Does something boring alone become fun when done together?

    Me and Anonymous1523.

    Neither of us found any real enjoyment in the game. We played it for reasons entirely unrelated to the game itself.

    The only reason I stuck around with Anonymous1523 was to extract information from him.

    King Dulgok attacks you with its sharp beak, dealing 22 damage!You swing your baseball bat, dealing 15 damage to King Dulgok!King Dulgok lands a critical hit with its sharp beak, dealing 56 damage!You have died.

    “...”

    This game... is not easy.

    Icarus: Wow, you really suck at this game.

    Icarus was Anonymous1523’s in-game nickname.

    Icarus: Just stick to healing me, okay? Yep. I’ll take care of everything else!

    He started the game wanting to make friends, and perhaps because of his young age, he seemed to find more interest in the game than I did, with my stiff, outdated reflexes.

    Icarus: Make sure you have enough potions and keep your mana up. This next boss is tough.

    Icarus: Fuck, that was a rough fight. Yep. Good job.

    Icarus: Hey, what are you doing? Hurry up! We can’t move forward without you.

    We played together for about three days.

    We didn’t really get close.

    He focused solely on the game, and I just supported him as a healer.

    We hardly talked about anything personal.

    Whenever I tried to create an opening for conversation, he’d suddenly log off, claiming he had to meet his “fuck buddy.”

    Then one day, it happened.

    I woke up, washed my face, turned on my computer, and found dozens of messages waiting for me.

    Message from Anonymous1523: Hey! Hey! Wake up! Wake up now! We’re screwed!!!

    Message from Anonymous1523: Hey! Are you dead? If you see this, reply immediately. Yep.

    Message from Anonymous1523: Reply fast. It’s urgent.

    What on earth happened?

    I replied, uneasily recalling Woo Min-hee’s ominous words.

    SKELTON: What’s going on?

    Message from Anonymous1523: Are you in Incheon? If you are, turn off your phone and go dark immediately.

    SKELTON: Why? What’s happening?

    Message from Anonymous1523: My dad’s marked a refugee camp. He plans to send everyone there to Seoul.

    SKELTON: What? To Seoul?

    Message from Anonymous1523: Yep. Something about “Comeback Home” or whatever. Anyway, he’s going to round them all up and force them to move. He’s relocating the entire camp.

    From what I know, a single refugee camp houses anywhere from 5,000 to 30,000 people.

    Relocating an entire camp to Seoul is tantamount to killing everyone there.

    “...Classic Yang Sang-gil.”

    Exiled to Incheon after failing elsewhere, and yet he knows only one thing—solving problems by dumping the burden onto others.

    That’s the kind of person Yang Sang-gil is. His method of survival is to deal with people he doesn’t know by making them someone else’s responsibility.

    But why is Anonymous1523 telling me this?

    Is it because he doesn’t want people to die? Out of a sense of justice?

    No, it’s neither of those.

    What he really wants is communication—a conversation where he feels slightly superior to the person he’s speaking to.

    He thought the information he possessed would grant him that advantage, but not knowing how to act, he spammed me with over 30 messages.

    SKELTON: Hold on a second.

    Message from Anonymous1523: Seriously? Do you have a plan? Yep?

    The forum was no help at the moment.

    Even if we posted about this, the flood of game-related posts, amplified by FailNet users, would bury it in endless scrolling.

    We could try spamming the forum ourselves, but that wouldn’t be easy.

    I’m fast and precise, almost machine-like when it comes to spamming, but someone like Anonymous1523 doesn’t have the persistence or patience for it.

    Spamming is a last resort. There’s another option to try first.

    SKELTON: (SKELTON Pleading) This is serious. Can we talk for a moment?

    The place with the most people right now was Monster Park.

    We could spread the word there.

    Luckily, I had a connection with the game’s creator, Foxgames.

    SKELTON: If you’re there, please respond. This isn’t a game-related request. It’s about saving lives—our forum friends and your game players.

    A reply came soon after.

    Message from Foxgames: What’s up, SKELTON? Why the sudden urgency this morning?

    SKELTON: You know Anonymous1523, right? Yang Sang-gil’s son?

    Message from Foxgames: Of course. Didn’t I give you a special account because of him?

    SKELTON: I heard something from him.

    I told him about Yang Sang-gil’s horrifying plan as relayed by Anonymous1523.

    Message from Foxgames: What? Moving an entire camp to Seoul without supplies? That’s murder! Are you sure about this? Got any proof?

    It was only natural for him to be skeptical.

    SKELTON: Did you block Anonymous1523? I told him to send you a detailed message.

