Note: Is-nim is the shorter version of Ignis-nim. I will keep this moving forward.
Then he found Is-nim in his chat list and opened his profile. The messages he had hurriedly sent back when he had still been inside the attack-and-defense war had not even been checked yet.
So even if I send messages, he doesn’t look at them, huh?
Haein immediately pressed the voice connection button.
Only after the light of his monitor finally went out did Yeonjun calm down, letting out a sigh as he settled his startled heart.
What do I do now?
After the duel ended, whispers and guild invitations had kept flooding in like crazy, so he had turned them off for now.
But the problem was how to clean this up. Now that news of his return had already spread across the entire server, running away would not solve anything.
Yeonjun had to choose now.
Would he jump back onto the path of a named player, or would he choose to disappear again?
Just as Yeonjun, soaked in frozen exhilaration, could not easily make up his mind, a notification sound he had never heard in his life rang out.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
The strange notification sound, almost like some kind of signal, turned out to be an Open Messenger call request.
What is this? Who would send me something like this?
Flustered, he reflexively pressed the accept button, and a familiar nickname appeared in the center of the screen as the call connected.
—Hyung? What on earth is this? You said you weren’t doing high-end content.
At the clear voice, which sounded thoroughly sulky, Yeonjun jumped in shock and dropped his phone.
—Do you know how shocked I was when I got contacted while I was running an attack-and-defense war?
Haesal’s voice continued flowing out from the phone that had fallen toward the floor.
Was he around twenty now?
It was a beautiful voice that sounded as if it had only just passed through puberty, low at first glance, but not heavily settled.
I thought my control was dead too.
No, if he was being objective, it was dead. But no, that bastard was so bad he was basically running straight into his aim.
He hit him because he was slow, and dodged because he was slow. It was an extremely obvious logic.
Startled, Yeonjun quickly ended the call with his strength-drained hand. The excuse he had made to shake Haesal off had become a lie, and he had suddenly received attention. Both were facts he wanted to avoid.
“…I don’t know what’s going on either.”
There was no way saying that to the call-ended screen would reach anyone. Yeonjun set his phone to do-not-disturb so no notifications would pop up until the time he had set his alarm for, then placed it on the charger and pulled the blanket over his head.
I was just planning to fill out the encyclopedia.
If he could, he wanted to hide away somewhere no one would recognize him.
One, two, three.
He gripped the edge of the blanket tightly and took deep breaths to calm his quickened breathing, and only then did his startled heart settle a little.
In the end, it was just commotion on the internet. In reality, real people lived their own lives.
Ignis, who was only a hot topic online, could not have even the slightest effect on Yeonjun’s life.
Right, that was enough. Just as Yeonjun finally calmed down and let out a long breath, the voice he had heard a moment ago echoed in his ears.
‘Hyung, what on earth is this?’
No, thinking about it again, it did not seem like that had been his tone.
Yeonjun turned over, buried his face in his pillow, and held his breath. So what are you going to do now?
At the hope that, objectively speaking, he might still be not that bad, strength entered Yeonjun’s hand without him realizing it. But maintaining that strength was by no means easy.
‘But I lost rank 1 to Crew.’
If he wanted to confidently say he was not dead yet, he should not have lost rank 1 back then. If he thought he was fine only to be denied late, then Yeonjun’s mental state would not survive it.
Once again, he inhaled, held his breath, and counted to thirty. Soon blood rushed to his face, and his head shook side to side.
He did not know. There was nothing he could be confident about. In any case, for the sake of his daytime routine, it was time to sleep now, and since he had stayed up much later than usual, his eyelids were slowly growing heavy.
Let’s sleep first. After sleeping a bit, I’ll think about it again with a clearer head.
Yeonjun made that decision, closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, morning had arrived in an instant.
“…”
All through the early morning, Yeonjun dreamed of being chased by someone he could not identify.
No matter how much he ran, the face of the thing chasing him briefly took the form of a boss monster he had defeated during his prime as Ignis. Then it became his father’s face. Then it changed into Chief Joo’s face.
As if there were no meaning in Yeonjun running away, it kept rushing toward him and stretching out black shadow-like things, as if it might snatch his ankles at any moment.
Chased by a being that seemed to say struggling was meaningless no matter what he did, Yeonjun gasped for breath until he crashed head-on into someone who had been waiting for him ahead.
It was a dream, so of course it did not hurt, but something glowing warmly placed a shining sword in Yeonjun’s hand.
