85. Sleepless Night
After everything somehow came to a good end, night arrived.
The moon was already high in the sky by the time I logged out of the game.
The light feeling I had inside the game, and the peace that had settled over my heart, slowly began to get buried beneath old memories piling up one after another.
According to experts, the more time you spend locked away by yourself, the more your past mistakes keep coming back to haunt you.
So maybe this was the time to go outside.
What an incredible development.
Instead of shutting myself in my room because I was having a hard time, I was actually thinking about going outside.
“Night~ walk~”
Had I gotten old?
I even said it with a little rhythm without thinking.
I still thought I was young...!
The apartment hallway was dim and empty at this hour.
Every now and then, the distant sound of the elevator reminded me that people actually lived here.
“For some reason, tonight feels like a night when I don’t want to take the elevator.”
Well, I only lived on the third floor, so taking the stairs wasn’t exactly a big deal.
The hallway lights suddenly flashed on as I approached, almost as if they had been startled by me.
I slowly made my way downstairs on tired, lifeless legs.
I had put on a jacket because I thought it might be cold outside, but it was warmer than expected.
If I walked for a while, I might even have to take it off.
As expected, staying locked inside all the time really wasn’t good.
When you only experience the outside world through the internet, there was a huge difference compared to actually seeing and feeling things yourself.
Right.
Pie apparently lived somewhere around this area now.
Maybe if I got the chance later, visiting her once wouldn’t be so bad.
“...Hmm...”
Right.
That brought me back to Pie.
Pie, who was no longer some nonexistent intelligent life-form, but an actual highly intelligent living being who had appeared right in front of me.
From what I heard, half of her was still inside World Gate.
If that other half wasn’t found, something bad would probably happen.
Well, if I thought about it in the most predictable way, anyway.
“Haah... If this is the Matrix... I’m probably not Neo.”
A red pill and a blue pill placed in front of me.
Which one had I picked?
At this point, even I didn’t know.
Actually, maybe this was better.
I hated heavy topics.
I preferred things that were light.
Something so light I could just let it drift away.
Even if people liked serious and dependable people, I wished the world that approached me could be light.
Come on.
Haven’t you tormented me enough already?
I walked out of the apartment entrance and stared blankly at the moon hanging in the sky.
Whenever I felt down and my head was completely empty, the moon somehow looked especially beautiful.
Maybe it was because it shone so brightly against the pitch-black sky.
Or maybe because its shape changed little by little every time I looked at it.
I didn’t really know.
But when I stared at the moon like this, it felt like my mind became clearer.
“...Hmm... Maybe I should move somewhere bigger.”
See?
The complicated thoughts disappeared immediately.
I didn’t even have a stable source of income, yet here I was talking about moving.
Then again...
If I simply left the enormous amount of money the Chairman had given me in the bank, the interest alone might be enough for me to live comfortably.
In that case, maybe I should just buy an apartment building somewhere and become a landlord.
That didn’t sound too bad.
“My god... I can’t believe I’m capable of thinking this extravagantly.”
Just a few months ago, I had been the kind of guy who thought,
Today’s meal can be cold rice mixed into yesterday’s leftover ramen broth~
Looking at it this way, wasn’t the Chairman basically my lifesaver?
I had been only a few steps away from dying of malnutrition, and now he had given me enough money to dream about becoming a landlord.
Maybe calling him Master really was the correct thing to do.
“Haah... Making money through the game still isn’t very efficient since World Gate hasn’t properly settled yet. Compared to the time I put into it, the value is too low... Reality really doesn’t work like a novel.”
Of course, I knew better than anyone that the main reason things didn’t work out was because I had no motivation.
So please don’t criticize me too much.
Still, inside the game, I had plenty of motivation.
The version of me inside the game felt slightly different from the real me.
Even though I wasn’t doing it intentionally.
Could that be my true nature?
If so...
Wasn’t that a little problematic?
A materialistic outlaw who did whatever he wanted?
Maybe it was because I had no emotional room to breathe in reality.
Was all my built-up stress exploding like that inside the game?
If that was the case...
Then maybe I really did need to become a landlord!
“But... do I have to study to become a landlord? Waaah~ What a pain.”
I walked through the night streets while spouting nonsense.
But now that I could see the flow of things even while spacing out, my blank state of mind kept getting interrupted.
The steps of a passing cat.
The clouds drifting through the sky.
The movements of people returning home after a difficult day.
Cars moving along the road.
Even the wind blowing past me.
It was distracting.
“Next time I meet Dorfin, I should ask what I’m supposed to do about this.”
Maybe this was proof that I really did have some kind of talent.
But even thinking that was annoying.
It made me feel too awake, which irritated me.
“...Come to think of it, when is Jin going to get himself together? Is Modak alone not enough?”
Dorfin had already recovered long ago and even received compensation because of it.
But Jin still hadn’t shown any real improvement.
Whenever he got the chance, he sank back into depression.
He seemed softhearted, but somewhere inside that soft heart, he had developed a stubborn streak.
No matter what anyone told him, he insisted that he was right.
When someone was suffering, naturally you tried to bring them something that would make them happy.
But Jin would enjoy it as much as possible, and afterward start saying he was miserable and sad again.
Watching him was enough to make even me depressed.
Wouldn’t it be okay if I started getting annoyed with him now?
At this point, maybe dragging an entire truck full of students for him to teach would be one solution.
If he was too busy teaching them to death, he wouldn’t have time to think.
“...Right. Let’s take him to the merfolk. That should balance things out.”
Think about it.
Even if the merfolk had regained their strength, it would still take a huge amount of time before they became powerful enough to face the Empire or the Alliance.
And during that process, countless outsiders would definitely be worked to the bone.
A little while ago, I had checked the official homepage.
There was a hurried announcement filled with typos saying that a new region called Karantlia had been opened.
Well...
It was technically my fault, but Karantlia had somehow managed to get entangled with both the Empire and the Alliance.
What a headache.
If it had connected to some smaller nation instead, or at least revived without anyone hearing about it, they could have grown much more safely.
I was honestly worried they might repeat the mistakes of countries that suddenly experienced an economic boom, wasted everything on luxury without thinking about the future, and then collapsed not long afterward.
...Yes.
I knew this was all my fault.
“Oops. Habit got me again...”
Without noticing, I had arrived at the riverside where I usually ran in the mornings or on sleepless nights.
This place was unusual.
Even late at night, the streetlights were bright and there were plenty of people around.
Of course, that also meant there were plenty of drunk people and plenty of minor incidents.
I should just avoid them.
Now that I could see the flow of things, if I got cocky and started using that ability recklessly, I might end up doing something that could get me legally punished.
So let’s be careful.
Very, very careful.
I quietly walked along the road while many people came and went.
At one point, a group of bicycles suddenly rushed past without any lights even though it was the middle of the night.
That scared the hell out of me.
“Oh? Aren’t you my junior?”
“Wow. What a coincidence.”
While I was waving my hand around to chase away the bugs gathering beneath a streetlight, the junior trainer who had been running behind me recognized me and called out first.
I thought this every single time I saw him...
Did this man have anything else in his daily routine besides exercise?
Was he suffering from some strange disease where he would die if he didn’t exercise for at least an hour every day?
“What brings you outside? I didn’t expect to see you walking around like this.”
“Did you tell Lucy the password to my house?”
“...What?”
This guy was the junior of that trainer.
He might not know much about the Chairman, but maybe he knew something that could serve as a clue.
Why had the Chairman created World Gate?
What exactly was he trying to accomplish with it?
If his goal was truly to stand in a position similar to something like Ruin itself, then why had he chosen to pursue that dream through the form of a game?
