Han Sung-hyuk had long legs. For every few steps he took, I would have to awkwardly trot behind him until I caught up, then I would walk and fall behind again. I watched the movement of his muscles through his shirt as he walked, wondering how the fabric seemed to be both slightly loose but also form-fitting. Game magic.

  As we walked, I opened the Kill Feed, checking compulsively for names I knew. No sign of anyone I knew, until, of course…

  I closed the Kill Feed.

  I wanted this scenario to be over. I was so tired – not physically, my Endurance stat wouldn’t allow it.

  This wasn’t even the halfway mark yet. And if the difficulty progression was anything to go by, the scenarios were just going to get harder and harder.

  What would happen if I just…

  I forced the thought down. I couldn’t give up after coming this far. The thought made me feel defiant.

  I’d survived though some bad things in my life already, hadn’t I?

  Han Sung-hyuk was still walking without looking back. I didn’t know what to make of him. His silent aloofness was both intimidating and infuriating.

  Somehow I felt uncomfortable using the power of Gabriel’s Ring on him. It felt invasive prying into the thoughts of someone so elusive. I was probably being stupid, but I fiddled with the ring and that was all.

  I had come up with a sort of plan as I walked. If Han Sung-hyuk could pass the exam and become an official, he might be able to retroactively accuse Wen Yong, or rather, the magistrate, and have me acquitted. And then hopefully we could finally get out of this damned scenario.

  And into the next one.

  The walking was starting to make my brain work. Pitching my voice to sound as friendly as possible, I called out to Han Sung-hyuk, “H… Hey, how did you pass the last scenario?”

  His head titled a little in my direction, but he didn’t turn. “Why?”

  “Uh, you know how fairy tales and folk tales are… like, a lot of them can super gory from what my friend… my friend told me. Either there’s these sweet little fantasies or like… everyone dies. And… well I think that was what was going to happen in the last scenario. It just seemed that way… Am I just being paranoid…?” I laughed awkwardly to fill the silence when he didn’t respond quickly.

  “How did you pass the scenario?”

  “Oh… I completed both of my tasks. Uh, to attend the festival and to escape from my family’s abuse. The family’s abuse.”

  For a few moments, the only sound was the steady trudge of our feet.

  “So this time, you haven’t finished yours?”

  “I thought I had. I had to receive a token of affection, which I got… but… I dropped it.”

  I faintly heard him scoff.

  “And then I had to ‘maintain my faithfulness’.”

  “The fuck?”

  “Yeah, it’s weird… it’s really vague. I thought if I just kept turning Wen – Striking Red Crane down, that would count.”

  And now he’s dead.

  “What, he wanted you to sleep with him?”

  “I… don’t know about that. He wanted to go against the story. He wanted me to join him, and the game even said I could and still pass the scenario.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “Did you forget the part where he killed my friend?” I demanded, louder than I’d intended. Shit, don’t get this guy against you, you need his help to get out of here!

  When his response was silence once again, I could feel panic crawling across my shoulder blades.

  Oh no. Oh no.

  “Maybe it’s because I dropped the umbrella,” I said quickly. “I thought about going back, by myself, and looking for it.”

  “And how long would that take?”

  I shut my mouth. Yes, I already knew it was a stupid idea, but it still feels bad to hear that tone of voice.

  Still, it would probably be faster than waiting to Han Sung-hyuk to finish the exam.

  Super fast if I was caught and executed on the spot.

  Briefly, my mind turned to Sukju, wondering how far a cockroach could travel and whether it could go searching for the umbrella for me, but I had no way of knowing where the creature had gone.

  It’d probably drown if I sent it into the rice paddies, anyway.

  I groaned and wondered why it had to be a cockroach for the hundredth time.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “What now?”

  “Oh… nothing. Just… trying to decide what to do next.”

  He grunted and continued walking, his hand moving in the thin air before his face.

  “Um… What are you looking at? The Kill Feed?”

  “Dailies.”

  Ah. How long had it been since I had done mine? They didn’t seem that important, honestly, but it gave me something to do while I tried to sort out my thoughts.

  “How long has this been going on?” I complained aloud. Spending so much time alone must have sent me a bit out of my head.

  “What?”

  “Uh… The wheelspin thing.”

  “A few days now.”

  Damn, I’d missed out of several spins already? The prize wheel hovered before me, keeping pace as I walked. The outer edge was rimmed with neon yellow light, and each prize space was a different, faintly translucent colour. They were all blank, but there were different numbers of each colour.

  Three pink, three yellow, three green. Two each of the red, blue and purple. Only one white and orange, as well as two panels that shimmered, one silver, one gold.

  And one that was ominously black.

  I started at the gleaming black panel. This damned game… I wouldn’t be surprised if it had some warped concept of prizes. What if these so-called ‘prizes’ were curses instead?

  Still, if Han Sung-hyuk had been spinning the wheel for the past few days and been fine, the odds of something bad happening had to be relatively low.

  Right?

  I shut my eyes and spun the wheel.

  A stupidly happy little tune started to play, in time with the little tik tik tik of a neon arrow at the top of the wheel, hitting small pins set in each of the panels. The wheel spun around and around and slowed and slowed and stopped.

