After the Nemesis War, I didn’t stay particularly close with Gong Gyeong-min.

We were already walking different paths, and I didn’t think those paths would ever cross again.

I remember the last time I saw him.

He had turned an old school into his own hideout, and inside it the air was so cold it made you shiver even in summer.

There were rumors he was building bizarre experiments or facilities there, but since Gong Gyeong-min’s place was far away from where people lived and heavily guarded, it never became gossip.

And now that Gong Gyeong-min has appeared before me again.

His intention was direct.

Message from KONG_13: Wanna meet up for a bit?

He suddenly proposed a meeting.

But that isn’t such a simple matter.

In times like this, if you want to invite someone, you have to show sincerity like Park Penguin.

All the more so if it’s someone like Gong Gyeong-min in the chaotic Seoul area.

SKELTON: I want to, but I can’t.

SKELTON: You know, right? What’s roaming around near Seoul.

SKELTON: Who swallowed Seoul?

At that, Gong Gyeong-min went silent.

He didn’t say another word.

I figured I’d offended him.

That’s how it goes when relations are already strained.

Something you’d joke about with a close friend turns into salt rubbed into a wound, and old grudges flare up violently.

So be it.

I’d already half given up on this friend anyway.

It was about an hour later when another message from him came.

Message from KONG_13: You don’t have to come in person.

SKELTON: What?

Don’t have to come in person?

What did that mean?

Did he mean a video call?

My doubts were somewhat resolved with his next message.

Message from KONG_13: [Attachment]

The file he sent me was a program leading into what they call a VR virtual world.

I wondered why he’d suddenly send me something like that, but I didn’t want to think too deeply about it.

In these end times, it’s common enough for one more sane guy to start acting strange.

Besides, it was the dead of winter; I had no reason to go outside, and aside from receiving Necropolis transmissions, I had nothing else to do. So I installed the program he’d sent me.

[ 幻想乡分布 ]

Chinese text popped up.

Dozens of file names flashed by, many of them in simplified Chinese.

It looked like a Chinese-made program.

I waited as it installed, and once it finished, I immediately ran it.

The program asked for a tool I didn’t have.

A VR connector.

I searched Foxgame’s game warehouse, and sure enough, it was there.

I strapped on the big VR headset that covered my entire vision and sat down in a comfortable seat.

After fumbling through the unfamiliar controller and settings, unreadable Chinese characters appeared, and then, amidst the chaos of the text, familiar Korean appeared.

[ World of Gong ]

Unlike the elegant Chinese calligraphy font, the “World of Gong” title was written in bland Malgun Gothic.

I guessed Gong Gyeong-min himself had inserted it.

Curious about his intentions, I pressed Start.

A woman’s voice whispered in Chinese right beside me, but I only understood that it was some sort of greeting.

The screen brightened, and I found myself in a dazzling city drenched in red.

A stereotypical Chinese-styled fantasy world—

towering pagodas, octagonal eaves and tiles, anthropomorphized pandas, characters dressed in Song–Ming-era robes but with Western features more than Asian ones.

It looked like the inside of a virtual reality game.

I suddenly recalled a story Rebecca once told me—about how, during the collapse of China, the wealthy had poured money into building a virtual reality world, and how that illusionary land was eventually destroyed.

The craftsmanship was impressive.

Even if wages were low in China, it was obvious an enormous sum had been invested.

As I wandered, taking in the unfamiliar world, someone approached me.

It was clear he wasn’t an NPC—from his mannerisms, his gaze, and his striking appearance.

Most of all, he was wearing a hanbok.

“It’s been a while, Park Gyu.”

It was Gong Gyeong-min.

His in-game avatar looked nothing like him, but his voice was unmistakable.

It was, in its way, a dramatic reunion—but it took a while before we could properly communicate.

I didn’t know how to use the mic for voice chat, and he had to tediously teach me.

Only after finishing the setup could we finally talk.

“Yeah.”

I checked my own avatar.

A default character—dressed in Ming-era robes, hair tied back in a ponytail.

It was a novel experience, sure, but our time and emotions had driven a gulf between us that no novelty could bridge.

To be honest, I was a little displeased with the situation.

“So, what’s the point of calling me out here? You’ve got something to say, don’t you?”

I glared at the 3D-rendered form of my former comrade and spoke sharply.

