—I’m sorry, but you’ll no longer be able to use your legs.
Those were the first words he heard from the doctor after, around the time he had finally come to understand the world, he was hit by a car while trying to save a child who had run into the road.
If you were told directly that the legs you had assumed would be fine for the rest of your life would no longer move, it would be truly absurd. Even more so if it was delivered by a doctor as a simple notice.
Even so, up until then, he could accept it. Well, it wasn’t as if he thought, “I grew up without parents, worked myself half to death, and lived this trashy life anyway, so not being able to use one pair of legs is nothing”—of course not.
He simply seemed to have thought that if the life of a child who could live a life different from his own had been exchanged for his legs, then it couldn’t be helped.
That was how it was then. Back then.
He hadn’t known how inconvenient it was to live in a wheelchair because his legs wouldn’t move. He hadn’t known how lamentable a life it was to be unable to walk when he had no lover, no family, and had to live alone.
He quit the work he had been doing. In the first place, how was he supposed to go to work when he couldn’t drive a car? Once he quit, he had no way to earn money, but that didn’t mean he could find a new job. He had spent his whole life going out to job sites to make a living, so how could he possibly do something else now?
A perfectly normal—no, not perfectly normal.
It did not take long for a once-decent office worker to shut himself in his room and do nothing but play games. His once-neat appearance gradually began to deteriorate, and the same went for his mental state. Sinking deeper and deeper into delusions, living only on games and comics, before he knew it, he had become a wreck.
Well, thinking about it now, perhaps even that was an excuse. If he had simply kept studying for a job he could do from home, or if he had made a lover or friends before his legs were injured, or if he simply hadn’t saved that child.
If he had chosen one of those countless what-ifs, perhaps he might have lived a different life. If so, he might never have been possessed into the game whose ending he had seen countless times.
In any case—talking about that now is meaningless.
In the end, he passed out in front of his computer, and when he opened his eyes, he had been possessed into the game.
“—Who are you?”
If one were possessed into a game world, and that too as an extra who appeared merely as a classmate of the protagonist, what sort of life would one live?
Hadn’t everyone indulged in such fantasies at least once? Especially someone who had lived a wretched, damned life; someone whose legs had become useless, who spent his days holed up in his room playing games, too cowardly to even think of going outside, soaked in defeat.
If one were possessed into the game one had longed for so desperately, and even into some extra one barely knew—wouldn’t most people think like this?
Since they already knew information about the game, they could monopolize fortuitous encounters and become a hero who saved the world; or secretly help the protagonist who already existed; or act as a helper at the protagonist’s side and gain fame; or perhaps even become the mastermind who sided with the enemies invading the world and helped bring it to ruin.
Good and evil, hero and villain. No matter what direction they imagined, most would think along these lines.
They would grow strong, their enemies would be helpless before them, they would date the heroines, and in the end, they would live a life praised by others—whichever side they chose, they would at least harbor the ambition of acting on their own initiative and becoming someone important enough to change the flow of the world.
Of course they would. No matter how much one denied it, humans were beings who lived with a desire to improve. After all, no one would want to be possessed into a game world only to live the same loser’s life as before.
A body shriveled to skin and bones from not eating properly and never exercising, and a ruined mind that had neither money nor peace of mind, yet was too afraid to step out into the world because of what he had done in the past, so he shut himself in his room.
If someone wanted to continue that life exactly as it was, then they would never have wanted to be possessed into a game in the first place. They would simply pound away at a keyboard and mouse, living with dead eyes inside a cramped little room.
Of course, he was not that sort of person. He was someone who wanted a chance to settle his damned, miserable past life and live properly.
If there was any difference between him and those fellow sufferers whose delusions had flared up as described above—it was that for others, it would end as a delusion, while he had actually been possessed into a game world.
At first, he was thrilled.
The legs that had been ruined in the accident and could no longer walk properly had returned to normal, his gaunt body had changed into that of an ordinary person, the face of a wreck he had seen in the mirror every day had become the face of a healthy boy, and when he realized the superpower he could feel within his body, he was so happy he laughed like a madman.
Of course, the fact that he had been possessed into a mid-boss who would meet a tragic end, an extra whose name did not even appear in the game, made him a little dizzy, but even so, it wasn’t bad.
Choe Jihyeon, the heroine from the game he had loved most before being possessed, existed in this world as his childhood friend. An environment where, unlike before, he could live normally had been prepared for him. To him, it was the best possible start.
It was only one year, but he had been possessed before the original work began, so he had time to adapt to his body, and he had time to train his superpower together with his childhood friend.
He had no intention of wasting that year, and he devoted himself to training every single day.
He kept training, believing that eventually he would overcome even the condition of his body, which was still unfamiliar and could not walk well, and even his weak ability, which could barely cut through small objects—and in that way, he came to realize reality.
