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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 7
Chapter Title: Modern Civilization Tour -4
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Looking down below.
A steep incline of stairs, so dense and treacherous that one slip could cause serious injury.
Old walls covered in random graffiti.
Cigarette butts and trash scattered messily everywhere.
Looking up above.
The uncomfortable, filthy view of the ground from just moments ago was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, stars gathered together, hand in hand, singing in unison,
and a warm moon hung there, illuminating the darkness.
I lived in a hillside slum.
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Poor folks don't have many games they can play.
Hopping along the faded lines scratched into the parking lot.
Kicking around a worn-out soccer ball that's lost all its bounce.
If even that's not possible, just gazing up at the sky.
That's why my childhood memories were filled with that night sky.
I was weak and sickly, so I couldn't play with the other kids, and there wasn't much to do inside the house either.
The science textbook from the social worker was already worn thin from endless reading.
I read the newspapers too. Half the words were too hard to understand, but I kept going back to them.
So I stared at the sky.
Dreaming while gazing at the sky.
The black night sky was a canvas just for me.
With imagination, I didn't have to pay for paint—I could draw whatever I wanted.
What if I'd been born rich?
What if I'd been like Taemin from my class, handing out Choco Pies during class president elections?
What if I stumbled upon a magic lamp discarded on the roadside...
My childhood fantasies always ended incomplete.
Becoming rich. Tossing out fried chicken instead of Choco Pies at the election.
While walking through the slum, picking up a magic lamp from a cat's food bowl.
But I could never picture what came after.
The me in those fantasies, clutching unimaginable luck, just didn't know what to do and gave up.
Imitation is the mother of creation, or so they say. Just like someone who's never seen a dinosaur couldn't imagine one.
Having never had it, I couldn't imagine happiness.
All I could vaguely sketch was a smiling face.
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Why do people hate other people? I obsessed over that thought back in middle school.
It wasn't some philosophical musing.
I was getting beaten every day by my so-called "friends" in class, and curiosity got the better of me.
Sometimes for being poor, sometimes for forgetting supplies, sometimes for not having a mom.
They'd spout some reason every time they swung their fists, but we all knew it was a lie— they knew it, and I knew it.
So I couldn't help but wonder the real reason.
What on earth made them pick on a quiet kid like me?
If it was harassment without reason, then why could people hate others for no reason at all?
Around then, villains started appearing in my fantasies.
A monster who stole my shoes and tossed them into the bushes. One who secretly jabbed pushpins into my back during class.
A monster who stole the supplies I'd scraped together to buy and flushed them down the toilet.
In my fantasies, cornered by monsters, I'd become rich, fling fried chicken around, or pick up that magic lamp.
But there was still no happy ending. Even if I pushed the monsters far away, they'd always come back eventually.
Losing in reality, losing in my moonlit dreams, day and night of constant defeat.
One day, it hurt too much.
I thought it was my body aching, but no.
Sure, I had plenty of bruises, but by then, those barely hurt anymore.
It was my heart that hurt.
Like a cavity, the pain starts when the rot reaches the nerve.
Something precious deep in my heart had been chipped away at, bit by bit, until it finally hit the core.
I cried out of fear and sorrow.
Once that precious core was gouged out, I wouldn't be me anymore.
The moment I stopped being me, the rage I'd gritted my teeth through would burst free. I'd hurl curses and grab something sharp to charge at those rotten "friends."
It wasn't becoming a criminal that scared me.
It was losing my humanity.
The first time is always the hardest. The second is bearable, the third feels normal.
The instant violence wins over anger, I'd become just like the monsters in my fantasies.
No—worse than monsters.
They had the money to attend school without worry, both parents alive, and a gang of friends to hang with. I had none of that.
If I lost my humanity too, I'd have absolutely nothing left.
I had to protect my heart. That one precious thing, I had to safeguard.
I tried.
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Observe deeply enough, and you learn a lot.
People are the same. Some parts are incredibly complex, but others are so simple you can diagram them.
I classified human types and studied what behaviors worked on which.
People don't always appreciate unconditional devotion.
You have to pull back sometimes, remind them to be grateful. People cling harder to what they might lose than what they have.
People care desperately about social scrutiny. Use others' eyes as a weapon.
Even the toughest thugs lose their edge under the gaze of a crowd.
So for those who hated me,
it was more effective to make an indifferent multitude hate them than for me to hate them back.
Instead of living by my heart, I calculated everything with my head.
I smiled through sadness, cried through joy. I catered to those around me while maneuvering them to act for me. The "real me" trapped in a corner of my mind felt suffocated, but that was better than getting beaten.
That's how I got through my mechanical college life.
I joined a club. Figured it was good for building connections.
To solidify my social standing, I even dated a girl. She wasn't my type, but rejecting her confession would spell trouble—I could see it clear as day.
She'd spread vicious rumors with those venomous eyes, thinking, "How dare he turn me down?"
Then, on an utterly ordinary day,
"Wanna try TRPG? I saw it on YouTube, and I bet I'd be great at it."
my girlfriend said.
No interest, but I didn't refuse.
She told me to create a character.
Without even giving background info—just "it's fantasy, so figure it out"—and dumped it on me.
Back home, I stared at a blank sheet of paper for ages, agonizing.
What kind of character? Fantasy has so many genres. Do I have to act it out? What's an opportunity attack anyway? And so on.
Wracking my brain, a thought struck me, and I scribbled with my pen.
Four letters on the white paper: Barbarian.
My first TRPG character, that barbarian, embodied my deepest wish.
What if... I hadn't been weak, and was brimming with courage?
What if I were the kind of man who split the skulls of every rude bastard I met?
Fun fantasy, right?
Looking back, maybe I wanted to rewrite my miserable childhood.
Not a great mindset now. As I said before, character and player must be separate.
A hack GM met a hack player—the session's doom was sealed.
My barbarian split skulls first, asked questions later, enemies or not.
Even when NPCs begged for the story or spun tragic tales, I just rolled the dice.
The GM threw in suspiciously overpowered NPCs way too often.
Investigating a mountain village mine, and suddenly the empire's crown prince or northern grand duke shows up? Why?
My character was useless. Those pretty boys swept away continental threats, leaving me to clean up scraps.
And it blew up.
Inevitable, really.
My first TRPG was a total mess, but... it left a strange feeling.
Maybe I liked moving from the heart, not the head.
Or perhaps...
The stories I could never finish under that slum night sky,
maybe through this TRPG game, I could finally complete them.
So.
That's why I came to love TRPG.
In this little play unfolding on paper, I wanted to find a story.
A thrilling, awesome tale where I could pay back every misfortune in my life.
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"...So, what kind of story do you think that would be?"
"Romance first. Love in a session makes it fun."
"And?"
"Trials and tribulations are always key. The protagonist has to overcome hardship to grow."
"More?"
"Humor too. It catches two rabbits at once—fun on its own, and adds flavor next to tragedy."
"If I got this right, GM runs the game, player enjoys it... Which do you want to be?"
"GM. Because the thirsty one digs the well."
"So you built a world."
"Yeah."
"Alright, I'll help. I've got a story I'm searching for too. You'll make a world for me later, right? You hogged all that funding— if you have a conscience..."
"I know, I know."
Up on the slum railing where the bright moon shone clear,
the Illusion Tower Lord and I hooked pinkies.
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The fatal flaw of spilling your family drama to someone: Snap out of it, and you're mortified.
Couldn't even look the Illusion Tower Lord in the eye for about three days.