I’m currently enrolled as a third-year student at an agricultural high school. I’m in the Horticultural Science department, and since practical work is included in our performance evaluations, I had to tend to the fruit trees I’d been cultivating after school during the final exam period.
Weeds on the road grow just fine even when trampled and sprouting through cement cracks, but the things we grow at school would immediately droop their leaves if we didn’t pay them just a little attention.
Perhaps my shoulders were drooping just like that, because my classmate Dongwoo slapped me hard on the back.
“Did you do well on the exam?”
“So-so.”
“Guess you didn’t do well.”
“Well, yeah.”
I wasn’t originally the type to be hung up on grades, but lately my head had been so full of other thoughts that I’d become even more out of it.
“Hey, hey! Stop pouring water!”
“Oops.”
If it hadn’t been for Dongwoo’s words, I would’ve almost caused trouble for the flowerpot next to mine. The floor had become soaked with water, so I grabbed a nearby mop and wiped it up. The reason I was so out of it right now was also because I hadn’t been able to sleep last night.
The reason I was so distracted right now was because I hadn’t received any contact from Seongheon hyung for the past two weeks.
But if I didn’t do this, I felt like I’d just repeat the same life of being a fool all by myself—accepting the hyungs’ calls, getting tricked again, letting my guard down easily, getting played again.
I wanted to pay back the hyungs for all the times they’d messed with me, but the only thing I could do was a passive method like ‘ignoring their calls.’
I thought that if I did this, the hurt feelings would disappear like water draining from a flowerpot, but my emotions seemed to have a completely blocked bottom, as the sullen feeling just continued.
I needed a cider to clear my clogged-up insides, but I had no way to get revenge. Moreover, since I’d also seen Seongheon hyung’s scary side, my actions only became more and more timid.
Dongwoo helped me wipe up the water that had flooded the floor and put his arm around my shoulders.
“Only two subjects left for the exam tomorrow. PC room now?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go, let’s go.”
The reason I wasn’t going straight home was because yesterday I saw Seongheon hyung’s matte black SUV parked in our yard.
He seemed to have come to visit since he knew I was in the middle of exams, but I didn’t want to meet with hyung when I was already ignoring his calls. Daesu hyung had been nagging me to pick up since I wasn’t answering the hyungs’ calls, but now he ignores me too.
There was no real reason for the hyungs to cling to me. Except when they were bored. Or when they were trying to trick me into something.
「It’s fun to play with him.」
Seongheon hyung’s voice that I’d heard during the call with Gangjin hyung replayed in my ears again, so I shook my head to shake it off. After finishing tidying up the area, I got on the bus heading downtown with Dongwoo.
“What do you want to do about lunch? Snack bar?”
“Let’s just eat at the PC room.”
“Okay.”
As soon as we got off the bus, we entered a PC room near the bus stop.
There were quite a few kids wearing our school uniform scattered throughout the seats. Dongwoo and I found spots in the corner, ordered hot bars and jajang ramyeon, and looked around at the current games on the desktop.
Familiar icons caught my eye. Among them, my hand went to the ‘Earth’ game I’d played with Seongheon hyung a few weeks ago.
I just logged in wondering if my character was doing okay since it had been sealed away since then, but I wasn’t particularly interested. I’d always wanted to play games with the hyungs, but maybe it was because that feeling had now faded.
I wondered if there had been a lot of patches during that time, so while it was updating, I clicked on the Earth free forum.
“Jajang ramyeon and hot bar are ready.”
I was clicking through a few forum posts when the food arrived, so I first put a hot bar in my mouth. While chewing away, I continued browsing the forum when Dongwoo, sitting next to me, tilted his head slightly.
“You play this kind of thing too?”
“I just raised it a little then stopped.”
While checking new posts, I saw ones registered as recommended posts at the top. The titles were full of complaints, and some posts had over a thousand recommendations.
I didn’t know what it was about, but I clicked on what drew me in and read the content.
■Title: Atrocities of the Black Guild on the Diamond Server
■Author: Ssapseonbi
Probably no one on the Diamond server doesn’t know these pieces of trash. The reason I really feel like this is a fucking doomed game is because the rankers stick together like that, so we can’t go whenever a new boss comes out. Blocking paths with alts is a daily occurrence
(Black_pathblocking.jpeg)
Since we can’t get material items, our item level stays in place, and because of that, we can’t even run raids.
To upgrade items, you have to get gold through cash, but that’s not the end of it. Even if you want to buy material items with gold, the Black guild puts in purchase requests higher than market price and hoards them, so prices skyrocket.
(Auction_house.jpeg)
Does this make sense? How does Falakas Blue Scale go over 20,000 gold? On other servers, you can buy this for 2,000 gold.
You need to match your item level to 850 or higher to enter the new continent, Giloite Land, but we can’t go. New dungeon?? I haven’t even been able to get close to see what it looks like. Why? Because that area has been occupied by these trash guild’s trash bastards.
