* * *

The hero had disappeared.

Pi Hojin, 25 years old, found out about it about a month after the hero went missing.

The hero was Hojin’s high school classmate and the only person he could call a “friend.”

Even so, they weren’t close enough to keep in touch every day.

If they had been, perhaps he might have noticed the disappearance sooner.

But there was no time to regret the impossible now.

As soon as Hojin heard the news, he rushed out to find him.

There wasn’t much Hojin could do to track down a missing person.

Asking around was futile since the friend who had told him about the disappearance had already done that.

Hojin, a recluse, didn’t know enough people to gather more information.

He decided to start by visiting the hero’s house.

He knew the address because he had sent packages there before, but this was his first time going in person.

It felt inevitable.

Though the hero was his only friend, Hojin might have been just an acquaintance to him.

The house was empty.

When Hojin explained he was a friend of the missing tenant, the landlord gave him a skeptical look before reluctantly unlocking the door.

As expected, no one was inside.

“There was nothing but alcohol in the fridge and bottles in the trash. I just cleaned up the garbage and left the rest untouched,” the landlord explained.

The place was a mess, just as described.

The blanket on the bed was crumpled in a corner, and clothes were haphazardly piled on the back of a chair.

The top item was a hoodie Hojin recognized—navy blue, the one the hero had been wearing the last time they met.

Clutching the hoodie, Hojin searched the house thoroughly, but there was no clue about where the hero might have gone.

Disheartened, he slumped into the chair in front of a desk with a laptop.

“…Huh?”

As he sat down, something nudged his foot.

Beneath the desk, an object had fallen.

He reached out to pick it up, and his body froze.

“It’s a gift.”

“A gift? What is it?”

“…Something only you can use.”

It was a transparent CD case.

Inside wasn’t a CD but a flimsy piece of paper with a QR code printed on it, along with an ID and password written in bold pen strokes by Hojin.

“I… I hope you like it.”

Hojin had been curious about the hero’s reaction to the gift, but he’d been too nervous to look at his face back then.

All he remembered was the overwhelming tension he felt at that moment.

Did the hero ever use the gift? Hojin didn’t know.

That meeting had been their last, and life had kept him too busy to reach out.

He stared at the CD case for a while before setting it down.

After much hesitation, gnawing at his thumbnail, he finally opened the laptop.

Though he knew it was private, he turned it on with resolve, only to find it locked. He couldn’t access it.

Hojin roamed through the neighborhoods the hero frequented, visited shops he liked, and even revisited their old school, but no one knew where he had gone.

Calling his phone only brought the message that it was turned off.

Hojin begged the hero’s friend, the one who’d told him about the disappearance, to inform him immediately if the police ever found him.

He took a day off work to search tirelessly, but all he learned was that the hero had vanished without a trace.

The hope of finding him seemed increasingly distant.

---

The next day, Hojin buried his face on his desk at work.

He wasn’t one for exercise, let alone walking much, so after a day of wandering over 20,000 steps, his legs throbbed.

But the ache in his chest was far worse.

“Where on earth did you go…?”

He still couldn’t believe the hero was gone.

His heart pounded with worry—had something terrible happened to him?

Would the next call bring devastating news?

As he tapped his forehead against the desk in frustration, a booming voice startled him.

“Where he went? That’s what I’d like to ask! Pi Hojin! Where has your mind gone?”

The voice hit him like a hammer, jolting him upright.

His reflection appeared in the mirror on his desk, which his coworker had carelessly angled toward him.

Sunken cheeks, dark circles under his eyes, pale lips—he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

Quickly averting his gaze from his own haggard face, Hojin turned around.

“Uh, me?”

“Do you see another Pi Hojin here? Hurry up and check the file I sent you!”

His manager slammed a large hand onto Hojin’s PC monitor.

Startled again, Hojin opened the company messenger and found the file.

It was a document detailing error reports, and the list seemed endless as he scrolled.

“All of that! These are all CS-reported errors. Don’t even think about leaving until you’ve fixed them all!”

“Wait, so I have to work overtime…?”

“Who else but you? Of course, it’s overtime! Do you think we’re not busy enough? And taking a sudden day off yesterday—don’t you realize the entire dev team has to stay late because of you? Take responsibility, finish your work, and then you can go home!”

The manager’s voice boomed across the office.

Hojin broke into a cold sweat as he glanced around.

No one was looking directly at him, but it felt as if invisible eyes were glaring from every direction.

He hadn’t taken unauthorized leave, but using a vacation day during a busy period was a fact.

Still, how could he sit in the office knowing the hero had disappeared?

Jin Youngwoong, his only friend, was gone…

“Uh, but yesterday, I—”

“Isn’t ‘Fantasy Land Hero’ your responsibility, Pi Hojin?”

The manager’s voice thundered again, hands on his hips.

‘Fantasy Land Hero’ was the open-world RPG released by their company, Happening Games, earlier that year.

A top-30 mobile game with dazzling graphics and charming characters, it had gained immense popularity.

The genius behind the game’s intricate story and its lead developer?

None other than the most disheveled man in the office—Pi Hojin.

“Yes… I’ll take responsibility and finish everything.”

“You’d better.”

“Um, one more thing…”

“What is it? Speak quickly.”

“I still have over ten vacation days left… Can I use them soon?”

“What?!”

The manager’s incredulous gasp made Hojin shrink into himself, his already hunched shoulders curling even further inward.

“I really need to…”

Hojin, who usually answered everything in a timid, barely audible voice with, “Yes, I understand…” had summoned every ounce of courage for his remark today.

The manager, frowning in disapproval at Hojin’s hesitant but unyielding stance, tapped on the monitor.

“Let’s talk after you fix what’s here. Oh, and especially this! The red parts!”

The manager’s thick finger pointed to the errors highlighted in red.

“You must fix the issues marked in red today! Seriously, I don’t know which power user found all these bugs, but they’ve been bombarding the CS portal every single day, begging us to fix everything! Even people who didn’t know there were errors are noticing now because of that. It’s exhausting, really…”

Still grumbling, the manager finally walked away, hands clasped behind his back.

Hojin slumped into his chair as if collapsing, staring blankly at his screen with a hand over his face.

“Sigh…”

So many errors.

And of all times, now.

It was the last thing he’d expected.

* * *