“Mm— mm, mm…!”
My lips were completely trapped by his, so I struggled as much as I could without being able to speak.
Beep— beep—. Just as the piercing warning sound started to numb my ears, thud!—his grip suddenly loosened. I collapsed straight to the floor, gasping for breath as I stared at ShutUp’s legs standing firmly in front of me.
“Hmm. The effect’s good.”
ShutUp checked his status window and licked his lips with his tongue. I hurriedly checked my GG too. Two percent left. Until fainting.
No wonder my body wouldn’t listen to me. Like I’d taken a sleeping pill, I couldn’t put any strength into my limbs. My breathing came out ragged, like I’d climbed a high mountain. It didn’t hurt, but ShutUp’s voice echoed loudly in my ears, leaving my mind hazy. As if I’d been hit with a debuff, everything felt murky and distorted.
…I should rest.
Thinking that, I tried to press log out, but my hand was suddenly grabbed. Then our fingers interlaced like we were forming a link. I tried to pull away in a panic, but ShutUp’s hand, tightly threaded between my fingers, wouldn’t budge.
“Heeey— leet gooo. Ah.”
Even my speech came out slurred. ShutUp just kept smiling while holding my hand like that.
“Wanna see what a real bastard looks like?”
“Whaat?”
Suddenly, everything went pitch black.
And then a message appeared in the center.
<<‘GentleTouch’’s GG has reached maximum and has entered Faint Mode. Approximately 23 hours required until recharge completes.>>
What is this now?
I tried logging back in, but it wouldn’t work. Something felt off, so I took off the helmet. I wondered if it was broken. Twenty-three hours? It came out of nowhere, and I couldn’t make sense of it.
First, I called Han-woo.
“Hey, what’s this? My GG filled up and I can’t log in.”
[Did you link with ShutUp? You should’ve controlled it a bit.]
“How do I get back in?”
[You wait a day. Or buy a paid item to shorten the time.]
“No way I’m buying a paid item just for this.”
After hanging up, I turned on my laptop. I went to the official homepage and searched GG fainting, and it seemed to be a hot topic—even the free board was filled with posts about it.
Everyone was venting just like me, saying their GG filled up and they unfairly couldn’t log in. Wondering if a paid item was really the only solution, I opened the shop.
“Huh… what the.”
For a second, I thought an extra zero had been added by mistake. The paid item that reduced time wasn’t 10,000 won—it was 100,000 won.
“What? A hundred thousand won? What kind of insane game is this?”
I stared at it in disbelief when I noticed an article about Blood Planet on a portal site. I almost ignored it, but just like I’d said moments ago, the headline read: <A Game Item Costs 100,000 Won? This Is Absurd>.
When I clicked in, it said the item that removed fainting hadn’t always been expensive. Because of the game’s addictiveness, playtime needed regulation, and Blood Planet’s addiction level was currently considered dangerous. By law, the recommended playtime had been set to under six hours a day. Accordingly, whether Guide or Psychic, if you overexerted yourself and filled your gauge, you’d receive a penalty forcing you to rest for about a day.
In other words, that bastard had deliberately overlinked just to seal me off for a whole day.
“Wow. Ha… seriously. Ha….”
In the end, I had no choice but to go to bed early. Lying there, I worried, ‘There’s no way he’ll keep doing this, right?’
“He can’t be that crazy.”
But ShutUp was even crazier than I thought.
***
“Bye.”
Even today, the moment I logged in, ShutUp kissed me.
Honestly, the kiss itself felt good—almost like it was real. But the instant the warning alarm rang in my ears, any sense of bliss vanished and urgency took over. All I could think about was prying this guy’s mouth off me.
This has been happening for three days now. Still, since I managed to log in for even a brief moment, I was able to receive the experience points ShutUp gained.
“Ah, seriously. What is this? So annoying.”
The time remaining until I could log in still read 23 hours above my character. But maybe because I’d managed to link even briefly, I’d reached level 36. Of course, my ranking was still D.
But power-leveling really was effective. My level was rising ridiculously fast. When I told Han-woo, he said he was jealous and joked that maybe he should’ve just been a Guide too.
As expected of a B-rank, Han-woo enjoyed hunting with people. His specialty was [Poison], a Psychic ability that generated toxic substances to deal continuous damage.
Psychic attributes were assigned randomly, so to change them you had to delete your existing character and make a new one. But to prevent people from recreating endlessly, there was a one-week waiting period before you could remake a character.
Thinking I should sleep early again today, I lay on my bed scrolling through the game boards on my phone. While I was lying there, a message came from ShutUp.
[Log in at 9 tomorrow.]
