Chapter 8

“Writing numbers is so hard… Na-me-ya, help me!”

Arin entered the room with a pout.

Without even changing her clothes, she immediately took out her textbook.

“I was supposed to turn this in as homework today, but I forgot yesterday! The teacher said I have to hand it in by today, so I have to go back to school later.”

Na-me received the math workbook she handed over and opened it.

It’s hard to understand why Na-me made a round trip of an hour just to ask for help with homework. She could have just asked her classmates.

“I need to count to 30, but how do I write from 17?”

The education system in this world was really quick.

In Na-me’s previous life, runes were something only true nobles could learn.

But here, even first graders are learning something that’s common sense.

With numbers, Korean, and runes, the children must find it just a headache to have to juggle three different scripts.

“Wow… Na-me is really smart.”

Regardless of that, Na-me’s elegant hand movements, filling in the blanks quickly, made her a true object of admiration for Arin.

In Arin’s memory, the smartest kid in class couldn’t write that fast. Was Na-me even smarter than that?

For the past month, Na-me had been an excellent tutor for Arin.

Although it was unfortunate that she couldn’t attend school for some reason, she conveyed that, according to the nun, she would be able to start attending from the second semester. Just that news gave Arin strength.

Arin was just happy that Na-me didn’t treat her differently like the other kids.

At school, she was hesitant to talk because she was from an orphanage, where kids with poor backgrounds gathered, and at the orphanage, it wasn’t easy to fit in.

Especially in the past few months, Boyoung’s antics had worsened, and she was thankful to have broken away from her at just the right time.

“Na-me, do you know? Last week, Min Woo oppa was adopted by a rich family! This time, that rich uncle gave us a capsule as a gift. Two of them!”

She thought it was unusually noisy today among the children.

Normally, they wouldn’t even come in at this time, let alone be late for the return time set by the nun. It seemed they all ran back from school to be the first to use the two capsules.

“Min Woo op-pa is so lucky. Rich people can live in virtual reality every day without working. It must be so nice to play all day and even sleep in virtual reality!”

“Not really.”

“Is it that you don’t want to be adopted? Or that you don’t want the game?”

“Both.”

Na-me was quite satisfied with her life at the orphanage.

Even though the only internet PC in the orphanage was monopolized by high school students, she found enough satisfaction just with the books Arin borrowed from the library.

Recalling the time she had asked to borrow the most difficult-looking book and ended up with an encyclopedia made her a bit amused.

“An encyclopedia isn’t so bad after all.”

At least it was a great opportunity to learn words she didn’t know the meaning of from the internet.

The reason for memorizing words?

There was no particular reason.

She was tired of living a life that just focused on one thing and burned out.

She did it simply because she wanted to.

That was Na-me’s thought.

In her previous life, and the life before that…

“Thanks, Na-me! Let’s use the capsule together when it’s free later! I’m off now!”

And, oddly enough, she didn’t mind playing with a cute and naive child.

Was Seol-a feeling this way when she played games with me? It wasn’t easy to speculate.

“Ah… I should have asked Arin to pick this for me when she came.”

Na-me was still having a staring contest with a mana potion that was difficult to obtain alone. Without it, she couldn’t eat well. Even trying to force it down just made her vomit.

In the end, she decided to skip lunch and went out to the central living room where the kids were gathered.

These kids weren’t thinking about lunch at all; they were only excited about using the capsules.

The high school students had to set aside their feelings of disappointment due to their studies and headed back to school, but the middle school students were different.

Since they didn’t have much money like the high schoolers, it was tough to go to internet cafes. In such a situation, these capsules were like rain in a drought.

“This is the completely new model capsule released this year, right?”

“The specs are so good that even when playing Resonance at full settings, the ping is guaranteed to be single digits.”

“Insane.”

In the end, the two capsules became the property of one first-year high school student who decided to ditch school and one of the biggest middle school students.

They seemed accustomed to using capsules as they logged in right away and accessed the game.

“Jae-hwan, come in and duo with me in LoL.”

“Huh? Yong-jun, aren’t you playing Resonance?”

“I find it hard, so I don’t know how to play. You know how to play LoL, right?”

Under Yong-jun’s implicit threat, Jae-hwan reluctantly logged into LoL. Only then did he remember that his brother was a LoL fanatic.

Jae-hwan scrolled through the list of champions he currently owned. Even though half of the champions were deleted due to a large update two years ago, seeing the remaining 150 champions made him dizzy.

“Should I show my rank? I’m Cha Yong-jun, ranked third among the WoW masters.”