  Yellow.

  Come back and play, my head. I’m going to smash that fucking wheel next time.

  Whatever Han Sung-hyuk received, he wasn’t forthcoming about it, and I couldn’t blame him. I wonder what kind of lovely messages he received from the game. Still, the source of his current outfit was now clear.

  Thinking back on the message, there had been a typo. Well, I supposed that was to be expected, since the game was in beta, but it was the first time I had seen one, and it was a strange reminder that this was supposed to be a mobile game that we were stuck in.

  If this was a mobile game, I could leave it idle and have it play on without me. There would be special bonuses and rewards for silly little sidequests, like gathering nine hundred and ninety-nine pinecones or eight hundred eggs or something equally irrelevant to any plot.

  What if that was true here?

  Suddenly I found myself looking suspiciously at every pebble on the road.

  Wait. I’d seen errors before. Not typos, but those blank coding boxes that appeared occasionally. Clue to █ █ █ █…

  What the hell did those mean?

  When Han Sung-hyuk’s summoning cooldown had finally ended (“I’ve had enough of walking, the horse should have rested enough,” he said.), we re-mounted it. The saddle was too small for two people. I had to awkwardly sit close the horse’s haunches, holding onto Han Sung-hyuk, getting jolted incredibly uncomfortably.

  Thank God, once again, for Endurance stats.

  I had no words.

  We rode in silence for a few hours. Every now and then, a traveller or group would appear, and we would have to hastily hide in whatever cover we could find. If the horse had been corporeal, there was no way we would have been able to pass unnoticed.

  The speed at which we were headed to Hanyang was problematically slow. A fast messenger would be there soon, but with two people trying to ride a horse kitted out for one person, there was only so much we could do.

  “We need to tie ourselves together,” I said at last, fighting through the intense embarrassment flooding my head.

  Han Sung-hyuk looked at me like I had shot his pet dog. “What?”

  “We need to go faster, right? But my Strength stat won’t allow me to hang on for long enough. So… if we were tied together you could ride as fast as you like.”

  He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose while I traced patterns in the dirt with my feet, staring downwards with unnecessary concentration.

  “Fine.” He produced a rope out of thin air, a basic item he had probably spun from the prize wheel. Then he hopped back on the horse.

  Climbing up behind him, I awkwardly reached around his torso to loop the rope, twice, then tied the knot by my own side.

  We set off. It was no less uncomfortable, but we could move faster, much faster than anyone on a real horse. I could see now how Han Sung-hyuk had arrived so quickly. We would walk when the summoning skill hit cooldown, then ride again, reaching Hanyang within two days.

  It was evening when we arrived. The city straddled a river, fortified north and south by mountains. Emerging between verdant, rolling peaks, we were able to see the city laid out before us, walled all around where there were gaps in the natural barrier of the mountains. Torches and lanterns blazed in the dark, orange flames bravely resisting the velvet blue night.

  I covered my head with a plain shawl that Han Sung-hyuk gave me, and we walked together to the nearest gate. I followed behind, head down meekly, while he strode ahead.

  The guards at the gate evidently knew him; they nodded him through, and barely spared me a glance. From my dress, I was evidently a person of low class, and whose business was it, knowing what a young candidate for officialdom was doing out and about with such a person?

  I wanted to ask Han Sung-hyuk where we were going, but I had no opportunity. The city was busy, even at this time of night. Hawker stalls selling trinkets and street food lined the streets, and even though I had no need to eat, the smell made my mouth water.

  I’d barely been outside of Hong Kong. It wasn’t that the opportunity hadn’t arisen – exchange programs were a common practice for university students, but the thought of travelling so far, to a place unknown to me, was daunting.

  I went to Singapore once, as a teenager, following my mother on a business trip. I somehow got by with Cantonese and rudimentary English, left alone at the hotel while my mother met clients.

  My friends had all travelled more than I. Rohan regularly travelled to India, and Tommy to Malaysia, both to visit family. Rohan had also travelled alone to Japan several times to sate his anime obsession. Poppy had enjoyed regular trips to Korea for skincare and makeup shopping. Lee Wai Meng had basically been everywhere; he loved the experience of travel and always brought back the weirdest souvenirs for everyone, like a glittery sloth potscrubber from Brazil and hats with toy sheeps’ heads on them from New Zealand.

  Calvin though… Like me, Calvin had never left Hong Kong, as far as I was aware, although that was likely more due to disinterest than anything else. Calvin never seemed hugely interested in anything.

  Being in this game was the closest I had come to travelling the world. I hadn’t seen much during the first scenario, and not much more in the second, but the festival in the third had been fascinating. It was China, but not, a China that at once existed but never had.

  And now, in this historical, fictional version of Korea, I had to fight down the urge to run amongst everything, look at every stall, taste all the food, play festival games like catching goldfish.

  I kept my head down, sneaking glances left and right. Was the trembling in my hands fear or desire? I wanted to pray to anyone who might listen to give me a little moment to just forget everything and join the people on the street.

  Just one, little moment.

  But there was no-one listening, and I followed Han Sung-hyuk away from the lights and sounds, into the dark evening.