The Game Director that Returned from Hell - Chapter 5

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Potter

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Game Director that Returned from Hell ◈

Chapter 5

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I’d barely slept for two nights.

Han Seorim had left saying she’d think it over and get back to me, but I still hadn’t heard from her.

We’d definitely exchanged numbers.

I’d even checked that her phone rang right in front of me, so there couldn’t have been a mistake.

Then why hadn’t she answered yet?

Should I wait longer?

No, what if she’d decided to just ignore me?

Perhaps because I was getting so worried, I found myself typing and deleting text messages over and over.

Ding!

That was when a message arrived.

[Let’s meet and talk.]

She seemed to have made her decision.

It was two in the afternoon.

[Have you eaten?]

[It’s two. Of course I’ve eaten.]

A flat rejection.

[Let’s meet at the campus café.]

I grabbed my things and left home at once.

* * *

The campus café was quiet.

Exams had just ended, so the students were out enjoying themselves off campus.

That wasn’t bad. We’d be able to talk in peace.

“Over here.”

Han Seorim waved from a corner table, her chin resting in her hand.

As I approached, she greeted me.

“It’s been two days. Have you been... Actually, you don’t look well. Why are the circles under your eyes so dark?”

“I’ve been working on the game design document.”

“You’ve got it bad.”

Han Seorim gave a dry laugh.

“You’re number one in the world when it comes to enthusiasm. I’ll give you that.”

“Thank you for the compliment.”

Even as I answered, my mouth felt bone-dry. All this suspense was far from pleasant. I had no desire to stay this nervous.

I got straight to the point.

“So, have you decided?”

“You’re impatient.”

“I thought we should keep this brief. You’re busy, aren’t you?”

“Fine. I don’t like wasting time on small talk either.”

Han Seorim shifted in her seat, crossing her legs and folding her arms.

I remembered hearing somewhere that this posture meant rejection...

“I’ll give it a try for now. It seems like it’ll be a good experience.”

Books really weren’t all that reliable.

‘Success...!’

My hands curled into fists on their own.

I barely managed to stop the corners of my mouth from rising.

But I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice.

“You’ve made the right...”

“But.”

Han Seorim cut me off with a crooked smile.

An unsettling one.

“...Yes?”

“I have a condition too. Since I’m taking the job, I’ll do my best. But there’s something you have to promise me.”

“What is it?”

“My time is very precious to me. And staying interested matters even more. I tend to get stuck in a rut pretty badly, I guess you could say. Let me quit whenever I lose interest.”

I froze.

I looked straight into Han Seorim’s eyes, trying to figure out what she meant. Unfortunately, I couldn’t read minds.

But there was one thing I could read.

She was serious.

“...That’s quite a condition.”

“Not confident?”

Not confident?

I didn’t know what she was getting at, but that was ridiculous.

If I weren’t confident, I wouldn’t have started.

“Fine. That won’t happen, so it’s practically the same as having no condition at all.”

I wouldn’t let the project get to that point in the first place.

Putting out something I wasn’t satisfied with and getting an equally disappointing response was something I’d done enough of at my company in my previous life.

I had absolutely no intention of feeling that awful again.

“I hope you have the skills to match your confidence too, junior.”

“Of course.”

Han Seorim offered her hand.

When I gazed at it, she added something.

“Here’s to working together?”

It felt strange. Two days ago, she hadn’t taken my hand.

Of course, I didn’t simply sit there getting sentimental.

“Likewise.”

I took her hand.

Whatever else happened, one problem was solved.

I’d successfully recruited an art director.

* * *

Seorim was in a rather good mood.

“Let’s start tomorrow. Bring some basic drawing supplies if you have them. A drawing tablet would be best, if possible.”

That was what Cheon Yeonho had said as they parted.

She liked how straightforward he was.

She also had a feeling that what lay ahead wouldn’t be all that boring.

Of course, she’d have to wait and see how things actually turned out.

Suddenly, a dry laugh escaped her.

‘Life really does take you to strange places.’

Making a game. She’d never imagined she would do anything like this in her life. The world worked in mysterious ways.

‘A tablet, a sketchbook, and a pencil. That should do.’

Once she had the basics ready, Seorim put on her bag and left home.

When she reached the university, Cheon Yeonho was waiting at the main gate.

“Have you been waiting?”

“No, I just got here too.”

“We’re going to be working together now, so you can drop the formalities. I’ll just call you seonbae.”

“Sure. Let’s do that.”

Well, that had been quick.

Most people were awkward about it at first, even when she offered.

While she was thinking that, Cheon Yeonho asked casually, “What?”

“...Nothing.”

“Yeah? As long as it’s nothing serious. Anyway, follow me.”

Cheon Yeonho turned around.

She followed him to the club building.

“A club?”

“Yeah. We need somewhere to work on the game.”

“You’ve already arranged all this?”

“I did it yesterday.”

He put a key into the padlock and opened the door.

It was a small room.

The place had only been given a basic cleaning. Two computers stood side by side, and the bookcase against the opposite wall was completely empty.