And you see the toll fee for occupied territory? It’s insane. More expensive than the tollgate fee from Seoul to Busan. So if you try to go around and pass by that area, they just kill you. No reason. They just kill you. That guild itself only accepts rankers, so they’ve basically taken over this entire server.
The real scum is the guild master bastard, Enter. If a ranker doesn’t join his guild, he’ll come after them and gang up on them for days on end. He goes around with Alt and Control, these bastards, and they’re three extreme DPS—Sorcerer, Berserker, Ranger—so they backstab like crazy too.
Also, that bastard Enter learns every magic book that comes out and is practically Grandmaster level. Seeing how much he spends on cash, they don’t seem to be poor fucks.
Anyway, it needs to quickly become a dead game and have server mergers, because otherwise, the Diamond server is doomed as is. Those high-level folks on other servers, remember this guild and when servers merge, fuck up their real lives.
I really regret starting on Diamond. Anyone who knows these bastards’ hideout, whisper me. I’ll get revenge for you.
Just from the game IDs mentioned in the forum post, I could tell well enough who they were.
‘What, the hyungs were on the Diamond server……’
Seongheon hyung told me it was the Sapphire server, but he was actually playing the game on the Diamond server.
I knew it. I should have known from the moment he readily asked to play together…… Now I understood why hyung’s level had been low too. When I checked the rankers by server, Seongheon hyung’s character ‘Enter’ was ranked 5th at max level 150, and his item level was over 900.
‘I thought so, Seongheon hyung’s character name seemed a bit strange. I wondered why there was a 1 after Enter.’
The user ‘Ssapseonbi’ who posted this also had a very high item level, enough to be in the top 30 rankings. But if they posted something like this, they must have been severely bullied.
I knew that the hyungs’ gaming manners weren’t particularly good to begin with, so even seeing a post like this wasn’t a big surprise. The reason I felt bad right now was because Seongheon hyung had lied to me, saying it was a different server.
I could have just not played with them, but I was disappointed that while he acted like a caring hyung in front of me and received all my affection, behind the scenes he was giggling around with them. The other day, while running dungeons with Seongheon hyung, he said things like ‘Right, we had fun back then. I miss it,’ reminiscing with me about old times, but behind the scenes, this was what he was like.
I had no idea how far Seongheon hyung’s favorability would plummet. The good sides of hyung that had been accumulated like mileage fell off like threshing perilla seeds every time I discovered something like this.
“Daeyoung-ah, your ramyeon’s getting soggy.”
“Huh? ……Oh, yeah.”
I stuck my chopsticks into the jajang ramyeon to take a bite, but maybe because I’d left it too long, it had already hardened stiffly. I had no choice but to stab it like a fork and bite into it like eating cotton candy.
Maybe because my insides felt stuffed as if I’d eaten a bunch of sweet potatoes, chewing and swallowing the ramyeon wasn’t easy. In the midst of this, what Daesu hyung had said before and Seongheon hyung’s voice that had been heard over the phone overlapped and replayed in my head.
「You think he’s going to play games seriously with you? He’s just playing around with you. Because you’re easy.」
「It’s fun to play with him.」
‘Ah…… I’m the only one getting played, so it’s so unfair. The hyungs probably don’t know how I feel. There’s no way they would. People only understand when they experience the same thing.’
Whether in games or reality, it was as if the victor was always predetermined, and I felt completely drained.
I don’t know why they blatantly lie about things that will obviously be revealed. Does that mean I’m that easy to them? Because I always let myself get fooled and they laugh when I turn around? Because even when I sulk, I still happily lean into them when they hug me?
Not knowing any of that, like a fool, whenever Seongheon hyung called and played around, I went along with it all, and when Gangjin hyung suddenly barged into our house saying he was hungry, I made him food, and thinking he had a deadly disease, I even removed strawberry seeds for him.
Just how long do the hyungs plan to deceive me? How pathetic must I have been for them to do this…… Am I really not just a pushover?
“Sniff……”
“Hey, are you crying?”
“Mm-hmm……”
“Why are you suddenly crying while eating jajang ramyeon? That’s grotesque. Did you bomb the exam?”
“Just…… Ah shit, bathroom for a sec.”
Pathetic. I ended up fucking crying.
The reason I wasn’t this upset before was because when I got sulky, the hyungs would come and make up with me, so I just let it go, settling for that. Like a fool.
Now that I’m coldly thinking about it with walls built up between me and the hyungs, I really was a pushover among pushovers. Even if I live to be sixty, these hyungs will probably still be playing with me.
I want to show them now that I’m not someone who just takes it, not someone who’s easy anymore.
Thinking that, I washed my face and returned to my seat. I came here to change my mood by playing games, but my mood had actually gone down instead. I just didn’t want to do anything.
