Chapter Text
In the night dominated by silence the noise of a clock ticking was the only thing fighting it, making the quiet, rhythmic sounds seem especially loud.
Yoo Joonghyuk was awake in such a night. In times like this he felt strangely alone, like there was no one in in the world beside himself and the ticking sound he’s trying to shift his entire attention to.
The seconds piled and turned into minutes and the minutes into hours until he gave up and opened his eyes to glance at the culprit of the noise to check the time, 3:40AM.
With a sigh, he gets out of bed and reaches his computer, turns it on and booths up a game. He felt a sense of comfort looking at the familiar title screen: Omniscient Readers Viewpoint.
The subway station was as lively and crowded as ever, each person had their own goal, their own story and as boring and unimportant as it may seem to them, it was theirs.
In such a subway station Yoo Joonghyuk found himself walking absentminded. Today he was going to a job interview at a gaming company. They reached out to him, telling him that they heard about his streams and that they were interested in working with him.
This was a good opportunity for him but yet he couldn’t help but feel puzzled at the request. That is because barely anyone watches his streams and, even though he considered himself good, he was no pro by any means.
Even though he enjoyed playing games and would like making a living out of it, there was no way a gaming company would know or care about him and the main reason he was so sure of that was because the main game he streamed was an idle game no one seems to have heard about, not the type of game you would see pros play, that’s for sure.
His goal with the streaming was him wanting this game to reach more people since he was convinced it could be loved by others as much as he loved it.
At first his streaming career seemed to be starting quite good, there were some people joining in and even interacting in the chat and trying to get him to talk more. However, it seemed like those people were more interested in looking at his face and chatting with him than the game itself, leading to him turning off his camera for the streams. After that, his viewers seemed disappointed and eventually lost interest.
However what was even stranger was that when he looked up the company, nothing came up. It was looking more and more like a scam, who in their right mind would go to an interview for a company that was completely in the shadows? The only thing that proved its existence was the address and the building showing up online under the name of the company.
In the end he decided to go and see for himself. He recently lost his job so if it turned out to be a real company it could only be a win for him and if it wasn’t, there was nothing to lose anyway.
,,What am I even doing?” he thought.
,,The doors for train 3434 to Bulgwang are opening.”
The voice snapped Yoo Joonghyuk back to reality. He disliked this type of noisy crowded spaces, which was the main reason why he avoided taking the subway.
He entered the carriage and waited for the train to be put in motion while making his way to the door on the other side so he could look out the window, as pointless as it was since is the subway’s window and you can’t see anything anyway. It was just extra troublesome if that door where to open at the next station.
,,The doors are now closing.’’
And with that the train started moving.
Yoo Joonghyuk was scrolling through his phone, trying to see if he could find more information on the company that wanted to work with him only to be distracted by a notification.
He clicked it without even seeing what it was for, lost in his own thoughts. When it opened his eyes widened slightly, a light appearing in them once again.
The notification was for an email, but what made him react to this email was the sender: tls123, the developer of the idle game Omniscient Readers Viewpoint.
The email read:
Hello, Yoo Joonghyuk! I hope this email reaches you well. I have heard about you streaming our game and I wanted to sincerely thank you! To show you our gratitude for your hard work, we decided to surprise you with a DLC for our game! This DLC hasn’t been publically announced on our website nor does it have a clear release date, so all we can provide you with is the beta version, which will be send to you at 7:00PM! This DLC will also come with a surprise we hope you will look forward to!
Tls123
Yoo Joonghyuk was taken aback. It was true that no one else was streaming their game but he didn’t expect the developer to reach out to him and even more, to send him the beta version of a DLC.
Even if his face wasn’t giving much away, he felt truly happy. The corners of his lips curved slightly into a small smile.
He checked the time: 6:58PM. It wasn’t that long until the time the gift was going to be sent.
Yoo Joonghyuk was lost in thoughts once again, but this time the anticipation was rather positive, however something was still bugging him. Why did they have to wait until 7:00PM to send it and didn’t just attach it to the first email?
The more time was passing the louder the beatings of his heart grew accompanied by a clock ticking.
When he looked up however it all came to a stop. There was no clock ticking, it was the clicking sound of the cogged wheel of a lighter.
In front of him, a tall man with a scraggly beard was desperately trying to light up something. When he realized what that thing was he felt like his heart was about to stop: it was a bomb.
More and more people started noticing and the commotion only grew. People where either frozen in terror or screaming, however before he or anyone had the time to react, the lights went off and the train came to an abrupt stop.
Yoo Joonghyuk couldn’t help but feel like the situation was rather familiar, but he couldn’t figure out why. All the faces around him where strangers, he never takes the subway unless is absolutely necessary and his life wasn’t interesting enough to have encounter terrorists before.
Then, a voice rang in the cabin.
[Welcome everyone, nice to meet you!]
He looked up in terror to see a white, furry creature floating in midair while grinning down at them.
In that moment something clicked in his brain and quickly checked the time, 7:00PM.