Studying was at least all right. The language was the same, and since this was ultimately inside a game made by a Korean, there wasn’t much of a cultural difference either.
The problem was his body, and the superpower that existed in this game.
More than six years had passed since he last used his legs. There was no way a person like that would suddenly remember the sensation just because he started walking again, was there? Walking and running were fine to a certain extent, but even so, he was nowhere near capable of moving nimbly and subduing villains.
His superpower? How could someone who had lived his entire life in an ordinary world suddenly handle a superpower well? The ability to cut through things was truly attractive, but all he could manage was cutting small objects.
No matter how much he trained, nothing changed. Meanwhile, his childhood friend quickly surpassed him.
The difference in talent that could not be filled with effort. The strength of a heroine that a mere extra could never dare reach for.
That fact drove a spike into his chest, and he nearly collapsed then and there.
—Don’t be too discouraged. I’ll help you.
If not for her, he probably would not have endured. She continued to help him, and buoyed by her encouragement, he did not give up.
Time flowed on, and at last he stepped through the school gate laughing and chatting with his childhood friend. A hall packed with countless people, a splendid entrance ceremony, words of instruction from the teachers, and even the protagonist’s greeting as the representative of the new students.
In that way, he steadily recalled information about the characters who existed in this game and the events that would happen in the future, imagining a shining future—only to realize reality once again.
It had been the tutorial of this game, but now it had become something that happened in the past: the first tragedy to befall the academy.
Countless people in black masks stormed into the auditorium. With the sound of gunshots, blood and chunks of flesh flew everywhere, and students milled about in panic among them. Unlike them, teachers, the protagonist, and a few students somehow fought back. The moment he realized he had been left alone in the middle of that scene, he could not even think of using his superpower and simply sank to the floor, feeling reality with his whole body.
This was not a world kind enough to treat a mere extra gently. It was a world where splattering blood and people dying were considered laughable trifles. The delusions he had entertained before being possessed, and the stories in the novels he had occasionally enjoyed reading, were nothing but imagination.
When he personally realized that the tutorial, where one first learned the controls, was in fact a tragedy where people truly died in a sudden attack, and when he realized that there was a limit to subduing villains with his weak superpower—he gritted his teeth.
Even so, after the tragedy ended, was it arrogance that kept him from running away, or lingering attachment?
Because it had been his first time. Because there would be another chance. Because he thought he might still be able to do it. Because he did not want to live that damned life from back then again—and so on.
Thinking up countless reasons, he studied and trained like a madman. He could probably have boasted that, throughout both his life before and after possession, he had never worked harder.
He spared even sleep as he trained endlessly, preparing for the future that would come. He secretly sent notes to the protagonist to inform him of the threats that lay ahead, and he also experienced real combat by beating down enemies together with his childhood friend.
When they defeated the first mid-boss and boss they encountered, he was so happy that, unlike himself, he even shed tears.
Until he realized that everything he had done had no meaning.
When he finally ran into the limits of an extra who had appeared merely as a classmate rather than the protagonist. When he struck the massive wall called reality, the fact that he was disastrously devoid of talent—he crumbled on the spot.
Even if he had returned to before the original story began, he had not had much time to prepare. Legs that, no matter how desperately he tried, did not move well, as if they belonged to someone else; the weakest of the weak, possessed without even the status window that had definitely existed in the game, unable to use his superpower properly.
No matter how much he studied, his grades were average. Despite being one of the few superhumans in the world, at the academy he was not merely ordinary, but a terribly weak student.
They said that a mediocre person who worked hard could not defeat a genius who did not. A perpetual failing student could not defeat a genius no matter how hard he tried. True to its role as the game’s setting, this academy was a place packed with geniuses, and since those geniuses were even putting in effort, the gap only widened further and further.
At first, he was angry. He cursed God, asking why, after granting him a chance, He had given such insignificant talent to someone who was trying this hard to live properly.
Then he despaired. He accepted the reality that would not change no matter how angry he became.
After that—I don’t really know. Even when his childhood friend knocked on his door and muttered something, he ignored her; shut himself inside the dorm room he had been assigned, he simply immersed himself endlessly in training; and despite that, he shed tears without end at the reality that did not improve much at all.
Of course, he naturally did not think, “If only I had never been possessed.” His previous life had been even more miserable than the life of a failing student he had now.
He merely thought how nice it would have been if he had possessed strong power; not this damned trash ability, but a proper ability; at the very least, a power that would grow stronger in accordance with his effort if he worked hard.
Time flowed meaninglessly like that, and so, the present.
“Ah, I remember now. Lee Hyeonu, right?”
While he was walking with his withdrawal form clenched in his hand, he ended up encountering a villain. And one in the exact same way as the scene that should not have begun yet, the scene where he would become the second mid-boss.