HACKED 116

“Do you not consider that you, Mr. San Gun, are beyond standard specifications?”

“Even taking that into account, you are certainly too weak. Look even now, handprints are left everywhere I grabbed you. Just how fragile is your skin? If I had bitten and sucked as much as my greed dictated, you would have been covered in blood…”

I cut San Gun’s words short.

“Objective criticism or feedback regarding me? I do not want such things. I request unconditional applause, and one-sided, biased praise.”

“Look at this guy.”

He let out a short laugh as if he had seen the most absurd person. Smoke leaked out from between his well-shaped lips.

I thought he would just ignore my words like that, but unexpectedly, he played along with me.

“Praise? Fine, praise. I got it. My pretty Myeong.”

“Pardon?”

“Our Myeong has a pretty face, and his actions are pretty. Even the sounds he makes when he feels it are so pretty, so what should I do.”

“…Could you please stop spreading false information.”

What is so pretty about a gloomy guy who has no sociability, no way with words, and whose only activity is digging himself into a hole while shut in his room? Even if it is one-sided and biased praise, it should be based on fact to some extent; this is just fake news.

“Since it seems like you would have been sick of hearing that you are pretty throughout your life, should I say something else? Are you aware that you were incredibly cute earlier?”

“Cu, cute… urgh.”

Just matching myself with the word ‘cute’ made me feel sick. Switching patterns to attack because he thought I might develop an immunity to the word ‘pretty’ is utterly malicious.

“A guy who always acted frail as if he hadn’t even been fed thin gruel flushed red and cried exactly as he was touched, and it was so cute I almost came in the middle of it. Why on earth did you beg me to let you go? It makes me want to fucking pound you and squeeze you until nothing more comes out, then kill you…”

“……”

Embarrassing words poured out of him without any filter. The more I listened, the more I wanted to crawl into a mouse hole.

Yes, this is definitely irony. It is irony and sarcasm. Unless he is doing this just to give me a hard time.

“If I had known you were this kind of guy, I should have dragged you out from behind that damn screen long ago.”

“Cancel, I will cancel everything. I ask that you simply do not say anything.”

I didn’t know it, but San Gun had an incredible talent for diss tracks. In a cipher lasting less than a minute, he completely trashed me. I see the potential for him to be the top of Korean hip-hop. He would be a huge success if he went in that direction…

‘Though it felt like some somewhat chilling content was mixed in at the end… it must be my imagination.’

San Gun crushed out his finished cigarette inside the empty cigarette pack. Mine still had more than half remaining.

Just then, it looked like ash was about to fall from the tip of the cigarette I held in my mouth. Fearing it might fall on the bedding, I twisted my body diagonally and half-turned my back to him. As I changed positions, a groan escaped me due to the muscle pain.

“Ugh… Ah, this is killing me.”

“Why such an exaggeration?”

“I am telling you I really feel like I am going to die! No, Mr. San Gun. Is it true that both the kiss and the sex were your first time?”

To thoroughly devour the partner until they are on the verge of fainting during the first sex. No matter how I think about it, this is not a level a virgin can achieve. It’s not like he is the ‘virgin but sexually powerful male lead’ that appears in romance novels.

“Why, were you discouraged because I am so excessively good at it?”

San Gun smiled broadly with his wide-set mouth. It was a very confident, gregarious, and refreshing smile, but to me, it felt only irritating.

“I am originally good at everything involving the body. So you don’t have to be discouraged, Myeong. Even if you envy me, wouldn’t it just be like a crow-tit breaking its legs trying to follow a stork?”

I will never forget this humiliation. The incident of the Mountain Hero’s mockery, I will have my revenge. Certainly…

“And… whether it is the first time or whatever, does that have any meaning.”

San Gun spoke as he flopped down carelessly on the bed. It was a tone that suggested it really was of no consequence.

“I was created only for you, and I die only for you. All my beginnings and ends are entirely yours. If you don’t eat me up, I am an unopened new product for life.”

“Eat up…”

I was about to be touched by something similar to emotion, but it shattered at the final sentence.

“Of course, the other bastards will all be like that too, not just me.”

“……”

I am the Compiler who commands the Incarnations. I am not an emperor who commands concubines.

