“It’s not sudden. You don’t know how happy I was when I realized you couldn’t remember. How despicable that was.”
“It’s me who can’t remember, so it has nothing to do with you…”
“It must have been shocking enough to forget. You don’t know how anxious I was that you might regain your memory. Installing surveillance cameras, wiretapping, watching your every move.”
At Heegang’s confession, Wonyoung just gaped for a moment.
He really wasn’t normal.
However.
“I…”
If he said Baek Heegang like that was okay, would they say it’s because he’s an abangsu?
“I…”
Still, it didn’t matter. Thinking that, Wonyoung was about to open his mouth.
[If that’s what you want, I’ll accept it obediently.]
[Cry (Cannot select due to shocked state).]
‘What the hell is this!’
It was confusing enough that a choice appeared, but this time the lower choice was grayed out. It wasn’t actually clickable either. When he tried to press it, a shitty guide window appeared saying [You’re too shocked for tears to come out.]
Then can this even be called a choice?!
‘What am I supposed to do! Select the top one? Are you crazy?’
I don’t care whether Baek Heegang is a pervert or a psychopath! Why did I stay in this game! Because I didn’t want to end things with Baek Heegang like this! Because I still didn’t want to part with Kyung Taerim and Ki Siyeon!
If it’s going to be like this, it’s completely meaningless!
‘System-ssi, come out! You said you’d help!’
Despite Wonyoung’s desperate call, there was no news from the System. Moreover, the time limit of 1 minute for the choice was rapidly decreasing.
How long had he been panicking like that? 10 seconds? 15 seconds? During that time, countless thoughts flowed through.
And Wonyoung, clenching his trembling fists, slowly exhaled.
‘Pull yourself together, Heo Wonyoung.’
Right. He wasn’t Narae. He was the top-tier elite talent Heo Wonyoung. That was the only fact that wouldn’t change no matter what anyone said.
Having made up his mind, Wonyoung reached out and pressed the choice.
“If that’s what you want, I’ll accept it obediently.”
“…”
Unwanted words came out of his mouth, but he’d already expected it.
Wonyoung felt his insides burning as he repeatedly reached out and lowered his hand. And then.
“N-no, I can’t do this after all… No! If that’s what you want, Heegang!”
As if forcibly accepting Heegang’s words, Wonyoung put on a performance with all his might.
“I-I, I’m troubled but…!”
It was truly a forced act.
And the very unfortunate fact was that even though Wonyoung was doing his best to act, as Narae it only amounted to bad acting.
Heegang had to struggle not to laugh watching Wonyoung’s performance. It was the biggest crisis of his acting career.
“Rae.”
“If that’s what you want, *gulp*, still!”
“Narae.”
At the call mixed with laughter, Wonyoung finally stopped acting. Heegang pulled the wide-eyed Wonyoung into an embrace.
“I like you, a lot.”
“…”
“So I’ll wait. I want to. Let me keep hovering by your side. Persistently and pathetically.”
Good thing. Did my acting work? Wonyoung answered smugly.
“Okay.”
At those words, Heegang’s laughter could be heard.
‘I’m glad I let it be.’
Heegang had known all along that Wonyoung had taken his phone last night and that he would have asked someone for help. That’s why he drew Wonyoung here. To make him pity him. To show him his desperate state.
What he hadn’t been certain of was whether Wonyoung would come looking for him or run away. After suddenly confining him and not saying anything, it was natural to be scared. A normal person would have run away when given the chance.
‘But Rae came looking for me.’
That meant Narae was that foolish and kind. It was also the reason he loved him.
It was all Rae’s fault. For receiving the love of a monster like him.
‘So you can’t resent me for what happens from now on, Rae.’
Muttering that to himself, he embraced Wonyoung’s body as if restraining it.
Body temperature, scent, breath—all sensations so pleasant they made him shudder.
* * *
That day, after Heegang left, Wonyoung lay on the bed blankly looking up at the ceiling. More precisely, he was looking at the status window. A new tab that had been locked in the status window had opened.
‘Memories.’
Inside the tab labeled like that, familiar scenes were lined up like a gallery. In the very first scene was himself looking shocked while looking in a mirror. When he pressed the image, a monitor-like screen appeared before his eyes and the scene from that time played.
—What kind of face is this…
He looked at Narae in the mirror and continued speaking, then stopped as if at a loss for words. It was when he first confirmed he had become Narae.
‘…’
Even though it wasn’t such a distant past, it somehow felt unfamiliar. What kind of feeling would he have if he saw Heo Wonyoung’s face now? Would he feel this same unfamiliarity then too?
