134
The morning in the countryside village started quietly from an early hour.
“Ah, I want a cellphone too!”
…It was quiet until just now. If it weren’t for the 16-year-old Isquis Gorgon, busy throwing a tantrum from the morning.
“I told you we don’t have money.”
“How can a snake like you not have money?! I see the money here is paper, so what! You can just make a few copies with magic!”
“You stupid bird-brain, do you know how tight the law is here? Ah, really. Why am I even talking to a kid whose head isn’t dry yet!”
“Head isn’t dry… what? That’s an insult! You learned another swear word by yourself!”
As Isquis banged on the table and shouted in excitement, Apophis retorted without backing down. This only made Isquis more furious.
It was understandable, as the Apophis that Isquis knew could never be short of money. Until the Gorgon Duke’s family fell, Apophis was responsible for the economy of the duchy, and he was the cunning type who would always lament about the lack of money in the territory but eventually pull out a hidden money pouch when urgently needed.
So this time too, although he was wailing, if Isquis whined a few more times, Apophis would eventually give in and buy him a cellphone. Isquis didn’t realize that his behavior was no different from teenagers nagging their parents.
“Isquis, why do you suddenly want a cellphone?”
Clatter.
Yeon Ji-ho asked kindly as he placed a freshly made rolled omelet in front of Isquis. Following Yeon Ji-ho, Set also put down a large dish of braised ribs in the center of the table.
Today’s menu for the late breakfast cum lunch was braised ribs. The sweet and savory smell of soy sauce-braised ribs, made for those who couldn’t handle spicy food, wafted through the air.
While constantly swallowing his saliva, Isquis answered Yeon Ji-ho’s question.
“…Yang Seon-jae told me to contact him on Byeolsta. He said you can do that with a cellphone.”
“Byeolsta? You don’t necessarily need a cellphone for Byeolsta, you know?”
At Yeon Ji-ho’s words, Isquis’s eyes widened. It’s not only possible with a cellphone?
When the excited Isquis asked about the method, Yeon Ji-ho smiled and told him to eat first. He said he’d tell him after Isquis finished a bowl of rice.
Nodding frantically, Isquis immediately started eating. At first, he intended to empty just one bowl of rice to learn about Byeolsta, but the braised ribs were so delicious that he had to empty two more bowls. Of course, during this, he also got hit on the back of his head by Apophis for spilling rice grains while eating.
Anyway, Isquis was the second person to get up from the table among those eating. Leaving Shango and Apophis, who were still burying their faces in the braised ribs, Isquis circled around Yeon Ji-ho like an anxious dog.
“Shall we go to my room then?”
Yeon Ji-ho, who had slowly emptied his bowl, finished his meal and stood up. He gestured to Set, who was reflexively about to follow, to sit back down, and headed to the main bedroom with just Isquis.
On the way to the bedroom, Isquis had to keep pressing down his wildly beating heart. For Isquis, who had rarely entered the main bedroom, this place was like a secret space. Of course, the excitement about learning Byeolsta also played a part.
“Here, you can use this.”
What Yeon Ji-ho brought in front of the nervous Isquis was a ‘laptop’. That is, the thing they used last time to enter the… me? What bus?
It was a very puzzling object for Isquis, so he scratched his head. Then Yeon Ji-ho smiled and said:
“Isquis, did you go to the PC bang with Seon-jae?”
“Ah, yes! Of course!”
Isquis’s face lit up at Yeon Ji-ho’s words. The PC bang he went to with ‘Yang Seon-jae’, whom he was introduced to last time, was one of the most thrilling and memorable experiences in Isquis’s not-so-short 16 years of life.
‘Hey, are you good at FPS?’
‘F… what?’
‘Ah, can you shoot a gun?’
Gun?
Isquis just raised an eyebrow, not knowing what that was. However, Yang Seon-jae sat Isquis, whose face clearly showed he knew nothing, in front of a computer and finally introduced him to a shooting game that was said to be popular recently.
Isquis, who got unfamiliar equipment called ‘keyboard’ and ‘mouse’, at first just scratched the back of his head, finding it strange. But after closely watching Yang Seon-jae next to him, Isquis finally understood how to use these two weapons.
Isquis started to get really interested in the game when his ‘character’ used its ‘ultimate skill’ for the first time.
-Dragons, annihilate the enemies!
