HACKED 66

“Huh?”

The question was so out of the blue and sudden that I was dumbfounded. Everyone else must have thought so too, as everyone’s gaze pinned the model student at once. Just from being stared at, the kid started to break out in a cold sweat.

“Master… I mean, are you a Compiler…”

“I’m your Master, so what else would I be?”

‘Wait a minute. Then who on earth did she think I was when she followed me?’

Even if she isn’t a real human or a real student, she looks like a child on the outside; does she just readily follow a strange adult who tells her to come eat without even knowing who they are?

Of course, there was that happening in the middle of our talk where she suddenly screamed and ran away… but she quieted down quickly and followed me after some hesitation, so I thought she had been sufficiently convinced.

“You weren’t <The Drum that Sounds on its Own>?”

Seeing as she’s using an Incarnation’s name, she isn’t a total stranger to the situation here. It seems she’s misunderstood something strangely. I pointed at Ja-myeong-go.

“I’m just a human. Not an Incarnation. Ja-myeong-go is over there.”

“Did you call for me?”

Ja-myeong-go offered a beaming smile. It was an incredibly gentle smile, but far from putting her at ease, the model student became even more flustered.

“Are you a real human? You’re not, p-p-panda, either?”

‘Where is this panda stuff coming from?’

The Incarnations I’ve met so far generally had idiosyncratic mental worlds, but even among them, this kid was top-tier. Perhaps because she’s a teenage Incarnation in her period of storm and stress, I simply cannot follow her train of thought.

“P-p, pfft, panda.”

I was so stunned I couldn’t even react, but Hwarang, who was drinking water, suddenly choked. I rolled only my eyes to glare at him.

“If you’re going to laugh, just do it openly.”

“Ahahaha, hahahahaha!”

“He’s laughing way too openly. Someone shut his mouth.”

Maybe it’s because he’s also physically in a similar age group as the model student, despite his soul being hundreds of years old, but his sense of humor is unique. Are pandas funny? I don’t find it funny at all.

The twins trotted over and used their small, fern-like hands to block half of Hwarang’s mouth from each side. Even with his mouth covered, he kept his head down and his shoulders shook. He was being obnoxious to the extreme.

“I think you’ve mistaken something, but I am indeed the Compiler. Though I don’t know why you followed someone whose identity you didn’t even know in the first place.”

“T-t-teacheer…”

‘Teacher?’

Another strange title came out. But before I could point that out, tears welled up in the model student’s eyes. I froze in my tracks.

“I, I-I-I, I… hic! Waaaaah.”

“Uh… yeah. Don’t cry… no, if you want to cry, cry…”

I don’t even know what I’m saying. I must look very stupid right now. Instead of me, who was creaking like a broken robot, Ja-myeong-go stood up and wiped the corners of the model student’s eyes with her long silk sleeves.

Hwarang is giggling, the twins are blocking his mouth, the model student is crying, and Ja-myeong-go is comforting her. It’s total chaos. San Gun, who was watching the scene indifferently, plopped his arm onto my shoulder. He’s heavy.

“You made a kid cry. Myeong, are you trash?”

“…”

I had nothing to say. I don’t know what the story is, but it’s true that I made that kid cry, and making a kid cry is a trashy thing to do.

“No, he’s not!”

The model student yelled out in the middle of her crying. Even while wailing so hard she couldn’t steady her body, she had a very good set of pipes.

“The teacher is n-n-not trash! I’m the trash. That Mister told me… that I’m trash, and told me to die…”

I don’t think that Mister is me. Then who is it? There are so many Misters here that I don’t know. To a high schooler, all adult men are Misters, I guess.

“Look at that. Myeong is lucky. Having someone take his side.”

Even though a child was crying right in front of him, San Gun’s expression was incredibly bored. He leaned his body against mine as if he were dying of boredom.

‘Ah, seriously. You’re heavy.’

If he’s going to lean on me so often, he should at least not be so fit. Does he really want to put his weight on me with that physique? He has no conscience.

“Since there’s someone like Mr. San Gun who wouldn’t take my side even if he died, shouldn’t I have someone on my side too for balance?”

“Your precious supporter is crying right now; what are you doing instead of comforting her?”

“I’m like this because I don’t know how to comfort people…”

“You really are trash.”

He concluded simply in one sentence. I became depressed.

“Hing.”

“You have quite a few Incarnations under you now; you should speak like an adult.”

“It’s a hing.”

Trash adult Myeong is sad. I wish someone would comfort me too…

˙✧˖°🎮 ⋆｡˚

The model student must have had a lot built up, as her crying lasted a very long time. After sobbing for dozens of minutes and soaking Ja-myeong-go’s silk sleeves into the shape of eyes, a nose, and a mouth, she finally managed to calm down.