“So, Myeong. It is fine to use me for satisfying your desires, and it is fine to use me like a limb… Yes, you can even hate and despise me. Anything you do is fine, but… do not treat me like a ‘human’. If you do, I will…”

While speaking in a position lying down looking at the ceiling, San Gun slowly rolled only his eyes to look at me. In his yellowish pupils, there was now not even a hint of playfulness or laughter.

“…get the wrong idea and overstep my place.”

“If you overstep your place… then, what happens?”

The question popped out immediately without passing through my head. San Gun stared at me with a blank expression.

Sometimes the Incarnations show this kind of expression. A blank face that contains no emotion. It is essentially different from the blank faces of humans who ‘do not reveal their emotions’. They seem like beings where ‘emotions did not exist from the start’.

To use a metaphor, it is close to an android robot before the power is turned on… or a character in a game character selection window waiting for the user’s choice. Even while seeing them breathe, speak, and blink right in front of me, I feel the sense of uncanny valley when facing a being that only mimics a human on the surface.

Perhaps… do they enter this state when they stop ‘pretending to be human’? Therefore, this blank expression might actually be closer to revealing their natural and honest bare face.

“Myeong. If you keep asking things like that.”

“……”

I couldn’t even guess what the words to follow would be.

San Gun looked at me intently for a while longer, then suddenly broke his blank expression and frowned playfully.

“I will go rawr. Rawr.”

At the same time, he raised one hand to mimic threatening me. Between his lips, which wore a mischievous expression, his pointed canines stood out. I could not inquire further.

There are things I didn’t know when I was simply a user of the game <No Lifer>, but found out after falling into this world I named <No Lifer>-α. Unlike the game, there are many hidden backstories here. Elements that were not in the in-game story, dialogue, or setting books.

The concept mentioned by several Incarnations in unison—‘losing one’s status as an Incarnation’—is such a thing, and San Gun’s words about ‘overstepping one’s place’ are another. And also the matter regarding the ‘true names’ of the Incarnations…

‘Ah, right.’

I had forgotten because we were rolling around so passionately that my body and mind became ragged. The conversation I had with San Gun a few hours ago.

‘I’ll tell you after the sex is all done.’

San Gun clearly said that. That he would tell me his name. He probably wasn’t just roughly making up a lie.

‘Exactly how is he going to tell me his true name?’

I have already experienced Hwarang’s case before. The moment I mentioned his True Name (眞名) without much thought, he showed a strange reaction.

‘How, how… my name, the Master…’

At that time, Hwarang was in a state where he couldn’t come to his senses because his injuries were severe. Even so, he opened his eyes wide as soon as he heard the name I uttered. And he pierced through me with intense eyes for a long time.

How was his face back then. Overall, it was a doll-like blank expression, but his eyes alone wavered with all sorts of complex emotions. As if reproaching me for how I knew that, or as if rejoicing as if a wish he had only hoped for in his heart had come true…

“About your name, Mr. San Gun, I became curious because I remembered what you said earlier.”

Even as I spoke, I was uncertain if it was right for me to bring this topic back up. I was worried for no reason, thinking I might suffer some disadvantage.

“The true name of an Incarnation… originally, you aren’t supposed to tell it, right.”

“I’m not.”

He answered curtly.

‘Ah, as I thought, it wasn’t allowed.’

I felt the emotion filling my heart—whether it was anxiety or expectation—quickly wither away.

“For other guys, it would be fine if it leaked out once like a slip of the tongue. But I am a bit on the edge. Actually, not just a bit, but a lot.”

“Why?”

“You know. I’ve already crossed the line.”

“Is it… because of killing that fake Master?”

“……”

San Gun simply shrugged his shoulders lightly.

I could feel him consciously withholding speech and choosing his words carefully. For a person who acted as if the concept of watching one’s tongue didn’t exist at all to do that… it must mean a significant restriction (禁制) is placed on it.

“Then forget it. I don’t need to hear it.”

“No. Now that I think about it… since things have gone as far as they can anyway, I don’t think there is any point in playing it safe now.”

Before I could even ask back what that meant, San Gun threw an out-of-the-blue question.

“Myeong. What Chinese characters do you use for your name?”