# Chapter 11
‘Why am I not moving forward?’
Despite walking almost at a run, the scenery around him wasn’t changing at all. Wonyoung had been walking in place the whole time.
‘Don’t tell me…’
As if providing an answer to Wonyoung’s suspicion, a notification window appeared before his eyes.
[You cannot leave the mission area while a mission is in progress.]
So it was that damn game causing problems again!
This was too much—trapping someone at a crime scene and preventing them from leaving.
He could have generously overlooked falling down and having his pants pulled off. But going to jail was absolutely unacceptable. He opened his mouth to summon the system, but whether it was still sulking or what, it showed no signs of appearing.
“How can this be happening? You said this was BL! What part of this bloodbath is BL? Where is the love?! This is a crime thriller, not a romance! Does the ‘B’ in BL stand for ‘Blood’?! System-ssi! System! Hey!”
Of course, there was just a tiny bit of blood on the tip of his sneakers, but anyway, Wonyoung, who had only been concerned about potential 19+ scenes since this was supposed to be a romance genre, couldn’t help but be greatly perplexed.
Who would have thought it wasn’t that kind of 19+ content but this kind!
After stomping his feet and venting his frustration for a while, Wonyoung soon realized that getting angry like this was pointless, so he took a deep breath and calmed himself down.
‘This must be part of the game scenario. Something like an event that has to happen. If so, I must have some appropriate action I need to take. That’s how I can progress to the next part of the story.’
Perhaps the next character to be pursued would be a police officer. They might have their first meeting in jail. Or maybe in a police car? This game seemed capable of anything.
With a complicated feeling from these consecutive worst-case scenarios, Wonyoung turned around. Anyway… he needed to approach that unidentified corpse, no, victim.
Swallowing hard, Wonyoung took a step forward and once again stood before the collapsed person.
“Excuse me… Are you alive?”
The other person remained silent. Wonyoung hesitated, then avoiding the fallen knife as much as possible, he bent his knees and sat down, closing the distance between them. He wanted to check if the person was breathing.
Suppressing the urge to run away from the intensified smell of blood, he listened carefully. Thankfully, though weak and slow, he could definitely feel the other person’s breathing.
‘They’re alive!’
As soon as Wonyoung confirmed the person’s survival, he took out his phone and dialed 119. Whether it was a game or an event, a person’s life should be saved, right?
“Ah, yes. There’s someone collapsed here, bleeding a lot, and it’s serious… Eek!”
Wonyoung, who had been urgently speaking, suddenly let out a terrified shriek and dropped his phone when a blood-covered white hand suddenly grabbed his wrist.
Meanwhile, the person who had startled Wonyoung picked up the dropped phone and ended the call. In the light from the phone, the face of the person, which had been shrouded in darkness until now, was finally visible.
And at the same time, as if he were some sacred angel statue, moonlight brilliantly settled upon the man’s head. From somewhere, a gentle piano melody began to play, and the moonlight surrounding the man sparkled like some special effect.
The man illuminated by moonlight had a pretty face, and seemed to be about the same age as Narae.
“Hey, are you conscious? Can you move?”
Wonyoung reached out to the man but stopped hesitantly at the sight of the blood soaking his abdomen and asked. The man gritted his teeth and replied.
“Just leave me alone and get lost.”
“Pardon?”
“I said get lost.”
“…”
Wonyoung stood there dumbfounded for a moment before getting up from his spot.
How dare he tell me to get lost. No one had ever treated him like this before. To be treated so rudely by a game character.
“Fine, stay there then.”
Die if you want, or don’t. Wonyoung turned around without regret and walked quickly toward home. However…
[You cannot leave the mission area while a mission is in progress.]
‘Ah, seriously.’
Finding himself walking in place at the same location yet again, Wonyoung didn’t get angry this time but gave up quickly with a short sigh and turned around. After all, having entered the game, he couldn’t defy the game’s principles.
Above all, his premonition that every character he needed to pursue would be unlikable seemed to be coming true. That is to say, that rude half-dead person appeared to be a character he needed to pursue.
If that’s the case, this must be their first meeting or something, just like with Kyung Taerim.
Wonyoung returned to the man’s side.
“Then what would you like me to do for you? Other than getting lost. I won’t call anyone.”
“…What?”
“If I leave you like this, I’ll probably be cleaning up a corpse tomorrow morning. This neighborhood already looks haunted enough, so what happens if property values drop even more? Wait, I’m just renting, so maybe it’s better if they fall…?”
[Statement incompatible with character traits. Warning 2 times. Penalties will be imposed if warnings accumulate beyond a certain number.]
