Prologue
He had tried to kill himself. There wasn’t any particular reason. He just wanted to. It was a habit. He was, by his own account, just an ordinary person who wanted to die. A bug-like existence that didn’t even try to overcome its depression.
He was just… too lonely being alone, he supposed. To tell the truth, none of it was his fault.
He was like everyone else. One of the most ordinary people imaginable. The kind of person who, in childhood, had thought he might be the main character of his own story. He felt joy when joyful things happened, sorrow when sorrowful things did. There were times when a baseless melancholy would creep in, but there had also been times when something small and funny came along and he’d quickly forget it all, trying to smile.
…Ah. Was I really like that once.
A hollow laugh escaped him. Probably, yeah.
His cramped studio apartment was always a mess. It smelled like a bachelor’s neglect. Towers of cup ramen trash gave off a foul stench, and though he’d wash himself out of habit, he never cleaned or did laundry, so the place was perpetually filthy. The piles of clothes and clumps of dust were enough to lay bare his situation and his wretchedness at a single glance.
“……”
Whenever the dark loading screen appeared, his reflection stared back at him. He was long past caring about the grimy face reflected in the monitor, so he adjusted his thick glasses without so much as a grimace.
The look that suited the words loser, pathetic, fatty better than anyone in the world. This was his own pitifulness, his just deserts — so he had no complaints.
His chubby fingers clicked the mouse. Surprisingly quick movements for someone with that much flesh on them.
But tick — he immediately misclicked and let out a dried-up sigh. The shirt he’d dug out from the back of a drawer should have been exactly the right size for his large frame, yet for some reason the sleeves were wide, getting in the way of his clicks. He found it darkly funny that even his sleeves were conspiring to get in the way of his life now.
He had no choice but to move to the keyboard. He almost wondered, pointlessly, whether fingers this thick could even hit the right keys accurately. But watching them find the buttons at speed made it clear just how long he’d spent rotting away in this room.
“Chicken money.”
A low voice was the last decent thing left about him. Rough around the edges, but with some polish, it could be listenable. His looks, though, were like mold gone bad — so nobody liked him. Wasn’t it only supernatural beings, like goblins, who didn’t know better? Wasn’t it the old hunchback who had a voice like that?
“…Missed it.”
The character on the monitor was dazzling, nothing like the loser on this side of the screen. A character with stunning platinum hair swung a sword. The monster — the target of his muttered “chicken money” — took the hit and bled.
The faster the sword moved, the faster those chubby fingers moved too. The more the handsome face on screen shone, the more the wretched life outside the monitor stood in stark contrast.
When the fingers that had been flying finally stopped, the platinum-haired man on screen stopped with them. He’d been playing so long his eyes felt dried out. Anyone watching might have made a fuss about the rare sight of the rank-one hero missing a monster — but at this hour, in what people called a “dead game,” there were no users left to watch his every move.
“And to think it was once called a masterpiece…”
The voice reminiscing about past glory didn’t even sound wistful. By now it was just the habit of a lonely shut-in talking to himself.
His thick hand released the mouse. Instead, it picked up the knife sitting beside it. Before he could even hold it up against the scarred mess of his wrist, he let out a short, “Ah……”
“The kids didn’t log on today.”
Raise the kids properly, slay the demon, push the fame that had nowhere left to go even higher…
He’d better hurry.
It was a poor reason to give up on suicide. But then, the reason he had scars on his wrist was equally poor. That was just the kind of person he was — living and dying for reasons that were groundless, sloppy, and utterly worthless.
“……”
And the only thing in the world that understood this worthless person was the game. Into the characters on the monitor — the ones he had raised — he had poured all his longing. Everything he had ever wanted to do, everything he had ever wanted to have, everything he had ever wanted. He’d emptied it all in.
Thanks to that, he’d even cut back on his medication (because he’d get so absorbed in the game that he’d miss the times he was supposed to take it). He suffered for it with other ailments instead.
A surprise, maybe. His talent bloomed through gaming. Investing in something, nurturing it. He found himself wondering, for no particular reason, what kind of parent he would make — surely the best kind. Did parenting require talent too? At the very least, it was clear a talent had blossomed in him that was nowhere to be found in his own bloodline.
The cursor drifted away from the platinum-haired character he’d been controlling. Instead, it came to rest before a strikingly handsome character packed with muscle. His eyes swiveled. He pushed his glasses up once. The fingers on the keyboard tapped a few more times.
Then he paused before the character in the drab robe with the pretty smile, once — and again before the character with the long ears and a face and coloring so vibrant they could only be called spectacular…
“Wow.”
Looking at the character selection screen like this was one of life’s small pleasures. Honestly, he was confident he could stare at it all day if asked. These gleaming characters were treasures his miserable life had managed to produce.
