[Guild/Planaria: Now who’s going to be our ranged DPS?]
The moment everyone held their breath, waiting for Ignis to open his mouth, Yeonjun, on the other side of the monitor, had turned bright red as if his face might burst.
He was ruined.
Ruined.
He really wanted to die. If he died right here, he felt like they could write [Died from being too embarrassed] as his cause of death.
Since when had they known?
In front of him, they had gone, “Ahh~ Yes~ You’re someone else~” and then behind his back, they had even laid in wait for him?
The impression he had of Haesal, to whom he had opened his heart just a tiny bit, who had been promoted in his mind to a veteran player who was good at the game and treated him well in a way that was burdensome, instantly crashed down into that of a fraud who had been mocking him.
How funny must it have been to watch him pretend not to be himself all this time?
And what about the pathetic way he fumbled around in RPG dungeons or quest dungeons?
Had they watched him today and laughed, thinking, ‘How is a Flammer losing to a Crusader in DPS?’
Or had they been thinking, ‘Even that legendary Named can’t beat the passage of time after all?’
Yeonjun felt as if all the blood in his body had gone cold.
He was not even slightly aware that the misunderstanding had happened because his standards were too high and because he was thinking of his own peak playing days.
He was simply embarrassed and humiliated.
As if it were not enough for things to be a mess at work, even in the game he had returned to after ten years, he had been deceived.
His face flared hot.
The chat seemed to be scrolling up quickly with something, but none of it entered his eyes. He only wanted to run away from this situation.
In reality, unless he stopped breathing altogether, he could not escape, but in a game, all he had to do was cut the connection.
Yeonjun immediately pressed esc and force-closed the client.
Only after the screen returned to the desktop did his head turn cold.
He should at least have thanked the people who had helped him. But at the same time, resentment surged up.
They had all clearly known, yet they had pretended not to and joined in teasing him, hadn’t they?
With shame rising all the way to the top of his head again, Yeonjun wanted to stick his nose into a dish of water and die, if only he could.
However, cruelly enough, there was something more important than death for an office worker. It was none other than getting to work on time.
‘I have to go… I have to earn money.’
Unlike developers, who had plenty of places willing to call them in, planners like Yeonjun had to hold on frugally for as long as they could here.
That way, he could pay off this damn jeonse loan and move his snail shell to a slightly bigger home.
‘First, let’s sleep…’
Sleeping would not solve everything, but at the very least, it would let him escape from the immediate embarrassment.
Yeonjun rustled around, pulled the blanket all the way over his head, held his breath, then let it out in a long, “Puhah,” and shook his head.
Since when had they known? Had they just not believed him from the beginning?
At this point, that seemed highly likely.
Since they had pretended to be fooled just enough, how ridiculous must he have looked, innocently saying thank you and asking for favors?
Now he understood why, when he had asked why they liked Ignis so much, they had poured out chat messages in such a rush that it felt burdensome.
It had all been to make fun of him.
After barely calming his excitement, Yeonjun now felt sad.
The tiny, modest joy he had found in his harsh daily life had come back as one huge, horrible slap in the face.
Haesal was not a cute fan who remembered his past self. He was a deceiver.
Since earlier, the Open Message notifications he had set to silent seemed to have been updating like crazy on one side of the status bar, but he did not even want to look at them.
Yeonjun sighed then squeezed his eyes shut, confirmed that the sender of the messages was Haein, and pressed down on the notification window.
[This notification will not be displayed in the status bar.]
[Turn settings on] [Turn settings off]
Yeonjun pressed the turn settings off button and made it so they would not even appear in the status bar at all.
He did not want to think about what he should do from now on, but for now, he just wanted to run away. Even from this reality, where he had become so pathetic.
***
The next morning, Yeonjun opened his eyes in a terrible mood and pressed his fingertips against his eyes, which had swollen up from stress overnight.
He had not exactly cried, but so much heat must have rushed to his head that it throbbed like the head of someone who had cried all day.
Still, he had to go to work.
Yeonjun opened his banking app, checked the deposit record for his salary, and clenched his fist slightly.
Let’s go out and earn money.
He struggled into his clothes, stuffed the last of the bread he had bought a little less than a week ago into his mouth without really eating it properly, and by the time he was done, it was already the hour when he had to hurry if he did not want to be late.
‘What am I supposed to do about the game now…’
Blankly boarding the subway headed toward the station near his company, he looked around and saw people with shabby expressions similar to his own packed in like bean sprouts.
Everyone’s life is hard.
Even if it’s shitty and you want to run away, there’s nothing you can do.
You have to make a living. Put another way, maybe it was all right to run away from things that did not affect his livelihood.
Yes, let’s run away.
Surrounded by the zombie horde of the morning commute, Yeonjun made up his mind.
Let’s think calmly.
At this point, without interacting with people and while only doing fringe content, how was he supposed to get information that could cut off Chief Joo’s head? Forums?
