Chapter 1
In the middle of the torrential downpour, a man drenched in blood stood alone.
His face was frozen cold.
He had finally won the battle against the final boss.
But there was nothing left by his side.
The victory he had gained upon the blood of those he loved felt unbearably hollow.
Across from him, a man with golden eyes clad in black armor lay collapsed, a faint sneer curling on his lips.
The man’s arm was crushed, and a massive hole had been pierced through his chest. His legs were blown far away, and his waist was half torn off, exposing his bones.
“You… in the end, you couldn’t protect a single thing. Not the world, not your friends, not your lover…”
Before he could even finish speaking, the golden-eyed man’s head flew through the air.
The man holding the sword muttered through gritted teeth.
“Shut up. With your death, humanity will rise again. We will mourn the fallen, rebuild, and rise even higher…”
The rain began to stop, and sunlight broke through the dark clouds.
【NOMAL END】
The screen froze, and the credits began to roll.
Thud!
I slammed the desk.
“Ssshh, sss… damn it…”
A dull pain throbbed up my arm.
I immediately regretted hitting the desk.
“Patient, is everything all right?”
A nurse’s voice came from outside the door.
I hurriedly made an excuse, saying it was nothing, fearing she might come in.
In this lifeless, desolate hospital room, I couldn’t even get angry as I pleased.
The game screen, indifferent to my mood, continued beyond the credits, showing the lifeless body of the final boss.
Once again, I had failed to reach the happy ending.
How many months had it been now?
Yeah… maybe about half a year.
Half a year spent chasing the happy ending of a single game.
I thought it was a choice I wouldn’t regret—to spend the remainder of my life, after being told I was terminally ill, on something I loved.
If only I could have seen that happy ending.
I had tried everything I could over the past six months, but still failed.
As if the happy ending had never existed in the first place.
But the developers had clearly declared that there was a happy ending.
That faint hope was what kept me going until now.
Now that I had unlocked every ending with every playable character, all that remained in me was emptiness.
Honestly, I hadn’t expected to become so obsessed with this game.
Before I was diagnosed as terminally ill, gaming had been a luxury I couldn’t afford.
I barely managed to live day by day—I had no time to waste on something like that.
I had spent every waking moment working odd jobs, saving money like a madman, dreaming of one day owning a house.
Of course, that money had long vanished, devoured by hospital bills and treatment costs.
Like a tree withering in a drought, I had needed something—anything—to endure the tedious hospital life.
I tried watching those webtoons everyone said were fun, scrolling through social media, but eventually, I settled on gaming.
Games—something I had always wanted to try, but never had the time for.
I used to feel a strange envy watching people play late into the night.
And the game I poured the last six months of my life into turned out to be what people called a trash game.
A cleverly disguised landmine, wrapped in fancy advertising that made it look like a masterpiece.
Like a piece of spicy pollack gangjeong pretending to be sweet fried chicken in a school lunch tray.
<Become a Hero>.
It was a game about boys and girls attending an academy to become heroes who would protect a world filled with demons, villains, and monsters.
With its stunning illustrations, charming heroines, seemingly limitless freedom, and three main playable characters offering a variety of storylines—it had been hyped as one of the most anticipated titles ever.
But the “most anticipated title” had, upon release, become one of the greatest disasters in gaming history.
The reasons were clear: absurdly high difficulty, unfriendly progression, and a complete lack of convenience features.
It didn’t even have a basic save function—once you died, you had to start all over again from the beginning.
Yet, a small number of people still played it.
And I was one of them.
For someone stuck in the hospital all day with nothing but time, Become a Hero was the perfect game to kill time with.
It might have been hostile to players, but there wasn’t a single lie in its advertisements.
Charming characters, immense freedom, and hidden Easter eggs.
That was why I’d been hooked for half a year.
I stared at the lifeless final boss reflected in the descending credits.
Pitch-black hair that seemed to swallow all light, skin pale as death. Even though he was dead, his golden eyes still shone fiercely.
It was only an illustration, and yet, there was something overwhelming about it.
He was the game’s final boss—the very being who had kept me from ever reaching the happy ending.
Because defeating him always required the sacrifice of my comrades.
Of course, I had tried other methods.
I had gathered every hidden piece, maxed out my stats, equipped the most powerful items, and challenged him alone.
I had even tried using the game’s report system to eliminate him while he was disguised within the academy.
I could proudly say that I had attempted everything possible within the limits of the system.
And yet, look at the result.
All my efforts ended in failure.
Some might have called me obsessed.