It wasn’t even a question like “Will you come?”—just a command. Getting a message like this on my real phone, not inside the game, made me wonder what he even thought I was.
Unbelievable. Seriously.
I glared at the message for a moment, then replied. From the past few days, I’d learned that ShutUp got annoyed if I answered late, so I sent replies as soon as I saw them.
[Okay. Got it ^^]
It hurt my pride, but I needed him to hunt so I could gain experience too, so I went along with it obediently. Yeah, embarrassment only lasts a moment. I figured I’d stick with him until A-rank, and if I couldn’t find a decent Psychic by then, maybe I’d partner with Han-woo instead.
Then suddenly, I wondered if linking with Han-woo would mean kissing and holding hands like ShutUp did.
…Ugh, chills.
I couldn’t even imagine it. With ShutUp, it felt separate because he was just a character in a game, but doing that with a real-life friend? I’d probably quit the game entirely.
If I were just going to play casually, I even considered remaking as a Psychic and leveling slowly from low levels—but the moment I remembered the giant spider inside the castle, all motivation vanished.
I hate bugs. I even pay for pest control at home; there was no way I wanted to suffer from insects inside a game too. Still, I couldn’t give up my selfish desire to become high level and get rare loot.
Choosing Guide was a god-tier move.
Getting power-leveled by ShutUp like this might actually be the best decision I’d made.
***
Around the time office workers were getting off work, a customer looking for a jeonse lease came by. While I was showing them a few suitable homes, my phone rang. I was about to say, “If you’re another client, please wait,” since I had one more place to show—but it was the landlord from the building across the street.
[Yoo Du-seon. Buy some condoms. 0.01.]
“Zero point zero… what?”
[One.]
After saying okay and hanging up, I just stood there dumbfounded.
This wasn’t a normal errand. Seriously, what was this? It felt like being someone’s snack runner back in school. Things had been quiet lately, so I thought he’d stopped ordering me around—but here we go again.
After seeing the client off, I went to a convenience store. Buying the condoms the landlord asked for felt embarrassing even though they weren’t for me. So I stacked a bag of jelly I didn’t even eat on top before placing everything on the counter.
But… he’ll pay me back for this, right?
Even while running the errand, I found myself worrying whether he’d actually give me money. That’s just the reality of living paycheck to paycheck.
As I walked toward the building, though, something felt off. The contract had the old address written down, so I hadn’t paid attention to the new one—but a familiar set of letters was engraved on the nameplate.
24, Jamun-ro 54-gil.
Where had I seen that before?
Lately everything was some kind of “-ro” or “-gil,” so I couldn’t figure out where I’d noticed it. Maybe my eyes were just tired from searching through listings all day yesterday.
On the way up, I also grabbed the mail addressed to him. Not because I cared about him—just in case he made me run another errand later. The recipient name read “Seomun Jun.”
Oh, right. His name was Jun.
At first, I thought his last name was Seo and his given name was Mun-jun, but actually Seomun was the family name and Jun was the given name. I chuckled to myself inside the elevator and stopped at the 7th floor, standing in front of his door.
But unlike before, it didn’t open right away. Even after ringing the bell, there was no answer for a long while.
“Ah, what the.”
Irritated, I pressed it again. Just as I was about to hit it one more time, a voice from the intercom told me to wait.
After a moment, the door opened, and a long, solid arm stretched out. His palm was empty. I hadn’t noticed at first because only his arm was sticking out, but he was shirtless, wearing only pants.
When I didn’t hand it over immediately, he reached further. I pulled the convenience store bag back and told him the price, and he clicked his tongue.
Come on, Juni. An errand is an errand—pay up.
As he turned to go inside, another man walked out from one of the rooms.
But… he was only wearing briefs. That unfamiliar man handed Juni a wallet and rubbed his back. Maybe because I’d only ever seen men touching each other’s backs in bathhouses, it caught me completely off guard.
What… did I just see?
I hid my expression as best I could, pretending not to be surprised.
Jun pulled out ten thousand won from the wallet and handed it to me, then tried to close the door like he didn’t need the change. But I hated these kinds of awkward arrangements. He was the type who’d order me around again later and bring up the leftover change.
“What?”
I quickly shoved my foot in the doorway to stop it from closing, and he replied irritably. Without thinking, I stuffed the jelly I’d bought and the coins from my pocket into the hand holding the doorknob.
“Here’s the change. If you add the jelly price, it should match exactly. Ah! And this—your mail.”
Then I slipped my foot out and gently pushed the door shut for him.
Beep— click.
Even after hearing the front door close, Jun stood there, staring down at the jelly in his hand.
“You went to buy something—so why’d you get this?”
On the jelly packaging, a mushroom-shaped character grinned brightly.
