Smash!
I could hear the sound of something shattering inside accompanied by what seemed like piercing screams. I couldn’t tell what the sound was because it was muffled by the walls, but it appeared to be the voice of a woman, or perhaps a child, hurling curses in a frenzy.
This marked the second strange event of today. It was baffling, considering it wasn’t even during work hours. Despite my irritation, my heightened senses diligently analyzed the turmoil of magical power within Vasilisa, discerning its intensity, quantity, and direction. Following that, I shifted a step to the side.
Bang! Crushh!
The front doors of Vasilisa café burst open as if they were about to shatter, revealing a burly man hurled through the air. He landed sprawled on the very spot where I had been standing only moments before.
“Aaaaargh! Collie, you piece of sh*t!”
The man scrambled to his feet and shouted in rage. He was clearly no ordinary citizen of Paju going about his day.
He possessed a notable amount of magical power and was impressively muscular. Although we had never formally introduced ourselves, I was able to recall information from the time I played the game. His fixer name, was it JJ?
He was merely one of the mass-produced NPCs available as an assistant for difficult quests and wasn’t an important character at all.
“Shut that rotten mouth of yours!”
However, the person presumed to have sent him flying possessed a level of magical power that was incomparable to someone like JJ. A chair from inside Vasilisa flew at an incredible speed before striking JJ who was awkwardly standing, and with a cry of “Gwaaah!” JJ was sent flying back again.
Then he lay motionless on the ground as if he were dead.
Of course, my eyes could perceive not just his outward appearance but also the magical power residing within his body, so I could tell that he wasn’t actually dead. It seemed that the woman causing havoc inside had also guessed as much.
“Hey, JJ, you little shit! Just lie there. I’m coming to kill you!”
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64ce79d606107d003c23ea27", id: "pf-5140-1"})JJ, who had been sprawled on the ground for a moment, sensed her voice approaching and immediately got up and ran into the darkness of the back alleys of the Geumchon neighborhood. And the one who emerged a step later from the café was… a rather small woman.
Although she was short, she had a flashy appearance that would catch anyone’s eye anywhere.
Her long hair was bleach-blond, and she wore a dazzlingly red leather jacket while holding a ridiculously large zanbato (horse-slaying sword) in one hand.
She harbored a strong and dark magical power as I had sensed beforehand. Upon confirming that JJ had disappeared, she kicked the ground in irritation and cursed.
“Ah, sh*t. That sneaky bastard!”
Then she hurled aimless curses into the darkness of the back alley.
“If you show that ugly face of yours in Vasilisa again, I’ll slice you up! You’d better find yourself a broker other than Tudor!”
Tough talk. Her name is… I’m not sure. Her real name was never explicitly revealed in the game. However, her fixer name is Curtain Call. She’s a fixer I’ve seen a few times coming and going from Vasilisa, but never had any direct dealings with.
Still seemingly not over her anger, she did a quick glance around and then yelled at me.
“Who are you! Why are you here?”
“I’m a customer.”
“…. Ah, right, this is Vasilisa. Sorry.”
Before I could even decide whether to feel offended or not, she lowered her head to 90 degrees and apologized. It was hard to remain angry when I was faced with such a response. So, I just shrugged and said.
“I was about to enter the shop; could you move aside?”
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64cc9e79c7059f003e4ad4b0", id: "pf-5109-1"})“I’m going in too. Excuse me then.”
After saying that, Curtain Call sheathed her giant zanbato and headed into Vasilisa…
“Collie! Bring a chair!”
“Ah, got it!”
…and then following Tudor’s call, she hurried back out, grabbed a chair, and darted back in. As befitting a powerful warrior, her movements were almost like the charge of a wild boar. I stepped aside for a moment to avoid her path, which must have looked odd to Curtain Call.
While Curtain Call hurried to fetch a chair, she noticed me standing awkwardly and remarked,
“If you’re a customer, why are you standing over there like that?”
“Because if you hit me, I could die.”
“Huh?”
Curtain Call looked puzzled for a moment, glanced up at my mask, and then examined me from head to toe before a look of realization dawned on her face. It was a look that seemed to say, Oh, you were born with a pitifully weak body.
“Ah, I see. Sorry about that. And sorry for shouting at you out of the blue earlier!”
With those final words, Curtain Call disappeared into the store with a chair in her hand.
“Hmm… Was that her character?”
I was lost in thought while tapping my mask with my finger before entering Vasilisa.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "663633fa8ebf7442f0652b33", id: "pf-8817-1"})Despite the recent commotion, the inside of Vasilisa seemed surprisingly normal.
Of course, it wasn’t exactly the Vasilisa of an ordinary day.
A broken chair, possibly thrown by Curtain Call, lay in a corner, along with a shattered cup and a table split as if by an axe. These seemed to be the remnants of Curtain Call’s earlier rampage. The damaged furniture was just left unattended with no one to clean it up. How did this commotion arise in the first place?
It couldn’t be called a safe or quiet place since it was frequented by rough mercenaries and fixers, yet it was a spot run by the overly charismatic Tudor. Events like “tavern brawls” were almost unheard of in Vasilisa.
Ah, now that I think about it, there’s one more strange thing.
Yes, Tudor who led a leisurely life was not the type to clean up such messes. This was because there was someone else who took care of the major and minor affairs of Vasilisa as a café, aside from its business as a brokerage for fixers.
But he was nowhere to be seen.
Orb, the barista with the monitor head who could be considered the icon of the cafe, was not here.
In his place, or for whatever reason, a bald mercenary leaning casually against the counter greeted me.
