“Haa. Forget it — since you’re here, just tell me how to get out.”
[ System ]
[?]
It was annoying that it had sent a single question mark when it could easily have said something more. Expecting human courtesy from a System window was laughable, he knew — but it still rubbed him the wrong way.
“Not out of the house or the neighborhood. I mean out of this game.”
He deliberately emphasized “game” to make it absolutely clear he wanted out. That should be more than enough for it to understand his intentions. But the System window displayed nothing. Don’t tell me it’s broken. It was fine earlier when I threw something — why now of all times?
“Are you broken?!”
[ System ]
[No.]
He let out a breath of relief when the previously silent System window answered back perfectly fine. He didn’t like it, but one thing was certain — in this unfamiliar world inside a game where he hadn’t even spent a full 24 hours yet, the System was the only thing helping him. So whether he liked it or not, he had no choice but to depend on it.
“Then why weren’t you saying anything.”
[ System ]
[If it’s about how to leave the game, I believe I already told you?]
That threw him for a moment.
“You never told me that. You only said I couldn’t exit.”
[ System ]
[Oh! ㅇ0ㅇ You’re right. The way to leave is simple.]
“What is it?”
[ System ]
[You just need to pursue any character and see their ending. Easy, right? ^0^]
He’d already seen the ending three times, but knowing full well this wasn’t a game you could clear easily, his blood started to boil.
“Are you messing with me? You think anyone can just waltz their way to an ending?”
[ System ]
[ㅠㅠ. Please don’t be angry.]
Reaching an ending in FMB was no easy feat. You needed the capture target’s affection at 100% and Lee Yura’s affection at a minimum of 95% to unlock the happy ending.
On top of that, each character had a fixed window of time to see their ending — for Choi Woosu, it was graduation. You had to confess then and only then to guarantee the happy ending. Confessing on any other day increased the likelihood of being rejected. So timing the confession to that exact day was crucial — but the problem was that the earliest possible ending was still a full 6 months away from when the game had just started.
“How am I supposed to spend 6 months inside a game, of all places?”
[ System ]
[Do you want to quit the game?]
The question was so obvious it almost felt insulting.
“Of course I do. You suddenly wake up inside a game — isn’t it normal to immediately want to get out?”
[ System ]
[And you still want to leave right now?]
“If I didn’t want to leave, why would I have asked all those questions earlier? Why are you asking that?”
[ System ]
[I was curious. Whether the real Yeon Juwoo was happy.]
“……What?”
[ System ]
[Were you happy? In reality.]
The words stopped him cold. His school years hadn’t been anything particularly enjoyable, and unlike other people, he’d never managed to land a job. His relationship with his family wasn’t good, either. Come to think of it, his life hadn’t really been happy at all.
[ System ]
[That you want to go back. Do you truly mean that?]
“…….”
[ System ]
[Was your life happy enough to leave a new one behind and return to it?]
Unlike before, the System asked the question in a calm, measured tone — and then it stayed still for a while without changing the message. He stood in that uncomfortable silence, thinking for a moment before he spoke.
“……The modes.”
[ System ]
[Modes? ㅇ0ㅇ]
“The game modes. Easy, Normal, Hard. Which ones can I choose from?”
[ System ]
[All three are available!]
“Give me Easy.”
[ System ]
[Sure! >♡<]
The calm from just moments ago might as well have never existed — the System window lit up with a heart, visibly delighted, and once the mode was set, it vanished from sight.
[ System ]
[Easy Mode On]
His thoughts had grown heavier somehow. Up until just now, he had genuinely wanted to go back to reality — but the System’s words had shaken him more than a little.
Even if I go back to reality, nothing will change. Maybe reality is even more hopeless than here. At least here I’m just starting out — but back in the real world, I’ve already tasted failure and given up.
He had survived more than 20 years of a miserable reality — surely he could manage 6 months. Taking the earliest ending as his goal: exactly 6 months. He decided to put reality out of his mind for now and try living inside the game.
“Alright, let’s stick it out. A student who hasn’t even started the entrance exams yet is still better off than someone who’s failed the job hunt thirty times.”
He wasn’t unaware that making a decision like this after barely one day in the game was foolish. Today had been fine since it was the first day and all he’d done was the tutorial — but he had no idea what lay ahead.
Still, he had a feeling that living here might not be so bad after all.
He woke up feeling like he should, opened his eyes — and the room was dark, the sun not yet up. He checked his phone, and it wasn’t the fact that it was 6:10 AM that shocked him, but the notification at the top of the screen: [2 Missed Alarms].
Setting aside the fact that he’d slept so soundly he hadn’t even heard the alarms go off — what stunned him was that, with school a mere 15-minute walk away, an alarm had been set to go off before 6 AM.
“This kid’s out of his mind. He’s got an alarm set for 6 AM for a school that’s 15 minutes away.”
Even accounting for the fact that he lived alone and had to make his own breakfast before heading out, setting an alarm this early when he didn’t even bother getting done up seemed odd.
Maybe he exercises in the mornings? But one glance at the body made that seem unlikely, and finding no particular reason for the early wake-up, he gave up trying to figure it out.
Thanks to all that, he was now wide awake — and he took a shower at a pace leisurely enough to earn him a smack on the back from a mother if he had one, then sat down to eat breakfast while watching the morning news for the first time in who knows how long. Up until last year, this had been the kind of daily life he’d imagined for himself. Eating breakfast while watching the news before heading to work — a routine he had once dreamed of. Seeing it come true here, in this place, left him with a strange feeling.
He was about to change when the nameplate on the uniform caught his eye — “Yeon Juwoo.” An unfamiliar house, unfamiliar shelves, an unfamiliar uniform. Everything here was something he was seeing for the first time, as foreign as the smell of this place — and yet, laughably, he moved through it all as naturally as someone who had lived here for years. So this is why habits are said to be such a frightening thing. Once he’d changed into the uniform, he said “I’m heading out” to the empty living room and left.
“Oh.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry, hyung! I really am!”
“Hey, hey, it’s fine.”
