“Ah.”
I blinked. It was hot and humid. When I exhaled, my breath fogged my vision. I felt around my head and touched something hard.
The VR helmet.
I pulled it off, revealing the dusty interior of the capsule.
I sat in the old capsule chair with its worn-flat cushions and waited for my pounding heart to calm down.
Reality? Is this really reality?
Logout after exactly thirty days. Fear surged through me.
Was this really the real world? When I pressed that button and the capsule opened, would I find that too much had changed?
Heart trembling, I opened my mouth.
“Open Status Window.”
Silence.
Neither the familiar notification nor the System Window answered.
Only then did it finally sink in.
I had successfully logged out.
“Huuup.”
I drew a deep breath and pressed the button. The capsule door opened with a click, and stale air greeted me.
“…Huh.”
A dark, cramped room. A small TV on the desk. A single bed. And one person asleep on it, reeking of alcohol.
“Khrrr. Khrrooo.”
Who would’ve thought those bizarre snores could sound so welcome?
I’m back. Back in reality.
Everything was exactly as I remembered it. The last thirty days felt like a dream.
After staring blankly around the room for a while, I walked over to Jinho hyung.1 Then I slammed the edge of my hand into his uvula.
Whack!
“Khrrr… gack!”
If it hadn’t been for this guy’s snoring, I never would have crawled into that capsule. I grabbed Jinho tight as he thrashed around.
“Take one more. No, two.”
Whack! Whack!
“Gack! Grrrgh!”
“You’re both old enough to know better. Especially you, when you’re supposed to be the goshiwon2 manager.”
“…Sorry.”
“Let’s not have any more embarrassing scenes, all right?”
Bang.
The door closed. Jinho turned around with a sigh.
“Are you insane?”
Before he could say anything worse, I beat him to the punch.
“For the record, it was self-defense.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?”
“I’m perfectly sane.”
“Then why the hell did you hit someone in the throat while he was sleeping—!”
Thump, thump, thump.
The man next door pounded on the wall. Judging by the rhythm and force, the message was clear: I want to kill you.
Jinho lowered his voice.
“Why the hell did you pull that shit? In the middle of the night, too.”
“The middle of the night?”
“Yeah, you lunatic. It’s only three in the morning.”
Jinho held out his phone, looking utterly dumbfounded.
July 25. 3:02 a.m.
I checked the date and time, and my mouth fell open.
Only three hours have passed?
I’d spent a whole month in Murim. Exactly thirty days. Yet only three hours had passed in reality.
“…Hyung.1”
“Don’t talk to me. My throat hurts.”
“What’s the usual time ratio for a game capsule?”
“You’re like Hong Gil-dong, you bastard—popping up in the east one moment and the west the next.3 Even your conversation topics are all over the place.”
“What’s the ratio?”
“Huh?”
When I asked with a stiff face, Jinho hyung1 looked briefly flustered, then answered.
“The latest capsule that came out last month can do five to one, I think.”
“What exactly does five to one mean?”
“What do you think? Five hours pass in the game for every hour in reality.”
This was driving me crazy.
“What about anything beyond that?”
“There isn’t anything. Five to one is the limit of current technology… But why are you asking?”
Because something impossible had happened.
How am I supposed to make sense of this?
Even at a second glance, the capsule was ancient. That piece of junk, made more than twenty years ago, had left modern technology in the dust.
Thirty days in only three hours. What kind of time ratio was that? My head was too scrambled even to calculate it.
“That’s insane.”
“What is?”
There was no way I could understand this on my own. Maybe Jinho could come up with some kind of answer.
After a moment’s hesitation, I spoke.
“A month ago—no, three hours ago—I went into that capsule…”
I’d been through so much that there was a lot to tell. Even after hearing the whole story, Jinho remained silent for a long time.
Then he said one thing.
“That’s insane.”
“Exactly. How does any of this make sense? Could that be some illegally modified capsule or something?”
“No. Not the capsule. You.”
“Huh?”
Jinho hyung1 spoke with a serious face.
“Just own it and apologize. Say, ‘I’m sorry. Your snoring was so loud I hit you.’ Be cool about it, you bastard.”
“…”
“What, you couldn’t log out and spent a month risking your life in a game? Go write a novel.”
Right. I knew that was going too well.
I sighed.
“I’m telling you, it’s true.”
“Come on, Taekyung. Let’s think about this rationally.”
Jinho put on a solemn tone.
“Some guy smacks a sleeping person in the uvula to wake him up, then says he was trapped in a game for a month. But he checks the clock, and only three hours have passed? And the capsule is an antique that belongs in a museum?”
“I know it sounds insane. I get it. But…”
“Then try to get me, too. My head hurts from the hangover, my uvula hurts, and looking at you hurts.”
“No, just listen to me!”
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
Before the man next door could smash through the wall, I lowered my voice.
“Then try it yourself.”
“What?”
“If you try it, you’ll believe me.”
Nothing was faster than experiencing it firsthand. If I pulled him out after about ten minutes, he’d have no choice but to believe me.
