Chapter 5

Where am I? Who am I?

It’s a bit cold since the sun isn’t out. The wind is blowing. My right ear is itchy.

What does cold mean? The wind? Where is the right?

“Ah… Hello?”

A girl shyly greets me.

She looks to be just twenty years old, her pure long hair fluttering in the wind.

Perhaps due to the chilly weather, her cheeks are flushed red.

“You. You? You… yeah, who are you?”

“Ah…? Haha, right, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Seol-a. As you can see, I’m a gamer just like you.”

“Gamer?”

“This is inside a game! Actually, I haven’t played much either, so I don’t know well… but I’ll tell you! Wanna follow me?”

The succubus lady, introducing herself as Seol-a, grabbed my hand and led me towards a place where a red light was gathered.

She was quite talkative.

“I’m going to explain it just once, so pay attention! If you forget and ask again, I’ll kindly tell you again, but… um, it’d be better to remember it all at once, right?”

“This is the starting village. If you check your pocket, you’ll have some money. If you give it to the merchants here, they’ll give you items that correspond to the price. Since this is a game, there won’t be any cheating, so you can be assured. What items should we buy? Hmm…”

“This is our team’s castle. You must protect this above all else! With all your strength! You should protect it as fiercely as possible, you know? How much strength should you give? Well, as much as our lives?”

In the place she led me to, I could see others as well.

[■■■■:■ ■■■ ■■■? ■■ ■ ■ ■■■■ ■■■ ■■■]

“Before going to the line, we should stop by the forest and help the jungler. But you must never defeat that monster! If you do, they’ll get really angry.”

Leaving behind a friend who seemed to have no idea what I was saying, we joined a place where fierce battles were underway.

On the opposite side, beings similar to us were taking down our soldiers one by one.

“Let’s imitate them as well. You have that fox orb in your hand, right? Try throwing it far away with all your might!”

“But don’t go too far forward! Run away from the scary monsters!”

“Hehe. I’ve been caught too. It’s okay, it’s okay; I just won’t die next time. Let’s go fight again!”

“This game… seems hard.”

Back then, I was foolishly a very passive person.

Unless Seol-a specifically instructed me, I wouldn’t take the initiative to move.

I couldn’t keep up with the busy Seol-a, always finding myself isolated and dying first.

Every time that happened, Seol-a encouraged me not to give up, but in contrast, her demeanor didn’t seem particularly bright. The shadow of anxiety didn’t fade.

“Let’s do it again… yeah, let’s try from the beginning. Who’s good at starting from the start?”

I wondered how many hours we had been playing together like this. After yet another accumulated defeat, we returned to the waiting room. Seol-a stared blankly at the dreadful swamp of losses.

Red. Crimson. Fiery red. Reddish.

“I’ve lost ten games in a row…”

“Are you struggling too? But today was still fun, right?”

“Let’s go home now. Sorry for making you suffer from the first day.”

We had a home.

A single white, blank room.

With barely any decor, just a bed, a table, a chair, and a refined carpet.

“I guess this carpet should be sold. I liked it.”

Seol-a pressed a few buttons, and the carpet vanished without a trace.

She sat me down on the bed and showed me the screen she was controlling.

Squiggly letters floated in the air.

I soon recognized that they were Chinese characters.

But what were Chinese characters?

“When you win a few games, you get titles like this. Then you can resell them like this. See, click here… raise the title, enter a price… um, I think I can sell this for a thousand won. Finally, click that button, and it’s done. Not difficult, right? I’ll show you again, watch.”

“It’s hard, and you probably don’t know why we’re doing this right now… but after the game, we definitely need to do it! After selling everything, we can go back to playing.”

“Are you really tired? How about we sleep and meet tomorrow? You’ll play the game with me again, right? It’s a promise!”

Seol-a was optimistic about everything, but that didn’t mean she lacked a competitive spirit.

If she missed an easy game, she would cry out loud. In 2v2 battles, she never let her guard down. Sometimes she would almost forget to breathe.

But whether I was playing or sleeping well, she was always in the game. It wasn’t until the dawn woke from her slight movements that I got to see her asleep.

“Seol-a.”

“Yeah?”

“When will you stop?”

“Today feels like a day I can really make it! Can we play a little longer?”

“Okay.”

Today’s record was a slight improvement over the first day: 2 wins and 19 losses.

However, after miraculously winning twice after losing consecutively 19 times, her spirit was incredibly high.

“Let’s keep playing until we lose just one more game.”

Today, she was more desperate than usual. But despite that, there were no significant changes in her skills. Rather, the difference was that over the past two weeks, I had started to understand the game.

I began to understand her commands and learned how to perform tasks without orders.

For example, I grasped the mechanism of rs acquisition and the difference in exposure risk based on positions on each front, and even realized how to modify the frontlines arbitrarily.

I learned that attacking multiple fortresses evenly was better than focusing on one fortress. In addition, small pieces of knowledge, if accumulated, began to establish themselves in my mind one by one.

In this game, the trivial things were the stepping stones to growth, and we, having grown well, started stacking the foundation for victory step by step.

But this game wasn’t a solo game, and inevitably, our miraculous winning streak was bound to break someday.

It wasn’t a loss to be regretted. It was just that we were inferior to our opponents, our combination wasn’t good, and in a level battle, luck didn’t favor us. It was just a loss that could be expected. But for Seol-a, it seemed different.

“We lost…”

“Yeah.”

“Did you have fun?”

I felt tired, but if I had to argue, it was fun.

I nodded slightly.

“I also had fun.

I could be with you… so…

Sniff… sob… it really felt fun…

I’m sorry…”

“Why are you sorry?”

“I don’t think we can play together anymore…”

She knelt down, sobbing.