“We’re not an official club that gets funding. More like a small group that’s borrowed a room.”

“Right. Well, it doesn’t really matter.”

‘This might be a nice place to come when I want some peace and quiet.’

Thinking along those lines, Seorim sat down.

Then she asked, “So, what do I do now?”

It hardly needed saying, but Seorim knew nothing about game development.

Actually, she knew nothing about games in general.

She’d read the game design document Cheon Yeonho had given her, but she lacked the basic knowledge to figure out what she was supposed to do from that alone.

She explained her situation and got an immediate answer.

“First, you need to draw some illustrations.”

“Illustrations?”

“You’ll be designing how the game looks. It’s the basic stage of putting the backgrounds, characters, and enemies into visual form. Of course, I’m not expecting you to come up with the designs from scratch. I’ll give you rough sketches, so interpret them in your own way.”

Cheon Yeonho handed her a folder of A4 sheets.

Seorim took it and skimmed through the pages.

Then she went rigid.

“They’re a little gory, right? Sorry if you’re not used to that. But I still need you to do it.”

“They are horrifying.”

The drawing skills, mainly.

Seorim felt something close to shock.

She could say with absolute certainty, swear it to the heavens, that she had never seen drawings this bad in her entire life.

She looked up to check Cheon Yeonho’s expression. He didn’t seem the least bit ashamed.

‘Does he not realize how bad he is?’

No, he’d said he was looking for someone because he couldn’t draw, so that couldn’t be it.

‘But this is just too much.’

She couldn’t even tell what he’d tried to draw.

Seorim thought for a moment.

Most people would probably hold back.

If someone couldn’t judge their own drawing skills properly, people would avoid commenting because they felt bad saying something harsh. Or they would think, ‘Well, he brought me here because he can’t draw,’ and quietly struggle through the work.

But Seorim wasn’t very good at holding back comments like that.

“My five-year-old cousin could draw better than this.”

“Your cousin must have a good eye for art.”

“I’m saying you’re horribly bad at drawing.”

“It’s true, so I can’t argue.”

How could anyone be so shameless?

Only after she stared at him in disbelief did Cheon Yeonho add, “Does it matter if you can’t tell from the drawings? I’ve added notes to everything.”

“You have. But they’re too abstract. What is ‘blue skin, as though the soul itself has frozen’ even supposed to mean?”

“I approached you because I need that kind of abstract idea brought to life.”

“Have I gotten myself into something bad?”

“Of course not. You’ve come to exactly the right place.”

Cheon Yeonho pulled over a chair and sat across from Seorim.

He studied the folder for a moment with a thoughtful hum, then spoke.

“I’ll explain the general atmosphere. It’ll be easier to draw if you have some background.”

“...All right. Let’s hear it.”

The moment she said that, something changed.

Cheon Yeonho’s eyes grew distant.

His blank expression looked less like he was imagining something and more like he was revisiting a moment in his past.

Just as that struck her as odd, he spoke.

“This place is hell. A hell that holds sinners receiving extremely painful punishments.”

His voice began to fill the room, low and quiet.

“There are many kinds of pain. This place only deals in physical pain.”

Seorim turned Cheon Yeonho’s words into images on the canvas in her mind.

“The setting is inside a huge organ. It wriggles and moves, and its color is closer to dark brown than pink. ...Yes, the color of a cancerous lung. That’s the right way to describe it.”

This was easy to picture.

There had been a similar scene in a comic Han Jingyeong had read when she was little.

It was a story about the main character exploring the inside of a giant snake’s stomach.

“The space is divided into perfect cubes. To move from one space to another, you squeeze through a hole in the room. It looks like a butthole.”

“...”

Unpleasant, but she certainly had a clear picture now.

An old movie had a similar setting.

It was about people trapped inside a cube whose layout changed at regular intervals.

“There are two groups in this hell. Sinners who suffer, and jailers who show you new, creative ways to make people suffer every moment.”

“What do they look like?”

“The sinners all look sick. They have to. They’re people who died of illnesses because they didn’t take care of their bodies. They failed to prevent diseases they could have prevented. All for a moment of pleasure.”

“Things like drinking and smoking?”

“In extreme cases, drugs or self-harm.”

“...All right. Go on.”

“The jailers have blue skin, like I wrote in the notes. They have no expressions. Their eye sockets and mouths are sewn shut. They see nothing and say nothing. They even have nails driven into their ears, so they can’t hear. All they do is torture. They’re mechanical. In fact, they’re pretty close to machines.”

Should she picture a serial killer from an old movie?

The image of a mechanical torture expert was starting to take clear shape.

What would work...? Right, a skinny one would be good.

He’d said the genre was horror, so that would be scarier.

Once she’d gotten that far, Seorim could understand what Cheon Yeonho’s drawings were supposed to show.

‘They do get the point across.’

Setting aside his bizarre lack of skill, the designs themselves were easy to grasp.

With a rough image in mind, Seorim opened her eyes.

She met Cheon Yeonho’s gaze and asked, “The jailer is the important one, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought so.”

Seorim smiled.