*
Pyeonghwa had become particularly interested in his appearance lately. Since the person he liked was a breathtakingly beautiful person, he thought he shouldn’t fall too far behind when standing next to him. Fortunately, the base his father passed down to him was quite decent, and being a younger man four years junior gave him a certain competitive edge.
“Dad’s hair is abundant though… ssuup, next time he comes home I should ask if we have baldness genes in our family.”
Pyeonghwa muttered while tying his bangs with a rubber band. Since his father’s hair was thick, he could rest easy for now. Pyeonghwa unfolded a gel-type mask pack and stuck it firmly to his face. At twenty years old his skin was firm, but Dohae’s skin was like a peeled egg, so he felt he needed to start managing it early.
“Is there~ a way~ to gather lots of aggro points~.”
Pyeonghwa hummed arbitrarily adding tunes as he got up from his chair. When Pyeonghwa went out to the living room, the egg, now nearly the size of a basketball, rolled along following behind Pyeonghwa.
Pyeonghwa lifted the egg up and hugged it in his arms as he sprawled on the sofa. The surface was rough but warm, and it felt good to hold.
“Is there~ a way~ to make hyung like me~ ooh~ yeah yeah~.”
As he was singing passionately with his eyes closed, he heard the sound of someone pressing the door lock. Soon the lock released and the door opened. Since his father always showed up unannounced out of the blue, Pyeonghwa opened his mouth with his eyes still closed, as if used to it.
“Dad, I blocked the hole in the front door with a wooden board, so fix it when you leave.”
There was no answer. Pyeonghwa frowned and called “Dad?” once more, then slowly opened his eyes.
“Aaaaagh! Fuck!”
Blood-red eyes were looking down at him. His heart dropped. Pyeonghwa trembled as if shuddering and tumbled down below the sofa with a crash.
“Huk, crazy, you, what are you. Why……!”
“……Hey, why don’t you change your password?”
“Get out! Before I report you for trespassing!”
“Nothing has changed here. Except for one capsule.”
Pyeonghwa jumped up and glared at Bae Sinhyo. He’d gotten much taller and bulkier than before, and the murderous aura flowing from his red eyes had deepened even more. But Pyeonghwa, who’d originally been fearless and had even raised his mental strength stat significantly, didn’t back down.
Bae Sinhyo looked Pyeonghwa up and down and raised one corner of his mouth. He would’ve been disappointed if he’d cowered—he was still a newborn puppy who didn’t know to fear a tiger. Looking at him, the only thing that had changed in three years seemed to be his height.
“You haven’t changed at all either, Noh Pyeonghwa. You’re still wearing those pajamas?”
“What’s wrong with my pajamas…… ah, shit.”
Pyeonghwa looked down at his clothes. They were pajamas he’d received as a gift from Bae Jihyo, Bae Sinhyo’s younger sibling, in middle school. Against a pale yellow background, orange fox drawings were stamped in a regular pattern, but as he’d grown nearly 20cm taller, they’d become drastically shorter. The top barely covered his stomach, and the pants were so short they didn’t even cover half his thighs.
It wasn’t just the clothes that looked shabby. His bangs were tied in an apple hair style, and he even had a mask pack stuck to his face. Pyeonghwa deliberately acted confident and lifted his chin. He didn’t want to show Bae Sinhyo any sign of being flustered, but he couldn’t hide his reddening ears.
“You look like a pig bastard, you know? Stop eating so much. You’ve gotten so wide. And get out!”
“Don’t you know muscles? Muscles. You look like… you’re obviously completely removed from exercise.”
“Huh? No? I have muscles too, you know? This is exactly the slender trend these days, you know?”
Pyeonghwa rolled up his top and tensed up with a hup. It did get firm and create shadows, but Bae Sinhyo, whose muscles split just from breathing, couldn’t tell what he was supposed to be looking at and snorted.
Compared to before, his physique had improved, but his skin texture seemed similar to back then when he was soft to touch anywhere. And his chest muscles especially looked poor……
Bae Sinhyo saw the pale-colored nipples and hastily lowered his gaze. This time he saw smooth thighs below the short pajama pants squirming. Bae Sinhyo coughed and turned his eyes away.
“Ahem! Throw away stuff you wore in middle school, bastard!”
“I’m wearing it, so do you have something to contribute? Fuck, don’t start shit and get lost!”
Pyeonghwa huffed as he threw the pack that had been on his face into the trash. Bae Sinhyo’s expression twisted strangely. Fucking bastard, he’s gotten pretty…… Since his build had gotten bigger, he’d thought the cute charm would disappear, but he’d matured with the same feeling as before.
‘He said he was dating.’
Noh Pyeonghwa’s romantic partner wasn’t just one person. The bastard who always chanted noona, noona on streams had confessed on a recent dawn stream that he’d been swayed by yet another woman. When he was young, he said he’d only look at one person because he didn’t want to be like his dad, but in the end he seemed to be living up to his face value like his own father.
From Bae Sinhyo’s perspective, Pyeonghwa seemed to have fallen deeply into romance and lost interest in gaming. That time when they’d nurtured the dream of becoming pro gamers together really seemed to have become the past, and he felt deflated. At the same time, anger surged up. Just because of a woman, he’s letting that talent rot? If that’s the case, why did he ruin his own life?
