#133
“Do I… look like mold?”
When I looked at Hyun Dowoon with a slightly shocked expression, he asked back with a surprised face, “Mold?”
“Wasn’t it like dandelion seeds?”
“Have you never seen mold before?”
“Ah… I didn’t think it was mold because it looked fluffy. Isn’t it usually grayish or bluish?”
From the way he spoke, it was clear that Hyun Dowoon had never seen mold in his life. Well, having grown up in a good family with servants, where else would he have seen it except in textbooks?
Anyway, mold spores and dandelion seeds look quite different, so I accepted that Hyun Dowoon wasn’t teasing me with his comment.
“By the way, it’s quite dirty,” Hyun Dowoon muttered, looking at his feet. The room was quite dark, but the sticky feeling like being immersed in flour dough was truly horrible. The glowing green color made it feel even dirtier.
According to the employee, they pay the most attention to cleanliness, but it was unpleasant even just from the visual stimulation.
“It’s surprising that some people like this,” Hyun Dowoon said with a frown. I pointed at Shin Haejun.
“Maybe it exists… because of people like that?”
Shin Haejun was jumping around, touching various slimy, sticky, and bizarre objects, shouting about finding numbers and words written on them.
I quietly watched Shin Haejun shaking a bottle covered with what looked like frog eggs, shouting that when he turned on the light, only certain eggs lit up, then I looked away.
‘Is this… emetophobia?’
I know it’s not officially recognized as a disease, but I understood why it was called a phobia due to how disgustingly horrible it was. The more I looked, the more goosebumps I got, and my face involuntarily twitched. I don’t know how Shin Haejun can be so unbothered.
Unlike Shin Haejun, Hyun Dowoon muttered with a slightly nauseated face, “I heard Team 1 often rolls around in dungeons…”
“Do you hate it that much?”
Shin Haejun, who had come closer, picked me up and pulled me out, then asked with a nonchalant face.
“Should I freeze the floor if you hate it?”
“This is a place used by ordinary people… That’s destruction of property.”
Freezing the floor would make it easier to walk around, but we couldn’t destroy someone else’s property just because we didn’t like it. Who knows what would happen when it melts?
Realizing that we needed to find escape hints to get out of this room, I slowly started moving forward one step at a time.
Hyun Dowoon, noticing that I didn’t like moving, tried to pick me up and carry me, but I refused, thinking it would be better if we all spread out to find hints.
“Wow… I can see why it’s an R-rated theme even though it’s not particularly violent or sexual.”
I frowned as I used a toy-like drill to grind away strange flag-shaped substances stuck to a tooth model to find numbers. The tingling vibration reminiscent of being at the dentist made me grimace involuntarily.
“There’s a card here that says ‘Happy’. Wasn’t there a 5-letter alphabet lock over there?”
“Yes… just a moment.”
Hyun Dowoon pulled out a card from inside a bizarrely shaped clown’s mouth and read it. I entered it into the lock attached to a large mouth model on the wall. Inside, I could see a piece that looked like a puzzle piece.
‘Ah, I really hate this…’
I frowned, deeply regretting my own suggestion to try an escape room. But we had to continue to get out, so I reached in…
“Aah!”
“What, what’s wrong!”
Shin Haejun flew over when I screamed, asking urgently. Hyun Dowoon also came closer with a startled look.
“So-something brushed past me…”
I quickly pulled out my hand and checked it, seeing fluorescent purple liquid on the back of my hand.
‘I can’t take this anymore…’
If this is R-rated, then I’m under 19…
I was so shocked that my mind went blank.
***
‘Ugh, I hate this so much!’
‘Aah!’
‘Aaaah! Shoot! Shoot everything!’
I heard familiar voices from somewhere. These voices were…
My real-world self. As I wondered when I had said such things, various scenes came to mind. When I was dangling from a huge spider web, when I was hit by a penetrating skill inside the body of a giant slimy mud monster, when I encountered a swarm of bat monsters in a cave that used bizarre ultrasound to locate characters.
The truly hateful situations I had experienced in the game flashed by.
‘Huh?’
The background suddenly changed to a gloomy forest. And through it, a giant tree with various fluorescent mushrooms hanging from it was walking around.
The tree approached me, and from between the round mushrooms, a huge tongue shot out and licked my character.
This was absolutely unbearable. I slashed at the slimy tongue that had licked my body with a flamethrower.