The radiance, giving off a soft silver light, soon burned away the black shadows that had been following him. The brightly shining thing stared at Yeonjun through the light as if waiting for him to step forward, then pushed him from behind.
Just as he had seen the motion on the screen, Yeonjun gripped the glowing sword and cut through the shadows, and at the end, there was nothing.
When Yeonjun turned around at the darkness that had vanished almost emptily, the warm light that had pushed his back had also disappeared without a trace.
Yeonjun was confused. What makes you different? There are plenty of people who obsess over me. So what about me is special to you, enough that you’re different from the others?
The moment Yeonjun thought that alone, the light flashed brightly, and he woke from the dream.
It was a stupid dream.
When he sat up in bed, sweating cold sweat, there were no notifications at the top of the screen, probably thanks to having turned on do-not-disturb mode before sleeping.
What else had Haesal sent him all night? Yeonjun suddenly felt ashamed that he had run away without saying anything.
It’s not like you’re eleven years old…
After taking a deep breath, he checked the messenger, and a huge number of Open Messenger messages had arrived from Haein.
[Dohae] Hyung???? 1:21 AM
[Dohae] What happened? 1:22 AM
[Dohae] Hyung, no, lol. 1:24 AM
[Doae] Please say something. 1:24 AM
[Doae] No, hyeo-yajgeoi. 1:25 AM
[Doae] Hyung, wait. 1:26 AM
[Doae] This isn’t you mocking me, is it? 1:59 AM
[Dohae] You’re not even looking at whispers. 2:01 AM
[Dohae] Did I seriously get blocked? 2:01 AM
[Dohae] Voice connection request has been accepted.
[Voice Connection] 0:27
[Dohae] ????? You didn’t block me???? 2:10 AM
[Dohae] Hyung, please say something. 2:11 AM
After sending about thirty messages like that, the end was a long apology.
[Dohae] Hyung, I’m sorry. I kept telling you that you were really fine and that you were plenty good, but you said you would absolutely never do it with me, and while I was in the attack-and-defense war, I saw you become a hot topic somewhere I didn’t know about, so I think I got really upset. I can’t help feeling disappointed, but that’s my own feeling, and from your perspective, you might have judged that there was no need to worry about it… (See more)
He was the one who had startled him out of nowhere, accepted the call and then unilaterally hung up, and ignored his messages. Yet seeing a message that ended in a long apology made him feel strange.
Seeing the sentences lying flat in the same low posture, saying things like, “I’m sorry for taking it out on you when it wasn’t something I had the right to be angry about,” and “It’s a good thing that you returned to PvP, hyung, and it never made sense for me to feel disappointed in the first place,” did not make his heart feel light.
What should he say in a situation like this? That there was no need? That he had been the one who ran away unilaterally, so there was no need to attach that much meaning to it, and he was not particularly angry, so Haein did not have to worry?
While Yeonjun was working hard to squeeze his brain, the time had come when, no matter how relaxed his morning commute was, he had to hurry up, get ready, and go to work.
‘Let’s go to work first.’
Things inside a game were only ever inside a game, and Yeonjun’s reality was at the company. During work, at least for a little while, he could run away without feeling guilty.
With that firm misunderstanding, Yeonjun went to work and roughly skimmed the company community, only to find a familiar name had followed him all the way there.
| [Open Community] [Title: Yeon is going wild right now.] [Post] Anyone been to the user community? A famous name from the early 2010s came back, beat an active ranker, and vanished ㄷㄷ; Do you think it’s really him? People in the community are saying the movement pattern is similar, so it seems like the same person. But can someone really take a ten-year break, come back, and still have their physical skill not die? I’m just jealous ㅠㅠ Even yesterday, my son told me, “Dad, you’re too bad, I can’t play with you”ㅠㅠ [Comments] – I saw that too. It really seemed like it was him. Amazing… – I’m shedding tears at the last line ㅠㅠㅠ – Have you ever had an eight-year-old say, “Dad, you’re so bad”? I made that game you’re playing… |
Even people in departments unrelated to Erha Online seemed to have at least heard the name of their company game’s most popular named player, and it had become the center of small talk all over the place.
Even Team Leader Ahn, who had originally joined as someone in charge of casual shooting games and whom Yeonjun had thought was not very interested in MMORPGs, brought up Ignis as a topic of team chatter.
“Oh, right. Yeonjun-ssi, did you see that too? Ignis was that famous player from the early days of Yeon’s launch. I heard people went wild yesterday because he came back?”
“…”
At the curse of Ignis following him all the way to the company, Yeonjun once again wanted to run away somewhere.
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