Jinho stared hard at me before answering.
“Fine. Let’s try it, then.”
He climbed into the capsule and even put on the VR helmet. As he grumbled about the sour smell inside it, I said,
“I’ll pull you out soon. Stay holed up at Honghwaru.”
“Honghwaru, my ass. Just close the capsule door.”
I was curious to see his face when he came back out. I closed the capsule door, took out my phone, and opened the stopwatch.
The instant I pressed start, the numbers began racing upward.
One second, two seconds… ten seconds.
Ten seconds in reality had to mean minutes, maybe even hours, in the game.
By now, he must be scrambling to figure out what’s going on at Honghwaru…
Clunk.
“Huh?”
The door opened.
What? Why is he already out? No, how did he get out?
Jinho sighed at my bewildered expression.
“What are you doing?”
“Uh… Huh?”
“The power isn’t even on. What game were you playing?”
What was that supposed to mean?
“The power isn’t on?”
“Move.”
While I was still stammering, Jinho climbed out of the capsule, bent down, and picked something up from underneath it.
“What does this look like to you?”
A cord.
An unplugged power cord.
I scrubbed furiously at my eyes, but nothing changed.
Was I seeing things?
“Why is this…”
“Taekyung. Jin Taekyung. You poor, pathetic soul.”
Jinho gazed at me with sorrowful eyes.
“Go to a mental hospital as soon as the sun comes up. I’m going back to my room.”
He tossed the power cord aside and walked away. I stared blankly after him.
The power cord hadn’t even been plugged in.
Then what was the game I played?
I felt as though I’d been bewitched by a ghost. Goose bumps rose all over my body.
I lay on the bed and thought.
Am I crazy?
I’d played a game for thirty days in a capsule that hadn’t even been plugged in.
I could understand Jinho’s reaction. But everything that had happened there…
It was all real.
Jin Wikyung, Wolhwa, Hyuk Mujin, and the Head Elder. I remembered every NPC’s face, their way of speaking, their mannerisms. It hadn’t been a delusion I’d cooked up on my own.
Then what was the problem?
There was only one answer.
The problem was the game capsule itself. It had been made twenty-seven years ago—a piece of junk that should have been retired long ago and put in a museum.
Even its date of manufacture was suspicious.
January 1, 2020.
The day the Demon King Asmodeus fell at humanity’s hands.
Who the hell was making game capsules back then?
Hundreds of millions had died during the five-year Great War, and monsters had roamed through city centers.
In my opinion, the bastards who heard the breaking news that the Demon King had fallen and fired up a factory going, All right, let’s make game capsules now! belonged in court.
Back then, I thought it was a misprint.
I froze.
A misprint?
The product manual!
How could I have forgotten something that important? What an idiot.
I shot to my feet and began turning the room upside down. At last, I found the familiar little booklet under the bed.
Product User Manual
Product Name: Virtual Reality Access Device
Model Name: Ark - 2020
Manufacturer: H Soft
Date of Manufacture: January 1, 2020
Then the next page.
Precautions
The player cannot log out at will.
If the player dies during play, resurrection is impossible.
A month ago—no, three hours ago—I had thrown the booklet aside at this point.
This time was different.
With trembling hands, I turned to the last page.
Key Features
A custom capsule made for one person only! Once a user is registered, the capsule is permanently bound to that user until death.
Time-ratio adjustment for comfortable play! Upon login, time in reality passes very slowly. The reverse is also true.
Character Synchronization System! By synchronizing with their character, the user experiences a greater sense of unity.
“What the hell is this?”
I could read the words, but my brain refused to process them. I started again from the beginning.
First, permanent binding.
It meant exactly what it said. The capsule was mine until I died. Once I got some answers, I was going to smash the goddamn thing to pieces.
Next, the time ratio.
That was the part I’d been most curious about. But instead of an exact figure, all it gave me was the vague phrase passes very slowly.
It said the reverse was also true, so time in the game must be passing very slowly now.
Then is the war still going on?
Jin Wikyung came to mind. The Head Elder’s betrayal was already a given, and he would try to stab Wikyung in the back at the critical moment. Had Hyuk Mujin and the reconnaissance squad gotten that news to him?
Right. That’s still a long way off. The time ratio reversed.
More importantly, I had immediate problems of my own. I examined the final key feature, but unlike the others, this one made no sense no matter how many times I read it.
Synchronize with a character?
Just to be sure, I even looked it up in a Korean dictionary. It meant exactly what I thought it meant, which only made it sound even crazier.
How the hell do you synchronize with a game character?
I couldn’t make any sense of it. In the end, all I’d done was add another question to the pile.
One thing was certain.
I wasn’t crazy.
I flopped onto the bed and read the front of the booklet again.
“Manufacturer: H Soft.”
In the end, every road led to the same place. If I investigated these bastards, something was bound to turn up.
I searched the internet for H Soft, but aside from a porn studio with the same name, I didn’t find a thing.
“…”
First, I needed to lock the door and think.
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