“I know you. Pak, right? Pak Yeung-Sung?”

Yeung-Sung turned from the flower bed to see a pale American. “Excuse me, but who are you?”

“I’m a guy that just had a very upset woman shoulder through him. From your direction” he added. Pointed at him, he crinkled out a sneer out of a cowboy western, saying, “And I intend to do something about it!”

“You are?”

Straightening out from his squat, Yeung-Sung rubbed his hands together to shake the earth off them. Hopping down off the little plot of land at the town square, he took in the sight of this coloner who had suddenly started interrogating him. Was he one of her fanboys?

He had the least amount of purple on his person that he had seen thus far; which was to say none. Instead, he dressed and looked exactly what Yeung-Sung pictured when he imagined shut-in gamers, ones devoted to this Airgead “cause” -if you could call it that. A greasy zip-down hoodie and cargo pants slumped down over him, concealing his body-shape. The zip was open, and he had his hands wriggling through, digits peeping through torn holes. Yeung-Sung supposed that he was the fanboy type, so maybe his first guess was correct.

He was about his age; most people here were. As much as he could figure, if anyone would comply to a society built on toy money, it would have to be this generation; old enough to have been exposed to the prime of gaming culture; old enough to start learning how to be financially accountable; but young enough that the fresh memories of the old-world were a reminder of their robbed future. That’s odd. Did I just defend the logic of the colony?

He looked back at the coloner, with his wave-swept hair and asked, “What exactly are you going to do?”

“Oh nothing,” the American replied. “I was just joking, don’t really care.” He strode over, taking his hands out of his hoodie pocket’s and proffered it. “Wilhelm. Wilhelm Ryan pleased to meet you. No, I don’t speak Korean, lol.”

As he shook Wilhelm’s hand, Yeung-Sung was taken aback. Did he just say “lol” in a real-life conversation?

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“Pak Yeung-Sung,” he replied instinctively. “- Wait, you said that you know me. How? I only arrived in the colony”.

Wilhelm strode past the purple post box and took a seat at the bench behind him. “Word spreads fast, I guess,” he began, stretching his arms. “We don’t get a lot of new members anymore, and that means we don’t get a lot of updates on the outside world. Know anything about the situation in Dallas?”

Yeung-Sung shook his head.

“I expected as much,” he sighed. Then, peering over his shoulder at the mounds of earth that Yeung-Sung was kneeling over before he made a questioning hum. “Say…what were you doing in the garden? Not pissing, I hope.”

“I-I was just looking,” Yeung-Sung stammered back. He looked over several times, unable to keep his focus on Wilhelm. Rising slowly, the American was unconvinced. He gave a slow, sarcastic nod, his lips turned in. “Right.”

Leaning over closer, Wilhelm saw the sprout. “Oh, you were planting something, I see.” He turned, his cargo pants rippling in contrary motion. “Why lie about that?” he asked, cocking his head.

Yeung-Sung opened his mouth to output some excuse, but then he noticed something. People. Suddenly, from every fork and alley, members of the colony started to come through the town. The streets filled with a new buzz of life, and he saw a few shops hurriedly have their CLOSED signs flipped over. As soon as he had planted his seed into the earth, people came.

“Everyone’s come out?” he said, annunciating it slowly, then re-framing it into a question.

“Yeah,” Ryan said with a sour note, stuffing his hands back in his hoodie and kicking a pebble on the ground. “The first milestone’s been reached. Money exists; Woohoo,” he grumbled.

“That sounds like a good thing, why are you annoyed?”

“Because I wanted to be the first one through the Gauntlet! I could’ve done it, if I had a little more time.”

“Is being first that big of a deal?” Yeung-Sung asked.

Wilhelm stopped sulking. “Huh? Of course it is. Why do you think people are only coming out now? We were all vying to be first. And somehow, even though everyone else here is a dang idiot I still didn’t win.” He stuck his head up to the sky and moaned. “Ughh, why do I bother?”

He noticed Yeung-Sung looking at him blankly. “Oh right, you’re new. Haven’t they added an explanation of resets to the tutorial? I was sure they did”.

“Don’t know. Didn’t do it.”

Wilhelm continued on, “You’re lucky, man. Back when I started, they didn’t even give us a tutorial. Said it would ruin the integrity of the experiment. That said, the game design was a lot simpler back then. With the new bullshit “minimalist” system, I suppose they had to give people something.”

Yeung-Sung interrupted him. “I didn’t do the tutorial.”

“Hah, good one.” Wilhelm buckled his knees in a good imitation of laughter, but then went fish-eyed and deadpan in a single, twisting moment. “You’re just shit at it. I get it, don’t worry. I’ve seen it before.” He beckoned him forward and started walking. “Come, bro, I’ll take you up to our local. You’ll make some friends, get settled in.”

He stopped, realising that Yeung-Sung was not following. “Bro -eh, Yeung-Sung? Come on, man, I’ll buy you one.”

Well, he didn’t take it as bad as Woo-Yi.