamer?”
“This is inside a game! I haven't played many rounds myself, so I don't know much, but... I'll teach you! Want to come with me?”
The succubus lady who introduced herself as Seol-ah grabbed my hand and led me toward a place where red light was gathering.
She was quite the chatterbox.
“I'll only explain this once, so pay close attention! It's okay if you forget and ask me again, because I'll explain it kindly... Hmm, still, it's better to memorize it all at once if you can!”
“This is the starting village. If you check your pouch, there should be a few coins inside. Give money to the merchants here, and they'll give you items worth the price. Don't worry, they won't scam you because this is a game. What item should you get? Hmmm...”
“This is our team's fortress. You have to protect it above all else! With all your strength! Give it everything you've got! How much effort should you put in? Well... as much as our lives are worth?”
There were other people at the place she led me to.
[■■■■:■ ■■■ ■■■? ■■ ■ ■ ■■■■ ■■■ ■■■]
“Before going to your lane, stop by the forest like this and help the jungler. But whatever you do, don't kill that monster yourself! That friend will get really angry.”
Leaving behind the friend who couldn't understand a word she was saying, we joined the battle that was raging nearby.
On the other side, people with forms similar to ours were taking down our soldiers one after another.
“Let's do the same thing. You have that fox orb in your hand, right? Throw it as hard as you can at that place over there!”
“But don't go too far forward! Run away from those scary monsters!”
“Hehe. I got caught too. It's okay, it's okay. We just have to avoid dying next time. Let's go fight again!”
“This game... seems like it might be difficult.”
At the time, I was foolishly a truly passive person.
Unless Seol-ah specifically told me to do something, I didn't bother moving on my own.
I could never quite catch up with Seol-ah as she darted busily from place to place, so I was always isolated and killed first.
Whenever that happened, Seol-ah encouraged me not to give up, but by contrast, her complexion didn't look very bright. The shadow of anxiety never left her face.
“Again... yes, let's start over from the beginning. Who's good at something from the very beginning?”
How many hours had we been playing together? We returned to the waiting room after suffering yet another defeat. Seol-ah stared blankly at the brutal losing streak that had piled up.
Red. Crimson. Bright red. Reddish.
“We lost ten games in a row...”
“Are you tired too? It was fun today anyway, right?”
“Let's go home now. I'm sorry for making you work so hard from the very first day.”
We had a home.
A single pure white, featureless room.
The only furnishings were a bed, a table, and a chair, along with one elegant carpet.
“We'll have to sell this carpet. I liked it, though.”
After Seol-ah pressed a few buttons, the carpet smoothly vanished without a trace.
She sat me down on the bed and showed me the screen she was operating.
Winding characters floated in the air.
I had no trouble realizing that they were Chinese characters.
But what was a Chinese character?
“Every time you win a few games, they give you titles like this. Then you can resell the titles like this. Look, click this here... put up the title, enter the price... Hmm, this one should sell for a thousand won. Finally, click that button and you're done. Not difficult, right? I'll show you again. Look.”
“You probably don't understand why we're doing this yet, either... But you have to do it after every game! Once you've sold everything, you can go play another game.”
“Are you very tired? Then let's sleep and see each other tomorrow. You're going to play games with me again tomorrow, okay? Promise!”
Seol-ah was optimistic about everything, but that didn't mean she lacked a competitive spirit.
When she narrowly lost a game she had all but won, she would cry her eyes out. In battles fought two against two, she never let down her guard. Sometimes she even forgot to breathe.
But whether I was playing a game or sleeping, she was always playing. I could only see her sleeping when dawn came and I briefly woke up at the sound of her presence.
“Seol-ah.”
“Hmm?”
“How long are you going to keep playing?”
“Today really feels like the day we might win! Won't you play with me just a little longer?”
“All right.”
Today's record was two wins and nineteen losses, a little better than on the first day.
But after losing nineteen games in a row and miraculously winning twice, her spirits were incredibly high.
“Let's play until we lose exactly one game.”
She was more desperate than usual today. That said, there hadn't been any great change in her skill. If anything, the change was that after two weeks of an exhausting grind, I had begun to understand the game.
I began to understand her commands and learned how to perform tasks even without being ordered to.
For example, I learned the mechanics of acquiring RS and the differences in exposure to danger depending on each front's position. I even learned how to alter the front lines at will.
I also realized that before the fourteen-minute mark, it was better to attack several fortresses evenly than to focus on a single one. Other small but important pieces of knowledge continued to take shape in my mind one by one.
In this game, small things were stepping stones to growth, and as we grew stronger, we laid the foundations for victory one after another.
But this wasn't a game played alone, and eventually our miraculous winning streak was bound to end.
It wasn't even a close loss. We were simply worse than the opponents, our composition wasn't good, and luck didn't favor us even when the situation was even. It was just a game we were bound to lose. But apparently, Seol-ah didn't see it that way.
“We lost...”
“Yeah.”
“Did you have fun?”
I was tired, but if I had to say, yes, it was fun.
I nodded slightly.
“I had fun too.
I could spend time with you... because...
Sob... sniff... I think I really had fun...
I'm sorry...”
“Why are you sorry?”
“I don't think we'll be able to play games together anymore...”
She sobbed as she dropped to her knees.
Seol-ah and I met each other's eyes head-on. Now that I noticed, Seol-ah was quite tall.
“From now on, you have to get up by yourself even if I don't wake you. You'll get up by seven in the morning at the latest, right?”
“Yeah...”
“From now on, you have to play games by yourself even if I don't queue them up with you. You have to play twenty games a day, okay?”
“Yeah...”