He was too tired now, and his mental strength could not hold out, so even just lurking in a space where many people’s opinions clashed back and forth was painful.
‘I was too complacent from the start.’
Let’s not hold on to useless hope. Let’s just pray that the executive line Chief Joo has grabbed onto gets blown away for embezzlement or something! That’s more realistic!
Having reached that conclusion, Yeonjun headed to the office.
“Yeonjun-ssi, good morning~.”
Starting the day with the team leader’s lively morning greeting, Yeonjun soon learned, through a phone call he could hear from one corner of the office, the TMI that the team leader’s child was sick again today and could not go to daycare.
After replying with a copy-paste answer, eyes unfocused, even to child Hansol’s weekly report, he stretched long. By the time he had finished the routine work of the morning, it was already nearly time for lunch.
“Shall we go eat soon?”
“Yes.”
At Yeonjun’s short answer, Team Leader Ahn finished tidying up her monitor and led Yeonjun to the cafeteria.
As always, the company cafeteria was crowded, and for free food, the quality was quite good, so Yeonjun renewed his determination to stay attached to this company and keep going.
“Yeonjun-ssi, what are you eating today?”
When he casually stood in front of the meal-ticket machine and checked the menu, today’s Korean menu was jjolmyeon sundubu.
Yeonjun felt his mood, which had been sunk to rock bottom since last night, improve a little.
“Korean.”
“Then I’ll eat noodles.”
They each scattered to get their meals and took a corner of a table. Only then did his stomach seem to realize it was hungry, and he heard a gurgling sound like air escaping.
Yeonjun secretly wrapped a hand around his stomach, gave a small cough, and picked up his spoon. The spicy broth he had not had in a while was sharp and salty.
Right, everything is about making a living, so at least I should eat well.
Just as Yeonjun scooped up a thickly swollen jjolmyeon noodle from the stew, put it in his mouth, and was feeling a small happiness, a gloomy shadow fell behind his back.
‘Fuck.’
Why has this bastard come all the way here again? Is he trying to pick a fight?
Yeonjun, appalled, set down his spoon and turned around. That same irritating face was looking down at him with a leisurely expression.
“Assistant Manager Sung, long time no see. Whew, I wandered around for ages looking for you.”
‘Then why were you looking for me?’ Yeonjun suppressed the urge to immediately fling his spoon at him and calmly opened his mouth.
“What did you need me for?”
At the blatant atmosphere of, ‘If you don’t have business, get lost’, a small female employee who had been hiding behind Chief Joo popped out.
“Oh, ooh! He really does have a similar impression!”
What is this? What did he say this time to turn me into a spectacle? Just as Yeonjun’s eyebrow twitched, thankfully, Team Leader Ahn stepped in.
“Oh my, what’s this atmosphere? Are you trying to set up an office blind date or something?”
At that advanced conversational technique of spouting complete nonsense to change the mood, Chief Joo took a retreating step backward and denied it.
“What are you talking about? The event preparation team was having a hard time, so I was going to help them.”
“Why, are you going to take our Assistant Manager Sung and make him carry things again?”
At Team Leader Ahn’s prickly question, which sounded like a joke, Chief Joo placed his fingertips on his chin and looked Yeonjun over from head to toe.
At that unpleasant, sticky gaze, which absolutely did not feel ordinary in meaning, nausea rose in Yeonjun.
“No, not as a porter. I think we’ll need to assign him something a little more special. How tall is Assistant Manager Sung?”
At Chief Joo’s incomprehensible question, Yeonjun wanted to glare and say, ‘Why do I have to tell you that?’ But he was a chief, and for now, he was still a true elite riding the highest fast track to success.
“I’m 183 centimeters.”
“Ooh, even your height is just right.”
Was he planning to make him dress up as a tree or something? Or hold a parasol? Just as all kinds of odd jobs that required height flashed through Yeonjun’s mind, the young employee standing beside Chief Joo held out her phone screen to him.
“Look, he really looks like you, Assistant Manager Sung! I’m telling you, you’re perfect!”
So what is that! When Yeonjun narrowed his eyes and looked down at the screen, an image of a blond knight bearing a majestic title was displayed.
As Yeonjun remembered it, he was one of the core figures of the Chapter 6 main quest, a handsome NPC packed with a high concentration of provocative settings that fans would like.
“Isn’t this Logan…?”
When Yeonjun asked, recalling the conversation he had with that guy last week, the employee nodded again and answered energetically.
“Yes! We were worried because none of the cosplay staff matched the image this time, so it’s such a relief that you’re here, Assistant Manager Sung!”
‘…’
What is she talking about? At those words like a bolt from the blue, Yeonjun doubted his own ears.
Jjolmyeon Sundubu is a delicious variation of Korean soft tofu stew (sundubu jjigae) that includes chewy jjolmyeon (wheat noodles).
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