Seol-a’s gaze met mine directly. I realized she was quite tall.

“Now you have to wake up on your own without me waking you up. You’ll wake up by 7 AM at the latest, right?”

“Yeah…”

“From now on, without me running the game with you, you have to play by yourself. You must play at least 20 games a day, okay?”

“Yeah…”

“Just because you like games doesn’t mean you can stay up too late. If you sleep in, then you’ll oversleep the next day. Got it? You’ll promise me, right?”

“Can’t we play together?”

At my question, Seol-a fell silent for quite a while.

“Yeah… I didn’t like games. I hate them, I hate them, I’m tired of them.”

“Why?”

“Well… it’s only natural that a game made to enjoy isn’t fun if you can’t enjoy it, right?

If you can’t earn money from games every day, you’re doomed to die trapped in the capsule.

I was scared.

I kept thinking, ‘Am I going to lose again this time?’

Counting how many games I need to win every day to survive that day is tiresome.

Every time the game drags on and doesn’t finish quickly, I feel like I’m going to suffocate.”

Seol-a remained silent for a while.

Before long, the enemy invaded the castle and made their final assault.

Perhaps due to the reflection of the sunset, her cheeks were flushed red. Maybe because it was a bit chilly, dewdrops were gathering in her eyes.

“I want to call your name one last time.”

“I don’t know my name.”

“It’s okay. I’ll name you now.”

Slowly, she began to speak.

And her gaze pointed towards the top of my head.

“Name.”

“Name?”

“Yeah. Look.”

She pointed above my head.

[NoName]

“I don’t know English well, but… I can read it.”

Seol-a embraced me tightly.

“You don’t have no name; you have a very pretty name, ‘Name’.”

“Name… is that so?”

“Our Name must live. Live fiercely until the end, even for your mother’s sake. One day, when you wait and wait… someone will come to rescue you here.

Actually, I wanted to keep pretending to be your sister…

But…

I can’t…

You’re my daughter.

I’m scared of dying, but being forgotten is scarier.

Please remember, there’s only one mom named No Seol-a.

Our proud daughter, Name.”

* * *

I still haven’t grown up.

My mind is gradually growing, but this tiny body remains the same.

I know the reason.

In the first place, the minimum age supported by the virtual reality capsule is 7 years old. If one is trapped in the capsule from birth and accesses virtual reality through illegal means, it’s only natural that they will transform into the standard physique of 7 years old.

Was my body projected to what it would look like 7 years later when I was a newborn? I don’t know. The price for confirmation would be too great.

Seol-a never explained why we became trapped in the capsule, quietly closing her eyes.

I wondered if she hoped I wouldn’t get involved in any bad situations. I don’t know the details. I don’t really want to know either.

But sometimes, it’s good not to grow.

Because when I lie down with my mom like this, it feels as if time has stopped.

Both my mom and I seem unable to escape from six years ago.

Seol-a seemed to have considered suicide at first.

Because the capsule we were trapped in was named “MEIMEI-2X,” another name was “coffin.” It was termed “the coffin.”

A counterfeit created to compete against American products boasting high mana technology. Initially, even though it was a low-cost model, it received significant attention due to its respectable performance.

Moreover, it featured complete soundproofing, complete odor-proofing, and complete mana interference cancellation. But soon, an event occurred that would explain why this product was still referred to as “the coffin.”

When a client error occurs in “MEIMEI-2X,” there was a considerable chance that the capsule’s entrance wouldn’t open.

Due to focusing too much on performance, mechanical defects arose. The hinges were mana-proof, so there were no means to open them remotely over a network.

Unless firefighters forcibly pry the entrance open from the outside, one would be trapped.

Of course, the product was recalled in full, but… companies looking to minimize losses would naturally resort to tricks.

They had means left to sell it cheaply to individuals in the underground market.

But in such situations, there were always people willing to exploit the companies’ intentions.

By taking advantage of the fact that the capsule was completely mana-proof, someone came up with the idea to lock people in the capsule.

In this day and age, where everyone is assigned a biometric chip, there’s no way to hide anywhere on Earth. Damage is something that must never be done.

But what if one locks them into a capsule that isn’t detectable by mana?

They might eventually get caught, but in the meantime, the person can’t send rescue signals, and the fact that they are dead wouldn’t even be passed to the database.

Even if they went through great lengths to find them, they’d just find a cold corpse and criminals who had fled without a trace.

If only the language processor module and protocols are damaged,

there’d be no chance of survival.

But it seemed Seol-a noticed I was trapped with her and was trying to think of a way to survive. So, she devised this silly title-making scheme by tricking tricks.

At first, she must have worked hard to gather money necessary for survival while gaming by herself, but handling the needs for two was certainly challenging.

She ultimately gambled that she could teach me to play the game on my own, and as someone who remembers a bit of my past life, I could only follow her lessons with an intelligence of less than two years.

Yeah, it’s pure luck.

But I thought this luck would not occur twice.

Until today, when princes and princesses appeared in front of me.

Well, instead of a prince and princess, it was a thorny turtle and an ice eagle.

While spending sweet times with Lili, the game was now nearing its end.

The ancient spire crumbled, and flames engulfed the castle.

All of our side lost their spirit and retreated.

Three enemies were focused on destroying the remaining castle.

But what are you all doing?

Why did you leave the castle and come to the starting village?

“■■■■■■■■: ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■■ ■■ ■ ■ ■? ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■■ ■■ ■ ■ ■?”

The signal I’ve been sending all along?

Ah, I see.

Finally, you’ve come, mom.

People may be foolish.

But when a million gather, one or two must not be foolish.

Though tears or laughter couldn’t come out, actually couldn’t come out…

I was able to blink more happily than ever.