Reading the warning message in the notification window, Wonyoung rubbed his head and changed his tone.
“Even though you’re a stranger… I’m… worried because you’re collapsed here.”
“What nonsense.”
“I don’t understand it either, but that’s just how I am.”
Muttering about character traits and incompatibility, Wonyoung lowered his body and met the man’s gaze.
“What do you want to do?”
“What… ugh.”
“No, are you still bleeding? That’s why I said we should go to the hospital!”
Seeing the blood pouring from the man’s abdomen, Wonyoung jumped to his feet. First, it seemed necessary to buy some medicine or bandages to stop the bleeding. Otherwise, one of the characters he needed to pursue would die from excessive bleeding.
But Wonyoung couldn’t go to the pharmacy. It was because of the message saying he couldn’t leave the mission area.
‘Then what am I supposed to do? Let him die?’
Pacing back and forth anxiously, Wonyoung turned to look at the man with a “what if” feeling. It was the worst method, but he had nothing to lose.
Wonyoung approached the man and tried to pick him up… but failed and awkwardly supported him instead. Contrary to his appearance, the man was large and annoyingly heavy.
“Let’s go.”
As Wonyoung pressed firmly on the man’s wound and walked unsteadily, this time there was no message saying he couldn’t leave the mission area. As expected, he needed to accompany the man.
“I said get lost… I don’t need, uh, treatment.”
The man grumbled something in the meantime, but Wonyoung ignored him completely.
Anyway, he couldn’t take the man to a pharmacy like this, so he thought he’d better take him home for now.
‘That place is barely enough for me to lie down, and now an extra mouth to feed…’
While swallowing his tears, Wonyoung supported the man and walked diligently. During the process, a terrible and dangerous message saying [Stamina is insufficient. Please rest.] appeared, but somehow he managed to stay awake and reach the front door.
‘This really is a hellish game in every way.’
With another resolute promise to give this game a 1-star review, Wonyoung opened the peeling iron door of the semi-basement house.
* * *
Slowly opening his eyes, Wonyoung let out a deep sigh as soon as he saw the unfamiliar ceiling. He was still in the dream, no, in the game.
Now on his second day in the game, Wonyoung got up with a still awkward feeling. His muscles were screaming in pain from sleeping curled up on the floor without proper heating.
‘Ah, that person.’
Shaking his still foggy head, Wonyoung soon remembered the guest he had brought home yesterday and raised his knees to look at the bed. A body too sturdy to be crammed into a single bed was lying pitifully, wrapped in bandages.
“The bleeding has stopped now.”
Though his life might have been in danger had this been reality, the man’s condition seemed stable, perhaps because this was a game. Wonyoung even checked his temperature just in case, and sighed in relief at the thought that he wouldn’t have to dispose of a corpse after all.
Last night, when Wonyoung returned from the pharmacy, the man had already lost consciousness.
Wonyoung hurriedly stopped the bleeding from the man’s wound and wiped off the blood on his body with a wet towel. Even afterward, he diligently wiped away the sweat of the man who was struggling with a fever, and massaged his arms and legs thoroughly. In other words, he did everything possible at a layperson’s level.
Eventually, his stamina completely ran out and he was forced to sleep, only waking up just now. Looking at his status window, he saw that due to insufficient rest, only half of his stamina had been restored, but he decided to find meaning in the fact that the man had survived.
‘Maybe the game would have progressed that way anyway.’
With Kyung Taerim, it had been like a common romance drama before turning into a comedy show, and this time it was a sudden bloodbath. Is this how all BL games dramatically shift genres back and forth?
‘What kind of person is this guy, lying with his stomach slashed open in front of someone else’s house?’
Curious for the first time about the man he might have to pursue, Wonyoung stared intently at the soundly sleeping man’s face.
As he had thought even in that urgent situation last night, it was a strangely pretty face. He didn’t want to use such a cliché comparison, but it was like a flower boy prince straight out of a shoujo manga.
‘So romance is romance after all.’
Like Kyung Taerim, the characters to be pursued all had remarkably high aesthetic standards. However, this man had an unnecessarily large body compared to his pretty face. And what filled that large body was none other than a dragon tattoo.
Considering his abdominal wound as well, he didn’t seem to be engaged in respectable work.
‘By the way, am I the only one who’s this frail?’
Suddenly recalling Kyung Taerim’s considerable build, Wonyoung looked down at his own skinny arms and sighed. When he lowered his arm, his sleeve slid down, covering half of the back of his hand. It was a terrible appearance, like something was off.
