Episode 4
The surroundings were dark. In a dazed state, I got up from my seat and looked around. There he was, sitting in one corner, reading a book with a candle lit beside him.
What was he doing… reading a book in such darkness? No, how long did I sleep?
It was so dark that I couldn’t see what time the clock on the wall was indicating. I got up from the bed and approached him. Then, perhaps having sensed my movement, he looked away from the book, and turned towards me.
“Oh, you woke up? Did you sleep well?”
“Yeah, I slept like a log. By the way, what book are you reading?”
“It was on the desk. It seems like it was the book the health teacher was reading. It’s about first aid. It’s good to know, right?”
I glanced at the book at his words, and the page illuminated by the candle revealed pictures and text about inserting gauze into a wound. Just looking at it made me wince.
Well, it was good to know about first aid, but… I raised my hand and closed the book he was reading.
“You’ll strain your eyes. It’s not good to read in such darkness.”
“I’m fine…”
“No. Leaving that aside, what time is it now? How long did I sleep?”
He then checked his wrist. Following his gaze, I looked at his wrist, where a wristwatch showed 1 o’clock.
“It’s 1 o’clock.”
1 o’clock? Hold on. What time did I go to sleep? The sun was definitely setting back then… Was it around 6 o’clock? No, it couldn’t have been 6…
“Why didn’t you wake me up? You should’ve woken me up in the middle. Aren’t you tired?”
“I didn’t wake you up because you seemed really tired. I’m fine.”
“Still… What did you do while I was sleeping? You must’ve been bored.”
“I just checked to see if there were any useful drugs or anything, and since there’s internet access, I also looked up what was happening outside… I was doing this and that, so I wasn’t really bored.”
“…I’ve got enough sleep, so now it’s your turn. It’s 1 o’clock now… I’ll wake you up around 7.”
I forced him to get up, dragged him towards the bed and laid him down. I covered him with a blanket to tell him to sleep and was about to leave, but he grabbed my sleeve.
“What?”
“I really… don’t need to sleep. It’s scary without you…”
“Scary?”
“…I’m afraid you won’t be here when I wake up, noona.”
“Why wouldn’t I be? I’m not crazy enough to go out alone when there are zombies wandering outside.”
“Still…”
“Where would I even go?”
“Can you stay by my side until I fall asleep?”
“What?”
For a moment, I thought I misheard something and almost burst into laughter.
“I’m not going that far – I’ll be right there.”
“But… Being there and being next to me are different. I stayed by your side until you fell asleep…”
“You’re not a child, do you really need…”
“I’m still young.”
Why was he like this… A 20 year old wasn’t a child. He was an adult. He should say something that makes sense.
“You said you’re 20. You’re not a kid anymore, you’re an adult. If you’re an adult, act like one. What, are you scared of the dark or something?”
“Yes. I’m scared.”
“…How did you stay alone while I was asleep?”
“It was okay because I had a candle next to me at that time…”
“Then I’ll light a candle next to you, okay?”
As I said that, I shook off his hand and tried to leave, but then I heard a depressed voice from behind.
“Do you dislike me, noona?”
“…Are you saying this because I’m not staying next to you? Hey, honestly…”
“You were embarrassed being with me from the beginning. You kept your distance and… haven’t even called me by name, just ‘hey’ and ‘you’…”
Why was he like this, really…
I sighed softly and turned around. As I did, he got up from his seat, looking at me with teary eyes.
“When did I ever do that? You seem like you’re out of your mind because you’re tired right now. Go to sleep.”
“See? Even now, you didn’t call me by my name, you said ‘you’.”
“…Yes, Do-yoon.”
“Noona…”
Immediately, he called me pitifully, his voice practically dripping with tears. Damn it, this was making me feel like I was a bad person..
“I like you, Noona. I really like you… I missed you…”
Seemingly unable to continue speaking, he bowed his head and wept sorrowfully. His appearance was both bewildering and embarrassing, but mostly it was just exasperating.
What was I supposed to do when a grown man cried!
Why are you crying, why?! I didn’t even say anything, so why are you crying!
This was driving me crazy. But I couldn’t just leave him crying like this…
“Do-yoon, I’m sorry. I… I’ve just been a little sensitive because of the current situation. I’m sorry. So stop crying.”
I approached him again and patted his back. Then he nestled into my arms.
Yes, yes. I was the one who was wrong. I was bad. Let’s stop crying now, huh? As I patted him on the back like that and comforted him, he gradually stopped crying. With eyes reddened from crying, he looked up at me and asked,
“Then you don’t dislike me, right?”