“I-I’m sorry. My emotions suddenly overwhelmed me…”

“But you know. Earlier, you said someone told you to die. How did you end up hearing something like that?”

“Well, you see, it’s like this.”

The model student rubbed her reddened nose and stole a glance at me before lowering her eyes again. What is she trying to say?

“Normally, 1-stars must die unconditionally. Because they have no value.”

“What?”

Ghastly words came out casually from the mouth of an Incarnation in the form of a young student. For a moment, I doubted my ears.

“Of course, I know that my being alive is just a waste of air. I know that, but I was so scared that I hid in the mirror. I don’t have much of a presence anyway, so I thought if I hid, everyone might forget about someone like me…”

“I don’t understand any of this. What does all that mean?”

The model student looked puzzled, as if asking why I was asking something so obvious.

“Didn’t the teacher give the Myeong-ryeong to kill the 1-stars and 2-stars?”

Me pulling the gacha a bunch and organizing the remaining Incarnations? It’s something all gamers do. As the opposite concept of ‘Incarnation Descent’, it’s called ‘Narrative Restitution’ in <No Lifer>. Of course, players use terms like ‘disassemble’, ‘release’, ‘grind’, or ‘melt’ instead of the formal term.

‘Narrative Restitution’ is the setting where a Compiler terminates a contract with an Incarnation and returns them to fragments of narrative. The effect was just becoming a cluster of light and scattering into the air. It is absolutely not the concept of death or murder. So, naturally, I have never given a Myeong-ryeong to kill Incarnations.

“No.”

“No?”

“Would I be crazy enough to do that? I’d be a real piece of trash then.”

“But I really almost died. It says so in the manual too…”

“Exactly which bastard did that? And what is this manual?”

“I don’t really know who it was. Oh, the manual is this! Pantheon Survival Rules for Newbies.”

The model student rummaged through her school uniform skirt pocket and handed over a crumpled, folded piece of paper.

‘There are survival rules that I, the master of the Pantheon, don’t know about?’

If those rules are real, I might not have gone through all this suffering until now. I quickly unfolded the paper.

Several pairs of eyes turned toward me all at once as if by agreement. No matter how much I experience it, I never get used to being the center of attention. It feels like my whole body is being pricked by intangible needles. I hurriedly scanned the text.

In conclusion, these survival rules weren’t the type that would be helpful to me. It wouldn’t be solved that easily, would it? More peculiar than that was…

“It’s in the format of a Napolitan ghost story.”

“A Napolitan ghost story?”

The model student looked like she didn’t understand at all.

“You don’t know?”

“I know what Napolitan is! I may look like this, but I’m an Incarnation with a ghost story motif; of course I know. My head is updated with even the most recent ghost stories. But isn’t that a short ghost story posted on the Japanese internet? The one where ‘I went to a restaurant and ordered spaghetti’…”

“The original is indeed that, but it’s changed a bit lately. Everything from putting all sorts of tricks in rules to creating worldviews similar to the SCP Foundation or the Backrooms is called Napolitan now.”

The model student tilted her head with her mouth open. She looked as if she hadn’t understood even a quarter of what I said. You said you’re a ghost story motif Incarnation. You said you’re updated with the most recent ghost stories. Why don’t you know this?

Could it be… is the standard of ‘recent’ a bit different?

“What are those latest ghost stories?”

“The ones serialized on portal sites in the form of personal experiences? Like my friend seeing a ghost, going to a haunted house during summer vacation, that kind of thing. The stories where everyone and their dog is the son or daughter of a shaman, and everyone has at least one shaman they know personally.”

“Isn’t that a trend from about 15 years ago?”

“Pardon?”

“Let’s change the question. What is the most recent slang you know?”

“Hum-jom-mu? King-wang-jjang? An-seup?”

“…”

“Do you know OTL? OTL. It represents a person kneeling in frustration, and in lowercase it’s orz. It’s really funny.”

I felt like a cold sweat was about to break out. I corrected my posture from leaning back against the chair.

I had naturally assumed that Incarnation, <Sickly Model Student>, would be an Incarnation from the exact same era as me. Because her outfit was a very familiar modern school uniform. She had a neat uniform that hadn’t been shortened at all, proper for a model student, with straight short hair and a face without makeup, so there were no clues to guess the time period.

Unlike Hwarang or the twins, who look young but are hundreds of years old inside, I thought she was truly younger than me. That’s why I treated her like a child without worry. The words and actions I had done thoughtlessly until now flashed through my mind like a panorama.

I became extremely solemn. I quietly lowered my gaze while resting my hands neatly on my knees.

“Noona…”

“Yes? What did you say?”

Only the model student, failing to grasp the situation, asked back brightly.