Confinement Constitution Guide

Warning! Gully 300m Ahead (2)

I responded indifferently to Sa Hae-geon, who was waiting for an answer.

“I don’t know much about games, so you choose whatever’s fun.”

“There are so many Switch games that many people don’t know them. I only know a few myself. Let’s play this one.”

Sa Hae-geon connected the Switch to the TV and skillfully manipulated the controller to select a game. Suddenly, loud music filled the living room along with a voice shouting the game title.

[Party Party! Our Party, Your Party!]

“…What kind of game is that?”

“Oh, it’s abbreviated as ‘Upa-Neupa’. It’s a game where you and I become a team to beat other user teams.”

“How do we win?”

“By rolling dice and playing mini-games. The scores from those two are combined to determine the winner.”

After briefly explaining, Sa Hae-geon manipulated the controller, and a character selection screen appeared with a cheerful sound effect. As I stared blankly at the screen filled with colorful characters, Sa Hae-geon sat next to me and handed me a spare controller.

“You choose the character you want to play first.”

The controller Sa Hae-geon handed me was unfamiliar. It had a directional pad on the left and buttons with incomprehensible alphabets on the right. As I held the controller and stared at it for a while, Sa Hae-geon put his lips close to my ear and started explaining how to use the controller in a soft voice.

“This is the directional pad, and these alphabets are…”

Every time his hot breath tickled my ear, I felt goosebumps. Was there a reason he had to explain the controller so closely? I endured Sa Hae-geon’s nearly disruptive explanation and managed to choose a child character wearing a black cat mask. The character then jumped up and down and pointed to a square-shaped box.

“Now you need to enter a nickname.”

“That’s the hardest part…”

Especially for someone like me who rarely has to come up with nicknames, it was really torturous. While looking around the house for inspiration for a plausible nickname, my eyes met with Cream, who was sprawled out on the floor. Right. We have Cream. Soon, my fingers busily moved to create the letters.

[PigCream]

It was a nickname that Cream would find ridiculous if she saw it, but I couldn’t think of anything better. After overcoming this big hurdle, I let out a sigh of relief. I felt drained even before properly starting the game.

Glancing sideways, I saw Sa Hae-geon carefully selecting a character and entering a nickname. On the large TV screen, a sheep character wearing a gray wolf mask with the nickname ‘0430’ was wiggling its hips left and right. Every time the sheep moved, the precariously placed wolf mask on its head fluttered.

“0430? Does that number have any meaning? Oh, could it be your birthday?”

“No.”

Sa Hae-geon shook his head slightly with a faint smile. If it’s not his birthday, did he just enter it randomly? I looked at the incomprehensible number on the screen and shrugged. …Well, it’s not my business anyway. If Sa Hae-geon doesn’t bother to explain, I don’t need to try to find out. If it was important, he would have told me before I asked.

‘…Although it’s a bit annoying that he’s creating a secret just for himself.’

After the nickname selection was over, the screen seemed to move to a loading screen, and soon a match was made. Eventually, two users with the nicknames ’27ButBelieveInSanta’ and ‘SantaIsReal’ appeared on the screen. Silver crowns were drawn in front of their nicknames.

“What’s that crown in front of the nicknames?”

“It’s the level. The gold crown is the highest level, so these people seem to have played this game a lot.”

As Sa Hae-geon had said about dividing into teams, our characters and the opposing team’s characters were looking at each other through a glass window. From the moment I learned that the opposing team, unlike me, was very familiar with this game, I started to feel extremely tense.

My heart was pounding loudly, and cold sweat was creeping up my palms. I wiped my palms on my flying squirrel pajamas and gripped the controller tightly. We would obviously lose, but hopefully not too miserably. That’s what I told myself.

* * *

And my resolution was in danger of becoming a mere joke. I frantically pressed the controller buttons, trying to somehow win this mini-game to make up for my continued mistakes, but it didn’t work out. The user named ’27ButBelieveInSanta’ skillfully pushed my character into the sea.

“Ah, wait…! No, why is this happening? Sorry. Wow, I’m so bad at this. I’m seriously terrible…”

“It’s okay, hyung.”

“No, it’s not okay. I’m really sorry. How can a person be this bad? This seems beyond human level.”

“It’s because it’s your first time. Everyone stumbles at first. And the users on the opposing team have high levels.”

“Am I possibly not human?”

Even Sa Hae-geon, who had been shaking his head and consoling me during my self-deprecation, flinched this time and couldn’t easily continue speaking. I raised my head at Sa Hae-geon’s strange reaction. Did he also find my skills quite pathetic? I thought at least Sa Hae-geon would say it wasn’t so, that I was doing well enough, until the end. I felt a little betrayed.

The face that had been wearing a faint smile even as we were losing in the game now had a serious look. I felt my heart sink.

“…Do you think so too? Really?”

“I…”

Sa Hae-geon’s lips, which had only been moving slightly, finally moved.

“Actually, I thought you were closer to a flying squirrel than a human.”

“…What, what? What are you saying, really.”

Betrayal? I couldn’t help but laugh at such an absurd statement. I thought he might be joking to cheer me up, but seeing his serious expression, it seemed he was being sincere.

