HACKED 3

Even after that, only useless comments were posted, mocking my misfortune.

Right, I was the one at fault for trusting an anonymous community. They were like people without a shred of compassion in their bodies.

At first, I was in denial. The fact that my precious account had vanished in an instant because of some guy I didn’t even know.

Then, I was enraged. Why me? Why my account of all things?

Afterward, I posted on customer service boards and user forums, trying to find a way somehow… and, though it’s a bit embarrassing, to be honest, I even relied on the “Prayer Meta” for a while.

“Ah, please. If you let me off just this once, I’ll live a really good life from now on. I’ll spoon-feed guides to all the newbies, I’ll lose every training battle on purpose, and I’ll live my life writing walkthroughs every time a new map opens…”

But naturally, the account did not return.

What kind of money was the money I put into this? It was the severance pay from my previous job.

That’s right. After resigning from my former workplace, I was resting while only taking on individual tasks… to put it nicely, a freelancer, and to be blunt, half-unemployed.

And then, I had released all the stress accumulated from my previous job and the job-hunting stress of looking for a new one into the game. Consequently, my small and cute severance pay completely evaporated. In the short span of half a year—even before I could successfully change jobs.

And now, I had nothing left. If I had known it would be like this, I would have controlled myself.

Passing the stage of wailing and suffering as I looked back at the in-app purchase history listed line after line on my credit card bills for the past few months… I finally came to accept reality.

One might say I went through the five stages of grief. Since my account had crossed the river of no return, it was “death” in the literal sense as well.

I entered the game one last time and made a new account. Then, I searched for my original account using the friend search function.

1 User found.

<User Name 808> ― LV. 500

Currently Applied Titles:

― “Get a life” (Within the top 10 playtime rankings on the server)

― “Pedal to the Medal” (Within the top 10 overall rankings on the server)

― “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner” (Achieved 100 consecutive wins in combat training)

― “Rabbit Princess” (Reached the user level cap)

― “Jasseugariguetdeunmangarigu” (Acquired more than 50 types of Avatars of Korean origin)

One-line Bio: (No content)

Since I could apply up to five at a time, the titles I had haphazardly thrown on, the level raised to the current maximum limit, and the blank bio—it was all definitely my account. For the record, titles in this game have no effect other than bragging rights.

But… the medal that should be next to the nickname is gone. The ranking dropped because I haven’t logged in for a few days. This is all because of that hacker jerk.

Requesting a 1:1 chat with <User Name 808>.

Me: Excuse me, you son of a bitch.

Yo, it’s hyung. ^^

Who is hyung??

The owner of the ID you stole. ^^

Did your life get a bit better after hacking my ID?

Is your conscience perhaps a bit ruptured?

Right, it must be ruptured.

That’s why you’d swallow someone else’s carefully raised ID overnight.

Yes, yes, take all the items and everything.

I don’t care if you trade them for taffy or whatever, just give me the ID back.

You can strip it all and give it to me naked.

Just please return the ID.

It’s a child I raised dearly with my wallet and devotion.

Please…

I’m begging you, Mister.

Please…

…

Me: You’re not checking?

…

Me: No, but why do I have to plead with a hacker?

Why am I acting crazy by myself?

I’m the victim and you’re the perpetrator?

This is so ridiculous?

Let’s have some common sense.

Ha… LOL.

Right, I’m the idiot for doing this.

Live a long life full of sickness.

Live a meager life, you highway robber.

I didn’t even expect a reply anyway. This was just my final struggle and a way to vent my anger.

I know, too. That it’s pathetic. But… if an account you made by grinding your daily life and money for half a year vanished in an instant, wouldn’t anyone become like this?

“I’m never playing this trash game again.”

I closed the game and deleted the app while grinding my teeth. I didn’t forget the pettiness of leaving a long, angry review along with a 1-star rating on the application store.

My connection with <No Lifer> ended like that. It was a dog-like ruin of an ending, even more special than the three previous backstabbings.

Time passed even after I was forced to quit <No Lifer>.

At the time of the hack, I acted like it was a matter of life and death, but once I actually quit, it was nothing much. Well, how much could life really change just by not playing one game?

I hit a slump with all games and unintentionally had a period of “fandom-hiatus-that-wasn’t-really-a-hiatus,” and I’d grind my teeth at the thought of that hacker jerk whenever it came to mind… It’s just about that much. That’s very minor.

Just how many times has it been that I was stabbed in the back by a game I had some affection for? I should applaud my own patience just for not scraping together my remaining severance pay to send a protest truck with an electronic billboard to the developer’s building.

The post I put on the anonymous board was the same. The comment section burned for a moment over the dopamine-filled topic of a “High-spending” “Ranker” being “Hacked,” but soon the comments cut off.

