Chapter 90
Jung Manho looked down at the black stone on the go board.
Across from him sat a child holding a white stone.
The daughter of the neighboring Hunter, whose identity he still didn't know.
"...So that's what happened yesterday."
The child still kept her eyes on the gomoku board.
What he had just heard flustered Jung Manho.
She helped someone she knew from an online community?
And apparently that help was something that happened inside a game.
'Is that the Roblox thing kids these days play?'
Still without meeting his eyes.
The child absentmindedly toyed with the go stones.
'...Why is she telling me this?'
Jung Manho found himself thinking that.
Why was she telling him about making a friend while playing a game?
Wasn't that the kind of thing she'd tell her parents, or that deputy director?
Jung Manho quietly looked at the child's face.
The way she scratched her cheek shyly while mentioning the word "friend."
Jung Manho suddenly thought about the child's parents again.
'...They're strong Hunters, but not good parents.'
There was no doubt they were powerful Hunters.
The kind of people who could take the Daejeon Tower in one fell swoop and make even the Association president tremble.
But at the same time, he also thought they were not good parents.
What kind of upbringing had left her saying she'd only just made her first friend?
'Even in a world like this, did they not even send her to school?'
Come to think of it, he had never once seen this child with her parents.
She was always alone.
Jung Manho thought the child in front of him was a little pitiful.
"Actually, I've never been to school either."
"What are you talking about all of a sudden?"
And once Jung Manho got that far in his thoughts,
he realized there was no need to ask why she was telling him this instead of her parents or the deputy director.
'Asking things like that doesn't make you a good adult.'
He'd seen it on the Problem Child Correction Program, so it had to be right.
'Guess she's opened up to me a bit.'
Maybe that magical-girl transformation belt he'd given her last time had worked.
Yeah, that's a good thing.
Even while Jung Manho was making guesses in his head, the child in front of him kept talking.
It was closer to mumbling to herself.
"Anyway, how should I put it... It felt really good? A little different from just taking first place on the game leaderboard. It almost felt like I'd made a friend... Well, not a real friend, though...."
Jung Manho decided to win a bit more favor.
"Wow, I see. You did really well. Helping a friend is a very admirable thing...."
Damn, even he could tell this sounded like atrocious textbook reading.
As expected, words like that didn't suit him at all.
Fortunately, the other side hadn't noticed.
"...Is that so?"
"Of course, of course."
Seeing her ask again with such an innocent expression, Jung Manho felt his chest loosen.
Watching the Problem Child expert's show every week had really paid off.
Then this should work out just fine.
He should probably let her win at gomoku too.
Jung Manho was going second. He placed a black stone after hers.
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Thunk.
The child immediately placed a white stone.
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Thunk.
Back to Jung Manho's turn.
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Thunk.
"?"
The child looked at him, puzzled.
But soon she picked up her white stone again.
The gomoku game went on.
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Thunk.
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Thunk.
"...I think I won."
As if he'd been waiting for it, Jung Manho let out an exaggerated sigh.
"What? I lost? My goodness, how did you even see that?"
Jung Manho stood up, patted the child's head, and showered her with praise.
"You're so smart. Aren't you a gomoku genius?"
Jung Manho thought the child would be pleased.
Children liked praise, after all.
The Problem Child expert had said to give unconditional praise.
But the child's reaction was completely different from what he'd expected.
Instead of being happy, she only looked up at him with cold eyes.
"……."
Silence fell.
Jung Manho sensed that something had gone wrong.
Then the child opened her mouth.
"Mister."
"Uh, uh?"
"Do I look like a kindergarten kid to you right now?"
"No! Of course not! No way! You're totally a grown-up, a grown-up!"
"Sigh...."
Jung Manho broke out in a cold sweat.
Damn, what would the Problem Child expert say in a situation like this?
He couldn't think of a thing.
"If you're going to let me win, at least make it close? What even is this...."
The child shot to her feet.
Her mood completely ruined.
"You should go now."
After saying that, the child turned around and went straight back into the room.
Jung Manho was left alone in the empty living room.
Awkwardness washed over him.
He let out a sigh and headed for his parked car.
"Haah... Kids really are too hard."
Jung Manho muttered as he stepped on the gas.
***
After Jung Manho left, silence once again settled over the house.
I lay on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.
My excitement was completely gone.
I was reminded once again that playing along with adults wasn't easy.
That was when it happened.
A familiar shape crawled out. It was Choho-gi.
Without a word, it huffed and lifted the gomoku board and the go-stone container I'd left on one side of the living room.
Then it set them neatly down in front of me and looked up at me quietly.
I didn't need to ask to know what that meant.
"...You want to play too?"
I was dumbfounded.
Could this thing even understand the rules of gomoku?
