By Zephyria 
[Quest]
Main Quest
Tutorial (Completed)
CHAPTER 1 (Completed)
CHAPTER 2 (Completed)
CHAPTER 3 (Completed)
CHAPTER 4
☞ The Way Back
Repayment √
Meeting Olga Again √
The Handkerchiefs of -1 and -4 √
Owner of the Clue √
☞ Whereabouts of the Item
Prisoner 28067 √
Experiment Na1.07-Gap √
Find the Requested Item √
Cheong’s Backer √
☞ Someone is Watching
Defense Force Member’s Dilemma √
Searching for Suspects √
Mystery of the Frame √
Where the Sun Sets √
☞ Reunion (In Progress)
What the Shapes Say √
The Snow Globe in the Basement √
The West of the City
[The West of the City]
Gu-reum’s location is still unclear, but…
This time, a clue for the Return flight might be found in this dilapidated district.
Nom. Joo-oh took a large bite of a fist-sized piece of bread while scanning the air.
Jin Mu-hae had bought it for him earlier. He had eaten it a few times before, but today it felt exceptionally soft and sweet.
It was worth waiting an hour. Mu-hae had given him a look, wondering why he hadn’t eaten it immediately and had instead carried it all the way to the Defense Force, but Joo-oh had remained silent and tucked it securely in his bag.
Because he wanted to eat it while watching Jin Mu-hae, who was lost in thought, sitting in the Defense Force instructor’s office.
When Jin Mu-hae was deep in contemplation, his face looked slightly cold, but that only made him appear more composed and handsome, making him a pleasure to watch.
“There’s soda in the fridge.”
“Hwang-jae gave it to you, right? Haha.”
“I heard you said you wanted some. If that were the case, you should have told me. Why extort it from a man with no money?”
“It’s not like that. Hwang-jae said he got a bonus and asked if there was anything I wanted.”
During this period, Jin Mu-hae usually had quite a bit of spare cash. Since it was the latter half of the game, missions to obtain funds appeared frequently, and above all, as his rewards increased, the amounts he handled became quite different from the beginning.
Of course, he spent more on equipment purchases and repairs, but he wasn’t at the point where he had to agonize over energy recovery food that differed by only a few deals, as he had in Chapter 1.
‘And yet…’
Currently, he only had enough money to last a few months. He used his monthly salary and the remittances from Director Gil with meticulous calculation, as if playing a “beggar run.”
No matter how he thought about it, this wasn’t Jin Mu-hae’s fault. As the story diverged, expenses increased.
And above all… there was himself. Today, Joo-oh had returned carrying six cushion breads, each costing 5 deals.
‘But it’s delicious.’
Delicious food is better than just food. And food bought by Jin Mu-hae is better than delicious food.
When Mu-hae offered to buy him something first, Joo-oh had no intention of refusing. Even though he had considered stepping back for the sake of Mu-hae’s ending, Joo-oh couldn’t bring himself to reject this.
‘It’s okay. I’ll give some to Jin Mu-hae too.’
As he pushed the bread he was eating toward Jin Mu-hae’s mouth, Mu-hae emerged from his deep thoughts.
Mu-hae glanced at the bread, then at Joo-oh, twitched an eyebrow, and opened his mouth.
Joo-oh loved how Jin Mu-hae accepted the food he offered without suspicion. Even if it didn’t suit his taste—as evidenced by a slight frown—he never refused.
It was always like this. At first, he would push it away, telling Joo-oh to eat it himself, but at some point, he started taking a bite whenever Joo-oh personally handed it to him.
Thanks to this, food that appeared only as images or decorative objects in the game had now been tasted by both Joo-oh and Jin Mu-hae.
Satisfied with the achievement he had created, Joo-oh giggled inwardly.
“Are you going back there later?”
“…Yes.”
“Do you know where it is now?”
“Roughly.”
Smart Jin Mu-hae. It seemed he had unraveled the tangled secrets once again.
Whenever that happened, Jin Mu-hae radiated a light from his face and exuded an intense atmosphere that felt like it was pulling one in, just like a scene from the game’s illustrations.
Joo-oh loved sharing those moments. Everything was wonderful when he was with him.
That was why he could easily ignore the desire for life writhing within him. Even when the instinct to survive at any cost tried to awaken something pitch-black, he could quickly become a thinking Joo-oh again if Jin Mu-hae touched him, hugged him, or licked his lips.
This was Jin Mu-hae’s world. Joo-oh felt that fact more vividly than ever.
The world revolved around him. It had changed for him, and it would continue to flow according to him.
As a hardcore player of 「La Vida Blue」, the fact that he could personally feel and witness this sight felt like a gift.
“Want some soda too?”
“I’m good.”
“Here.”
“I said I’m good.”
Despite refusing, Jin Mu-hae took a sip of the pink soda. Joo-oh thought he would scold him for drinking such a thing, but for some reason, Mu-hae didn’t seem to care about the taste of the drink.
He was gazing intently into Joo-oh’s eyes. Joo-oh stuffed the remaining bread into his mouth and looked back at him while chewing.
“Did you say this before?”
“What?”
“That Blue Energy is a bad thing.”
Jin Mu-hae suddenly asked about something from the past. Joo-oh tilted his head slightly and searched through his memories with him.
Ah. Come to think of it, they had had a conversation like that while riding on Jin Mu-hae’s bike.