Each character had a completely different disposition and appearance, not a single shared trait between them — and yet they all fit his taste. Whether that level of variety even counted as taste was debatable, but the preferences of a room-dwelling parasite weren’t something anyone else could understand anyway, so it didn’t matter.
First, good looks, good proportions. Personality, disposition. The reason this idle wretch with too much time had managed to max out the battle levels of every character might well have been the customization process — drenched entirely in his own tastes.
“……”
The hesitating mouse finally landed on the last character. The character with pale skin was staring back at him with an indifferent expression. He muttered absently.
“…I forgot to delete you.”
Hmm. He studied the character as if thinking it over, then took his hand off the mouse. But his gaze drifted back.
This one only logged in when absolutely necessary. A character that didn’t even belong on the same screen as the dazzling ones — off to the side, out of place. Compared to the gleaming characters, this one was dull.
It’s been a while. Should I go in? But what would I even do?
The only character among all of his that hadn’t been maxed out. He’d put the most effort into its visual customization, yet in terms of ability it was the most impractical — a character he’d never quite known what to do with.
“Ha.”
A hollow laugh. Trial and error. Still — unlike himself, the character wasn’t useless. It had been responsible for supporting the maxed-out characters. It had a strange penalty, and it wasn’t a combat-type, so he’d stashed it away in a corner.
“……”
His eyes fell on the character deletion window. By now, it was habit — he moved the cursor toward it.
“…Do you want to die too? Have it done to you?”
The cursor hovered over the button. If he clicked it, the character would be deleted from the game world. Since he himself — the one who had created it — was the one deleting it, when you really thought about it, it could be called suicide too.
Come to think of it, this one had been closest to death. It had crossed death’s threshold far more often than the maxed-out characters who actually fought in battle. Maybe that’s why — no guilt. Maybe… maybe… it had done all of that just to get attention.
The hand moving the mouse knocked against the knife. The knife fell to the floor. His vacant eyes weren’t looking at his wrist — they were fixed on the monitor.
Click —
The sound of a click rang out. There wasn’t much reason for it. Same reason as the reason he’d wanted to kill himself.
“……”
You want it too, don’t you? I failed — but I hope you get it. I wanted to die — but I hope you want to live.
1. Possibly Just Another Delusion
The RPG game Limit.
A game that, despite its name meaning “limit,” had once boasted limitless freedom — a legendary title that had once sat on the throne of RPG games. Since VR, virtual reality and all that, had come along, it had long since become a washed-up game with not a single user left.
During the time that new scars formed over the scars on his wrist, and wounds layered over wounds — he had dominated the game under the name of rank one.
He’d occasionally made money off the game too. With his level of skill, he could earn chicken money at least once or twice a week. If item drops were good, he could sell them to cover rent. Though this once-great game was now past worrying about chicken money and was on the verge of shutting down its servers entirely.
Ragraak, Behike, Hase, Sird.
Their names were well-known not just within Limit, but in real life too. So much so that more people knew the names of the four virtual children he had created than knew the name of the shut-in who had made them.
Back in the day, gameplay videos of the four kids had been captured, edited, and circulated across various sites. Hero, Mercenary King, Master of the Magic Tower, Forest Guardian. You could tell just from their titles how spectacular they were.
He had raised four characters to MAX level — a feat difficult to achieve even for one. He’d played without eating. Honestly, it wouldn’t be a lie to say there had been moments he nearly died not from cutting his wrists, but from overworking himself.
In the adventure party account where the four named characters came together, standing with quiet dignity in the farthest corner of the character screen was one ambiguous figure. Standing beside characters decked in glittering equipment with MAX level stamped across them made the comparison stark — and yet the character gave off a distinctive air that somehow couldn’t be compared to them at all.
It was a character with a pipe held at a haughty angle. Max level would be a stretch, but with time invested, it could be raised. He hadn’t done that, though. Because even if its level went up, it wasn’t a character that would be much help anyway.
The adventure party account’s sole artisan-type support character.
[Nickname: Hyeonwoo]
There had been a time when he was sincere about this one too. It had been his first character. Back then he had no sense of naming. He couldn’t think of a name he liked, so he’d just given it his own.
Because it was his real name, he had put the most effort into the customization. He’d wanted to show a better version of himself through it. But it had all failed, and in the end this one was a loser too. It had ended up being a useful test subject instead.
A character he had no intention — and no capacity — to raise. Rather than taking care of itself, the character spent its time supporting those remarkable ones in the party.
* * *
When he opened his eyes, his body was just as heavy as ever. It was a massive body, after all. Of course it was heavy. But the ceiling was unfamiliar. And instead of the perpetual smell of a bachelor’s neglect, the air was thick with a bitter herbal scent.
He blinked. His eyesight was poor enough that he had to squint to see things up close — yet the ceiling was visible in sharp clarity. Was he wearing glasses? Had he fallen asleep with them on? He tried to lift a hand, then stopped.
