Chapter 40

I was flying through the sky. With my enormous wings spread wide, I cut through the wind.

Far below lay a high, steep gorge shaped like a bottle gourd. Hundreds of people stood within it.

A man standing at the center shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Don’t fight for the Jin Family of Taiyuan!”

Then the ground shook. Trees trembled, and mountain birds took flight.

I glanced behind me. A massive cloud of dust was sweeping through the gorge toward us.

“Fight for yourselves! Fight for your families and the ones you love, before the enemy tramples them!”

He drew his sword and roared.

“Stand and face them like martial artists! I will do the same!”

Hundreds of weapons were drawn in unison. The man strode forward and took the lead. The cloud of dust crossing the gorge scattered, revealing countless people.

“Waaaaah!”

“Wipe out those Jin Family bastards!”

The man suddenly looked up. When he spotted me, he grinned.

“I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

The moment I saw his face, the strength drained from my wings. I plummeted into the depths of my consciousness.

“Pwah! Pwah-pwah!”

I desperately flapped my wings—or rather, my arms—before realizing what had happened.

It was a dream.

Thank god. I thought I was a goner. Only after catching my breath did the situation in the room come into focus.

“This is a breaking news report. A new Gate has appeared at Exit 3 of Hapjeong Station. Magical power measurements have confirmed it as a Grade C Gate, and…”

A small TV sat on the desk, showing an announcer. And then there was—

“What the hell was that?”

Jinho hyung¹ stood there with a pot lid in one hand and chopsticks in the other, staring at me like I was out of my mind.

“Some kind of performance art?”

“Shut up. I was dreaming.”

“About swimming?”

“About falling.”

“Good for you. You’ll grow taller.”

He delivered the line without a shred of interest and slurped up his noodles, looking completely at home. For a moment, I wondered if this was even my room.

“This is my room, right?”

“Probably.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Is this anything new?”

That actually sounded plausible. I almost bought it.

“Turn off the TV or something. People are trying to sleep.”

“Some inconsiderate bastard even hits people in the uvula while they’re sleeping.”

“…”

Anyway, that bastard had one hell of a mouth on him.

“If you’ve got nothing to say, eat some ramen. I cooked five packs because I thought you might wake up.”

Talk about foresight. I took the chopsticks from him, overcome with emotion.

This wasn’t just ordinary ramen. It was my first ramen in a month.

The smell that pulled at my appetite. Noodles cooked just right. Broth boiled spicy with separately sliced Cheongyang peppers.

This is insane. Absolutely insane.

Slurp.

By the time I came to my senses, it was all over. Jinho stared blankly as I licked the pot clean.

“I thought you were filming a commercial. Have you never eaten ramen in your life?”

“It’s my first ramen since I came back.”

“Are you still on that?”

“Try eating nothing but Chinese food for a month, then have some ramen. Michelin’s got nothing on this.”

“Stop. It’s not funny anymore.”

He looked thoroughly fed up. This time, though, I had something to back up my story.

“Look this over, then we’ll talk.”

“What’s this?”

“What do you think? A product user manual.”

“…Don’t tell me.”

“Yeah. It was inside that capsule. Read it.”

“Someone left this inside when they threw out a piece of junk more than twenty years old?”

Jinho tilted his head, then started reading. A few seconds later, he looked up.

“This is a misprint. The date of manufacture says January 1, 2020.”

I’d thought the same thing at first.

At first.

“That might not be a printing error.”

“Huh?”

“No, forget it. That’s still just a guess. What about the rest? Have you heard of the model or the manufacturer listed there?”

Jinho was crazy about electronics, especially capsules.

He was a well-known user on all the relevant sites and had even run an IT blog.

But his immediate answer sent my expectations crashing down.

“No.”

Well, that was only natural. Even an internet search hadn’t turned anything up. Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.

“You really don’t know? You know this field inside out.”

“Yeah. But I don’t know this.”

Jinho scratched his head.

“An illegally modified capsule? Or maybe a custom job? Honestly, I’ve never seen a design like that.”

The more he talked, the bleaker it sounded.

