Ch. 6 - Second Ghost Story - Laughing Woman (2)

After walking about fifteen minutes from school, I could see an apartment complex in the distance.

It was a normal apartment in a neighborhood for the middle class.

My home was there.

After the closing of Nakseong High School in my last life, the government had provided aid in my family’s move across the Han River. We had lived there for three years before my regression. At this point, it had been a long time since I’d visited my home.

It felt like I had returned to my hometown from a long time ago.

At first, I was worried that I would have forgotten the way home, since it had been three years. However, after following along the sidewalk for a bit, the memories slowly returned.

‘Right, there used to be a store like this over here. I used to buy spicy rice cakes here……’

That store over there was the mart that I used to go to on errands for my mom.

That restaurant was the place my family used to eat out on birthdays……

And a bit further down, I could see my apartment complex.

Three years might have passed, but I could clearly remember which building and which floor I lived on.

I was unable to calm my beating heart as I quickly entered the complex.

‘But… What was the passcode to our building again?’

I was stalled at the apartment building entrance.

I stood there for a while, trying to remember the code.

‘F*ck, what was it?’

Damn it.

If I looked up, I could see my home just a few floors up. To think I was stuck at the entrance…

I could even see the drying laundry on the veranda clearly from where I was standing.

‘… It would be weird to suddenly call my parents asking for the passcode, right?’

Actually, it wouldn’t be too weird, but I also thought that there shouldn’t be a need to go out of my way to do that.

I ended up deciding to sit and wait until someone came by to open the entrance.

“……”

Because it was still morning, there were almost no people passing by. It was only after a long time that some old lady opened the entrance door as she left.

I rushed in and got on the elevator, pushing the button for my floor.

‘7th floor.’

Badump, badump.

On the elevator walls there were familiar sights, such as announcement notices and fliers.

Everything was the same.

Just leaving the house for a few days on a retreat or a school trip could make the space feel slightly unfamiliar, but for me, I had spent three years away.

Was this what it felt like to return home after finishing military service?

[T/N: In South Korea, able-bodied young men are required to serve in the military from anywhere between 21 months to 3 years, depending on the branch of the military and the type of service. The draft begins once the male reaches the age of 18, but it can be delayed until the age of 28.]

While the place felt slightly foreign, at the same time, I had the weird feeling of familiarity and thought that everything was just the way it used to be.

As the elevator doors opened, I could see the front door and the bag of recyclables that my mom had sorted out to be disposed of. My heart began to beat faster than ever.

‘How should I greet my mom when I see her? Is my old computer still the same?’

As those thoughts began to flood my mind, I pressed the passcode to the front door and opened it.

Luckily, I could remember the passcode to my home.

“I’m home~!”

I shouted energetically, but the house was quiet.

“Mom?”

As I headed to the kitchen, I could see my mom’s note and a ten dollar bill on the kitchen table.

[You came home early today because it was the entrance ceremony, right? I will leave work at six, so you can order some chicken if you get hungry.]

“Mom……”

I remembered. Three years ago, mom had said that she would get a job as well, and so she had been working as a cashier at a local mart every day.

Because I missed my mom, I teared up a bit. Even as my eyes grew wet, I grumbled to myself.

“Why is it ten dollars…? Chicken costs closer to twenty dollars, nowadays…”

I missed Mom. I also missed Dad.

It hadn't even been that long since I’d seen them.

In fact, from my perspective I had seen them just yesterday.

However, in my last life I had seen my parents die right in front of my eyes before I was brought back to the past, so my heart hurt greatly.

“Huuu……”

But it wasn’t like anything had happened now. I decided to stop being so rushed, and to slowly enjoy my old home.

I took a deep breath.

I could smell the nostalgic scents of the potted plants purchased by Dad, mixed with the deodorizer purchased by Mom.

It smelled like a house where people actually lived.

Although the house we moved into in my past life wasn’t bad, for some reason it didn’t really grow on me.

However, this old home had the same atmosphere… just the way I remembered.

While the media often portrayed hometowns as some home in the sticks, since I was born and raised in the city, in my mind my hometown was the house that I have lived in the longest with my family.