A short, intense line came through the headset, shaking Isquis’s brain. At the same time, the archer character Hanzo succeeded in shooting a huge dragon with one arrow. It was a blind shot, but as if beginner’s luck followed, there happened to be a large group of enemies in the path of that huge dragon.
-Double kill.
-Triple kill.
-It’s burning blue!
He didn’t quite understand, but a blue fire attached to his character’s portrait, and his face kept appearing on the top right of the screen.
At that moment, Yang Seon-jae, who was sitting next to him, threw off his headset and quickly stuck close. He grabbed Isquis’s shoulders, shook them wildly, and shouted excitedly.
‘Hey, are you crazy! You said it was your first time! What’s with that quadra kill!’
‘Uh…?’
‘Shit, were you an archer in your past life? Your talent is insane!’
Blink, blink.
Isquis hesitated for a moment at the praise mixed with intense swearing, and then a bit late, goosebumps rose all over his body. Now he got a sense of what he had done. He had annihilated most of the enemies with the dragon-filled arrow.
From then on, Isquis’s eyes sparkled as he properly grabbed the keyboard and mouse and started to focus on the screen. Isquis, who originally had excellent dynamic vision, quickly adapted to the game.
…If Yang Seon-jae hadn’t received a call from Yeon Ji-ho telling him to send Isquis home, Isquis might have stayed at the PC bang until that night.
As he returned to Yang Seon-rok’s house, Yang Seon-jae gave Isquis his Byeolsta ID. Along with the words to contact him if he wanted to go to the PC bang again.
“Looks like you enjoyed the PC bang?”
“…Huh?”
Isquis, who had been briefly reminiscing about his in-game achievements, lifted his head at Yeon Ji-ho’s voice. He saw Yeon Ji-ho looking down at him with crinkled eyes and a smile.
“Seon-jae is pretty good at games, right? When I played with him briefly before, it seemed like he had been gaming since he was young.”
“J-Ji-ho, have you played it too? ‘Hero Watch’?”
“Ah, no. I only play console games. Mostly single-player games. Ah, I haven’t played recently so I put them in the pantry. Do you want to try this next time too?”
Isquis’s eyes sparkled at the mention of games. Seeing his eagerness to nod immediately, Yeon Ji-ho said let’s learn this first and placed the laptop in front of him.
“You can think of this as a portable version of the ‘computer’ you touched at the PC bang. This is the keyboard, and this is the touchpad.”
Now, this is how you move it…
Yeon Ji-ho’s brief laptop usage lecture continued. And in less than 30 minutes, Isquis had mastered using the laptop.
Yeon Ji-ho logged into his Byeolsta account on the laptop, said he doesn’t use SNS much so Isquis should use it freely, and left the room. It seemed he had plans to go out in the evening, so he was finishing his tasks before that.
Sitting in front of the laptop like this, Isquis nervously rummaged through his pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper.
He hadn’t memorized the keyboard yet, so he clicked one by one, comparing the letters on the keyboard with those on the memo, and then pressed the enter key. Then a familiar photo popped up.
The round back of the head standing far away was clearly Yang Seon-jae. Happy to see a familiar face, Isquis carefully touched the mousepad and clicked on the speech bubble icon as Yeon Ji-ho had taught him.
But that was as far as things went smoothly. It was difficult for Isquis, who hadn’t properly learned Hangul yet, to type what he wanted to say on the keyboard. After pulling at his hair, Isquis finally clicked on the smiling face next to the chat window with the mouse instead of the keyboard.
Then a bunch of emojis popped up.
Isquis clicked on the most neutral smiling face among them.
“^_^”
“Yang Seon-jae: d?”
“Yang Seon-jae: What is this?”
Surprisingly, the reply came back immediately. Isquis started clicking on emoticons continuously, wearing a smile identical to the emoji on his face.
“:D”
“:>”
“♥♡”
He also sent various symbols whose meanings he didn’t understand, besides expressions. However, the response from Yang Seon-jae was different from what he expected.
“Yang Seon-jae: gtfo”
“Yang Seon-jae: blocked bye”
…And with that, the chat was cut off. The despairing Isquis jumped up from his seat.
“I need to learn how to write.”
A spark flashed in Isquis’s eyes. By the way, Isquis had never received formal education even in Asterra, so he was illiterate even in Asterran, the official language of Asterra.
Isquis ran straight to the living room. Outside, Shango and Apophis were quietly enjoying their dessert. Isquis shook Apophis’s shoulders and shouted.
“I want to study, Appo!”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
How cute!