It’s natural. A game community is a place where hundreds or thousands of posts go up a day, and all sorts of attention-seeking, incidents, and accidents run rampant.

— So what happened to this?? Is the writer still chanting “Unbreakable Heart” like a prayer? Is the heart not broken?

Perhaps having fished for old posts that were issues on the board late, there was one relatively recent comment. I wrote a rough reply.

ㅤ└ (OP) No. It’s broken.

Now it doesn’t matter what happens. It’s none of my business.

I closed the community web page and turned off the screen. I tossed my phone haphazardly onto the head of the bed, poked around job-seeking sites and music composition communities for a bit… and gave up on that too.

I flopped down next to my phone. I could see the yellowish ceiling of my studio apartment, which must have been ivory once but was now beige.

“What am I doing right now…”

Under bosses who seem to lack the very concept of “musical sense” in their brains, I waste time on work where I can feel neither reward nor fun, and receive a salary as the price of wasting my life. When I finally can’t take it and quit the company, I eat away at the money I’ve saved while looking for a new company again… Only the company name changes, but I enter a place no different from the previous one and repeat the same obvious routine.

Nothing changes by switching from in-house to freelancer. The “boss” just changes to a “client,” and the spatial background of the work just changes from an “office” to “home.”

Since middle school, I lived while clinging to music alone. It’s not that I particularly liked music. It was just that this was the only talent I had.

Even calling it music, I’m not the type to handle grand, expensive classical instruments and go to competitions. It’s just grinding out MIDI with a DAW turned on in a corner of my room. My talent is merely having slightly better ears for listening than others and a slightly more sensitive sense of pitch.

Even though I gave up everything else and went all-in on music, I couldn’t reach the top in this industry. I’m just at a level where I can make a living because work comes in occasionally.

Commonly seen in the arts and physical education fields, I’m far behind the natural-born geniuses, yet it feels like a waste to abandon this path. The so-called “ambiguous talent.”

My skills aren’t bad, but they aren’t outstanding either; I’m an ATM that can be used for a moderately cheap price, producing mixing and mastering of mediocre quality when mediocre salaries are inserted. Not content with just people in the same industry, I now have to compete with AI. That is me.

My very last job was in the A&R team of a small entertainment agency. The idol group launched by the CEO—who sold his house, sold his car, and pulled loans to the max—failed miserably, and the A&R department itself was blown up. The few months I rolled there like crazy without even the minimum human rights guaranteed became “water-career” experience too embarrassing to even put on a resume.

As much as the time I’ve lived, there are a few people I know, but there is no one I can call a truly deep relationship. My only hobby is staying in my room holding a computer or phone to play games.

I’ll probably grow old like this without having achieved or possessed anything. Struggling and squirming like the animals on an island that is gradually sinking as sea levels rise due to global warming.

Do I have to live like this until I die?

It’s a really pathetic life. The saying that most people live like this is no comfort to me. What meaning does the saying that everyone dies anyway have for a person who is on the verge of death?

“Self-pity is disgusting.”

I rubbed my dry face hard and pushed up my upper body. At 그 moment, the phone I had tossed next to my pillow rang.

There is no one I exchange personal contact with. Since I quit, I’ve barely taken on freelance work. Nominally it was a break, but in reality, it was because I was stuck in my room eating away my severance pay while playing games.

Seeing as it is, it’s probably an ad or a notification message. In fact, that was correct.

[No Lifer] (Ad) History or not! Compiler ‘User Name 808’, who has been absent for a long time, your Avatars are quietly waiting for you in the deep darkness. Return right now! If you want to live.

“No Lifer?”

It was a name I used to see every day, but lately, I had been pushing it to one side of my memory. Before I could think that something was strange, I habitually tapped the notification message after reading only the first part.

And I realized too late. Something was wrong.

It’s not strange to send a notification to a dormant user who hasn’t logged in for a long time telling them to return, but the phrasing was excessively strange. Usually, isn’t it something like, “If you come back, we’ll give you a mountain of return-celebration fodder! You pigs!”?

And decisively.

My <No Lifer> account had been forcibly logged out due to hacking, and on top of that, it was after I had wiped the app completely. There was no way a push notification would come to my phone…

But my finger had already touched the notification message. The pitch-black screen immediately following the execution of the game application filled the phone display.

However, my face, which should have been reflected on the display, and the scenery of my room were not visible. The <Boundary Laboratory> logo, which should have appeared next, did not appear either.

Darkness seeped through the display and spread outward. The hand holding the phone, the arm, the body, the entire room… everything turned pitch-black. As if falling into an abyss.