Chapter 1
Coach: Goyo, there’s a coaching position open. Come whenever you like.
SGY: Player, this is Sa Gongyeon from Day News. Would you perhaps be available for an interview…?
When I turned on my phone screen to check the time, notifications for unread messages popped up.
It had been ages since I retired from professional gaming, yet they were still calling me “Player.”
You would think the coach would have given up by now, but he kept contacting me with stubborn persistence.
I looked down at my hand for a moment.
Ever since the accident four years ago, it had looked perfectly fine on the outside and posed no problems in everyday life.
I just couldn’t play professionally with it anymore.
With a practiced flick of my fingers, I dismissed the notifications and left only the push notification for a livestream.
It was time for my favorite M-tuber’s stream. I didn’t have time to waste on message notifications I wasn’t going to read anyway.
The moment I turned on my computer and entered the livestream, I sent a donation first.
My username and donation message appeared in huge letters in the chat window.
The M-tuber beamed and called out to me.
“Welcome, Gunbam!”
[Gunbam: Hello.]
My greeting was quickly buried beneath the messages from the fervent viewers.
[SaveMeSaveMePleaseLetMeOutICan’tBeatThis]
[ICan’tDoThisAnyMorrreeheheheekikikikik]
[I’mSorryI’mSorryI’mSorryI’mSor]
[I’mDyingI’mGoingToDieAaaghItHurtsItHurtsItHurts]
[End?ingHow?EndingPleaseEnding]
My favorite M-tuber’s streams didn’t attract many viewers.
There were only a few dozen at most, but perhaps because they were all devoted fans, the chat was far more active than on other streams.
Another unusual thing was that viewers of small personal streams normally found it easy to get friendly with one another, yet no one here had the slightest interest in anyone else.
They were too busy telling the M-tuber what they wanted.
But that was precisely why I liked it. The lack of unnecessary attention actually put me at ease.
“I’ve been waiting just for you, Gunbam.”
[Gunbam: I’ve been waiting for your stream too.]
More than anything else, I genuinely liked this M-tuber.
I smiled bashfully as I sent the message.
I had debuted as a professional gamer at nineteen, built a respectable career, and retired.
The accident had forced me into retirement, and becoming unemployed overnight left me incredibly bored.
So, while looking for something to relieve that boredom, I started playing games.
After becoming absorbed in all sorts of online games, I eventually turned my attention to packaged games and devoured everything from AAA titles to indie games without discrimination.
Then I discovered an indie game that suited my tastes perfectly.
I stayed up for two nights to see every ending, then naturally searched for other games by its developer.
That search happened to lead me all the way to a livestream hosted by the developer himself.
That was two years ago.
After becoming one of the developer’s devoted viewers, I began enjoying an incredible privilege: testing the games he was developing.
Since he was a solo developer, they were all pixel-art indie games.
But their imaginative settings and stories let me immerse myself more deeply than any other games I had played.
Their genres were so varied that no two ever overlapped, and every last one was even connected within a single vast universe.
It was known as the Archive universe.
For two years, I play-tested the games the developer gave me and spent many happy hours inside his world.
Wondering what kind of game he had made this time, I typed into the chat.
[Gunbam: The game you gave me last time was really fun.]
“I knew you would reach the True Ending, Gunbam.”
How did he know I had cleared the True Ending?
I blinked for a moment.
But he probably knew that I had stayed up all night to see every ending of each game he had given me, so it wasn’t particularly strange.
I brushed off my doubts and asked a question.
[Gunbam: What kind of game is it today?]
Amid the flood of messages the viewers were hammering into the chat like mad, the M-tuber somehow picked mine out and grinned.
“Hmm. There’s no game today.”
Then he suddenly leaned his face close to the camera.
I instinctively leaned back a little from the face filling my entire screen.
His eyes gleaming in the light, the M-tuber whispered.
“And there won’t be one ever agaaain.”
My heart dropped.
“No more games?”
For someone like me, who had enjoyed all kinds of games thanks to the M-tuber, the news came as a bolt from the blue.
Unlike me, frozen in shock, the M-tuber seemed unusually excited today.
Anyone looking at him would have thought he had won the lottery.
[No?Game?NoGame?CanI?Leave?Let?MeOut?]
[IWantToLeaveI’mSorrySaveMe]
[It’s over already? How boring.]
[FinallyFinallyDieDieDieDie]
The viewers’ messages also ran wild after the M-tuber’s bombshell announcement.
I barely managed to move my fingers amid the deluge of chat messages.
[Gunbam: That’s a shame…. May I ask why?]
“Because it’s over now.”
The M-tuber spoke in an immensely relieved voice.
“Thank you for everything. It’s all thanks to you, Gunbam.”
Did he mean he was quitting streaming altogether?
Would he keep making games? Or was he giving that up too……?
It was common for solo developers to abandon development for all sorts of reasons.
But it would be such a terrible waste. He was a developer with a genius talent.
Just look at how much the viewers of this stream loved his games.
‘Couldn’t he release at least a few of them in Early Access or something?’
Knowing that he already had several highly polished games, I worried at my lip.
I started typing into the chat to ask for details, only for my fingers to stop.
It should have been impossible, yet I felt as though my eyes had met the M-tuber’s through the screen.