“Nothing so grand. I just saw your post, thought of you, and got curious.”

“Really?”

I searched for the logout button.

It wasn’t easy to find amidst the jumble of Chinese and Korean text, but eventually I spotted what looked like it.

Just as I was about to press it—

“Beyond the Wall of Eternity.”

Gong Gyeong-min said it.

Just a day ago, those words would have meant nothing.

Now, they were enough to stop me in my tracks.

“That you know of it surprises me. You may have gotten older and deep into the internet, but that game belongs to a world someone like you shouldn’t possibly know.”

So he knew the game.

There were clues.

He’d supported the so-called “bishoujo” mobile game Red Archive, and even served as a moderator on its forum.

Back in China, he’d been obsessed with Chinese mobile games too.

Despite the outgoing, sociable image he projected, he was actually someone who enjoyed games.

Maybe that’s partly why I agreed to his invitation—because of that shared history.

“You know about the game?”

“Why are you looking for it?”

“I’m not. Someone else is.”

“Oh, I see.”

His avatar turned away, hands clasped behind his back.

“As I thought.”

He muttered, staring off to the side.

“People are different from what they seem.”

“What do you mean?”

He glanced around.

“As you can see, everyone else here is just NPCs.”

“I’ve seen similar worlds before.”

Like the cyber-grave Foxgame had once built, now long gone.

I had no intention of chatting in a place like this for long.

If I couldn’t get what I wanted here, I’d look elsewhere.

Maybe the market. There were always collectors out there, even in fields I knew nothing about.

“Can you get the game?”

It might well be the last question I’d ever ask him.

He turned back to me.

As if reading my thoughts.

After all, we’d fought side by side on the battlefield.

And before that, we’d been close friends, dreaming the same dreams back in school.

“Getting it isn’t hard.”

“Can you get it now?”

“You really haven’t changed.”

“I think I’ve changed plenty.”

“If you need it, I’ll send it. Whether it reaches you is another matter. But before that...”

He waved his hand.

Between us, a glowing portal appeared.

He gestured at it.

Telling me to step through.

“It’s necessary.”

I heard him sigh.

“I’ll send it. But first, go in there.”

“What’s inside?”

“Something I want to show you. And something else—you’ll really like it, but I’ll save that for later.”

For some reason, he was almost giddy.

Especially when he mentioned the second thing. He even chuckled like a boy.

But if he could have seen the cold stare I fixed on him, he wouldn’t have been laughing.

In a voice even I found chilling, I said:

“Too much time has passed for us to clear up old misunderstandings.”

“It’s not that kind of problem.”

He nodded.

“It’s not that kind of problem.”

His repeated words carried a trace of anger, of resentment.

He didn’t say more. Instead, he stepped into the portal.

A new scene unfolded.

“?”

But this wasn’t VR.

It was real.

A CCTV feed, looking down from above, showing a place where countless people lay.

It didn’t take long to realize they were corpses.

“What is this?”

I spoke. Even if his avatar wasn’t here, my voice would reach him.

“The news didn’t report it, but there was a massive protest in Seoul. How could there not be? Divide citizens of Korea—who’ve lived in a free democracy for over half a century—into masters and slaves?!”

His voice was laced with that same anger I’d glimpsed before.

“Jeon Si-hoon, that bastard, is shooting people in broad daylight. They say he mounted machine guns and kept firing until the barrels glowed red.”

“Really?”

“Really! They kill people for fun! They massacre people systematically! Can you believe it?!”

It was horrific.

A massacre, plain and simple.

But my soul was no longer so pure as to be shocked or outraged.

The me who had once been shaken to the core by the Defender’s certified kill video was long gone.

Everyone’s stress in the apocalypse is different, but no one can deny we’ve all become numb to death and destruction.

Honestly, I felt indifferent.

“Then why didn’t you try to stop it back when you were in Jeju?”

That was how I truly felt.

He fell silent.

No doubt he had nothing to say.

In some sense, he was no different from the Jeju Committee—an accomplice.

Like how citizens of Pyongyang are seen as complicit in the northern dynasty’s crimes.

He’d sucked the same honey, and now he wanted to claim innocence? That wasn’t smart.

And now, after all this, he suddenly wants to play the crusader of justice? In a way, it disgusted me even more.

“...If you say so, I’ve got nothing more to add. I know I’m not doing well either.”

