Chapter 12.2

‘Him dressed up as a pirate… I’d like to see it.’

Seeing as his endorphins were spreading in that situation made him an official lunatic. He had to go and see the doctor again to check if there was anything wrong with his brain.

Sangwoo opened the Internet browser by moving the idle mouse. He visited Jaeyoung’s social media that he had bookmarked, but the latest post was still the photo he had taken with Sangwoo during their Chinese skit.

After a few clicks and searches, photos posted by strangers appeared.

Search, click, click, screenshot. Search, click, screenshot. Click, search, screenshot. Click, search, screenshot.

#HangukUniversityFestival #FestivalContest #GhostBar #HangukUniversityTheaterClub

A pale-faced smiling vampire, a frowning vampire, a vampire with a scary look on his face, a vampire holding a snack tray in one hand and three bottles of soju in the other. Jaeyoung being the only one with a twinkle in his eye in the group photo after they all had removed their makeup. He wanted to see more, but he could only find eight pictures.

Sangwoo turned on a data recovery program and did a rollback on the Jang Jaeyoung folder, and he modified the titles of the newly saved images according to the format.

‘I can’t erase them, for now. Not yet. Just for the time being.’

That day was too long. Sangwoo took a long nap in order to deal with his extreme stress. Then, he cleaned every inch of the apartment and ate a simple dinner. After gaming a few rounds and pulling off all the keycaps of his keyboard and cleaning off the dust and other dirt, he still had time, so he took a shower after doing five sets of calisthenics, including push-ups. It was only midnight when he finished getting ready for bed.

At exactly 12 a.m., he normally reserved a seat at the library and checked his mail. Since there weren’t any classes until Wednesday, he didn’t have to go to school, so he skipped reserving a seat and just checked his email, but there wasn’t anything noteworthy. There was a newsletter from a gaming company he subscribed to and a weekly English grammar lecture email among others. When he had opened them, read them all, and organized them according to their categories, he received an email.

0430 Work Material

Sender | Jae. J

4/30 Work details

1) Revised requested parts

2) Added weapon objects

3) Lv7-10 maps

4) Infinite mode resource

5) Ladder ranking UI

Large Attachment: 0430.zip

Sangwoo left the email open and only stared at it for three minutes. What was he supposed to do? It was as if nothing had happened after the fuss he made. Moreover, even though Sangwoo had asked Jaeyoung several times, he had emailed him the work by midnight before. He had always uploaded files to the FTP or handed them over through external hard drives right before their meetings.

Sangwoo, who had downloaded the attachment and checked it, was shocked. There were no typos and there weren’t any titles that didn’t follow the guidelines.

“You can do it perfectly.”

He had even gotten a lot done during the day. His day had been adjusted according to the schedule in the planner allowing him to catch up on work , and about 50% of the delayed tasks had been completed. At the same time, there wasn’t any sign of it being a sloppy job. He carefully checked it, but he couldn’t find a single mistake. Sangwoo was a little excited after sorting the file list by the titles, but at some point, he closed the window.

‘I know he’s good at designing, but what does he mean by this?’

He checked his phone just in case, but there weren’t any new messages. Sangwoo fell into extreme confusion.

return 0;

He had a similar routine the following day. No matter how much time you spend studying programming, it still isn’t enough, and even if you study ahead, you aren’t that motivated.

‘It’s fine if I let go for just a day.’

Midterms were over and there weren’t any classes. Moreover, he had had a shocking experience, so he deserved some rest. Just like a sluggard, like a grasshopper, like a sloth, like Jang Jaeyoung.

However, it was surprisingly difficult. Time didn’t go by when he didn’t play games or take a nap. Sangwoo had no idea how to fool around. At his mother’s house, there were quite a few toys to spend time playing with, but when he started living alone in order to study, he naturally didn’t bring any of them with him.

He walked around in the small room looking for anything to do. He spent time dusting off clean furniture, cleaning the bathroom, doing laundry, and restocking the shelves for no reason at all.

Even if he pretended to be fine, the tension of walking on thin ice dominated his emotions. It was fine at dawn, but as midnight approached, he got worse and worse. Sangwoo felt nervous, so he analyzed Jang Jaeyoung’s behavior and came up with several theories.

i) Jang Jaeyoung intended to continue an inappropriate relationship.

ii) Jang Jaeyoung had given up on having an inappropriate relationship, but he wanted to continue producing the game.

iii) He had simply sent him a file of his previous work.