In my past life, after the closing of Nakseong High School, the government believed the cause to be a bioweapon attack. They had the residents of the neighborhood move rapidly, and after the area was sealed off, I couldn’t even visit the nearby area.

It was a place I always missed.

First, I went into the bathroom to take a piss. The sight of the bathtub I often used and the toothbrush I had used in the past made my heart stir.

‘In the house we moved into, instead of a bathtub, there was only a shower stall. It was incredibly uncomfortable.’

All bathrooms should have a bathtub.

‘My room. Will my room also be the same?’

After finishing my business, I hurried to my room.

My room was exactly as I remembered it, from the curtains, to the bed, to the desk and the computer.

In my past life, we were so rushed to move that we were unable to pack some of our personal items, and so my computer had been left behind.

Because of that, I had lost all of my game files, the pictures filled with memories, and my personal journal. It had been one of my biggest regrets, but I was finally able to get them back.

“……”

It was weird enough returning home early because of the entrance ceremony, but I had even come back to my old home.

Calmly sitting on my bed in my own room felt like a dream.

It didn’t feel like a dream because I was happy, but rather because it was bittersweet and slightly hazy.

My old home was always like that. Just sitting there often made me get lost in my thoughts.

“… my computer.”

I had been sitting around for a while, before getting my head straight and standing up.

“Let’s see, what kind of thoughts did I have three years ago?”

After turning on the computer, I could see the desktop and a lot of nostalgic folders.

“Right, at that time I was playing this sort of game… let’s check out my browsing history. Oh, ‘Past Life Rubber Shoes’. Right, at this point in time I used to read this webnovel a lot… PUBG was around back then as well. It’s a bit older than I thought… Ah, this is……”

[T/N: The ‘Past Life Rubber Shoes’ webnovel mentioned may be a parody of a very old comic called ‘Black Rubber Shoes.’]

And so I spent my time lost in memories as I browsed through my computer. I had also looked around my house, ordered chicken with the money mom left me, and rolled around on the sofa as I watched TV. As I left the building and spent time outside on the playground reminiscing my life three years ago, it had already become evening.

I returned home and was playing on my phone when I heard the buttons on the door lock being pressed. My parents had returned from work, and I could hear them as they came in.

“Moooooooom~~~! Daaaaaaaaaad!”

I came out running to greet them, but they were acting normally as they entered the house.

“Oh my, why is this kid so delighted to see us?”

“I missed you…”

“Huh? Did something happen? Did you see a ghost in the house or something?”

My Dad tossed out a joke as he chuckled.

The atmosphere became harmonious and cozy, and that atmosphere continued as we ate dinner together.

My parents and I chatted about how my entrance ceremony went, whether I made friends and the like. In this manner, I enjoyed the reunion with my parents and spent the rest of the day with them.

* * *

《STATUS WINDOW

Name: Lee Joon

Age: 17

Title: Main Character

Disposition: [Two-Faced] Click to Expand

Special Ability: 1. None

2. None

3. None

Quirk: Last Second Cramming.》

Click.

Disposition: [Two-Faced]

Your disposition is two-faced.

You feel lonely when you are alone, yet you feel bothered when with others.

You seem sociable at a glance, but you are actually introverted.

You are usually cautious, but you occasionally become impulsive.

Because of your two-faced nature, you usually have two opposite mindsets that clash. This results in the lack of persistence to continue through a task over a long period of time. However, because of your two-faced nature, you are able to see a situation from multiple angles. This allows you to react quickly in sudden situations and act with great wit and tricks in response.

“I’m a moron?”

Before going to sleep, I was reading through my Status Window thoroughly as I lay in bed, but I ended up being stunned.

“My strong point is what? Using tricks?”

Of course, I already know what my own personality was like.

Whenever I did something, although I usually did more than average, I often found it difficult to finish up all the way.

In human relationships, I felt lonely when I’m alone, but I also had the mindset that when I was with others, I wished to be alone.

Financially speaking, I always made sure to turn off any lights I wasn’t using and I had the desire to save up. However, if something really caught my eyes, I had the tendency to splurge just for that.