Staring straight into the camera, the M-tuber stretched his lips into a broad smile.
At that instant, a hot sensation surged through my nose, and blood began to pour from it.
“Ugh…….”
My eyes grew hot, and a throbbing headache split my skull.
Was it because I had stayed up all night and watched the stream immediately afterward?
As I briefly rose from my seat to look for tissues, his voice reached me.
“You’re the best viewer I’ve ever met, Gunbam. I know you can do it. Because I found you, and I confirmed it.”
After finally finding some tissues, I plugged my nose and looked at the screen again.
The M-tuber was still staring straight into the camera.
“From now on, it seems I’ll be the one watching you, Gunbam.”
Nothing he had said for a while now made any sense at all. Pressing the bridge of my nose, I tapped at the keyboard with one hand.
[Gunbam: I don’t understand what you mean.]
“I can’t wait. I’ve been waiting for a truly long time. Such a very, very, very long time.”
By this point, there was no mistaking that something was wrong with the M-tuber.
He didn’t seem drunk. Surely he wasn’t on some kind of drug…?
As a longtime viewer, I was about to type that perhaps he should end the stream for now.
“Then shall we begin?”
He called my name.
“Han Goyo.”
A name I had never once told him.
The instant my lips parted with a startled sound, the entire world distorted.
The ordinary, perfectly normal studio apartment around me became stained in blotchy fluorescent colors and crumpled as though it were melting.
With a cheerful notification chime, a System Window appeared before my eyes.
‘Han Goyo’ announces his name to Akasha!
Current Recognition: 0.01%
System Windows filled with incomprehensible information sprang up and blocked my vision.
I checked the final System Window and lost consciousness.
You are the System of planet ‘Earth.’
Read only on MUGEX
The sound of string instruments rang from an old speaker.
The persistent static mingling with the long, drawn-out notes grated on my ears, making me furrow my brow.
I groaned and opened my eyes.
Before me was a sight I had never seen in my life.
An interior composed of bright, colorful hues. A mural with an enormous, adorable character painted on it. Toy packages stacked as high as a Christmas tree.
No matter how I looked at it, this place could not have been further removed from my studio apartment.
It looked like some kind of toy factory.
Pressing hard at my temples against the faint headache that still lingered, I examined my surroundings once again.
A huge sign bearing rounded typography hung overhead.
The words were extremely familiar. I could hardly believe them even as I stared, and ended up reading them aloud.
“…?”
I hurriedly looked back at the character mural I had only glanced at earlier.
Welcome to Happy Smile Factory!
We are your toy friends, here to make you happy.
Let’s all shout together! Happy Smile!
The children’s toys bearing those adorable words wore happy smiles.
Cold sweat dampened my spine.
Because was….
A game made by the developer I liked.
Had the developer kidnapped me and locked me inside a place resembling his game?
It was the most plausible hypothesis I could think of, and yet it was absurd.
Who would kidnap an unemployed nobody who used to be a pro gamer? It would be the most pointless thing in the world.
After standing frozen in this unreal situation, I slowly rose from the floor.
“…Wow.”
Halfway to my feet, I caught sight of my clothes and gave a hollow laugh.
I was wearing the work uniform from .
On the chest of the conspicuous lime-green uniform was a name tag bearing the Happy Smile logo.
Employee: Gunbam
I scratched at the embroidered name patch with my finger, but it was firmly attached and would not come off.
Thinking there might be something useful on me, I rummaged through my pockets, only to find dust.
Instead, a pouch containing a flashlight hung from my waist.
This was exactly how the game began.
“This is insane.”
The curse slipped out on its own. I dragged a hand down my face.
was the first of the developer’s games that I had ever played.
It was about a player who woke inside a toy factory and escaped while searching for their lost memories and the factory’s hidden secrets.
The problem was the toys.
The toys here utterly despised ‘adults.’ Therefore, they tried to eliminate any adult who entered the factory without permission—in other words, the player.
So, if the situation unfolded the same way as …
I would have to escape the factory while avoiding murderous toys.
Any lunatic capable of preparing a factory on this scale would surely have prepared killers in toy costumes too.
What was I supposed to do?
I discarded the thought process of a sane person and tried to follow the lunatic’s way of thinking.
For now, I decided it might be best to treat this as though I were playing the game.
After all, if it followed the game, the objective would be to escape the factory.
I moved cautiously across the lobby. Just as I was about to enter the interior…
BOOM!
An enormous crash erupted from deep inside the factory.
‘Surely the toys aren’t moving already?’
If they were, staying out in the open would do me no good.
I vaulted over the entrance turnstile and ran inside.
A cloud of dust billowed up and obscured my vision. I roughly covered my nose with my sleeve and searched for somewhere to hide.
Suddenly, something clamped around my throat and lifted me into the air.
“Ghk!”
The feel of hard plastic constricted my airway. I struggled for only a moment before my assailant quickly set me back down on the floor.
A bewildered voice followed.
“What the—are you a civilian?”
As the dust settled, I began to see the person who had strangled me.
She was a petite beauty with bobbed hair and sharp features.
Beside her stood a man who was likewise dressed in a work uniform.
The moment the woman’s gaze met mine, a rectangular System Window appeared.
You have discovered ‘Mo Haein’!
‘Mo Haein’ is eligible for Character Registration. Would you like to register her?