“Please don’t equate me with these weird pajamas.”

Despite my plea, Sa Hae-geon just manipulated the controller without any particular response. The mini-game had already reached its final stages. Unlike me, who had lost miserably in the one-on-one fight, Sa Hae-geon’s character had crushed the opposing user and was preparing for an extended match with the user who had beaten me.

Although I started the game without much interest and it wasn’t really fun as I kept losing, perhaps because we had gone through ups and downs in a short time, I found myself unconsciously cheering for Sa Hae-geon, who was on my team. And since we were playing the game anyway, it’s best to win as much as possible.

“You need to do well. You’re our team’s only hope. If we lose here, we have no chance…”

“Yes. I’ll definitely win.”

As Sa Hae-geon finished speaking with reddened ears, the final battle began. The sheep character threw away even the wolf mask it had been wearing and pushed the opposing team’s chick character to the edge of the ground. Every time Sa Hae-geon predicted where the opposing user would jump and moved a step ahead to interfere, I couldn’t help but exclaim in admiration.

Unlike me, whose movements were completely off, Sa Hae-geon was controlling the character with dazzling and skillful moves. Timing the waves, the sheep and the chick engaged in a long standoff at the edge of the ground before jumping simultaneously. Slightly twisting its body, the sheep narrowly avoided the chick colliding from the front at an angle, quickly turned around, and shoved the bright yellow body.

[Splash!]

The match was decided with the sound of falling into water.

[Peep peep peep…]

[Baa, baaa!]

Unlike the chick, which was floundering in the sea with a gloomy face, the sheep picked up the wolf mask that had fallen to the ground and hugged it with a triumphant expression.

“Wow, you’re really good at this?”

“I told you I’d definitely win.”

Sa Hae-geon mumbled in response to my praise, seemingly embarrassed, and briefly held my right hand before letting go. I had been feeling uncomfortable because we kept losing due to me, but Sa Hae-geon’s not-so-funny gesture slightly lightened my heavy heart.

“Did I do well?”

“Yeah. You did really well. Leave the dice to me.”

Although my mini-game skills were poor, my dice luck was exceptionally good. I’m not sure if my dice luck was particularly good today, but every time I rolled, surprisingly high numbers came up. Still, nothing is absolute, so I couldn’t completely let my guard down. After slowly catching my breath, I carefully manipulated the controller.

The child character wearing the cat mask threw a dice as big as itself with all its might according to my control. The dice, which had up to 15 pips, rolled and came to a stop.

[14!]

When another high number came up, the opposing user sent crying emoticons repeatedly. It was fortunate that the game was decided by combining the scores from the dice rolls and the mini-games. If it weren’t for the dice scores, I would have been watching Sa Hae-geon’s reactions nervously throughout the game.

“Hyung, you’re really good at rolling dice?”

“Yeah. It’s fortunate that my dice luck is good even though my game skills aren’t great.”

I wondered if my luck only applied to dice, as I was the first to be eliminated in the next mini-game as well. Despite being at a disadvantage without me, Sa Hae-geon moved busily here and there, becoming the final winner once again.

And as if that was the last mini-game, a referee character appeared from somewhere and totaled the scores. A brief silence fell in the game. Sa Hae-geon and I couldn’t take our eyes off the TV screen. The screen seemed to go dark for a moment, then soon colorful fireworks burst across the entire screen, announcing the winning team.

[The winners are… ‘PigCream’ and ‘0430’! Your party is truly, truly awesome!]

Sa Hae-geon’s and my characters hugged each other and jumped up and down. Only now did the tension ease. I sighed with relief and looked at Sa Hae-geon sitting next to me. Sa Hae-geon was staring at me with a smiling face. It’s not even reality, just winning in a game, yet he’s smiling like that.

Moreover, it’s not like we did it together; it was practically Sa Hae-geon doing it alone. How could Sa Hae-geon not get annoyed even once at my gameplay? What, is he dreaming of becoming a sage or a saint? As I was lost in these thoughts, cool fingers gently tapped my cheek.

“Huh? What?”

“I enjoyed playing the game with you. Really.”

“Ah… Me too, I guess…”

“We won thanks to you rolling the dice well today. Rolling dice is a skill too.”

It was nonsense. He had struggled alone to win the mini-games.

“What are you talking about? If you had been on a team with someone else instead of me, you probably would have won easily even if the dice scores weren’t great. Besides, dice is about luck, not skill.”

“What? You’re the one talking nonsense. I tried hard because I was on the same team as you. If I had been on a team with someone else, I wouldn’t have concentrated this much.”

“…”

“I tried hard because I wanted to win together with you. Even if we had lost, I would have just been happy to play the game with you. I was just enjoying myself the whole time we were playing. I’m right about this.”

Sa Hae-geon spoke with a slightly sulky voice and started tidying up the game console. I sat still on the sofa, watching the devices being put away one by one in his hands. I felt strange. It was weird to see Sa Hae-geon who was so happy to play just one game with me that even his ears turned red, who smiled faintly even when we kept losing because of me, who fretted trying to console me when I was berating myself for my terrible skills, and who noticed and said what I wanted to hear before I did.

It was similar to the chilling feeling that comes from the realization that “this guy is really out of his mind.”