How to Create a God (4)

Even in a world where nothing was left, time still passed quickly.

Every day, I woke up, ate the breakfast that was distributed to me, and went outside with a shovel in my hand.

The obligations and rules that oppressed me were long gone, but the only thing that kept me going was the prosperity of the past that had already disappeared.

Everyone was busy looking for their own roles, hoping that the glorious days would return.

It was a paradoxical scene of leisure and bustle.

This was the camp scenery that I liked.

“Yuseong, you’ve been going for walks a lot lately, haven’t you?”

As I stood by the window, sipping my coffee and looking outside, Donghyun approached me and started a conversation.

He also had a paper cup with mixed coffee in his hand, reflected on the glass window.

I took another sip of my coffee and turned to him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You didn’t go out this often before… Do you have any worries?”

I smiled faintly at his question.

It had been almost two weeks since I met the mysterious girl.

During that time, I had taken some time to visit her with the food that was given to me.

Most of what we did when I went to see her was playing games.

We played board games that I brought from the comic cafe and had trivial conversations.

Sometimes we shared simple snacks that I found somewhere.

As our meetings became more frequent, Donghyun seemed to sense something suspicious.

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately.”

I couldn’t tell Donghyun the truth, not yet.

It was clear that this was not the right time.

I tried to brush him off with a vague answer and a sheepish smile.

He looked at me with a complicated expression as I shook my coffee and laughed.

“If you have any worries, you can always talk to me.”

“You know I always come to you first when I have any worries.”

“Lately, you seem to be keeping things to yourself, like you used to.”

“It’s not that kind of worry, it’s just… I miss the days when I was happy even though I was busy at work. You know, those silly thoughts.”

At first, I went to see her to persuade her, but now I didn’t mind playing games with her quietly.

I even enjoyed it.

Someday, I would have to tell everyone the truth and bring her to the camp, but for now, it was better to keep our secret and have our strange conversations.

I didn’t care about her nonsense about the truth of the world and how to create a god.

It felt like I was going back to the past when we played games and chatted in my room.

“You’re not hiding a pack of cigarettes somewhere and smoking them by yourself, are you?”

“I don’t smoke that often, do I? Do you want to smell me?”

“Get away from me. What do I care about your smell?”

He backed away a few steps, hitting his hand as I tried to dispel his suspicion with a witty attitude.

One of the group members behind him chuckled and laughed.

Donghyun glared at him for a moment, then sighed and rummaged through his pocket.

“You’re more likely to take more chocolate than cigarettes. Let me know if you find any cigarettes.”

“Oh… chocolate?”

“Eat it secretly when you go for a walk.”

I held the chocolate that came out of his pocket in my hand.

It was not as big as before, but a small piece of chocolate fit in my palm.

I nodded and put it in my pocket.

It was a good thing to give to the guy who was waiting for me to play games in my room.

As I tapped the chocolate in my pocket with satisfaction, one of the group members who was watching me teased me.

“Hey, boss. Why are you only giving presents to Yuseong? That’s unfair.”

“Come on. You’re not kids. Why are you acting like that? I’ll give you a cigarette if you follow me.”

“Oh, you’re the best, boss.”

Donghyun winked and left with the group member.

I sighed with relief as I watched him leave the building.

I knew it was all for the sake of the group, but I couldn’t help feeling a pressure in my chest.

It was the weight of the secret.

It felt heavy just to keep words in my heart.

“I need to find a cigarette.”

Through the blurry window, I saw his broad back.

He was always devoted to the group members.

I owed him a lot too.

I didn’t know when I would be able to repay him.

***

It had been three weeks since I met the girl with the strange personality.

By now, even my walks were accepted as part of my routine by the group members.

As usual, I went to my room under the pretext of a walk and found something that made me gasp.

The girl was sitting on the bed, leaning against it, with a familiar object in her hand.

It was a familiar but special object that shouldn’t work normally in this world.

“What is that…?”

Blink. Blink.

I opened and closed my eyes several times, not believing what I saw.

No matter how many times I closed and opened my eyes, the scene before me remained unchanged.

A girl was holding a smartphone in front of me.

A smartphone with its screen on.

“An important item.”

“What? The smartphone still has battery left?”

I widened my eyes as I looked at the smartphone in her hand.

Even though the power had been cut off for a long time, the girl’s smartphone was still working perfectly.

A smartphone with its screen on. It was something I hadn’t seen in a long time.

The relics of the old era had all fallen asleep without any battery left.

I couldn’t even remember the last time I used a smartphone.

“Do you find it amazing?”

“What else would be amazing if not this?”

There was a time when using a smartphone was normal.

But now, a smartphone with battery was not a common thing at all.