***
“What kind of dream is he having? His body keeps twitching.”
Shin Haejun, who was holding Lee Jaeha’s body, muttered with a displeased face. The surroundings were a complete mess, but only the bed covered in fake blood remained intact.
After Lee Jaeha fainted from being startled by the room’s devices, Shin Haejun had smashed up the room. Hyun Dowoon didn’t stop Shin Haejun but joined in. They both knew that this world was moving according to Nine’s manipulation anyway.
While Shin Haejun was preciously holding Lee Jaeha, Hyun Dowoon touched Lee Jaeha’s phone to summon Nine.
-(╯•﹏•╰):
I didn’t know it would turn out like this either.. Really..
“If all of this is fake anyway, you should just show things that Jaeha-ssi would like. What were you thinking?”
“Yeah, you should have made it a sexy theme instead!”
As Hyun Dowoon interrogated with a cold voice, Shin Haejun jeered from behind. Nine spun around with a dejected face.
But.. I don’t know anything!
“What?”
Before, when the author was writing directly, there was no room for me to intervene, but now I have to come up with everything, even movie content! But I only know things from inside the game! The basic framework of how society works was all created by the author! I don’t have the ability to create content!
“Then you could have brought out something bright and fun from within the game.”
But… Yeonsoo-nim seemed to be a bit suspicious… I didn’t know he’d suddenly want to come do this. Because I had to squeeze it out on the spot… I mixed various things from the game….
Nine seemed to be reflecting on causing Lee Jaeha to collapse. As the dejected emoji spun in place, Hyun Dowoon sighed deeply.
In the end, Nine had mixed various things together because using content from the game might raise suspicions. Shin Haejun thought Nine was being stupid. He wondered if it was unavoidable because Nine was an artificial intelligence, not human.
“You said you mixed things from the game anyway? What will you do if that also raises suspicion?”
From the really trivial things… to the things Yeonsoo-nim didn’t like much, I mixed everything… I thought he might not remember the things he doesn’t like?
In the end, Nine had created this knowing Lee Jaeha would dislike it. Nine seemed to be regretting the “fainting” part.
I can’t help it. These delicate parts need to be adjusted directly. There’s no data!
“Still! Making him collapse like this is too much!”
What! You’d say something different if you tried it yourself? But when Yeonsoo-nim said ‘Let’s go to an escape room’, I couldn’t show him a completely empty world! I did my best at the point where Yeonsoo-nim didn’t think it was strange at first!
Hyun Dowoon, who had been angry, closed his mouth, overwhelmed by Nine’s logic. Certainly, if Lee Jaeha, who came from another world, started noticing strange points and becoming suspicious, it would cause a bigger problem. This world could only be maintained if Lee Jaeha believed it was real.
He really shouldn’t become suspicious… Bad things will happen again. I don’t want that either.
Nine, who had been angry, spoke again with a dejected face. Did “bad things happening again” mean facing the moment when Lee Jaeha almost left this world once? Hyun Dowoon hesitated for a moment but thought that was the case and sighed lightly.
“Ugh… ugh… hate it…”
A groan escaped from Lee Jaeha’s mouth, who had been quietly unconscious. It seemed he was having some kind of bad dream. The bad experience from earlier had clearly brought on a nightmare. Shin Haejun thought so and glared fiercely at Nine.
He might wake up soon! I’m going now!
As Nine disappeared into the phone, just as it said, Lee Jaeha’s eyelids began to flutter lightly.
“I hate tongues!”
And Lee Jaeha shouted with a tremendous voice as he suddenly sat up. But he soon held his forehead and drooped his head, seemingly dizzy.
“Jaeha-ssi, are you alright?”
Hyun Dowoon hurriedly approached Lee Jaeha. It was to prevent him from seeing the completely destroyed room. At the same time, he tapped the phone in his hand. Thinking that having something was better than nothing, even though Nine was the culprit who caused this mess, only Nine could fix it.
Shin Haejun seemed to have the same thought, pulling Lee Jaeha into his arms to prevent him from seeing the surroundings. While the two covered as much as possible with their bodies, the room returned to its previous state in real-time.
“…Huh?”
A small, questioning sound escaped from Lee Jaeha’s mouth. Wondering if he had noticed something, Shin Haejun and Hyun Dowoon’s bodies stiffened.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
