I scrubbed the leftover plastic from my lunchbox with a scouring pad.
After washing it, I set the plastic beside the sink for now.
I wasn’t exactly a put-together person. At least, not the type to diligently keep up with housework.
A kitchen this clean, without a single trash bag or recycling bag in sight, would probably get messy again before long.
Come to think of it, I was almost out of dish soap. I should buy some next time I went to the mart.
And pay-as-you-throw trash bags too. A toothbrush as well.
Also, bottled water to drink right away… Should I just save money by drinking tap water?
Buy this, buy that. Once money started slipping away like that, I could already picture my bank balance thinning out.
Living alone costs more money than you’d think.
And there were plenty of times you checked your balance and got shocked after the fact.
I rubbed my stomach absentmindedly. It was smooth, without a single bit of flab.
Twenty-seven-year-old man Lee Jincheol cut back on food expenses whenever money got tight. Just stopping delivery saved money, and if he treated it like dieting and got by on eggs or tofu, the effect was maximized.
If he got sick of it, he cooked for himself. After all, he had an excellent cooking teacher right next door.
Then, once he lost weight, he’d start buying expensive ingredients or whiskey again, gain the weight back, lighten his bank balance, go back to picking at boiled eggs, and repeat the cycle.
On the other hand, twenty-year-old Kang Jimin had no weight to lose.
This wasn’t the lip service elderly petitioners often gave—What weight do you have to lose?—either. In their eyes, even the plump administrative officer looked like a beanpole.
But this body?
Even at a glance, it seemed like it shouldn’t lose any more weight.
Still, I had to save on food expenses somehow…
My current balance was three million won. Including cash, it was four million.
Enough to live on for a while, but also an amount that could evaporate in an instant if I let my guard down.
Rent. Maintenance fees. Installments. Student loans. Every imaginable risk factor was crawling all over the place.
Then first, I had to cut down on living expenses.
There wasn’t a single ingredient in the fridge, and I couldn’t very well claim I was saving money while getting by on convenience store lunchboxes or delivery.
I took out my phone and searched for a mart.
Right. Let’s go grocery shopping. The detergent was running out anyway.
I put on the clothes I’d taken out earlier while making a fool of myself in front of the mirror.
At first it had been a little embarrassing, but the more I wore them, the more it felt kind of fun.
Long ago, I’d watched my younger sister obsess over dressing up dolls and couldn’t understand it at all, but when the doll was this pretty, maybe it was different.
By the middle of it, I was even disappointed that the wardrobe only had plain clothes.
There were a lot of cosmetics, but I couldn’t tell what was what.
I wasn’t planning to powder my face anyway, so that was fine.
Looking in the mirror fully equipped, sure enough, there was a reason people said fashion was all about the face.
With this, it was proven that the reason I’d never cared about fashion was because of my face. Not that I was happy about it.
When I swept my hair back, even that looked like a picture. As people often said, it was a shot that felt like a waste not to leave as a photo.
…Thinking that I said that while looking at my own face makes it sound like some incredible self-flattery.
Come to think of it, my bangs were a little long. I might need to go to a hair salon soon.
“Ugh…”
A groan slipped out before I knew it.
Not because there was another place for money to leak out….
But because I had no idea where to even begin.
When I was a man, the regular shop just cut it the way they always did.
What were women supposed to say when they went to a salon?
“…”
Just imagining it wasn’t easy.
***
After filling the fridge with onions, tofu, eggs, and the like, the place finally felt somewhat like a human being’s home.
I bought not only ingredients, but also ramen, pasta, oil, and all sorts of seasonings. Thanks to that, my arms were aching.
There was a fairly large mart very close by. Barely over five minutes on foot.
When I walked in the opposite direction from the downtown area, it was right there, practically under my nose. The more I learned, the better this location seemed for living. I’d seen on the map app that the subway station was close too.
Rather than thinking good was good, it gave me a chill.
This place. Just how much was the monthly rent?
When I opened and closed my fingers, the marks from carrying the bags were vivid.
The more I looked around the mart, the more things I needed increased one by one, so I put everything in the cart thinking I’d have it delivered.
But when I asked them to deliver it, the answer that came back was that they didn’t do that.
—Ah. 2020.
—?
—…P-pay-as-you-throw bags. Please.
Thanks to that, I had to come back groaning with both hands full of luggage.
Thank goodness it was only five minutes away. I ended up properly feeling the difference in strength between men and women.
This time loop thing wasn’t easy to get used to.
In every little thing, the five-year gap kept popping up out of nowhere like this.
But if I thought about it a little more, there had to be a way to use this time difference effectively.
Actually, the idea itself had occurred to me a while ago.
Stocks or coins.
—If I just take out the maximum loan and dump it all into Bitcoin, won’t money start duplicating itself?
Come to think of it, the myth of Bitcoin’s invincibility as I knew it had started around this time.
I remembered how, for a while, it had done nothing but soar, making people ask, It’s going up more? Even more? It’s going up even from here?
Then what are you doing?
It is the hour of heroes!!
Bring me my internet banking account and financial certificate at once!!
—Bitcoin -17%
—?