Why cling so desperately to a game’s happy ending?
I knew it too.
That this wasn’t normal behavior.
I just didn’t want to accept the death waiting for me.
By chasing a happy ending that never came, I could pretend that the end of my own life wasn’t so near.
If I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t be able to hold on.
The long credits finally ended, and the screen faded to black.
In the dark reflection, my frail body appeared.
A strange sense of emptiness washed over me at that pitiful sight.
It was probably time to let this game go.
The familiar BGM played, and the main menu appeared.
It was a screen I had seen hundreds of times over the past six months.
As I moved the mouse to exit the game, something caught my eye.
An achievement notification—a number “1” was glowing beside the tab that had long been empty.
That shouldn’t have been possible. I had unlocked every achievement except the happy ending.
Drawn by curiosity, I clicked the achievement window.
【Achievement Unlocked! – Ending Collector】
【View all endings with every playable character.】
【Achievement “Ending Collector” obtained. You have seen every ending with every character.】
【Congratulations! A hidden playable character has been unlocked.】
As the messages continued to pop up, my mind went blank.
Hidden playable character?
<Become a Hero> had a rather unique system.
It allowed any playable character not chosen by the player to appear in the game as an NPC.
In other words, the relationship between the player’s chosen character and the remaining playable ones directly affected the game’s difficulty.
But a hidden playable character?
That could mean a new path toward a happy ending had just opened.
Still… was I really going to fall for this again?
Hadn’t I already witnessed countless massacres where every companion—except the protagonist—was slaughtered?
A part of me feared that I was about to get my hopes up only to be crushed again.
And I feared that the ending this time might simply be the death of a pathetic addict who had wasted away his final days on a game.
Even so, my hand moved the mouse toward the New Game button.
“For the last time… really, the last time…”
My body was too frail for hesitation.
Just striking the desk earlier had been enough to send pain rippling through every inch of me.
At most, I had a month left.
Maybe two weeks if things went poorly.
This would be my final challenge in life.
I had resolved just moments ago to let it go, and yet My hands naturally moved, setting up the game again as if by instinct.
When I clicked on New Game, the character selection screen appeared.
And there it was. A new character I had never seen before.
Hovering the cursor over it opened an information window.
Name, face, stats—everything was blacked out.
Was it telling me to find out through gameplay?
I clicked Select Character. A blue window popped up.
【Would you like to select the hidden character, ■■■■■?】
【Yes / No】
Of course, I clicked Yes.
【Once selected, this choice cannot be undone. Do you accept?】
【Yes / No】
My hand, which had been clicking rapidly, froze.
A new message—one I had never seen before.
Cannot be undone, huh.
But that didn’t matter. I had already decided that this would be my final attempt.
I moved the mouse and pressed Yes.
Thump.
At that very moment, a heavy sensation sank in my chest, as if my heart had dropped.
A piercing ringing sound echoed in my ears.
My vision spun, my strength drained away.
The familiar opening theme of the game played faintly in the background as my consciousness began to fade.
Like a TV turning off, my mind went dark.
---
Beep beep beep!
A loud alarm jolted me awake.
“...Wasn’t I supposed to die?”
With a body that could’ve failed at any moment, I had thought that was the end.
But I was alive.
Not only alive—my condition felt unbelievably good.
The pain that had tormented me every day was completely gone.
My body felt light, almost weightless.
It was as if I had returned to a time before I ever got sick.
Slowly, I sat up.
“This place…”
It wasn’t my hospital room.
The familiar medicinal smell was gone, and the sterile white walls that had nearly driven me mad were nowhere to be seen.
Turning my head, I took in my surroundings.
A small but tidy kitchenette, a washing machine beneath it.
A neatly arranged desk and laptop.
A tiny bookshelf across from a simple bed.
It looked like a modest studio apartment.
What the hell happened?
Did I… go back in time to before I got sick?
My mind spun, unable to make sense of the situation.
A perfectly healthy body, an unfamiliar room.
I started to look around, trying to grasp what was going on.
Then something caught my eye.
A gray laptop with a pineapple logo.
That was my laptop.
I sat down and opened it.
“What the… hell?”
The moment the screen lit up, I froze.
Reflected on the black screen was a face that wasn’t mine.
Jet-black hair that seemed to absorb the light, skin pale as snow, and eyes that blazed gold like molten metal.
A cold, sharp-featured man whose beauty felt empty and hollow.
It wasn’t that I was simply shocked by how handsome I’d become.
No.
That face belonged to the final villain of <Become a Hero>, the very one I had been fighting until moments ago.