“Live like that forever, Noh Pyeonghwa. As a nobody. Pathetically.”
“Yeah, rainbow reflection.”
“Keep doing that shitty stream. Don’t hang around writing dirty posts on the internet.”
As Bae Sinhyo’s words continued, Pyeonghwa flinched and rolled his eyes around.
‘How did he know? Kim Subin maybe, but I thought Bae Sinhyo was so clueless he wouldn’t know……’
But since Bae Sinhyo was the one who did wrong first, there was no need to shrink back. In Noh Pyeonghwa’s dictionary, the person who threw the first punch was always wrong.
“I don’t want to? If you show up again, I’ll write another post?”
“Yeah. I’m going to show up again, so if you want to die, try it, you dog bastard.”
“Huh? You got beaten because you couldn’t do it, and you’re blaming others, amazing. Get better at it. What kind of pro gets dragged around swayed by netizens? Just retire, you idiot. What are you going to do with that glass mentality? That gameplay was also at a level that was hard to watch with eyes open…… urk!”
Bae Sinhyo impulsively grabbed Pyeonghwa’s collar. Easily lifted up, Pyeonghwa looked straight into Bae Sinhyo’s murderous eyes and smirked.
“All bluff.”
“You think I still can’t hit you?”
“Yup. You’re a fucking coward.”
“Ha……!”
Bae Sinhyo raised his pot-lid-sized fist. Pyeonghwa glared and twisted his head to stick out his cheek as if daring him to hit.
‘Ugh! This infuriating bastard!’
Bae Sinhyo’s fist trembled. It’s a wonder he hasn’t been beaten with this personality until now. Bae Sinhyo, who’d been debating whether to really punch him once, gritted his teeth and lowered his hand.
Even if not now, there were plenty of opportunities to beat him to a pulp. In virtual reality, he could kill him a hundred, a thousand times. Bae Sinhyo roughly pushed Pyeonghwa and released his collar.
“Fuck, I can’t hit you because you might die from one punch.”
“Huh.”
“Stop with that ‘huh’. Do you only know ‘huh’?”
“Huh huh huh huh.”
“Crazy elementary schooler bastard!”
“Huuuuuuuuuh.”
Pyeonghwa pushed Bae Sinhyo out with his body while going “huh huh.” Pushed all the way to the entrance, Bae Sinhyo cupped Pyeonghwa’s face with one hand and shouted.
“I got it! I’ll leave, okay! I’ll leave!”
“Let’s never see each other again, you fucking bastard. I’m changing the password right now.”
Pyeonghwa raised his middle finger. Bae Sinhyo folded down his sneakers to put them on and opened the front door. When he grabbed the doorknob and looked back, Pyeonghwa had raised one more middle finger.
“Hey, Noh Pyeonghwa.”
“What.”
“You’re fucking terrible at gaming. You’re not at a level to say anything to me.”
“Yeah, you’re worse.”
“Want to play?”
“Yeah, I don’t play with scrubs.”
“My comeback article will be up later, so watch that. I’m going.”
Thud. Bae Sinhyo closed the front door. Only when Bae Sinhyo’s footsteps could no longer be heard did Pyeonghwa place his hand on his chest and let out a sigh of relief.
“Ugh… I was so fucking scared, I really thought he’d hit me! Did that bastard get bio-experiments done somewhere? Is that a human or the Hulk?”
When the bulk that had filled the space disappeared, the house suddenly felt spacious. Pyeonghwa immediately changed the door lock password and sent the changed password to his father by text. The text he’d sent a month ago was still marked as ‘unread’, but that wasn’t his problem. He’d read it before coming home or not.
Pyeonghwa returned to the sofa and sprawled out again. He’d been doing skin care thinking of the lovely Do Dohae, but Bae Sinhyo had completely ruined his mood.
“Tch, whether he comes back or not.”
Pyeonghwa pouted his lips and turned to his side. Does he think he can’t be a pro gamer? He’s just not doing it! Pyeonghwa opened his phone and opened the chat window with Yoon Gyeom.
“……”
At some point, Yoon Gyeom’s recruitment offers had stopped completely. When he scrolled up through the chat window, he saw that precisely after the special lecture, he hadn’t tried hard to look good. When Pyeonghwa asked something first, he would just kindly answer that question.
“I want to do it too……”
Now he didn’t need to be afraid of Do Dohae, and even Bae Sinhyo had figured out Pax’s identity, so he didn’t need to hide even more. The Korean Championship, which had one month left, was a big competition broadcast overseas too, so if he participated at this point when change was needed, couldn’t he sweep up more aggro points? Greed suddenly sprouted in Pyeonghwa’s heart.
But he’d been streaming for too long. Even if he took off his gas mask and overhauled his skills, it would be difficult to avoid the eyes of netizen investigators. Whichever team he went to, they’d quickly find out he was Pax. So that’s why Yoon Gyeom wasn’t coveting him anymore either……
He thought about asking Yoon Gyeom, but not wanting to be rejected, he pressed the back button. So this is what it feels like to be held back by the past. Pyeonghwa felt helpless for the first time in a while and curled up.