I never thought it could enjoy such a refined intellectual pastime.
But I was still bored, and it was hard to ignore the creature's persistent gaze.
"Fine. Just one game."
I reluctantly got to my feet.
As expected, the result was exactly as I'd predicted.
It lost miserably.
At least it seemed to understand the rules themselves, but....
Choho-gi made a dejected face at my completed gomoku line.
I let out a deep sigh.
"Again. This time you go first."
This time, I decided to try it a little differently.
I played the game in exactly the same way Jung Manho had just done.
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Thunk. Choho-gi placed the fifth stone.
Gomoku complete.
"……."
Silence hung for a moment.
Choho-gi looked back and forth between its stones and mine.
It seemed to realize that it had won.
"...!"
Choho-gi threw both arms up and started bouncing on the spot.
Not content with that, it started circling around me.
It was its own little victory celebration.
It looked as if it had won the whole world.
Seeing that, I couldn't help snorting a laugh.
"Honestly, do you really have to be that happy?"
Its pure joy even seemed a little cute.
At that moment, Jung Manho's face flashed through my mind.
Only then did I realize.
Ah, this was the kind of situation where you deliberately let the other person win.
"...In that guy's eyes, do I look just like that thing?"
Did I really look young enough to get this happy over such a blatant loss?
My face suddenly grew hot.
"Sigh, I should go into the Tower or something."
I'd rested long enough for the past few days.
It was time to start climbing again.
And it was about time to level up, too.
***
[Entering the 36th Floor of the Tower (EXTREME).]
The familiar alert appeared, and the scenery changed.
Before I knew it, I was in the latter half of the 30s.
There might be another change, big or small.
"Waaaaaaah-!"
Sure enough, this was another landscape different from what I'd expected.
Cheers rang out from every direction.
A crowd packed the city.
And even colorful flags and confetti.
"What is this? A festival?"
I couldn't make sense of what was going on.
Even after looking all around, I couldn't sense the slightest tension.
Why was I in a place like this?
"Oh, that's..."
Then a familiar symbol came into view.
From the flags fluttering along the road, to the huge banners hanging on building exteriors, even to the small handheld flags the children were waving.
A golden hourglass was drawn on every one of them.
My emblem was everywhere.
"I heard the national flag had changed, but this much?"
Of all places, I'd appeared right in the center of the square.
A stage-like open space with nothing blocking the view in any direction.
It was only a matter of time before everyone's attention focused on me.
"Huh?"
"That person is...!"
Someone in the crowd pointed at me.
The surrounding noise died away.
Silence spread outward.
Before long, thousands of eyes filling the square turned toward me all at once.
"I-it's the Sage!"
"The Little Sage has returned!"
The silence was shattered by a massive cheer.
My ears rang, and my body stiffened.
My heart began pounding wildly.
A scene I'd never seen before in my life.
It was pressure on a completely different level from getting hundreds of comments online.
Being under the gaze of tens of thousands of people in real time.
'I'm not good with this kind of thing.'
Just as my mind went blank and I froze in place.
The crowd split apart to both sides, opening a path.
Familiar faces approached.
It was the king in a splendid crown, the knight commander Seymour guarding his side, and Sharon, who looked even more mature now.
"Sage!"
The first to run up to me was Sharon.
Her face was full of surprise and delight.
The king and Seymour also looked deeply moved, but perhaps because of their positions, they were a little more restrained.
"I knew you would come visit us again. What an honor this is...."
The king's voice trembled faintly.
The young king bowed his head to me, though I looked far younger than him.
I wondered if it was really all right for the king to bow his head so readily.
No one seemed surprised or tried to stop him.
As if that were perfectly natural.
"……."
The moment the king bowed his head, everyone in the square knelt at once.
An unbelievably unreal sight.
I could feel my heartbeat speeding up.
Cold sweat broke out in my hands from the tension.
'I really should take a picture of this. This is totally newspaper material.'
Even in the midst of extreme anxiety, that thought crossed my mind.
A desire to somehow preserve this scene.
I wanted to hang this view on a wall and look at it again and again.
It felt really strange.
A bizarre state of embarrassment, anxiety, and pleasure all at once.
In contrast to me, Choho-gi beside me was enjoying the situation one hundred percent.
It stood with its chest out, holding a flag.
As if it were the protagonist or something.
That thing definitely had narcissistic tendencies.
'Sigh, I wonder who it takes after...'
Just as I was sighing to myself.
I saw a bizarre sight.
From the bodies of the kneeling people.
From the hourglass flags fluttering everywhere.
Milky-white points of light rose up.
Thousands of clusters of light began gathering in one place.
Straight toward the flag Choho-gi was holding.
My flag shone with white light as if resonating, drawing in every last bit of the surrounding light.
'This?'