I had a somewhat contradictory personality. I did already know this about myself, but the system had just accurately bombed me with undeniable facts.

“… Do you think I want this type of personality?”

While I did feel a bit indignant since I couldn’t do anything about being born with this personality, I once again felt that the system was able to transcend beyond what I had recognized.

While I had dismissed it simply as a complicated personality, the system had strictly defined it as two-faced, with no room for argument.

‘Is there anything else?’

I checked it thoroughly to see if it had stats similar to most online games, such as strength, agility and intelligence, but there were no such stats.

After searching the status window, I closed it to find the main screen.

《MAIN SCREEN

[2019 Mar. 04 | Monday, 23:03]

[Lee Joon - Number of Attempts: 2, Progressing in Tutorial]

[Ghost Story Points: 13]

[Causality Rate: 2%]

Status Window

Manage Club (Locked)

Statistics

Settings》

That was probably the most fundamental screen of the system, the main screen.

“What does the number of times mean? If you include the first time, when my head exploded, I should be on my third try……”

Also, what was this causality rate? Even when I tried to press it, there was no response. Since the manage club tab was locked, I couldn’t click that either.

“Number 3, Statistics, click.”

Poof.

STATISTICS

-Total Time-

[Total Time Played: 3 Years, 0 Months, 0 Days, 23 Hours, 03 Minutes, 57 Seconds]

[Time Spent Sleeping: 1 Year, 02 Months, 13 Days, 7 Hours, 30 Minutes, 25 Seconds]

[Time Spent at Nakseong High School: 11 Hours, 21 Minutes, 42 Seconds]

[Time Spent Speaking with Friends: 3 Days, 11 Hours, 48 Minutes, 37 Seconds]

[Time Spent Studying: ……]

[Time Spent Gaming: ……]

-Total Numbers-

[Number of Deaths: 2]

[Number of Times Surviving a Ghost Story: 1]

[Number of Times Starting Over at a Checkpoint: 1]

[Number of Times the Demon King Revived: 1]

[T/N: Pretty sure the number of checkpoint start overs should be 2, but the author may have a different method of counting it.]

“Damn, they have the strangest things here.” Using the moment the message had first popped up at the starting point, the statistics page contained all sorts of different statistics about me.

‘Checkpoints, huh……’

Since I mostly played online games, it was a word that was slightly unfamiliar to me.

I may have seen it a few times when I played some console games a long time ago.

They might have simplified the ‘Save/Load’ functions and called it a checkpoint.

‘For the rest… will there be a time I use it? How annoying.’

I guessed that it would take a few more deaths and experiences for me to get the hang of what it did.

“Next! Number 4, Settings, Click!”

SETTINGS

[Graphics Options]

[Audio Options]

[Control Options]

The graphics options included numbers for brightness, contrast, and gamma correction.

As I increased or decreased those numbers, my vision would get brighter or darker in real time. While this did seem very intriguing, it didn’t seem to have any real uses yet.

I had thought that increasing the brightness in a dark space could be useful, but after testing it out in my room, I found out that that was not the case.

As I increased the number, it wasn’t that the brightness was actually increasing. It was more like a white filter was forming in front of my eyes. It wouldn’t help with seeing something better.

“Damn, this is useless.”

[Audio Options].

The audio options were at least better.

When I decreased the volume bar hovering in front of me, I could hear the sounds growing quieter in real time.

Although being alone in my room at night was already pretty quiet, when I decreased the volume to the lowest value, even the minute sounds of the hum of the refrigerator and the sound of my heartbeat disappeared.

‘… This is quite good. With this, I won’t need any earplugs in loud places.’

Of course, it was more likely that the system was controlling my sense of hearing, rather than actually eliminating all of the sounds in the world.

In order to find out what the control options did, I tried pressing random stuff. There were so many useless options, like when I tried moving my arms, my feet would move instead. That was an option with absolutely no use.

“That’s crazy. Nothing here is useful.”

I slowly struggled, trying to move my feet in order to get my hands to move and return the options back to normal. When I finished struggling and finally got it back to normal, it was already past midnight.

I guess it was time for me to go to sleep.

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