Everyone wanted it, but it was hard to find one.

I took off my shoes and walked towards the girl who was holding the smartphone.

I sat next to her and stared intently at the smartphone in her hand.

“Where did you get it? Did you pick it up from outside?”

“I made it.”

“What?”

“I made it myself because I needed it.”

The girl answered calmly to my question about the origin of the smartphone.

She always gave me strange answers.

And today’s answer was more annoying than any of her previous ones.

I grabbed the back of my neck and looked at her.

“You made this? You did?”

“Yes. Do you like it?”

“Oh, sure…”

It was nonsense.

How could she make a smartphone by hand?

Maybe she could assemble one, but she couldn’t produce a normal one without a factory.

But she gave me such a brazen answer that I had no choice but to accept it.

I nodded quietly and looked at the smartphone in her hand.

I saw pixelated characters moving busily on the screen.

“You were playing a game, huh? Well, I guess you can’t watch videos or anything since there’s no internet.”

“Do you like games?”

The girl who was holding a smartphone in her hand asked me as she shook it slightly.

Do I like games?

Not many people would say they hate games when asked such a question.

Unless they say they don’t enjoy them much.

And I was the same in that regard.

“Games… I don’t hate them. But I wasn’t so passionate that I would put everything else aside to play them.”

I was also one of those who liked games, if I had to be honest.

Even after work, I would sometimes play some mobile games.

Well, that was a long time ago, though.

Now, it had been so long since the battery died that I couldn’t remember the last time I played.

As I followed the game screen in her hand with fascination, she opened her mouth with a faint smile.

“Do you want to try playing this?”

She offered me the smartphone she was holding.

As she held out the smartphone to me, I reflexively took it.

My eyes moved along with the smartphone and examined the game she was playing.

I saw dots densely filling the smartphone she handed me.

The characters expressed in dots were moving busily and interacting with each other.

“A pixel game, huh? This kind of nostalgia is nice.”

I liked both pixels and 3D graphics.

It might depend on personal taste, but I felt like I could enjoy any game right now.

As I fiddled with the smartphone she gave me and looked at it, she made a light comment on the pixel graphics.

“It’s because it hasn’t grown properly yet.”

“What hasn’t grown? Is your character level too low?”

“That thing you’re holding.”

She said, pointing at the smartphone in my hand, not the game.

I looked at her again, sitting next to me.

What did she mean by the smartphone growing? It wasn’t a Tamagotchi or anything.

Even the famous Tamagotchi couldn’t evolve the device itself.

I was puzzled by her absurd remark and tried to mess up her hair.

“Hey, how can a smartphone grow, logically… huh…?”

But my hand that was reaching for her stopped in mid-air and stayed still.

Something I couldn’t identify was holding me back.

It felt like my hand was trapped in space and couldn’t move forward.

I opened my mouth wide as I looked at my hand hanging in the air.

-“Forget it.”

“…”

And I quickly forgot.

Why did I raise my hand?

I couldn’t remember it well.

I lowered my hand awkwardly and focused on the screen of the smartphone in my hand.

The small characters were still moving on the smartphone screen.

“They’re cute. But I can’t understand a word they’re saying.”

They were having some incomprehensible interactions with speech bubbles above their heads.

I watched the characters in the game more closely.

It looked like the characters had some roles assigned to them as I watched them quietly.

They seemed to have their own society.

“Is it fun?”

“This game is not bad.”

The characters moved diligently and did their tasks, as if the AI was finely crafted.

Sometimes, they would deviate from the rules that governed them and show some peculiar behaviors.

It felt like I was raising ants in a transparent gel.

I also remembered the tiny sea monkeys I used to keep in a fish tank when I was young.

It was soothing to just watch them without any thoughts.

“You might feel healed if you just stare at them.”

I knew this feeling wouldn’t last long, but it wasn’t too bad for now.

As I gazed at the screen with the smartphone in my hand, the girl pointed at a character on the screen and said,

“Something will change if you tap it.”

“Really?”

She said I could interact with the characters.

I followed her advice and moved my finger towards a character on the screen.

Tap.

A number -1 appeared above the character’s head as I touched it.

It seemed like the character took damage.

The gauge at the top of the screen also decreased significantly.

“Hmm… I guess I can hit the characters by touching them.”

“Don’t you find it fun? Why don’t you keep doing it?”

She asked me if I enjoyed hitting the characters, but I shook my head after some thought.

I didn’t feel like doing it right now.

I didn’t know how their society worked, or even what the purpose of the game was.

I didn’t like to cause trouble without any reason.

“Well, I’m having fun just watching them for now.”

I gave her a vague answer and continued to look at the smartphone blankly.

The game I played after a long time was enjoyable without any complicated controls.