Chapter 35
How Can You Be Dopamine Addict?
I had already decided that I would reveal to Stay-at-home Wifey that I was Dopamine Addict only after making him owe me his life.
And now that I had taken a bullet meant for him, there could not have been a better time to confess that I was Dopamine Addict.
Besides, it would be troublesome if he continued mistaking the Unicorn District player for the real Dopamine Addict.
Stay-at-home Wifey stared at me in bewilderment before finally managing to ask,
“You’re… what?”
“You heard me.”
“Why are you Dopamine Addict?”
He continued in an increasingly agitated voice.
“How can you be Dopamine Addict? You said you were T-Bastard! If you’re Dopamine Addict, then who the hell was that guy just now? And why are you only telling me this now?”
He said all that without even taking a breath.
It seemed I needed to calm him down a little, so I opened my mouth.
“I wasn’t deliberately hiding it… No, actually, I was.”
“What?!”
“If you had known I was Dopamine Addict, would you have cooperated with me this much?”
Apparently remembering how thoroughly he had cursed Dopamine Addict when we first met, Stay-at-home Wifey fell silent for a moment.
But after thinking about it again, he still seemed to feel wronged, because his hand rose into the air.
“You bastard! Even so—!”
“I’m injured.”
“Ah, fuck…!”
No matter how furious he was, Stay-at-home Wifey apparently could not bring himself to hit the person who had taken a bullet for him, so he continued treating me.
“This is seriously ridiculous… No wonder everything you did seemed completely insane…”
“Don’t heal me completely. Just enough that when Meursault comes back, she’ll think, ‘Oh, it was a lighter injury than I expected,’ and let it go.”
“God, you talk so damn much. You kept your mouth shut just fine while you were deceiving me all this time.”
He was going to hold this grudge for quite a while.
Stay-at-home Wifey concentrated on the treatment for a moment, then looked toward Taejeong as though he had suddenly realized something.
“But judging by how that bastard reacted earlier, it looked like he already knew you were Dopamine Addict.”
“Oh, right. Taejeong knows.”
“What? Why did you tell that bastard but not me?!”
“There were circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“The player who used to travel with Taejeong was impersonating me.”
“Impersonating you? There was another player like that?”
“I think the guy just now was impersonating me too. Probably.”
Stay-at-home Wifey looked utterly dumbfounded.
“Why are there so many people pretending to be you?! What could anyone possibly gain from impersonating a sociopath like you?!”
I had wondered the same thing, but somehow it sounded offensive coming from him.
“Anyway, the first person who impersonated me failed his route and died. But the guy we just met is dangerous.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. He even copied your entire character customization. Creepy as hell.”
“…It’s not just because he copied me.”
Now that my body had recovered somewhat, I pushed myself upright and sat down.
“He’s a player from the Unicorn District who has unlocked the system, just like me.”
“Unicorn? Ah, so that’s why he had a hoverboard…”
“And for reasons I don’t understand, he deliberately impersonated me and sent messages to other players.”
“He sent messages to other players? What kind of messages?”
“That communication between districts was possible… Ah.”
I stopped there as a realization struck me.
“Considering he made it all the way here, I guess it really is true that there’s no barrier.”
“There’s no barrier? Then does that mean we can travel to other districts even before the Second Apocalypse?”
“Probably… Hmm.”
A sharp throb ran through my shoulder, forcing me to stop speaking for a moment.
Stay-at-home Wifey grabbed my arm and insisted on healing me a little more.
As he treated me, I continued.
“And… you saw his body.”
“Right! How was he the only one with an adult body? Since he’s from the Unicorn District, maybe he used some kind of technology to forcibly accelerate his growth?”
Forced growth through Unicorn technology.
I had not considered that possibility, but it was not impossible.
However…
“From what I saw… I don’t think it was just forced growth. There’s definitely something more to it.”
Though I don’t know what that is either…
I had felt something was wrong from the moment I saw him.
As long as I was Dopamine Addict, that man could only be an impersonator.
But he was far too perfect to be a simple impersonator.
His way of speaking was even more obnoxious than mine, but how could he possibly imitate something as subtle as the way I walked?
And his claim that he had come to check whether I was growing well bothered me too.
Stay-at-home Wifey looked deeply unsettled by my insistence that there was more to it.
But true to his flower-garden brain, he soon dismissed the concern.
“We were planning to go to Unicorn after the Second Apocalypse anyway. This is good. Now we have another reason we absolutely have to visit.”
“Well… that’s true…”
At that moment, Taejeong, who had been watching the surroundings, approached and whispered quietly,
“Meursault is returning.”
I looked up and saw Meursault running toward us from a short distance away with several soldiers.
“We’ll talk about this again later. And if anyone asks about what happened today, don’t answer anything.”
“Got it.”
“Yes, sir!”
The soldiers who arrived with Meursault hurriedly placed me on a stretcher and attempted to treat me.
So we stopped talking and put on a convincing performance of me having suffered a serious gunshot wound.
***
By the time Meursault returned, Stay-at-home Wifey had already healed most of the injury.
To the other soldiers, it probably looked as though the bullet had merely grazed me.
Despite the wound being insignificant, Meursault forcibly admitted me to the medical ward.
And then the Commander came to see me.
“How are you feeling?”
“As you can see, I’m perfectly fine.”
The Commander already knew that I possessed the same healing ability as Lunamoon, so he did not appear particularly shaken by my injury.
Even after hearing that I had been wounded, he had not rushed over.
He only came late at night, after finishing all his work.
Because of that, I overheard the medical orderlies whispering that he was an iron-blooded dictator who would not even flinch when his own son was injured.
Not coming to see me immediately had been an extremely cold and accurate judgment, but I still found it slightly disappointing.