Of course, it wasn’t a rank based on tier but rather a simple count of games played above a certain tier, but nobody bothered to point that out.

“When did you play 700 games? Did you ditch school every day?”

Additionally, the fact that he was diamond rank 1 would be an object of envy for the average person.

While everyone was busy chatting loudly, Na-me’s gaze, peeking from the back, focused on the bottom right of the screen.

[Hall of Fame]

[1st Ladder Rank – Anaconda (1394 points)]

…

[1st Game Count Rank – No Name (4032 games)]

Na-me couldn’t help but smile wryly.

Did I really play that much?

That number likely wouldn’t go up for a while. Perhaps someone else would finally take the top spot this year. Let them take it.

Most likely, unless she went insane, she wouldn’t play this game again.

* * *

[NoName <- Is this bastard banned?]

There hasn’t been any mention of him lately.

- If they even caught him live on stream and he didn’t get banned, is that even the game? Lol

[Official Death of NoName.rip]

03. 05. 2043 ~ 06. 11. 2050.

Rest in Peace

-peace you bastard

ㄴYou don’t even know what a drip is, you literate bastard lol

ㄴHe’s been destroyed piece by piece, NoName

-Seeing that he’s still getting points, it seems he was in the military.

ㄴIf public service counts, I’d be really thankful.

ㄴGet lost


[Wasn’t NoName dead?]

Then what is this? Is he a ghost? lol

(Screenshot)

-Season 1 turned back like a dog

-What? How did he get unbanned!

-21/0/2 what’s this? lol Even if it’s just a normal game

ㄴOur team’s Yasuo is always 2/10/2 but he’s banned.


...

It doesn’t feel real.

He’s really back.

To my hometown.

The incident originated entirely from Arin's stubbornness.

“I heard there’s a school trip.”

“I just decided not to go.”

Early in the morning, even though the bus was set to depart at 10, Arin got ready for school as usual.

At the beginning of July, around this time, elementary, middle, and high schools went on field trips with a day gap in between.

The travel destinations change every year, but elementary school goes for 4 nights and 5 days, middle school for 3 nights and 4 days, and high school for 2 nights and 3 days.

As can be seen from the name, all the schools were operated by the same foundation.

Being a private school, the cost of the school trip seemed quite high, but surprisingly, since we are from a low-income background, we could almost participate for free.

Arin had been looking forward to this event so much that she kept chatting to me about it for about a month.

When I asked her why she wasn’t attending, she avoided my question, saying she just didn’t want to go anymore.

“So, can you play a game with me tomorrow? All the older siblings are gone that day, right? Okay?”

“I’m not that into capsules…”

“Tch... Na-me, that’s mean.”

Even if she sulked, there was nothing I could do. She dashed to her first-floor bed and buried her face in the pillow. It was kind of cute how she peeked at me from the side.

“Um... why does Na-me hate games?”

“I'm just tired of them.”

“Did you play a lot before?”

“Yeah.”

“How much was a lot?”

“All day.”

“How long is ‘all day’?”

Eventually, I stopped answering her endless barrage of questions.

Instead, I pinched her soft, baby-like cheeks and stretched them.

“Ewwww.”

“I’ll play just one game.”

“Really? Really, really, really?”

Arin’s eyes suddenly widened. Is it really that great? It’s just a single game. It won’t last even an hour.

Sadly, her interest was solely in LoL.

Even though she might have been curious about games like Fall Guys or Block Craft, she was influenced by the fact that all the kids in the orphanage were obsessed with LoL.

“But I’ve never played LoL before, what should I do?”

“It’s okay.”

“I really don’t know anything.”

“I’ll help you win.”

“Wow, Na-me, that was so cool!”

She jumped into my arms.

I lost my balance and fell to the ground.

I kept viewing her as just a little baby, but what I kept overlooking was that I was actually smaller than her. I hope a mana potion that promotes growth is developed soon.

I pushed her away gently and stood her up.

“I’m going to sleep now. You should go to school too.”

“You just woke up and you’re going to sleep again? If you sleep that much, you won’t grow tall!”

“Well then, I'd rather stay short as I am.”

I couldn’t give up my precious sleep.

Arin, still full of energy, wouldn’t understand.

“Anyway, even if I go to school, I’ll be alone... I’m a bit scared of getting scolded by the PE teacher...”

“Do you hate school?”

“I like playing with Na-me more.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Arin bit her lip. Did she understand the meaning behind my words? I wasn’t sure, but that didn’t change her situation.

I just wished that Arin wouldn’t become accustomed to loneliness.