But the results I found on the internet, grinning from ear to ear, were a bit different.
I stared at it, wondering what on earth was going on, but only for a moment.
The information that had been hazy until then came back to me clearly.
[Title: Did the notice drop…]
: Back
—Regarding this next project (tentative title: Niflheim), due to unavoidable…
—Due to the reduction in development staff caused by the coronavirus situation…
—We deeply apologize to our users…
(Summary) Taeil…we’re screwed.
ㄴAnon : Translation) Why develop games? If you do coins, money duplicates itself.
ㄴAnon : Lmfaooooo
ㄴAnon : Other game companies are excited and developing because their sales are up, but only we…
It was like lightning struck my head.
Come to think of it, the residents I’d passed on the street, the middle school boy openly staring at my chest, even the part-timer who avoided my eyes—all of them had been like that.
Not a single one of them had been wearing a mask.
—?
When I searched it, all that came up for Corona was beer.
The search results for COVID-19 were pitifully few.
That’s right. Shockingly, there was no such thing as a pandemic in this world.
—…Ha.
The vague pieces of information clicked neatly into place.
Right. The rapid spread of mart delivery had also been heavily influenced by COVID.
The president of Asgard had gotten a huge kick out of playing with coins right after cutting down the dev team because of COVID.
Unable to let go of my lingering attachment, I searched for the next skyrocketing picks after Bitcoin, but everyone’s results were subtly different.
Some had risen, some were moving sideways, and some, unlike in my memory, had fallen.
Well, an infectious disease that had turned the world upside down had vanished altogether. It wouldn’t be on the level of a butterfly flapping its wings.
After realizing that much, I gave up on stocks.
If I took out the maximum loan here, forget being a hero of the age—I’d end up in the gutter.
“Goodbye…my dream of striking it rich overnight.”
Still unable to fully let go, I looked up Apple-phone stocks, and those were soaring just as I remembered.
I was tempted again and wondered if I should become one with Apple-phone, but then I saw the electric car stock, which had catastrophically plunged and was rolling around on the floor, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it again.
The electric car stock that should have been a god for the next three years had become half-crippled…
To forget my lingering attachment, I sat down in front of the computer.
Stocks, my ass. Let’s just play Odin Doti.
***
Before turning on the game, I entered Omagal and voice chat first.
…There wasn’t a single name I knew on the voice chat friends list, but it was like a habit, and my hand moved on its own.
Kang Jimin’s friends list was shabby. Even the few names there were all offline.
The arena corpses I remembered weren’t here, nor was the call room that came to be called the morgue after every member hit Grandmaster.
I wondered what those guys were doing now.
Only COVID had disappeared; famous people like Mu*k and T*ump still existed just fine, so those friends might be on Omagal too.
When I glanced at Omagal on my phone, it was the same Omagal as ever.
ㄴAnon : Fuck, Modern’s reaction speed is seriously busted
ㄴAnon : Maybe Modern isn’t fast, maybe your hands are old?
ㄴAnon : For real lol
Which meant the Modern kids and the old-timers had each other by the collars.
Honestly, when I first heard about it, I felt repulsed too.
It was only natural when the dozens, hundreds of hours spent practicing combos and beating up NPCs went flying into thin air.
But after hearing the explanation that only the combos came out through Modern, and that even then the damage and zanshin bonus were reduced, I felt relieved.
ㄴAnon : Ah, I’m going insane climbing Diamond... Nerf Modern’s startup frames, fuck
ㄴㄴAnon : Honestly, Modern isn’t that strong. Damage isn’t what matters, it’s that you can’t get the zanshin effect.
ㄴㄴAnon : Do you even play the game? This genre is originally a reaction speed game. The reason masters can block stuff that makes you go, How the hell did they block that? is because they’re already thinking ahead, and Modern lets you empty your head completely and still react on a Valhalla level.
ㄴㄴAnon: -old-
ㄴㄴAnon: You fucking son of a bitch
ㄴㄴAnon: -got scratched-
Sometimes it seemed to heat up with a barrage of curses, but it passed without incident.
Kids grew up by fighting, and in the end, they always ended up holding hands and making up.
ㄴAnon : FT10 me
ㄴㄴAnon : uid 10684360
ㄴㄴAnon : I hereby declare. Modern-tards are vermin eating away at the game… They must uninstall immediately…
ㄴㄴAnon : Lmao
I wiped the dampness from the corners of my eyes.
An arena packed with newcomers like this, not the same ten-set matches among the same old guys who knew one another’s settings inside and out.
Ah, damn it. The tears keep coming.
Maybe because I was in a woman’s body, I’d become more emotional.
As I watched with a warm feeling in my heart, another notification popped up.
It was the VTuber post I’d left a comment on earlier.
ㄴNationalStraightSword : Who knows? In five years, VTubers might show up on the Major League scoreboard.
ㄴㄴAnon : Weeb filter
ㄴㄴAnon : I prophesy. In five years, VTubers will go to space too.
ㄴㄴRestreamWarrior : What kind of bit is this lol
ㄴㄴAnon : Why not just say they’ll start World War III too?
“World War III is a bit much.”
But they really do go to space.