1. The 10th Regression – 01
“From my point of view, true gamers are very rare in the world these days.”
“… What kind of bullshit is that?”
“Sweeup, shut your mouth and listen to me first. When I see kids these days condescendingly saying that it’s a ‘game’, it upsets me, right?”
Saying that, Seol Ha-jin gulped down the soju glass placed in front of her.
“From my standards, games are one of the art genres. A work of art that can impress people not only with a simple story, but also with the sense of control, level design, convenience, and lingering feeling after the ending. If you look at it this way, there is not much difference between movies and games.”
“But what?”
“So, from my perspective as a true ‘gamer’, those who gather in a PC room with 5 people and scream that you ate my CS, or throw hundreds of thousands of won into a mobile game to get a piece of data, can’t call themselves gamers. You don’t deserve it, that’s what I mean. I don’t know anything else, but there’s no afterglow, no emotion, and, crucially, no happiness in those games.”
“Hey, you are very philosophical. Then, how great is Seol Ha-jin, the teacher, to play such a great game that he criticizes so many unspecified people?”
“At least they don’t handle low-level games.”
Seol Ha-jin started taking a condescending attitude as if he were giving a lesson by flicking his soju glass left and right.
“Hyunseong-ah, what is a game? Taking all the rhetoric out of this and that and looking at the essence, isn’t it to get a sense of stability away from the hustle and bustle of daily life for a while? However, there is no such thing as morality in games these days. When you play such a game, it may be fun for a moment, but in the end, there is nothing left.”
“Hajin-ah, I don’t know anything else, but I know one thing.”
“What?”
“Because you’re talking bullshit like that, no one wants to come with us.”
Saying that, Hyunseong Lee raised his chin and looked around.
The interior of the bar is quite spacious and splendid, and because it is currently full of people, it gives off a noisy atmosphere overall.
Even if it was right next to me, 4-5 people, regardless of gender, were sitting at a table and having a pleasant conversation, but unfortunately, the only table where two dull men were sitting and having a drink existed only at this place where Seol Ha-jin and Lee Hyun-seong were sitting.
“After being discharged from the military, I attended the opening general meeting at best, but I was in a position where I drank while talking about these idiots and idiots with no nutritional value.”
“That’s what I’m going to say, you asshole.”
While exchanging warm words of thanks to each other, the two of them happened to meet a woman who was toasting at the table opposite.
After meeting our eyes, she had a fresh smile on her face and lightly walked to the table with Seol Ha-jin and Lee Hyun-seong with a glass in one hand.
“Hello, seniors. Are you enjoying the opening general meeting?”
Even though a woman joined the table, which was filled with the smell of a widower, their expressions did not change. Because she knew all too well why she, who had just been hanging out with the insiders hahahahahoho, had to sit down at the table where the two best friends were sitting.
“It’s okay if you don’t have to worry about us. Ji-Eun, we all know that you are busy playing the role of a hype.”
Yes. There was only one reason why she came with a glass to a table that everyone else avoided, because she took on the grand role of leading the second year this semester.
By the way, she was the one who called the two jinta, who had no good friends in the department, to the opening general meeting today. If she hadn’t ‘asked’ the two to attend the opening general meeting through her contact network, she wouldn’t have even known that a drinking party was taking place here today.
‘Perhaps he regrets calling us by now.’
In other words, they just called us out of sympathy, or out of courtesy, but they may have been embarrassed because we said they would attend without notice.
ah… Why are those people telling me to come to the dog gun? Thanks to you, the taste of alcohol is gone. It also seems to have a strange smell. Aren’t you giving us that smell?
I don’t know, I felt a little pity for him to sit down with me, so I chatted with him and inadvertently invited him to come, but he said he was really coming. Of course I knew I would decline if I noticed. I didn’t know you could be so shameless
annoying. Hey, we’ll pay for the taxi, so why don’t you ask if we can go home at this point? They don’t even talk to us anyway, so it doesn’t matter if you leave a little early.
Could it be? As usual, it was a bit annoying for the two of us to sit here without notice.
Since you are exaggerating, speak as a representative. I mean, I don’t want to talk to those people.
Yes, I’m your boyfriend, so you say it.
No, it’s your boyfriend.
Then let’s play rock-paper-scissors fairly. The loser talks to those people as a penalty!
… Well, they might have had this kind of conversation with the in-laws behind their backs. No, that’s 99% certain. Because the ‘sensibility’ that I had steadily cultivated during 6 years of elementary school, 3 years of middle school, and 3 years of high school was fiercely ringing the alarm bell.
Gazelle living in the savannah has survived predator attacks for a long time, so it responds surprisingly sensitively to all kinds of deadly threats to its body.
It’s the same. His instincts, which he had lived holding his breath for 12 years in the middle of the classroom occupied by the Iljins, were whispering in his ear. The fact that this woman in front of him is a deep-seated insider different from him, starting with his race.
“By the way, what were you talking about so much fun? From what I’ve heard sneakily over there, they’re talking about the game.”
Seol Ha-jin and Lee Hyun-seong exchanged glances with each other for a while as Lee Ji-eun asked with dimples floating around her mouth.
If they were ignorant human beings, we might have been impressed that she brought up the subject of ‘game’ to have a conversation with us with a fairly smooth face.
