Chapter 3 : Adventure Level 1 (3)

Now that we had caught a slime, we decided to part ways.
“Let’s hang out tomorrow too.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“Do you have plans?”
“No, but I don’t want to hang out for a while. I’m dead tired from playing two days in a row. I’m going to rest at home for a bit.”
“What about Thursday or Friday, then?”
“I told you, I’m resting.”
“The weekend?”
“I plan on being tired then too. Don’t bother coming over on the weekend.”
Do Yugeon whined about whether I was really going to stay cooped up at home during such an important time, but I ignored him.
He knows I usually rest for a few days after hanging out for one, so I wondered why he was acting like this.
Is he having that much fun?
The current situation with slimes appearing is troublesome, but that doesn’t mean I want to run around exhausted.
If I search online at home, someone will surely investigate and organize the information eventually.

Three days passed, the exams ended, and the weekend arrived.
I did some searching during that time: experience points seemed standard, but people were arguing over whether leveling up was possible, and there were even claims of status windows appearing.
It was a mess—a mix of jokes and serious claims.
So, it’d be better to stop searching for now and check again once things calm down.
Cha Haneul lay on the living room sofa, flipping through a book.
Although there was a study, she preferred the sofa.
Reading for a long time made her wrist ache.
Flexing her hand open and closed felt a bit awkward too.
…Should I read an ebook?
Checking the page number, she got up from the sofa.
Whether it was a tablet or a smartphone, reading on a lighter electronic device would be easier on her wrist.

As she headed toward the study, the video intercom rang.
She checked it—it was the security office.
“Yes? What is it?”
“This is the security team. Mr. Do Yugeon is here. Should we send him up?”
I hadn’t made any plans with him.
“Please tell him to go back.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I wondered what he could have discovered this time to show up without even calling.
I entered the study and placed the book on the shelf.
I’d read the ebook version, but I needed to think about which device to use.
A smartphone is convenient, but it feels like nothing sticks in my head after reading, so it’s not very appealing.
Reading on a tablet, however, is relatively inconvenient.

My smartphone rang.
It was him.
“What.”
“Let me in.”
“Just go home already.”
“It’s cold outside. Because it’s cold, I feel miserable, and depressed, and, umm…”
“Stop exaggerating.”
Still, I told the security office to let him come up.
When I opened the front door, he came in wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt.
“You said it was cold—why the short sleeves?”
“It wasn’t cold, just a bit chilly. Unexpectedly so for May—enough to make you feel global warming?”
“So you were exaggerating. Still, dress warmly so you don’t catch a cold.”
“A cold? It’ll go away in a day.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say.”

He looked around as he entered.
“Where’s your mom?”
“Out.”
I went to the kitchen and grabbed cookies and orange juice.
When I returned to the living room, Do Yugeon was turning on the game console.
Didn’t he come because he discovered something related to slimes?
“What are you doing?”
He suggested playing a fighting game.
Do Yugeon doesn’t have a console at his house, and we only play fighting games when he comes over, so our skills are similar.
Still, I’m slightly better.
He chose a character focused on long-range harassment—a gun-wielding fighter whose ranged attacks are annoying.
However, the character isn’t top-tier, so if I block all the harassing attacks and then punish him, I can usually win easily.
We played one round, but I lost.
Blocking everything is easier said than done; at our skill level, it’s hard to block it all.
But maybe I could block it?
We played another round.
I lost again.
Ah, shit, this is annoying.
“Hey, stop using cheap tactics.”
He grinned and nodded.
Then he picked the same character.
Hmm.
We played another round, and I lost the same way.
This kid—I told him not to use it, but he keeps doing it? Is he trying to pick a fight?
Getting annoyed over a game is a bit ridiculous, so I took a deep breath.

Then he spoke.
“See, my skills were superior after all.”
“What are you talking about? You won using cheap tactics.”
“It’s still skill. I won by harassing well with a character nobody uses because its stats suck, didn’t I?”
“It’s not harassing—it’s cheap tactics.”
“Hahaha. The loser’s excuse.”
Ugh… As I grabbed a cushion and squished it, he asked, “Anyway, did you eat lunch?”
“Lunch? Not yet.”
“Let’s order now, then.”
“Okay, good. Let’s get chicken.”
“Chicken is a bit… I’m short on allowance right now.”
He scratched his cheek.
In the end, we ordered hamburgers.