“You said you’d send it?”

He laughed ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) bitterly.

The screen changed.

Not VR.

A pitch-black void.

“I’ll send it. Sure. Maybe.”

A notification popped up.

A new message in Viva! Apocalypse!.

The file I wanted would be there.

“Maybe the story in that game isn’t so different from what’s happening now.”

That was our last communication.

After the file transfer, he forcibly disconnected me.

And I accepted it without protest.

*

Message from deadman_working: I honestly didn’t expect anyone to be able to get this now.

I didn’t really know what kind of game it was.

I tried running it, but since it was built for an old operating system, it required a virtual OS and other complicated steps—way too much for me.

And the language barrier was another enormous obstacle.

I didn’t feel good about it.

I got what I wanted, but the reunion with my old comrade only reminded me of the gulf between us. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

I had an ominous but certain feeling: that gap would never be closed.

I couldn’t understand why he was angry.

No—just the fact that he was now angry felt like a huge deception, hypocrisy.

Still, I did gain one thing.

The reason Kang Han-min had chosen Jeon Si-hoon as his successor.

Jeon Si-hoon, though Korean himself, was said to despise other Koreans.

I wasn’t sure.

When I saved him, I saw no sign of that.

He’d just seemed like an ordinary person, growing from a boy to an adult—

except he carried immense power.

At any rate, I won’t see him again.

Maybe never again.

Though the look he gave me at the end still lingers in my mind, there are things in this world better left unknown.

Jeon Si-hoon’s inner truth is one of them.

“......”

I let out a shallow sigh and asked Deadman_working:

SKELTON: Are you satisfied?

Message from deadman_working: Yes. Very satisfied. I feel like I’m back in my youth. Like when I was at my father’s house, ears pricked at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, secretly playing in the dark.

SKELTON: Good for you.

One question lingered in my mind—about the contents of the game titled Eternity Beyond the Wall.

Gong Gyeong-min had said the story resembled what was happening between us now.

I had no way to know the story, but maybe Deadman_working, who liked it, would.

Message from deadman_working: In short, it’s about characters like oil and water, who can’t mix, moving toward a single goal. The title says it all: Eternity Beyond the Wall. If they could just overcome the wall, eternity—an ideal paradise—would open up. But from the start, the wall was insurmountable, and the conflicts and anguish born from that form the story’s main plot.

SKELTON: Hm... sounds cliché.

Message from deadman_working: A cliché story isn’t a bad one. That game consumed a lot of my time.

Message from deadman_working: Honestly, it never got popular, but it had a cult following. It had resonance. I was one of the players who felt it.

SKELTON: I see.

A story that didn’t matter much to me.

Still, I gave him a simple thanks.

Necropolis still hadn’t smiled on us, but its foremost authority had promised it would operate.

That night, alone in my room before the computer, I thought.

Eternity Beyond the Wall.

Yes, there truly was a wall between me and Gong Gyeong-min.

One that could never be crossed or broken.

We would never go back to how we were.

But—

“......”

Tap, tap.

SKELTON: The other thing you said you wanted to show me.

SKELTON: (Skeleton curious) What was it?

I’d become shameless.

Getting older isn’t always bad.

Of course, Gong Gyeong-min never answered.

I wouldn’t have, either.

Wanting at least a small spark of stimulation while the aftertaste still lingered, I called Cheon Young-jae.

“Hey. How do I even run this?”

He would know.

Judging by how he talked, he sounded like an expert.

And in fact, he did have some knowledge.

“You’ll need a virtual Windows, old Japanese fonts for Windows, and a text hooker.”

“I’ll look for them.”

“But, senpai, you had a hobby like this? Doesn’t seem like you at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if you’re going this far just to play it, people will think the same thing.”

He gave me a half-lidded stare.

I was puzzled.

“It’s just supposed to have a moving story, so I wanted to try it.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“What’s your point?”

At that, Cheon Young-jae hit me with a reply I hadn’t expected—one that silenced me instantly.

“It’s a nukige. An E! R! O! game! Sure, it’s a little touching, but at its core, it’s porn.”

“......”

Maybe this was the first time I’d ever felt defeated by Cheon Young-jae.

When I sat back down at my laptop in shock, a new message had arrived.

Message from KONG_13: The fissures made us who we are.