From a sensible point of view, the second theory was the most convincing one, but it contradicted their previous conversation. That guy had always acted beyond Sangwoo’s expectations, so it wasn’t easy to guess what was on his mind.

‘Today, I’ll find out how it’ll turn out, I guess.’

Sangwoo refreshed his mailbox while waiting for midnight. Five minutes before midnight, he went around the room after finishing getting ready for bed, and sat down by the computer. That’s when his cellphone on the desk lit up. Sangwoo grabbed the device and brought it right before his eyes.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Freeloader3: 5minutesuntildeadline

23:55

Freeloader3: Prototypedevelopment-Remind

23:55

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

He stared at the message with a dumbfounded expression. He didn’t know that the day when Jaeyoung pressed him for the deadline would arrive.

‘What the hell is he up to?’

Even if Jang Jaeyoung was strange, this was too strange. To Sangwoo, it was like a challenge that couldn’t be overcome no matter how hard he tried. While thinking like that, it turned into midnight.

In the newly refreshed inbox, there was an email just like the previous day. The sender was ‘Jae. J,’ and the title had all the content that was on the day’s schedule and the delayed work. Sangwoo’s gaze, that had been on clicking on the email, headed toward the cell phone screen that brightly lit up. There was an incoming phone call.

As soon as he realized who the caller was, his hand reached out to answer the call. His body did this involuntarily before he even figured out whether taking the call was appropriate or not. Sangwoo  opened his eyes wide and held the phone for a while. It would also be strange for the receiver to not greet the caller or hang up without saying a word. Sangwoo slowly brought the device to his ear.

– Hello.

Surprised by the sudden greeting, he almost dropped his cellphone. He grabbed his phone and barely made a noise after opening and closing his mouth several times.

“What is it?”

– The deadline hit, but you didn’t contact me.

“I made a prototype. It’s simply that there wasn’t a meeting, so I couldn’t demonstrate it.”

– Good job. I thought that you wouldn’t do it.

“I’m not the sunbae.”

He stopped talking after that. Sangwoo wondered what kind of expression Jaeyoung wore, who like himself, would be gripping his phone, what kind of sounds he would make beyond a few utterances, what kind of position he was in, whether he was in a pajamas, if he was wearing his glasses, and so on.  Sangwoo was questioning himself for having these thoughts.

– How have you been for the past two days?

“There’s no reason I haven’t been doing well.”

– How come? It’s possible that you haven’t been well, isn’t it?

“I’ve been doing well, though.”

– Great.

The conversation ended again. Meaningless words, words, words. They were pointlessly wasting radio waves. However, it wasn’t time to chat leisurely. There was an issue that needed to be solved between them.

“Jaeyoung sunbae.”

He called on his opponent, but there was no response.

“Why did you send the file? I thought you gave up on <VeVen> because of what happened the day before yesterday.”

Jaeyoung didn’t respond for a long time. He wondered if it had been such a difficult question, but that guy cleared his throat. Sangwoo clutched onto his phone with sweaty palms.

– You said you’d get me funds for studying abroad.

As expected, he got an unexpected answer in return. Jaeyoung seemed like a cloud that he couldn’t grasp, so Sangwoo got a bit agitated as this seemed like snow that melted upon reaching out to touch it.

“I want to, of course. But you said that it’s uncomfortable working with me, sunbae, and that it’s impossible to separate sexual desire from work.”

– What? When did I go that far?

“Listen. I told you that I don’t care if you’re a man. Choose between two things. Whether you want to begin something with me and produce the game or whatever, or give up on it all and never meet again. There’s no middle.’ Is how you worded it, sunbae.”

– Are you nuts? Why did you memorize that?

“I remember everything related to you, sunbae.”

The longest silence until now devoured the radio waves. Waiting was extremely difficult. Sangwoo didn’t want to put effort into pointless work as his least favorite proverb was “It’s like pouring water in a sieve.” He was going to look for someone else if Jaeyoung told him for sure that he was going to withdraw from the game production.

– I have no intention of giving up.