While waiting for the delivery, we started playing again.
He changed his character.
So, I picked the character he’d been using instead.
“Hey?”
“What.”
As expected, he couldn’t block the harassment either, so I won easily.
He kept telling me to switch, so I won just four rounds and then switched.
“See, I’m better after all.”
“You called it cheap tactics?”
“Cheap tactics are also a skill.”
“Then I’ll use them too?”
“We’ve played it too much today—I’m bored. Let’s play something else.”
Ignoring his bewildered expression, I turned off the game.
If he has a problem, he can try me.
While I was choosing another game, the hamburgers arrived, and I went to get them.

Returning from the entrance to the living room, Do Yugeon was gone.
I placed the hamburgers on the table and went to the room where the sound was coming from.
Do Yugeon was looking around my room.
What is he doing in someone else’s room?
“Looking for something?”
“Where did you put the laptop?”
“Should be in the study.”
I’d done some online book shopping while reading earlier.
I’d left it unattended in the study while it charged and forgot about it when Do Yugeon arrived.
Returning to the living room, Do Yugeon came back carrying the laptop as I unpacked the hamburgers.
“What are you going to do with the laptop?”
“I discovered something amazing this morning.”
“Is it related to slimes?”
“Yeah.”

Since he hadn’t said anything while we were playing, I thought he’d just come over to hang out, but he had a specific purpose.
Do Yugeon started searching online as he spoke.
“You said we need to find more slimes to verify the nature of the gold powder or the existence of leveling up, right? But the problem is, we don’t know where the slimes appear.”
We did talk about that during our commutes.
And I also told him I didn’t want to wander around when he suggested we just needed to explore more.
“So?”
“Now there’s a way to find slimes.”
“Is there a common factor among slime appearance locations? Besides being sparsely populated?”
“Not exactly.”
Do Yugeon went to a website called Slime Detector.
[Slime Detector]
At the top of the site, it said “Slime Detector,” and a Google Map was displayed in the center.
As he zoomed in on the map, red dots appeared over it.
It seemed less like something provided by Google and more like the site owner overlaying them onto the map.
Do Yugeon pointed at the monitor with his hand as if showing off.
“Ta-da!”

Cha Haneul stared blankly for a moment, then took a bite of her shrimp burger.
Delicious.
Do Yugeon didn’t say anything else even as I drank my cola, so I asked first.
“If you don’t know the common factor among appearance locations, how can it detect them? Are the red spots just places with no people?”
“No. I don’t know the details either, but apparently they selectively gathered sightings from social media, then used a computer to predict future appearance locations or something.”
“Hmm… Artificial intelligence?”
“They said it’s a bit different from that.”
I took another bite of the hamburger.
Delicious.
Do Yugeon also unwrapped his hamburger and started eating.
“So it means these are places where they might possibly appear?”
“Right.”
Do Yugeon nodded, so I nodded along.
“I see.”

He stared intently at me.
“…No other reaction?”
“To what?”
“Like, being amazed or something.”
“Wow, amazing.”
I said, then went back to eating my hamburger.
Delicious.
Noticing his sullen expression, I asked, “What more do you want?”
“Nothing in particular.”
Do Yugeon took a bite of his hamburger, still looking sullen.
His words and expression were complete opposites.
What’s wrong with this kid? Is he sulking because I didn’t react properly?
I moved closer to him and asked, “Are you sulking?”
“What, no way.”
He denied it, but his gaze was fixed on the laptop.

As Do Yugeon moved the mouse cursor over a red dot, a probability popped up.
3%.
“Does 3% mean there’s a 3% chance it’ll be there?”
“Yeah.”
Even if they calculated probabilities, the accuracy would likely be low, so the actual discovery rate would probably be lower than the stated percentage.
“Then eat quickly. We need to go out.”
“Where?”
Do Yugeon turned his head to look at me.
Smiling at him, I tapped a red dot on the monitor with my finger.
“Here.”
His expression brightened instantly.
So simple-minded.