Wonyoung felt restless for no reason and tried to close the window. Then he accidentally pressed a different scene.
—If it ends like this, do I just return to my life? And everything I experienced here becomes like it never happened?
—Correct.
It was exactly when he was persuading the System to escape from the ending with Heegang.
—What if I don’t accept this ending? What if I continue playing this game?
—Is it irreversible? Do I have to reset or something…
Wonyoung went blank for a moment looking at himself in the screen. Because he had eyes that were much more earnest and desperate than he thought.
The video continued for quite a while after that. When Taerim came to rescue him, he seemed happy yet calm as if he trusted him, and when rescuing Heegang, unlike himself, he had lost his reason and was extremely agitated.
When Heegang was about to say goodbye, Siyeon’s face had also come to mind without him realizing.
These were appearances he’d never thought of as himself, but they were all him. Not Narae, not abangsu, but Heo Wonyoung.
‘What… do I want to do?’
He’d gone too deep into the game. Both body and heart.
But that didn’t matter. Wonyoung just wanted to be certain of his own heart.
“What do I want to do? In the end, I’m just being toyed with by this shitty game system…”
“How about doing as your heart moves you?”
Wonyoung, who had been muttering to himself, was horrified to see a glowing orb shoving its face in front of him.
“Aaaah, what!”
“You called me, Player-nim!”
“When did I…”
Wonyoung, who was about to get angry at the absurdity, paused. Don’t tell me it came out because I called it a shitty game system…?
‘How ridiculous.’
As Wonyoung exhaled in exasperation, the System continued.
“I can’t fully understand Player-nim’s confused heart, but sometimes isn’t it okay to go where your heart moves you?”
Tempted by those words, Wonyoung hesitantly asked.
“Where my heart moves me…?”
“Yes. Stop the complicated calculations. You’ve already come this far anyway.”
“…”
The System was right. In the end, hadn’t he gone with his heart and not kicked away the opportunity to escape from the game with his own feet? There was no need to play the game now calculating affection levels or efficiency.
“You already have feelings for the three of them to some extent, don’t you?”
“…Yes.”
“Then watch. Watch and continue the story. When a truly satisfying end comes, then you might be able to return home as Player-nim wished.”
A truly satisfying end.
Was there such an end? Could he reach that end?
Wonyoung still couldn’t be certain, but soon nodded. His heart. He decided to regard his own heart as important for the first time.
Whatever the end might be.
* * *
Just when he thought he’d barely sorted out his feelings, not even a few days had passed before Wonyoung faced a new crisis.
“Hyung.”
“…”
“Let go.”
Wonyoung desperately shook his head. If he let go of Ki Siyeon here and now, one of either Baek Heegang or Ki Siyeon would die. After putting so much effort into those two guys, how could such a tragedy exist!
“It came off fine! Just stay here!”
“Fine? Leaving those kinds of… marks on your ankle?”
The origin of the problem was this. Wonyoung, who had been happily playing around with Siyeon who came over knowing nothing, accidentally got caught with the traces of shackles that had been tied to his ankle.
Unable to withstand Siyeon’s momentum in relentlessly pressing him, when he finally explained the full story, this disaster occurred.
Wonyoung clung firmly to Siyeon, who looked ready to rush out of the house at any moment, and shouted.
“It was because he was worried the blackmailer might harm me!”
“Then why tie you up? Who does he think he is?”
“He apologized later! He’s just a bit, uh, peculiar.”
“So why are you… friends with that kind of bastard?”
I want to ask that too. But what can I do about having grown attached?
Of course, he’d grown attached to Siyeon as well.
So he had to somehow overcome this situation. As Wonyoung was pondering like that, something unexpected caught his eye.
“Hey, you, a bruise!”
“What?”
Wonyoung saw a bruise inside the T-shirt exposed while he was clinging to Siyeon and shouted.
“You’re bruised! What is it, you got hurt again? You said you didn’t!”
“Ah, it’s nothing!”
Siyeon made that excuse in panic and pulled up his T-shirt. Wonyoung, who couldn’t match Siyeon in strength, used his head to burrow into the T-shirt from below instead of above.
“Hyung, are you crazy?!”
“This wound of yours… what is it!”
“Why are you going into someone else’s clothes?! Because hyung is so defenseless like this…!”
“Gasp, here too! There’s one here too!”
“Ah, stop!”
In the end, Siyeon subdued Wonyoung by force. Wonyoung, pulled out like a radish, was fuming with a bright red face.
“What did you do so well to be swollen?”
“…”
“Even if you glare like that, it’s not scary at all.”
“You…”
What are you laughing at, you bastard.