“Yeah. I don’t dislike you… No, I don’t dislike Do-yoon. There’s no reason for me to dislike you, right?”
“Really? That’s a relief. I’m really relieved…”
Then, smiling slightly as if relieved, he buried his face in my embrace again and hugged me tightly with his arms wrapped around my waist. I looked down at him, sighed inwardly, and gently stroked his head.
***
I slumped into the chair, burying myself into it.
Sigh… Did I really show that I didn’t like him that much?
To feel bothered by him… no, I didn’t feel that way… but then again, seeing that the person himself said such a thing, it could be right.
I blinked at the empty space, then turned my head towards the bed where he had fallen asleep. He was asleep quietly as if he’d never cried. In the end, I had to stay by his side until he fell asleep. It didn’t take long. He must have been tired, because he fell asleep soon after I forcibly closed his eyes and patted him to sleep.
Did I have a reason to dislike him?
Not really. There was nothing as such. In fact, I liked him when I played the game. He was handsome, wasn’t he? Pretty, even. So, why would I dislike him? In that case…
“…Maybe it’s because of the sense of dissociation.”
I liked him as a game character that I saw through the screen. But to have that in reality, in front of me? Hmm… Should I say it was awkward? It was a bit uncomfortable. Especially since with him around, all sorts of events would happen, even life-threatening ones…
And the most important thing was that he could regress. Everyone had one life. When you die, it’s over. But he wasn’t like that. He could come back to life even if he died. Honestly, that made me have a slight sense of reluctance. Was it human to not die even when you die? And I worried about whether his mind was really intact. Watching him go completely insane was fine when he was just fragments of data, but an actual person beside me going crazy in real-time? Oh… it was too scary, wasn’t it?
I think I kept my distance from him without realizing it for these reasons.
“I should be more careful from now on.”
For now, I would keep moving with him, so if I showed that I was keeping my distance, the same thing as today might happen again, and it’d become troublesome.
After reaching that conclusion, I turned my attention away from him and looked at the computer screen on the desk. I considered using my phone since it had internet access, but in this kind of situation, I thought it would be better to save the battery. So, I decided to leave my phone and use the computer in the infirmary.
Click. Click.
Rustle…
I moved the mouse to open a window.
[Global virus outbreak… humanity in crisis…]
[Zombie virus is becoming a reality…]
[Where did the virus originate from…]
[Measures announced by the government… city at a standstill…]
There was no informative article in particular. Everyone was just writing sensational articles without even knowing why the zombies appeared.
I soon closed all the news articles and switched to X-Tube. It wasn’t much different here. Videos shot by X-Tubers obsessed with views… Among them, I clicked on the video ranked first in real-time.
Even with the sound muted, just watching the screen was like being in hell. Zombies roaming on blood-stained roads. Even though the video was showing a person being eaten alive and killed by zombies in real-time, it somehow ranked as the top-viewed video without any restrictions.
After watching the video with indifferent eyes, I eventually shut down the computer.
“Sigh… What should I do now?”
Survival came first… For my survival, I needed to clear this stage.
The condition to clear this stage was to endure for three days. Then, a ‘cleared!’ message would naturally appear and allow us to proceed to the next stage. After that, we had to clear each stage, collect gems, and then we could enter the final stage to see the ending.
When you have sufficient gems, a god suddenly appears, asking if it was you who called him, grants a wish and the game ends. It was a silly and anticlimactic ending, the plot twist was clumsy – abruptly bringing in a god out of nowhere – but there was nothing to be done. No matter what a player said, the ending the developers had already created couldn’t change.
Still, the graphics, production, direction, story, and gameplay were all excellent until the end. The developers seemed to focus on progressing the game through each stage.
Anyway, in this game, among the many stages, the first stage was the most crucial. The reason being that it uniquely held a hidden piece. Unless one wanted to enjoy their own self-imposed hellish hard mode, they had to obtain this hidden piece here and go.
“Alright. For now, let’s focus on clearing this stage and obtaining the hidden piece.”
After making a plan, my mind felt much calmer. Should I wake him up around 7 and then go out to get food?
Hmm… In theory, they say you can survive for about three days even without food if you just had water. In extreme situations, one could collect tap water from the bathroom and endure by drinking that, but honestly, we, who had lived comfortably like houseplants in a greenhouse, couldn’t possibly manage that. It was a hassle, but we needed to go find food soon.
While I was thinking that…
Knock, knock.
“…!”
I swiftly turned my head to look at the direction where the sound was coming from.
Knock, knock.
It was the door. The sound was clearly coming from the door. And then…
Click… Click…
The doorknob turned.
