Chapter 371 - Black Star (4)

Kang Hyunbyul.

My ex-girlfriend, four years my junior.

She'd asked me out while we were both job hunting, and we'd dated for about three years.

Not that any of that mattered right now.

I lifted my gaze back up to meet Hyunbyul's eyes.

For some reason, she was giving me a cold look.

Probably because...

"That's where you're looking at a time like this?"

"Ahem..."

What was I supposed to do? My eyes had wandered.

I quickly pulled myself together and went on the defensive.

"Don't get the wrong idea. I was just checking."

"Checking?"

"Your default outfit here reflects how you see yourself."

"Then... this is how I see myself?"

"That's right."

If you wanted different clothes, you had to buy them with GP.

That was how I'd gotten the sweatpants and short-sleeved T-shirt I was wearing now.

"What was your default outfit?"

"Uh..."

A fitted navy suit.

My ex-girlfriend... meaning her, had bought it for me to celebrate my getting a job.

But...

"This. What I'm wearing right now was my default outfit."

Admitting the truth was a little embarrassing.

If I told her I'd been wearing that long after we'd broken up, wouldn't it look like I still had feelings for her?

"... Hmm. I suppose that is very you."

Fortunately, Hyunbyul readily accepted it without any particular suspicion.

But that did leave me curious about something.

"Very me? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Why so defensive? I just meant you look comfortable."

"O-oh, yeah?"

Sheesh. I could never hold my own around her.

Was it because I had so much to feel guilty about?

"Anyway... don't you have anything to say to me?"

"... Long time no see, Hyunbyul!"

"That's it?"

"Uh..."

Was there supposed to be more?

Oh, I hadn't asked her that yet.

"So how did you end up here?"

Hyunbyul silently glared at me, then sighed as if giving up.

"You still haven't kicked that habit of running away."

I pretended not to hear.

"Forget it. At this point, I suppose none of that really matters anymore..."

"Exactly. What does the past matter? They say the present is worth more than gold..."

I felt a chill from somewhere.

"Why'd you stop? Go on."

"No reason. I just thought I should apologize first."

"..."

"I'm sorry about what happened back then. I mean that."

As I stripped every trace of joking from my voice and apologized, Hyunbyul looked at me with slightly startled eyes.

"You've... changed a little."

"It was kind of inevitable... Anyway, are you accepting my apology?"

"You don't need to apologize. Like I said, what does it matter now? It wasn't really something either of us needed to apologize for..."

"That's... true."

After that brief exchange, an awkward silence settled between us.

Understandably so.

I was essentially reuniting in a distant other world with an ex-girlfriend I'd broken up with a year ago in real-world time.

"Anyway, I'm seriously surprised. I never dreamed I'd see you here."

"Really? I thought we'd meet someday."

"... Huh?"

"Ever since I woke up here, I kept thinking you must be somewhere in this world too. It was actually a bit of a relief."

"A relief...?"

"I mean your disappearance. I was really shocked when I heard. I thought you might have done something to yourself..."

Oh. I supposed it could have looked that way.

I felt a little grateful that she'd worried about me, even though it had been over a year since we'd broken up like that.

"So... how did you end up here?"

Our conversation kept getting sidetracked, making this my third time asking already.

"You never struck me as the gaming type..."

Fortunately, this time Hyunbyul gave me a proper answer.

"Well... I got a little curious after we broke up. I wanted to know what was so fun about it that you were so obsessed."

That was a strange feeling.

When we were dating, she'd scolded me for running three computers just to play a game like that.

No, wait.

"Then... you cleared the original?"

"Come on, how could I clear that? Later, after you went missing, I happened to find out there was a cheat version, so I played that."

"Then... what multiplier did you clear it on?"

"Thirty times."

"Thirty times...?"

A thirty-times multiplier put her pretty high up the ranks.

After all, this world was full of people who'd been brought here after playing with higher multipliers because they couldn't even clear it at that level.

"You must have played pretty hard..."

"Not really. I cleared it in about ten runs, I think? Maybe it was because I'd been playing the original, but it felt easy. And I'd learned a few things from watching you play back then."

"Oh..."

Come to think of it, I'd often explained things to Hyunbyul and shown off whenever I discovered a hidden piece or something.

She was so smart, she'd probably remembered it all.

"Why the sudden gloomy face?"

"... You can tell?"

"Of course. Think how much time we spent together."

After a moment's hesitation, I simply answered honestly.

"It's nothing. I was just thinking how you always listened without complaining, even though you probably weren't interested..."

Feeling awkward even as I spoke, I trailed off.

Hyunbyul answered after a brief pause.

"... You really have changed a lot."

"It's been a long time."

"That's... yes, it has..."

Things nearly turned awkward again, but it didn't last long. When I asked whether she knew what had happened after I went missing, Hyunbyul told me what she knew.

In short, it went like this.

My company had filed a missing-person report after a month, and she'd found out when the police came to see her.

And...

"You met my mother...?"

"Yes. At the police station."

"What did that woman say...?"

"She didn't speak to me directly."

"But something did happen."

"..."

"It's okay. Tell me."

Hyunbyul seemed to deliberate at my urging, then carefully spoke.

"She talked about inheritance for quite a while... then asked the police if there was any way to register your death before the required missing-person period was up."