“Fine, forget the design. But I know every model from the very first to the latest—everything that’s ever been released in Korea.”

“And?”

“The model name written here. The manufacturer. I’ve never seen either of them in my life.”

“Couldn’t it be an overseas manufacturer?”

“Oh, you hopeless idiot. You dumbass. You moron.”

Looking thoroughly exasperated, Jinho thrust the manual at me.

“Read the first line.”

“Product User Manual?”

“Exactly. It’s in Korean. Korean!”

“Oh.”

“Whether H Soft is a domestic company or a foreign one, if they went to the trouble of producing a Korean manual, there’s no way I wouldn’t know them. It’s not like there are hundreds or thousands of capsule manufacturers out there.”

I felt like a complete idiot. Not that I knew anything about capsules in the first place.

Then Jinho spoke up.

“Wait a second.”

He pulled out his smartphone and started tapping the screen. He seemed to be searching, but the result was obvious.

“Fuck. All I’m getting is porn sites.”

Yeah, that one was pretty good.

“It’s not even a ghost company. Why is there nothing about it?”

“Read the rest too.”

By the time he reached the last page, he’d really feel like he’d been haunted. Jinho turned the pages with a serious expression.

Once.

Then again.

“Isn’t it incredible?”

“Yeah. Incredible.”

His voice was hollow.

“You told me to look at blank pages. That’s incredible.”

“Huh?”

“No wonder I thought this manual was so half-assed. No explanation of the capsule’s components, no operating instructions, and even the model name, manufacturer, and date of manufacture are a mess.”

“Blank pages? What are you talking about?”

“Well, well. Look at this humanities-major bastard playing innocent.”

I snatched the manual from him and hurriedly read it.

The contents I’d seen before falling asleep were still there. Precautions on the second page. Key features on the last.

“You can’t see this?”

“Knock it off. This is starting to scare me.”

That expression. That tone.

He meant it.

The writing I could see was invisible to Jinho.

Or maybe…

Only I can see it.

I remained frozen for a long time.

Pshhh—

I climbed out of the capsule on shaky legs.

Its glossy exterior made it look like a giant egg. This was the latest model, released only last month.

“Oh, you’re out already. Did you try the game I recommended?”

Still half out of my mind, I answered the capsule café owner sitting behind the counter.

“Yes.”

The virtual-reality game he’d recommended was a megahit with ten million concurrent users. He’d said it had incredible graphics, outstanding freedom, and more than seventy percent of the market.

“The graphics are insane, right?”

I logged into the game, saw the graphics, and thought:

Am I the one who’s insane?

This is the most popular virtual-reality game out there?

The graphics were good. I could give it that.

But that was as far as it went.

The NPCs’ faces and movements. Their dialogue patterns. All five senses as I experienced them through my character. All of it felt unnatural.

It was a game. It never felt like reality.

“Do you have any wuxia² games?”

“Ah, so that’s what you’re into? There are quite a few. What’s the title you’re looking for?”

“Murim.”

“Murim Online?”

“No. It’s an open-world game. Single-player.”

“Is there a wuxia game like that?”

Figures.

There was nothing more to hear. I staggered out the door, and the owner called after me.

“Come again!”

I wouldn’t.

Not ever again.

Hope Goshiwon.³

I sat beneath the old, rusted sign and pulled out my smartphone. The other end picked up almost before it could ring.

Click.

“Yeah. What?”

My one and only nemesis—no, my younger sister, Hayeon.

The moment I heard that uniquely bratty voice of hers, my throat closed up.

“Hello?”

“…Yeah.”

“Why’d you call?”

“Just because. I wanted to hear your voice.”

A deathly silence followed.

“I’m hanging up.”

“No, wait. Wait!”

“You have three seconds. What do you want?”

That damn girl…

Right. This was Jin Hayeon.

Thanks to her, my tear ducts, which had gotten a little moist, dried out like the sand around the pyramids.

“What’s Mom doing?”

“She went out on an errand. Call her if you’re curious.”