Before heading to the target location, we stopped by Daiso and bought rubber mallets.
He hadn’t brought the rubber mallet he used to catch the slime last time.
When I asked why he didn’t bring it from home, he said he didn’t think he’d need it.
So he knew I wouldn’t be interested and still sulked? I don’t know how far I need to indulge this kid’s childishness.
The probabilities for all the red dots were single digits and pretty similar.
So, we decided to check the residential area near my house first.
The red dots were just points on the map, but in reality, they covered a considerable area, overlapping several blocks.
However, despite the considerable area, there were few actual places where slimes might be found.
The paths between blocks were wide open, and the blocks themselves were packed tightly with buildings, leaving few gaps.
I felt this when we wandered around on Tuesday too—there are just too few places to search for slimes.
The only spots worth checking were parking spaces where cars were parked.

We checked all the open parking spaces, but there were no slimes.
Do Yugeon retraced our steps and pointed to a corner between two houses, blocked by an iron fence.
“Let’s climb over.”
Glancing over, I saw a sign saying “No Dumping Cigarette Butts” and a CCTV camera in the corner.
“Go ahead, if you want me to call your parents.”
“Ugh… Where do we look now?”
“I don’t think there are any slimes in this spot.”
I gave him a reasonable argument, but Do Yugeon looked unconvinced.
He checked under cars some more before giving up and pointing at a house.
“What about over there?”
We’d already roughly checked the gardens through holes in the gates.
The house he pointed to was one we skipped because its gate had no gaps.
Moreover, not only did that house have no gaps, but its wall was ridiculously high and even had plants growing on it.
“How are we supposed to see?”
“I’ll give you a shoulder ride—take a look.”
“I don’t think that’ll be enough.”

Approaching the wall, it was clear a shoulder ride wouldn’t be high enough.
Even if I got on his shoulders and stretched my arm up as high as possible to take a picture with my phone, the plants would likely block the view.
While I was thinking, he saw a car parked next to the wall and clapped his hands.
“I found a way.”
And he tried to climb onto the car.
“Hey! What are you doing!”
I grabbed him just as he was about to climb up and pulled him down.
“Ah, why?”
He didn’t seem to realize what he was about to do.
“If you climb up and leave footprints, you’ll have to pay for a car wash at minimum, and if something gets damaged, you could be paying for repairs too. It’s all recorded on the black box, so if the car owner decides to pursue it, it’ll be very troublesome, right?”
“Ah.”
His expression showed understanding.
Do Yugeon grumbled and looked at the car.
He seemed disappointed.
“If you really insist on looking, I’ll climb up instead. Okay?”
“Huh?”
Honestly, the car wash or repair costs would be a burden for him, but I could cover it with my allowance.
If I just left my phone number, it could probably be resolved smoothly.
It wasn’t a particularly expensive car either.
“No. Let’s just forget it.”

Hm? Oh, right. Did that sound like I was bragging about money? Oops, my mistake.
My sense of economics in this life is subtly messed up, leading to occasional slips of the tongue like this.
It happened when I visited Do Yugeon’s house after starting elementary school too.
His TV was small, and I asked why they watched such a crappy TV, making the atmosphere awkward.
I felt a sense of crisis back then and tried to fix this habit, but it’s not perfect.
While I hesitated, wondering what to say to smooth things over, Do Yugeon nudged me.
“Hey, look over there.”
“Hm?”
I looked where he pointed and saw a blue slime crawling on the roof of a villa.
So that’s where it was.
“Alright. Let’s get it.”
Do Yugeon raised his rubber mallet.
Catching it is fine, but…
“How?”
It’s a villa roof—not the rooftop, just the sloped roof—so I didn’t know if there’d be stairs leading up, and the villa door would likely be locked anyway.
“Um…”

Just then, the slime wriggled and slipped off the roof.
Hitting the ground, it couldn’t withstand gravity and shattered into pieces.
“Ah.”
The slime’s remains turned into gold powder and then disappeared.
“Ah.”