What is it, there is quite a distance between this table and the other table, so we were listening to all the chatter about the game from there? But weren’t the insiders not very interested in the game?
Could it be that he secretly had a hobby of playing games despite being an insider? And why did you come all the way here with a glass to have a game-related conversation with us?
Oh, I see. She was actually the kind of woman I could communicate well with. Then it’s okay to expect a good mood with him today, right? Could it be that today’s atmosphere continues into tomorrow, and we can develop a good relationship in the future?
Could it be that we’re not going to be dating? So, is it the 1st from tomorrow? Maybe even get married? So, how many children should I have? I’m good enough to make a baseball team, will she like it too?
If you repeat this kind of useless delusion and confess your heart to her without notice, you will say, ‘Ah… sorry. I didn’t think so. Can’t we remain as good seniors and juniors as before? It’s not that I don’t particularly like seniors, but I don’t have any plans to date anyone yet.’ It means that this kind of rejection will fly away.
“No, it was nothing. If two men get together, there isn’t much to talk about, so it was just a trivial conversation.”
Seol Ha-jin, well aware of the fact that just because a woman ‘pretends’ to be interested in her, doesn’t mean she’s really interested in her, so she tried to change the subject somehow, but unfortunately Lee Ji-eun wasn’t a very easygoing opponent.
“Nope. Actually, I’ve been playing some games lately. I was wondering if the seniors were talking about the game as well.”
“what game?”
“Ragnarok. Do you know?”
It’s a game you know. No, should I say it’s a game that you can’t know in the first place?
Ragnarok. Among the games released this year, it is a mobile game that is attracting the highest awareness and topic.
It was a casual game released exclusively for mobile devices for popularity, but it boasted an in-depth story, attractive characters, and a degree of freedom comparable to that of most aaa games.
Ads related to Ragnarok can be found not only on portal sites but also on buses and subways.
‘It’s a game I don’t play though.’
But at the same time, it is also a game that Seol Ha-jin has not paid attention to, let alone paid attention to.
The reason is simple. Because, no matter how good the game is, how good it is, and how highly praised it is by the public, it was only a ‘mobile game’.
In Seol Ha-jin’s opinion, mobile games were not games. In his standards, mobile games were nothing more than a playground for toddlers disguised as games.
Since we have to target an unspecified mass of people, we cannot add many elements that are irritating or disliked, and since it has to run smoothly on smartphones, we have to compromise a lot with graphics including resolution. Most of the cases were simple enough to be cleared without difficulty.
Traditionally, you have to die a hundred times before you get used to the controls of a game, and it’s so complex that you can’t learn even half of all the commands until you clear the game, and you have to play for at least a thousand hours to say ‘Oh, I finally wear a newbie’s mask. You’re naked!’
In his view of steam and console supremacy, all humans who play ‘mobile games’ were nothing but ignorant and foolish primitives.
‘If I realized what a real game is, I wouldn’t even look at a game like that again.’
However, Seol Ha-jin was also well aware of it. How arduous and difficult it is to make the ignorant and ignorant public realize what a ‘real game’ is.
Even if you open a history book, you can understand it well. How much persecution and persecution did the sages who tried to preach the truth to the masses in the past and lead them to the right path?
It’s the same. In order to play a real game, there were various hassles of having to set up the optimal settings, purchase the game, and prepare time and space to access the game, but such annoyance did not exist in mobile games.
A mobile game that automatically connects to a game with just a few clicks of a finger and automatically hunts by itself with a few more clicks may be the most suitable entertainment for modern people who struggle in their busy lives and do not have time to play games.
The overwhelming convenience and overwhelming simplicity of the eyes were taken away, so I couldn’t really enjoy the game, and I thought that the act of just pressing the button was entertainment. It must be clear that this is the uneasy darkness lurking on the back side of modern society.
“Did you also play Ragnarok?”
“Yes, I tried it after being recommended by a friend, but it was surprisingly fun. I don’t even know how much time is passing by breaking the story.”
Seol Ha-jin, for some reason, bluntly opened her mouth as she saw Lee Ji-eun talking with a smile.
“Is it that much fun? To be honest, I’m not sure if it’s fun even after watching the commercial video.”
Lee Ji-eun was completely unaware of the fact that Seol Ha-jin’s words contained a sense of superiority and a sense of choice, ‘Can a mobile game, which is a pseudo-cyber gambling, be fun?’
“Yes, to be honest, I usually don’t enjoy games, but this was really fun. By any chance, senior, don’t you play Ragnarok?”
“uh? uh, what I’m busy playing other games.”
“Really? Senior, would you like to take this opportunity to try again? If you are thinking about doing it, please contact me. Did you know?”
“You want to contact me? why?”
In an instant, Seol Ha-jin’s heart sank. Didn’t women originally not like men who played games? But why is Lee Ji-eun trying to attract me and asking me to contact her?
Could it be that you were interested in me? No, that’s nonsense. I’ve only greeted them a few times so far, so there’s no way they’re interested in me.
So what is this now? Didn’t women just not care what a man who wasn’t interested in did? So, what is the sign that you want to play a game with me? Is it like that?
“ah… If you are going to sign up as a new member, I was wondering if you could write my ID on the recommendation list. Then 500 diamonds will be given to me for free.”
“…..”
It couldn’t be a reasonable reason to the extent that I nodded my head without realizing it.
Well, 500 diamonds can’t be helped.