I deliberately hadn’t called her. Hearing this brat’s voice was already enough to choke me up. If I heard Mom’s, I might start bawling like a little kid.

I quickly changed the subject.

“What about you?”

“What do you think a high-school senior with a hundred and twenty days left until the college entrance exam is doing? Studying.”

Her tone was sharper than usual. Exam stress must have been getting to her.

“How’s studying going?”

“I bombed the July mock exam. I didn’t manage my condition right and missed even the easy questions. God, the more I think about it, the more annoyed I get.”

“It’s fine. Just do well on the real thing. How many did you miss?”

“Two.”

“That’s still Grade 1.⁴ What about the other subjects?”

“Two across all subjects.”

“Huh?”

“One in Korean history and one in math.”

“…Two total? Across every subject? Are you serious?”

“Obviously that’s what I meant.”

Smart little brat…

I knew she was good at studying, but I hadn’t realized she was this good. Thinking back on my own school grades, it really seemed like there was such a thing as dumping all the genes into one kid.

“You’re pretty good at this studying thing, huh?”

“From your perspective, aren’t I amazing?”

“W-what kind of nonsense is that? I was pretty good at studying too, you know. You just don’t remember because you were in elementary school…”

“Last week during a deep clean, I found your report card. There were so many Grade 7s⁴ I thought it was a slot machine that had hit the jackpot.”

“You need some allowance, right? How much does makeup cost these days?”

“That’s pathetic. Seriously.”

Cruel girl…

The call lasted more than ten minutes. I mostly listened.

Hayeon rattled on about studying, school, and a boy she was interested in. Her voice had grown much brighter than when we first started talking.

I found myself getting oddly sentimental.

I really did come back.

Had I been dreaming? Or had I lost myself in some delusion?

Only a day had passed in reality, yet utterly incomprehensible, inexplicable things had happened.

But I decided not to try to understand them anymore.

I’m back in reality now.

And this was where I had to live.

My family was here. I was here. That was enough.

I’d simply had a strange dream for a little while. The kind of dream that would naturally fade with time.

“So I…”

“Yeah.”

Listening to my little sister chatter, I got to my feet.

It was time to leave the old, rusted sign behind and return to my room.

Bzzzt. Bzzzt.

Seong Jinho cracked open his bleary eyes. The smartphone beside his pillow was ringing.

Six in the morning.

The signal that his day had begun.

“Oh, I’m dying.”

It had been five years since he left home. By now, the moldy smell that crept into his nose every morning had become thoroughly familiar.

Eyes half closed, Seong Jinho shoved his cigarettes and lighter into his pocket and left the room.

Nothing wakes you up like a cigarette.

He shuffled up to the rooftop in his slippers. Just as he put a cigarette between his lips—

Thud.

“Huh?”

What was that?

He leaned over the railing and spotted a hunk of metal in the recycling area directly below.

He also saw the well-built young man standing there, staring at it.

“Hey! Jin Taekyung!”

At Seong Jinho’s shout, Jin Taekyung looked up.

“What?”

“You throwing that away?”

The hunk of metal was the junk capsule Taekyung had picked up the day before. After pulling that ridiculous prank with it, he seemed to be taking it right back out to the trash.

He was awfully serious for a prank, though… Ah, whatever. It was all nonsense.

Seong Jinho let out a short laugh.

“Why throw it away? Aren’t you going back to Murim?”

“You believed that?”

Jin Taekyung smiled back. But to Seong Jinho, who had watched him for a long time, the smile looked somehow awkward.

What’s with him?

Something felt off.

Jin Taekyung waved to the uneasy Seong Jinho and started down the hill.

“Where are you going, you punk? Aren’t we having breakfast together later?”

“I have to work!”

Jin Taekyung left without looking back. Seong Jinho took a drag from his half-smoked cigarette.

“That bastard really works hard…”

Soon, Jin Taekyung disappeared from sight.

Seong Jinho stubbed out his cigarette in a flowerpot and was about to leave when the junk capsule caught his eye.

He said the manufacturer was H Soft, right?

It was probably just some half-assed prank, but there was no harm in looking into it.