    Message from Foxgames: I got a message from him just now. But this is all so sudden... Wait, how did you two even become friends? You’re not in on this together, are you?

    SKELTON: No. If you don’t believe me, feel free to revoke my special account or ban me permanently. But could you trust me this one time?

    Message from Foxgames: Why should I trust you? Or someone like Anonymous1523?

    Now, things were different.

    ??: You piece of shit~ Off to prison with your dad.

    ??: How about we build a mini Jeju refugee fleet and dump you both in the ocean?

    ??????435: LOL, bye-bye!

    mmmmmmmmm: Hey, Anonymous1523! You know why I sucked up to you? So I could stab you in the back the moment you trusted me! And now you’ve gone and screwed yourself. Give me my build-up back!

    RokaGG: Looks like you’ll be executed. Isn’t everything under martial law now?

    ??: You and your dad are both done for.

    Everyone was tearing into him.

    It was hard to believe this was the same forum where, at one time, merely insulting him could make you a hero.

    Amid this relentless storm of hate, Anonymous1523 lashed out like a wounded animal.

    Anonymous1523: Hey! You bastards! What? Yep? I’m innocent! And guess what? My dad’s the acting president! The real president personally appointed him! What are you gonna do about it, huh?

    Anonymous1523: mmmmmmm, I’ll find you and kill you. Yep.

    I could have just watched.

    After all, his downfall had been inevitable since he was exiled from Jeju.

    But for a brief time, I had shared some moments with him.

    He was a bastard, but it would be unfair to say he had no redeeming qualities.

    Without him, 15,000 people would have been quietly sent to Seoul, and his father’s swift downfall wouldn’t have happened.

    So, as a veteran of the forum, I decided to offer him some advice.

    SKELTON: (SKELTON’s Advice) Hyun-soo.

    Message from Anonymous1523: ?

    SKELTON: (SKELTON’s Advice) Now’s the time to keep your head down. If you’re truly innocent, shouldn’t you prove it in court? Trust me, stay quiet here. Don’t respond to them—it’ll only make things worse for you. Just plead your case. Say you’re innocent. You get what I mean? Yep?

    I don’t usually use phrases like "Yep," but I added it to make him feel a sense of connection.

    His reply came quickly.

    Message from Anonymous1523: What? Hyun-soo? Ha, you piece of shit. Who do you think you are, calling me by my name? Just because I played with you, you think we’re equals? Yep?

    SKELTON: Your mom.

    Message from Anonymous1523: You’re blocked. Get lost.

    That was the last interaction we ever had online.

    *

    Screech—

    A truck came to a halt on the desolate golf course.

    From it emerged a middle-aged man, a woman, and two younger individuals, a man and a woman, one by one.

    The middle-aged woman took one look at the barren landscape of the golf course and collapsed to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.

    “Senior, I’ll leave this to you.”

    I turned off the walkie-talkie and approached them.

    Their eyes, filled with fear, fixed on me as I walked closer.

    I focused on the young man’s face.

    I was right.

    The boy from the corner of the photograph had grown up. His once youthful face was now marred by indulgence, his unkempt beard doing nothing to hide the fear etched into his expression.

    “...Excuse me,” he called out desperately.

    I didn’t reply.

    I turned away and returned to the bunker.

    Once inside, I logged onto the forum.

    Perhaps it was on a whim, but I launched Monster Park.

    I wandered through the hunting grounds I used to frequent.

    “Hm?”

    Something was different.

    West Wing of the Main Building

    A crumbling ruin covered in vines stretched over a rusted metal fence.

    Beneath it, the mutated cat “Angel of the Path” glared at me with piercing eyes.

    And there it was—a solitary grave marked with the name “Icarus.”

    You are...

    (East) (West) (South) (North)

    “Icarus?”

    Icarus was the in-game nickname of Anonymous1523.

    He had long since left the game, and with his imminent fate, why would there be a grave bearing his name here?

    I reached out to Foxgames for an explanation.

    Message from Foxgames: You finally found it? Bittersweet, huh? It’s one of the game’s mechanics.

    If you manually log out of the game, your character disappears completely.

    But if you leave the game running without any input for a week, your character transforms into a grave marked with your nickname.

    Message from Foxgames: If someone leaves the game idle for a week, they’re essentially dead, right? And let’s be real—who’s going to bother with a funeral for people like us? So we leave a little grave here instead. It’s part of the design philosophy. Monster Park is a reflection of the world we live in, after all.

    “...”

    I know that Icarus is still alive.

    But I also know that he won’t be for much longer.