‘Is Blue bad?’
‘This is also running on Blue Energy right now.’
‘Then why get rid of it?’
‘Because nothing is completely bad or completely good. We just choose the side where the gains outweigh the losses.’
‘Losses?’
‘Blue Energy.’
‘If the bike doesn’t move, what will we ride?’
‘Anything. Humans don’t die that easily.’
He had been poking and prodding to try and change the ending.
It was just as he said. The humanity of this world had avoided self-destruction. Even amidst devastated nature, they had quickly adapted, building cities and forming societies to survive.
Even if Blue Energy suddenly disappeared, people would adapt to a new world again after a period of growing pains.
The Return flight was created knowing that. It was a grand cause held by many who believed in the tenacious survival instinct of humans.
“Jin Mu-hae said there would be something to ride even if he couldn’t use the bike.”
“Still, a bike is more convenient.”
Liar. Joo-oh had seen him sitting very comfortably in the private jet.
Joo-oh narrowed his eyes into crescents as he gulped down the soda straight from the bottle. He didn’t mind. He hadn’t expected Jin Mu-hae to remember something he said so long ago.
“Time’s almost up.”
“Grab extra wires and follow me. You have to help with the demonstration today.”
“Okay.”
Before the final training of the day, Jin Mu-hae held a recording pad in his hand.
Joo-oh followed closely behind the figure in the Defense Force instructor’s uniform as he left the room, a satisfied look on his face.
Jin Mu-hae couldn’t concentrate at all throughout the lesson. It was barely noticeable on the surface, so no one else realized, but Joo-oh noticed immediately.
A distracted Jin Mu-hae. He struggled to suppress the urge to secretly take photos of him and create a ‘Negligent Duty Jin Mu-hae’ collection.
Because of that, he got hungry again, and Joo-oh ended up polishing off one of the breads he had saved for after his shower.
“Didn’t you eat it all earlier?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“And now you’ve eaten it all?”
He had clearly seen him eat five. Wondering if there were more breads hidden somewhere, Jin Mu-hae gave Joo-oh’s pocket a light pat.
‘Dummy.’
The only things in there were two strangely shaped Kukochis. Still, since Joo-oh had been diligently packing his bag lately, Mu-hae didn’t open the one on his back carelessly.
From now on, he should pretend to take things out of his bag when they were actually in his Inventory. Perhaps thanks to smelling Mu-hae’s scent, Joo-oh’s brain was working smoothly as he planned to sneakily eat his hidden snacks one by one.
“We’re outside the residential area now. Start changing.”
As soon as the car left the Jaegang District, the two transformed from a Defense Force instructor and assistant into mercenaries. Jin Mu-hae took off his neat coat and put on a red jacket.
Joo-oh kept glancing at him from under his low-pulled hat. While a neat Jin Mu-hae was good, Jin Mu-hae in this attire was the absolute best.
Where the sun sets. He murmured it very softly, but Mu-hae seemed to hear it. The man walking beside him gave a slight nod of confirmation.
Soon, the two arrived in front of a dilapidated building in the westernmost part of Goryeo City. Unlike last time, Jin Mu-hae didn’t rummage through buildings displaying patterns and simply passed them by.
He knew it. He had definitely figured out the secret of the shapes. After shining his flashlight around the dark interior of the first floor, he jerked his chin as if telling Joo-oh to follow.
Jin Mu-hae never got lost on a path he had already traveled. Joo-oh watched him with admiration as he walked without hesitation, as if a map were drawn in his head.
In front of a broken wall on the fourth floor, he stared outside for a long time. Then, estimating the angle by eye, he took a few more steps back.
Rustle—
BOOM!
Unexpectedly, Jin Mu-hae stomped his foot so hard it made a thunderous sound. The stone floor didn’t budge under that amount of impact.
This time, he shone the flashlight upward and thoroughly scanned the dirty skylight. Then, swish, he threw a piece of broken concrete he had picked up from somewhere.
TANG—! It made a hollow sound. He threw a hooked wire upward with all his might.
Creeeeeak—
Surprisingly, the solid ceiling material split, and a passage leading to an attic opened.
As Joo-oh marveled, a low voice reached his ears.
“Because that has to be seen from this side, not that side, to be completed.”
“The pattern?”
“The world.”
When you belong to something, you cannot see the whole. You must break out to see the world.
Jin Mu-hae murmured softly. It was a sentence written vaguely somewhere in the records left by Jin Seong-jo.
Before Joo-oh’s eyes, the grown protagonist threw himself forward. The man who leaped while holding the wire entered the small space above the ceiling.
He immediately reached out his hand to pull Joo-oh up, even though he knew Joo-oh could enter without even needing a running start.
Warm body heat lingered where their palms met. As Joo-oh entered the hidden attic, he heard a faint beep.
It was a sensor that detected the movement of living beings. As soon as the attic door closed, bright lights flickered on in the previously dark space.
♪♬♩—
A simple chiptune melody flowed from somewhere. Jin Mu-hae, who had been appreciating the retro rhythm, froze.
He pressed his hand to his forehead and slowly looked around the device. His eyes seemed to be wandering somewhere far away.
Joo-oh already knew this expression of Jin Mu-hae’s. It was a cutscene that would have appeared around this time even if the game’s story had flowed normally.
A flashback.
239 – I Became an Anomaly in a Dead Game