Chapter 40

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

Far below, a high, steep gorge came into view. Shaped like a bottle gourd, it held people—hundreds of them, at a rough count.

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 over my shoulder. A huge cloud of dust was sweeping through the gorge toward us.

“Fight for yourselves! Fight for the flesh and blood and loved ones who will be trampled by the enemy!”

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 plunged into the depths of consciousness.

“Pwah, pwah-pwah!”

I flailed desperately with my wings—or rather, my arms—before it hit me.

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. Mana measurements have confirmed it as a C-rank Gate, and…

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

“What the hell was that?”

Jinho hyung. He held 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 tossed out the line with zero soul 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 the TV off or something. People are sleeping.”

“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 boiled five packs because I thought you might wake up.”

Talk about foresight. I took the chopsticks from him, a wave of feeling hitting me.

Was this ordinary ramen? This 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.

Insane. This is insane.

Slurp.

By the time I came to my senses, it was all over. Jinho hyung stared blankly at me 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.”

“You’re still going on about 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. But this time, I had something to back me up.

“Look this over, then we’ll talk again.”

“What is this?”

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

“…”

“Don’t tell me…”

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

“You’re saying someone put this inside a piece of junk more than twenty years old when they threw it away?”

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

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

I’d thought the same thing at first. At first.

“That might not be a printing error.”

“Huh?”

“No, never mind. That’s still just a guess. What about the rest? Have you ever heard of the model or manufacturer listed there?”

Jinho hyung was crazy about electronics, especially capsules.

On the related sites, he was a named user people knew by name alone. He’d 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 hyung scratched his head.

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

The more he talked, the bleaker it got.

“Fine, I’ll grant you the design. But I know every model from the earliest ones to the latest. Everything that’s ever been released in Korea.”

“And?”

“The model name written here. The manufacturer. Complete strangers.”

“Couldn’t it be an overseas manufacturer?”

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

Jinho hyung thrust the manual at me, looking thoroughly exasperated.

“Read the first line.”

“Product User Manual?”

“Exactly. It’s in Korean. Korean!”

“Oh.”

“Whether H Soft is a domestic manufacturer or an overseas one, if they went as far as making the user manual in Korean, there’s no way I wouldn’t know them. It’s not like there are hundreds or thousands of capsule manufacturers in this business.”

I felt like a complete idiot. Not that I knew anything about capsules. That was when Jinho hyung spoke up.

“Wait a second.”

He pulled out his smartphone and started tapping the screen. Searching, from the looks of it. But the result was obvious.

“Fuck. Nothing but a porn site.”

Yeah, that one was pretty good.

“It’s not even a ghost company. Why isn’t anything coming up?”

“Read the rest of it, too.”

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

Once.

Then once more.

“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 slapdash. No explanation of the capsule’s parts, 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 liberal-arts dumbass playing innocent.”

I snatched the manual and read it in a hurry. 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?”

“Cut it out. This is starting to get scary.”

That look. That tone. He meant it. The writing I could see was invisible to Jinho hyung.

Or maybe…

Only I can see this.

I stayed frozen like that for a long while.

Pshhh—

I climbed out of the capsule on shaky legs. Glossy exterior, shaped 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 at the counter.

“Yes.”

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

“The graphics are insane, right?”

I logged in. I looked at the graphics and thought:

Am I the one who’s insane?

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

The graphics were good. I could give it that. But that was as far as it went.

The NPCs’ appearances and movements, their dialogue patterns, the five senses I felt through my character—all of it was unnatural. It was a game, but it never felt like reality.

“Do you have any games set in wuxia?”

“Ah, so you’re into wuxia? 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.

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

Click.

“Yeah. Why?”

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. I wanted to hear your voice.”

A deathly silence followed.

“I’m hanging up.”

“No, wait. Wait!”

“Three seconds. What’s your business.”

That damn girl…

Right. This was Jin Hayeon. Thanks to her, the tear ducts that had gotten a little moist dried out like sand around the pyramids.

“What’s Mom doing?”

“She went out. Said she had an errand. Call her if you’re curious.”

I deliberately didn’t. Even this brat’s voice was enough to choke me up. If I heard Mom’s, I’d probably bawl like a little kid.

I quickly changed the subject.

“What about you?”

“What’s a high-school senior with a hundred and twenty days left until the college entrance exam supposed to do? Study.”

Her tone was sharper than usual. Exam stress must have been hitting her hard.

“How’s studying going?”

“I bombed the July mock exam. I failed to manage my condition 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 1.¹ What about the other subjects?”

“Two across all subjects.”

“Huh?”

“One in Korean history and one in math.”

“…Two in 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 study pretty well, huh?”

“From your perspective, isn’t that really good?”

“W-what kind of nonsense is that? I studied pretty well 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 7s 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 much brighter than it had been at first.

I found myself getting oddly sentimental.

I really did come back.

Had I been dreaming? Or lost in a delusion?

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

But I decided to stop trying to understand them.

I’m back in reality now.

And I had to live in reality.

My family was here. I was here. That was enough. I had simply dreamed a strange dream for a little while. The kind of dream that would fade on its own with time.

“So I…”

“Yeah.”

Listening to my little sister chatter, I stood up. It was time to step out from beneath the old, rusted sign and go back to my room.

Bzzzt. Bzzzt.

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

Six in the morning. The signal that started the day.

“Oh, I’m dying.”

It had been five years since he left home. The moldy smell that crept into his nose every morning had gotten pretty familiar. Eyes half shut, 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. He’d just put a cigarette between his lips when—

Thud.

“Huh?”

What was that? Wondering, he leaned over the railing, and a hunk of metal sitting in the recycling area right in front of him caught his eye.

So did the well-built young man gazing 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 using it for some ridiculous prank, he seemed to be taking it back out to throw away.

He’d been awfully serious for a prank like that… Ah, whatever. It was nonsense.

Seong Jinho gave a short laugh.

“Why throw it away? Not 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. As Seong Jinho stood there uneasily, Jin Taekyung waved and started down the hill.

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

“I have to work!”

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

“That bastard’s really working 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.