"Ha..."

I'd more or less expected it, but it still felt like shit.

How much money did she think I'd saved up?

I was an idiot for hoping otherwise.

GRIND

As I unwittingly clenched my jaw, Hyunbyul tried to comfort me.

"S-still, you have five years. You weren't in an accident, and there was no evidence you'd been the victim of a crime, so they couldn't classify it as a special disappearance."

"What's the difference?"

"With a special disappearance, inheritance is possible after just one year."

"I see."

That was some consolation.

Even as I thought that, I found it rather funny and let out a small chuckle.

Wasn't that just like Hyunbyul's way of comforting someone?

Even back then, rather than offering empty sympathy, she'd find the positives and use logic to comfort me.

She'd played a fairly big part in shaping who I was today.

"So what happened after that?"

"I don't know either. I was dragged here three months after you disappeared."

"What...?"

I was genuinely surprised.

The Stone Fragment of Records had tangled up the timeline, but simply counting elapsed time, it had already been four years and one month since I'd become Bjorn Jandel.

And since the time ratio was five to one...

'That means nearly ten months have passed in the real world since I disappeared.'

In other words, Hyunbyul would have been summoned to this world around the summer of the 154th year of New Beginnings.

That really had been an eventful summer in all sorts of ways.

It was right around when that pillar of fire had erupted in the Dimensional Plaza too.

That thought made me curious about something.

"Then why did you only come to the community now? If you were summoned then, you must have spent almost three years in this city."

"I'm not an explorer. I suppose that made me harder for them to notice."

"You're not an explorer...?"

"No. Does it make any sense to fight monsters like that in real life just because I played a bit of a game? I just got a regular job at a decent place and earned money."

"From the sound of it, you must be human."

"And I guess you're not?"

Her question left me at a loss for words.

I was debating whether it was safe to share that sort of personal information.

Had she sensed my hesitation in that brief moment?

"I see. You don't want to tell me."

Hyunbyul's eyes narrowed into long curves.

* * *

I'd seen that look a few times when we were dating.

Back then, it had sent me scrambling to appease her however I could, but I didn't need to do that now.

Frankly, we weren't together anymore, were we?

Hyunbyul had always been rational. There was no way she didn't know that.

"You're the one drawing the line first, okay?"

"Yeah."

"... Fine. I won't ask you things like that anymore. Happy?"

True to form, she coolly accepted it.

Still, perhaps she was a little hurt?

"But don't expect to hear anything about me either. I won't tell you, not even if it kills me."

Well, yeah. That was only fair.

There was no arguing with that, so I nodded without any regret.

Hyunbyul bit her lip.

"You really aren't curious at all."

"If you told me, I'd have to tell you too."

Instead of making excuses, I answered honestly.

After all, she knew exactly when I'd arrived. Just telling her my race would drastically narrow down the possibilities.

"..."

Silence stretched on as we simply looked at each other.

"... Let's sit down first."

"... Yes, that would be better."

It felt awkward to keep standing, so we sat on the sofas provided.

But once we were seated, we had nothing much to talk about.

So I started with something light.

"This is your first time in the community, right?"

"Yes."

How had she gotten an invitation if she'd been working an ordinary job in this world? I suddenly wondered, but swallowed my curiosity.

"Do you need any GP? I can give you some. You can exchange it for cash at the Trade market too."

"No, thanks. I can earn that much myself. Besides, cashing out would have to involve an actual transfer of money, wouldn't it? Couldn't that expose my identity?"

"That's... true."

In truth, I'd only said it to get the conversation going. If she'd tried to cash out her GP, I'd have done everything I could to stop her.

"You... became an explorer, of course?"

"I did."

We'd agreed not to say anything that could identify us, but I readily admitted it.

If I rejected even a topic like this, we wouldn't be able to hold a conversation at all.

"What are you smiling about?"

"Nothing. It's just... I can't really picture you fighting monsters with blood flying everywhere."

"You get the hang of it."

"It must have been hard."

"What about you?"

"I've been doing all right. Honestly, working here is easier."

Well, she was the smartest person I'd ever met.

She must have adapted to this world quick—

"Really. They don't even have proper computerized systems, so it was easy to build up my initial capital."

Capital? Was she saying she'd embezzled money?

"And maybe it's because the market itself is so poorly structured, but once I really started investing, the returns were pretty good too."

"..."

"Hansoo."

"... Yeah?"

"On that note, why don't we stop testing the waters and just get together?"

"Haha, get together...? But we already—"

"No, I don't mean get back together. I mean join forces. I'll support you behind the scenes, financially and otherwise."

"Support me?"

"After achieving financial freedom, my next goal was to acquire power. And recently, I made a connection with someone pretty high up. I'll use that influence to back you."

"What do you want in return?"

"Isn't it obvious? In return, you'll take me with you when you go back. Going home is your goal too, isn't it?"

"Going home..."

As I trailed off, Hyunbyul's expression changed, as though she'd picked up on something again.

"Don't tell me... you're planning to stay here?"

I couldn't find any reason to deny it.

"Even if I go through hell to get back, there's nothing waiting for me there."

"... What about your mother!"

"Huh? My mom?"

"If you stay here, your entire housing deposit will go to her!"

Oh. That was what she meant.

"Oh, that's definitely some motivation."