“Hey, long time no see. How have you been?”
It was Kang Il-sam, the fixer who had once asked me to join his team. His fixer name was Thirteen.
“Ah, but what’s all this chaos? Where’s Orb? And Tudor?”
“Orb stepped out for a bit on an errand for Tudor. He should be back soon. And Tudor is…”
He gestured over his shoulder to a table.
At one table in the corner, I saw the small fixer called Curtain Call from earlier and she was having a conversation with Tudor.
Although I couldn’t hear their conversation, the sight of the tall Tudor whispering something gently to the much shorter Curtain Call resembled, at first glance, a young mother admonishing her child for her misbehavior.
However, Curtain Call’s bizarre behavior completely shattered that image.
With a look of dissatisfaction on her face, Curtain Call listened to Tudor’s words while… chewing on a cup?
This was no metaphor or joke. She was literally crunching on a glass cup while making a grinding sound.
What in the world? Why was she eating a cup? I mean, it’s none of my business if someone decides to chew on glass cups or slice up tables. The real question is, why was “that person” eating a cup?
For a more accurate clarification, I turned to Thirteen and asked.
“That… Collie, her name is Curtain Call, right?”
“Huh? You know her?”
“Well, only seen her face in passing.”
“Well, Collie is quite well-known. Most fixers in this line of work are a bit weird in the head, but that woman is something else entirely.”
It wasn’t because she was famous that I knew her, but rather because she was a named NPC memorable enough to remember her name and face. However, I felt there was no need to talk to him about that detail. I simply nodded along appropriately to encourage Thirteen’s misunderstanding.
“She began showering Orb with an overwhelming display of affection a while back. But today, she seemed somewhat off with Orb missing. Amidst all this, JJ unnecessarily picked a fight with her and that led to the earlier commotion.”
“What’s with that bizarre setup?”
“Hahaha! It’s quite unique, isn’t it?”
Thirteen laughed it off and moved on but this wasn’t something to be taken lightly.
Something was off. This was different from what I knew. Such a peculiar setup would have been easy to remember, yet none of this was part of the Curtain Call I was familiar with.
The only details I knew were her small size compared to her abnormally large weapon and a somewhat ambiguous setup seemingly designed to appeal to certain gamers.
There was nothing about her expressing affection for Orb… or chewing on glass cups.
“Did she always have this rare… food preference?”
“Hmm, not really… but things got a bit weird since she fell hard for Orb.”
“When did that start?”
“Let’s see… about… a month or two ago? I don’t know where she came from or what she did but it seems like she came back with a few new abilities and a touch of madness.”
Changes in personality, taste, and eating habits are not uncommon for fixers who work in the darkness of Paju, where beings of madness and abyss run rampant.
Among the people I had encountered, there were dramatic transformations like Jang Hyeon-deok, who went from being a professional driver of a secure taxi to a top-tier medium, and Lee Chang-hyuk, who turned into a monster after ingesting bodily fluids sprayed by an abyssal being. There was also Lee Seon-bin, who went mad overnight and had to be admitted to a special psychiatric ward.
And judging from Thirteen’s attitude of dismissing her affection for Orb as madness, it seemed that Curtain Call had experienced a temporary distortion upon discovering Orb’s absence from Vasilisa today. It appeared that JJ was an unintended victim caught up in this distortion …
When I shared my deductions with Thirteen, he agreed with a laugh.
“That’s almost right. But it’s not like JJ was an innocent victim. That guy has been a jerk from the start; it was only a matter of time before he got what was coming to him.”
Kuhahaha. Thirteen then burst into laughter. He was about to transition into a series of humorous anecdotes related to JJ, but I was more concerned about something else.
“So, this happened about two months ago? Are you sure?”
“It started precisely after you came here.”
Thirteen and I were in the middle of a conversation when Tudor interjected. It seemed she had just finished her talk with Curtain Call. Thirteen smoothly transitioned to address Tudor’s sudden involvement.
“Ah, right. It was around that time I believe.”
“Of course, it’s nothing to do with him personally. The coincidence in timing is just that, a coincidence.”
Despite Tudor’s words, there was a peculiar expression on her face. She was secretly looking at my mask with a serious expression that I rarely saw on her face…
“It somehow sounds like you don’t quite believe it’s just a coincidence?”
“No, I truly think it is a coincidence. But it’s not just Collie who started acting strangely around the time you arrived here.”
“There are others who’ve become strange as well?”
Tudor nodded slightly, but Thirteen seemed to have a slightly different opinion.
“That said, cases like Collie’s aren’t really common. Besides, such changes are almost an occupational hazard for us fixers; it happens more often than you’d think.”
He had a point… However, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy. Could it be that the game’s settings have been continually changing since I came to this world?
If a change that has occurred once continues to affect other things, and the affected things start to cause new events… It meant that the knowledge I had acquired through the game could become useless.
For example, one of the reasons I entered into a contract with Tudor was because I had learned through gameplay that she was a broker with a 100% trust rating who would never betray me. But what if that information became twisted and unreliable?
I would be wandering with zero knowledge in this chaotic world.
No, such thoughts are utterly pointless.
Didn’t I decide to twist the game’s setting anyway? Whether Tudor betrayed me or the locations of the artifacts I knew about changed, all that awaited me if I were to follow the game’s flow was a disastrous ending.
It was more important to investigate and verify the changes. Starting with Curtain Call. And it was also necessary to check on others who were thought to have caused these changes.
Because these changes themselves could be the clues I need to escape this world.
