The alarm woke me, but getting up was anything but easy.
On top of having a comfortable bed, this house had a cozy blanket too. It was the kind of sleeping arrangement that made it impossible to want to get out.
Wrapped snugly in the blanket, I was rubbing my eyelids when an oddly uncertain feeling came over me.
As if I’d forgotten something important...
“…!”
My sleep-addled mind quickly pieced the memories together.
The standing sign. OdinDoti. Normalization. Password.
I kicked off the blanket and sprang up. The drowsiness from just moments ago was nowhere to be found.
***
I grabbed some clothes from the closet at random.
It was unbearably awkward. Obviously, I’d never worn women’s underwear before.
The bottom half was one thing, but when I took a bra with me into the bathroom, the feeling that came over me was truly hard to put into words...
I hung the clothes I’d change into on the hanger and took off what I was wearing.
Standing in my underwear in front of the sink, I faced the beauty in the mirror.
Gentle eyes. A soft impression. Distinct features. Her once-pale skin had regained a bit of color.
I took a step back and moved my body this way and that. I stretched out my arms and legs, and even hopped lightly in place.
A pulling, uncomfortable pain followed.
...Even when I’d worn an oversized T-shirt, they’d made their presence known, and now that I was seeing them uncovered, I could understand why.
I let out a sigh and stood at attention. I wasn’t sure exactly how tall I was. Still, I could definitely feel that my eye level had dropped.
Maybe I wasn’t even 160 centimeters? Since it wasn’t the perspective I was used to, it was hard to judge by sight. Maybe she’d only looked tall because her proportions were good.
Looking at her in the mirror, I smiled again. Mm. This is disgustingly awkward.
I don’t remember ever being told off when taking photos, so why is it this hard to smile?
Is it because I can’t think of this as my own body?
Standing there in my underwear, I was starting to get cold.
Perhaps because I’d slept for a while, the chills from last night had subsided, but I wasn’t well enough to call it a full recovery.
My condition was still bad. That was why I hadn’t been able to start Odinson right away last night.
Actually, there was a bigger reason. No matter how tough I was, I wasn’t shameless enough to download a game immediately after receiving someone’s will.
—Shaaaah
I took off the rest of my underwear. Mm. I still can’t believe this is my body.
Still, as the warm water hit me, it felt as if the utterly chaotic day that had begun yesterday was being sorted out, if only a little.
Standing under the pouring water made me remember something.
Kang Jimin really was a gamer girl. Her desktop was empty, but her drives were packed with games.
The important thing here was that OdinDoti was among them.
Maybe Kang Jimin was the type of gamer who collected games rather than played them, because the entire Odinson series was asleep in her library.
Thanks to that, it saved me a lot of trouble. I’d been full of worries about how I would pay for it, and how I would find out the payment password, but all of that had been neatly solved.
Though the actual playtime was only about an hour each.
Why? Had she been told by the gatekeeper to “delete the game, scrub”? But judging by the other entries in the series, they generally had low playtimes too.
Either she was born with a golden spoon, or she had a terrible spending habit. Personally, I hoped it was the former. My head was still full of worries about rent and living expenses.
That’s right. I had more than one or two things to worry about.
Even if I could last for a while on the one million won in my wallet, what came after that?
Was Kang Jimin a college student? What was her major?
If she was a freshman, how long until graduation? Could I handle tuition?
How was I supposed to put food on the table from now on?
The civil service exam? I’d forgotten everything.
Ha. No. That wasn’t what mattered right now.
What mattered was OdinDoti.
From what I saw, even though it had been downloaded, the playtime was only about ten minutes, so there shouldn’t be any problem with going in and playing it as is.
All I can do is laugh... An S-rank local beauty Odinson newbie?
What is that, some golden unicorn with three horns?
I turned off the shower and squeezed out some shampoo. Wow. What is this scent? Everything I’ve been seeing since earlier looks insanely expensive.
I don’t know anymore. Just enjoy it.
But then the skincare was all-in-one.
...A woman using all-in-one? And with skin like this?
“Trash game with busted balance...”
I came out of the bathroom, shaking out my hair with a towel. Naked.
I didn’t have the mental energy to think about putting on clothes or anything. From shampooing to blow-drying, every single step was no joke.
Even hair that only reached around my shoulders took ages to dry. No matter how much I blasted it with the hair dryer, it didn’t feel like it was drying; it felt like a completely different body part from the hair I used to have.
Now I finally understand why women use two towels at a time.
Only after somehow wrangling my damp, sagging hair could I put on clothes.
It was my first time putting on a bra. I wasn’t manly enough to cross-dress.
Hooking it onto my own body was an unfamiliar and awkward experience, but wearing it itself wasn’t difficult.
Only after that whole exorcism-like ordeal was I finally able to sit down in the chair.