Had the Commander dropped everything and rushed to my side, it would have strengthened my position a little more.
On the other hand, I understood that he did not want to turn me into a weakness.
If he had come running immediately, the factions that disliked him would have tried to use me as a hostage without hesitation.
Of course, even if I became a hostage, I would simply walk out on my own, so I would have preferred receiving the Commander’s blatant favoritism.
The Commander stared at me quietly before asking,
“Who exactly was that man?”
That was the first thing he wanted to know?
Meursault had probably already told him how I ended up being shot.
He had been so unwilling to grant me permission to hunt because it was dangerous, and yet the moment I left the district, I came back on a stretcher with a gunshot wound.
He might refuse to grant permission next time.
More importantly…
How much did Meursault remember and report?
Had she even told him that the man’s name was Dopamine Addict?
The Unicorn player had spoken in Korean, so even Meursault could not have relayed the entire conversation.
But Stay-at-home Wifey had called him “Dopamine Addict” several times.
Meursault had probably realized that was his name.
I briefly reviewed the conversation I had shared with the Unicorn player.
We didn’t exchange anything particularly meaningful…
The Unicorn player had avoided answering my questions and disappeared after one-sidedly muttering things we could not understand.
Come to think of it, Stay-at-home Wifey had carelessly used the word “player.”
In that case…
“I don’t know either.”
“You don’t know?”
The Commander had left out the first part of his question, but he seemed to mean, Even though you are a regressor, you don’t know?
There were other people in the hospital room, so he was apparently choosing his words carefully.
The Commander intended to keep the fact that I was supposedly a regressor completely secret.
That was more convenient for me as well.
“Meursault said you described him as someone you knew if you knew him, and didn’t know if you didn’t.”
…Meursault, you bastard. It seemed she was still more loyal to the Commander than to me.
Well, this much was not difficult to explain.
“That is exactly what I meant. I knew him once… but I don’t know him now.”
One of the Commander’s eyebrows rose.
“You mean…”
He seemed to immediately understand that I meant someone I had known in the future before regressing, but no longer knew after returning to the past.
It was a complete bluff, of course.
“Everyone, leave us for a moment.”
At the Commander’s order, the soldiers who had accompanied him and the medical orderlies waiting nearby all withdrew.
Only the two of us remained in the hospital room.
“Now tell me. Is he someone you knew before you regressed?”
From this point onward, I had to be careful.
My story needed to remain consistent.
At the same time, I could not allow him to discover that I was a player rather than a regressor.
“If my memory is correct, he is from the Unicorn District. I don’t know why he came all the way here. Perhaps he regressed as well.”
“You think he might also be a regressor?”
“I’m saying it’s possible. Because…”
The Commander looked as though he wanted to ask something else, so I spoke first.
“That man called himself a ‘player.’”
“…Yes. Meursault said the word ‘player’ came out of his mouth, so I was about to ask you about that.”
Ah, so he had already heard the word “player.”
It was a good thing I had volunteered the information first.
Fortunately, that man had possessed an adult body like Lunamoon.
Because the rest of us were still children, no one would suspect that we were also players.
Though I would still need to warn Stay-at-home Wifey to keep his mouth shut more carefully.
…Could the Unicorn player have tried to eliminate Stay-at-home Wifey because he thought the idiot would get in my way?
Hmm.
For now, I continued talking.
“If he really is a player, that would explain why he acted as though he knew me. Like Mother, he would have watched this world through a game, so naturally he would know who I am.”
“You mean a new player?”
“Perhaps my regression caused a new player to appear.”
“…”
The Commander seemed to find my explanation plausible.
After thinking silently for a moment, he said,
“Go to the military academy.”
Again with the military academy?
“Wasn’t that matter already settled?”
“Even if you are a regressor, you would not be accustomed to a child’s body. That must be why you suffer injuries like this.”
Apparently, the Commander believed I had been injured because I had not yet adapted to my younger body.
Well, I had defeated eight cadets on the verge of graduation during the training simulation.
It would certainly be difficult to explain why someone like me had taken a bullet merely to protect Stay-at-home Wifey.
In the first place, I had not been shot because I failed to dodge.
I had deliberately taken the bullet both to make Stay-at-home Wifey owe me his life and to test his healing ability.
However—
“It’s an injury that heals quickly once I use my ability.”
“That attitude is dangerous.”
The Commander answered with unusual firmness.
“One momentary mistake could cost you your life. Remember that your mother, Lunamoon, possessed the same ability as you, yet she still died from an epidemic.”
“…”
The fact that he even brought up Lunamoon’s death meant he was sincerely worried that something might happen to me.
I believed Lunamoon had died because she failed her route, but…
If he learned that Lunamoon might have died because he married Daphne, this man would despair.
Daphne did not seem to have told the Commander that Lunamoon might have died after failing her route either.
Since I currently needed Daphne’s cooperation, I had no reason to bring up something that could worsen the relationship between her and the Commander.
Even so, I still did not particularly want to attend the military academy.
“But… you know we don’t have much time.”
“I’m not telling you to attend for six years. Train alongside the cadets only until you become accustomed to your body.”
“How long does ‘until I become accustomed to my body’ mean?”
“Until you can dodge an incoming bullet.”
He had to be joking.
Perhaps because he saw the Are you kidding me? expression on my face, the Commander chuckled and continued.
“At least attend until the next subjugation campaign. Even a brief period at the academy would make it easier for me to grant you an officer’s rank, wouldn’t it?”
Ah…
That was true.
I could not exactly serve as an operations officer during the subjugation campaign without holding any rank.
Well, I could treat it as a brief period of recuperation.
The cadets would probably dislike it far more than I would.