“Even if you like games, don't stay up too late. You'll sleep in the next day. Understand? You'll promise me, right?”
“Can't we play together?”
At my question, Seol-ah remained silent for a long time.
“Yeah... I hated games. I hate them, hate them, I'm sick to death of them.”
“Why?”
“Because... if you can't enjoy a game made for people to enjoy, of course it's no fun, right?”
“If I don't earn money through games every day, I'm doomed to be trapped in a capsule and die.”
“I was scared.”
“I was scared this game might be another loss.”
“I'm tired of counting every time how many games I have to win in a day to survive that day.”
“Whenever a game doesn't end quickly and drags on and on, I feel like I can't breathe and am going to die.”
Seol-ah said nothing for a while.
Before we knew it, the enemy had pushed all the way to the fortress and launched its final offensive.
Perhaps because of the sunset shining on her, her cheeks were bright red. Maybe because it was a little chilly, something like dew had formed around her eyes as well.
“I want to call your name one last time.”
“I don't know my name.”
“It's okay. I'll give you one now.”
She slowly began to speak.
Then her eyes turned toward the top of my head.
“Name.”
“Name?”
“Yeah. Look.”
She pointed above my head.
[NoName]
“I don't know English very well... but I can read it.”
Seol-ah hugged me tightly.
“You don't have no name. You have a very pretty name right here: Name.”
“Name... I see.”
“Our Name, you have to live. Survive stubbornly to the very end and live for your mother, too. If you wait, and wait some more, someday... someone will come and get you out of here.
I was going to keep pretending to be your older sister...
But... I...
Sob... sob... sniff...
I can't.
You're my daughter, you know.
I'm afraid of dying,
but I'm even more afraid of being forgotten.
Please remember that you have only one mother, No Seol-ah.
My proud daughter, Name.”
* * *
I still haven't grown.
My mind keeps growing, but this stubby body remains the same.
I know why.
To begin with, virtual-reality capsules only support users aged seven and up. If someone is trapped in a capsule from birth and connects to virtual reality through illegal means, their body naturally changes into the standard physique of the minimum age, seven.
When I was a newborn, it was a body designed to be what I would look like seven years later. Did my body grow exactly like this? I don't know. The price of finding out was far too high.
In the end, Seol-ah quietly closed her eyes without ever explaining why we had been trapped in the capsules.
Perhaps she hoped I wouldn't become involved in anything bad. I don't know the details, and I don't particularly want to know them.
Still, there are times when it's good not to grow.
When Mom and I lie here alone together, it feels as though time has stopped.
Mom and I have both failed to escape from six years ago.
It seemed Seol-ah had initially considered suicide.
That was because the name of the capsule we were trapped in was ‘MEIMEI-2X,’ with another designation of ‘coffin.’ It was known as the ‘coffin.’
It was a counterfeit made to compete with American products equipped with high mana technology. At first, despite being a low-cost model, it attracted considerable attention for its respectable performance.
It was completely soundproof, completely odorproof, and even had a function that completely canceled out mana interference. But soon, an incident occurred that explained why the product was still disparagingly called a coffin.
When a client error occurred in ‘MEIMEI-2X,’ there was a significant chance that the capsule's entrance would not open.
The designers had focused too much on performance, resulting in defects in the mechanical components. In particular, because the hinges were mana-proof, there was no way to open them remotely through the network.
Anyone inside would remain trapped unless firefighters forcibly pried open the entrance from outside and rescued them.
Naturally, every product was recalled, but companies wanting to minimize their losses were bound to resort to tricks.
A means of selling them cheaply to individuals in the shadows remained.
But with incidents like this, there was always someone willing to exploit them, regardless of the company's intentions.
Someone came up with the idea that, since the capsules were completely mana-proof, they could imprison people inside them.
In an age like this, every individual was given a biochip, so there was no way to hide anywhere on Earth. Damaging the chip was even more out of the question.
But what if they put someone in a capsule that mana couldn't detect?
They might be discovered someday, but until then, the person couldn't send a distress signal, and even the fact that they had died wouldn't be transmitted to the database.
Even if anyone managed to find them after a difficult search, all that would remain would be a cold corpse and criminals who had fled without a trace.
If they only damaged the language processor module and the protocol,
there would be no chance of survival.
But Seol-ah seemed to realize that I was trapped with her and devise some way for us to live. That was why, after using one trick on top of another, she came up with this ridiculous title-grinding scheme.
At first, she must have played games even by herself and desperately saved the money needed to sustain our lives, but there was a limit to handling two people's share.
In the end, she gambled on teaching me to play games by myself, and with an intelligence not even that of a two-year-old, all I could do was follow her lessons despite retaining some memories of my past life.
Yes, it was a stroke of fortune.
But I thought this stroke of fortune wouldn't happen twice.
At least, not until a prince and princess appeared before me today.
Though instead of a prince and princess, they were some spiny turtle and an ice eagle.
As I spent a sweet time with Riri, the game was already approaching its end.
The ancient spire crumbled, and the fortress caught fire.
All our allies lost the will to fight and retreated.
Three enemy players were completely occupied with destroying the fortress that remained.
But what are you guys doing?
Why did you leave the fortress behind and come all the way to the starting village?
“■■■■■■■■: ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■■ ■■ ■ ■ ■? ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■■ ■■ ■ ■ ■?”
The signals I've been sending all this time?
Ah, I see.
You finally appeared, Mom.
People are stupid, but...
When a million people gather, I guess one or two of them aren't stupid.
Even though no laughter or tears came out—or rather, couldn't come out...
I was able to blink my eyes more happily than ever.