It felt like it had taken almost an hour... It was enough time to understand why Mom used to take so long coming out of the bathhouse.
First, I handled the phone.
Fortunately, by the greatest mercy, the password was the same as the computer’s, and thanks to that, I was able to return from a primitive person to a civilized one.
The first thing I had to do was, of course, this.
—Odinson Minor Gallery
It wasn’t easy to tap the URL.
I hesitated for a long while, lifting and lowering my thumb, and even after finally pressing the button, it took me a long time to look.
—Odinson Minor Gallery
—Manager ㅇㅇ(thox15x1)
“...”
It wasn’t Back.
...Should I call that fortunate or not? I couldn’t get a feel for it.
No. I should call it fortunate.
Leaving aside the whole doppelganger thing, if Lee Jincheol were alive and well in this world and I might run into him, it would feel incredibly strange.
Just in case, I dug through the search bar.
“Back” “Let’s See Your Back” “National Team Straight Sword”
No search results.
I’d been fairly famous within the Odinson community. And yet, if none of them showed up in the search results, then I really must not exist in this world.
Just in case, I also checked things like “Elven Sword-Spear,” “Halberd Dragon Knight,” and “Faith Dagger.” They were builds I had developed and made famous.
Nothing.
Still nothing.
...If I’m not here, then Belly old man probably never started PvP either, right?
Just in case, I searched for Belly. Same result.
At this point, I could probably say for sure.
This world was completely different from the one I had lived in.
There was no Lee Jincheol in this world, and there was no Back and Belly duo either. There was no Omagal Hamburger Battle held every Sunday in the arena.
...I don’t know. Whether this feeling is relief or bitterness.
Well. Who knows. Maybe the Lee Jincheol of this world simply never started Odinson... No. There’s no way that’s possible.
As long as the possibility of playing it was open, I would have ended up clinging to this game no matter what twists and turns it took.
With my heart feeling much lighter, I scrolled down.
At the same time, I couldn’t ignore the loneliness.
There were eleven years there that I had devoted myself to. Thinking that all of it was gone, of course I couldn’t help feeling lonely.
But if there’s something to gain, there must be something to lose.
All right. Let’s see how the mood in this gallery is different.
“...? Modern controls?”
[Title: Classic boomers, I swear]
: ㅇㅇ
Every single day, they say Modern isn’t real skill,
throwing tantrums like we’re using some kind of helper,
when Modern was made to be used. If it pisses you off, you use it too.
You have ten years of experience and you’re salty because you lost to a newbie? You lost because you got ten years older.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ : That kind of bullshit brain-dead cheese isn’t real skill. (That’s right, the game needs newbies to survive.)
ㄴㄴㅇㅇ : Old man, your thought bubble turned into a speech bubble...
[Title: Classic is a “loser” of the bygone era!!]
: ㅁㅁ
No matter how hard you memorize, if the stats change, if the race changes, if the build changes,
if even one thing changes, the motion timing shifts and the combo you went through all that trouble memorizing becomes unusable.
So you press commands like you’re playing a rhythm game and land your combos,
but when you meet Modern in the arena, you get beaten to death with one-button clicks, then just grumble that today’s players have no grit.
Isn’t it truly an empty control scheme?
ㄴ ㅇㅇ : Take that back...!!
ㄴ fr lol : Classic... gave us a place to live... What do you know about the fun of Classic?!
ㄴㄴ ㅁㅁ : Classic will be pushed aside by Modern and die a has-been!! It’s perfect for a has-been control scheme that hasn’t changed in thirty years!!
Modern? What’s that?
One-button combo clicks...?
Nah. That’s a joke, right?
Memorizing commands down to the rhythm and pressing them is the foundation of Odinson, isn’t it?
[Title: Modern haters are gentlemen compared to these guys]
: ㅇㅇ
The real ones are the inertia freaks;;
Fine, I’ll concede a hundred steps and accept that movement has inertia.
But fuck, isn’t it crossing the line to give even camera rotation recoil and call it inertia? What lunatic’s head did the idea of mouse sensitivity getting slower when reverse inertia kicks in come from?
Are the people who miss that shit braindead?
What kind of FPS like that exists in this world? lololol
ㄴ00 : Sir, Odinson is not an FPS...
ㄴㅇㅇ : FPS, my ass, you knife-eared bastard.
ㄴㄴㅇㅇ : But an elf archer is right there on the cover?
...What? They massively reduced inertia?
You don’t have to inertia delay-cancel with Zanshin anymore?
How is it Odinson without that?
[Title: If you want to play 1v1, make a private room]
: ㅇㅇ
Who cares if people do mid duels?
But what’s with asking them to revive solo mode and all that?
The reality is that in the new game, they removed 1v1 ranking and concurrent players shot up lol.
Arena... is team fights? 5v5?
They got rid of the 1v1 arena?
“This...”
This garbage...
Is Odinson?