67. What an Incredible Coincidence
“You…!”
The moment I saw Pie’s face, strange thoughts about fanatics and their conspiracies flashed through my head, and I almost charged at her in a burst of emotion.
Good job holding yourself back, me.
Standing a little away from the mess Ien had caused, Pie—or rather, Lucy noona?—was staring intently at us.
No, at me.
What was going on here?
For now, I should at least say hello.
“Ms. Lowell?”
“Please call me Lucy.”
Unlike Pie, she had a husky voice.
She seemed to smoke quite a lot, so maybe that was why.
If she smoked while looking like Pie right now, it would feel like watching a little kid smoking a cigarette.
I really didn’t want to see that.
Apparently, customization no longer caused any sense of discomfort, so a change like this was perfectly natural in a way.
Still, personally, I wanted to see the same cynical look she had in reality even inside the game.
“Uh… your customization turned out really well.”
“I put quite a bit of effort into it.”
She seemed slightly taller than the Pie I remembered.
And was she wearing makeup too?
I had absolutely no interest in that sort of thing, so I honestly couldn’t tell.
Even the scent carried toward me by the wind was a powerful perfume that I could never have imagined coming from Pie back then.
It made me slightly dizzy.
Well, twenty years had passed, so in a way, it made sense—
Ah, no.
This wasn’t Pie.
No, but still…
She looked way too similar.
Was something like this really possible?
Could someone accidentally create a character that looked this much like another person?
There was no way they had given players the appearance of an NPC known as the Witch of Corruption as a preset.
I had absolutely no idea what was going on.
“Ah! Let me introduce you! This is my… summon? Modak.”
“Cute.”
Just in case, I lifted Modak up and held him in front of Lucy.
Pie and Modak hadn’t exactly been close, but during those twenty years—
No!
This person was Lucy!
Get a grip, Kim Ingwang!
Ah, right.
Since she was Lucy noona, showing her Modak could still be useful.
Y-Yeah.
Calm down!
Anyway.
Modak knew Pie’s face just like I did, so he must have been just as shocked by Lucy’s appearance.
It would have been strange if he wasn’t surprised!
“Is this the person you were talking about? She looks incredibly similar.”
“Right?! She does, doesn’t she?! I’m not imagining things, am I?!”
“Why are you getting so excited, Dad?”
“Dad? Are you married?”
“N-No! He’s my child, but he’s a child I gave birth to with my heart! His name is Modak! As in a bonfire!”
This was embarrassing.
I was so flustered that I didn’t even know how I was supposed to calm myself down.
As someone currently suffering between the boundaries of reality and a fantasy novel, I suddenly wanted to explain this whole situation to someone in an incredibly long and detailed speech just so I could finally feel relieved.
“Uh, for now, please sit here.”
“Thank you. Could I perhaps have some tea too?”
“Ah, yes. Of course.”
To be completely honest, the thought running through my head right now was absolutely ridiculous.
Realistically, something like that couldn’t possibly happen.
It shouldn’t happen.
And if I genuinely believed something like that was possible, then either something was wrong with my head, or I had become one of those unfortunate people who could no longer distinguish reality from fiction.
Still, let’s make one assumption.
Only an assumption.
Nothing more.
This was merely the assumption of an idiot who kept treating himself like an idiot whenever he wondered whether the Chairman might secretly be planning something completely absurd behind the scenes…
Or whether a fantasy novel might somehow be becoming reality.
So there was no need to think too deeply about it.
“Here’s the menu.”
“Thank you… Um, you’ll have to let go of it before I can read it.”
For example…
What if this game, unbelievably enough, could affect reality?
Yes.
This was an enormous what if.
Still, if that were true, it would explain why I had seen that message window asking whether I wanted to give up even in reality.
At least somewhat.
It would be easy to say that I had developed some kind of mental illness.
But even now…
I hated admitting it.
I didn’t want to acknowledge it.
I didn’t want to see it, feel it, or even remember it.
But although it happened less frequently now, the phenomenon still occasionally occurred to me.
“If only these damn message windows hadn’t appeared, I wouldn’t be thinking this much.”
“Ah, I agree that seeing bright blue text windows pop up in such a realistic game does ruin the atmosphere a little. Um… could I have the menu now?”
That was the kind of game this was.
A game that made me wonder whether some kind of mysterious fantasy power might actually be involved.
Just look at Dorfin and Jin!
Could you honestly call them NPCs?
If someone told me they were real people who had been kidnapped from somewhere and imprisoned deep inside the Super Real company building, forced to live as NPCs, I would have no choice but to believe them.
That was how absurdly advanced the technology was.
That was how impossible the phenomena inside this game seemed.
And if that was the case…
Could it really be impossible for Pie, an NPC from inside the game, to come outside?
“Ugh… I’m such an idiot….”
“Why is he acting like this? Are you okay?”
Of course!
That was ridiculous.
There was no way something like that could happen in reality.
And it shouldn’t happen!
So, trying to think about this as realistically as possible…
Even though it still sounded ridiculous, if I eliminated the impossible and considered the one remaining possibility as the truth…
Then the conclusion was this.
Pie had actually been a character controlled by one of Super Real’s employees.
“What do you think?!”
“Yes, I think so too. I suppose I’ll have tea some other time.”
“Hmm! That makes no sense!”
“Doesn’t it?”
But if that were true, it would mean that most of Super Real’s NPCs were controlled in the same way.
Was something like that even possible?
Well, at the very least, it was more believable than the possibility I had considered before.
The company occupied an absurdly huge amount of land.
They employed a ridiculous number of people.
