Dusk (BL Light Novel)

The rainy season started at dawn. Even though it was midday, the sky was dark, and the black river outside surged violently. It was ridiculous how people scrambled to buy multi-million-dollar apartments just to get a view of that filthy water. The world was full of strange people.
Among them, the strangest of all — worth tens of billions in strangeness — was me. I pressed my forehead against the glass window and sipped on a yogurt drink. My throat was parched after hours of gaming, so I’d stepped into the living room for a break. But my mood was as gloomy as the weather.
My body felt stiff, and I considered going to the gym for a workout, but the thought alone exhausted me. My sister would chew me out again, but I couldn’t muster the motivation.

Back in the day, I would’ve been out and about regardless of the weather. Am I getting old?
No. Even if I were younger, I wouldn’t be wandering around because of the trauma.
I let out a hollow laugh, but it did nothing to lift my mood.

Ugh, I feel like crap. I’m bored. I want to do something fun. I want to go out and play.
I’d been grinding resource points in the game field from Saturday until now, and I was sick of it. I wanted a break from gaming, but the boredom remained, gnawing away at me.
The most obvious solution would be to go out and hang with friends, but that wasn’t an option.

Inviting someone over to eat delivery food and watch a movie would be nice, but I’d cut off contact with everyone for so long that calling them over out of the blue felt awkward.
Moon Seonhwa was the only one who might be up for it, but she was currently under house arrest after her parents found out she’d been sneaking out to offline ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ events.
Console games weren’t my thing, I’d grown tired of webtoons ages ago, and I always fell asleep reading web novels.

YouTube? Yeah, right. I’d just end up watching Gang Jaegyung’s videos again.
Wow, I really have nothing to do. No wonder I game all the time. No wonder I’ve become a gaming addict. All I do is play or watch Retaking a Class’s videos.
Life is so painfully monotonous.

I should just ask my brother to teach me golf or something… No, that’s a terrible idea.
I can barely handle the workouts I used to enjoy, and now I’m supposed to swing a stick around with a bunch of politicians and business moguls? That’s insane. Just imagining it was draining enough.
I shivered, feeling the energy seep out of me, and pushed myself off the window. Shuffling into the kitchen, I carelessly tossed the empty yogurt bottle onto the counter, then dragged myself back to my room.

It was Monday, 3 PM — a time when most people were at work.
The number of players in the game had noticeably dropped.
The once-crowded base was now nearly empty, with only a handful of players milling around — a few crafters, some AFK players, and a couple of people who seemed to be eating lunch.
Out in the field, it was mostly college students who had just finished their finals and were back to grinding.

Maybe I should just leave the field to the enthusiastic college kids and go to a dungeon instead.
I opened the party search menu, but the first listing that caught my eye made me immediately regret it.
[(Party Recruitment) If Honeybread and I had a kid, their name would be Quuulbbang lmao (1/2) | TangerineFlavor]

For fuck’s sake. These attention-seeking idiots never run out of ways to be annoying…
I closed the party search window with a frustrated click and leaned back against the chair.
Damn it. I didn’t want to end up watching Retaking a Class’s videos just because I was bored, but it seemed inevitable. With a heavy sigh, I grabbed my mouse and opened the browser on the second monitor.

I navigated to Gang Jaegyung’s channel, scrolling through the latest uploads. As I did, something on my main monitor caught my eye.
Something was moving.
Without thinking, I glanced over to see a character circling around me, spinning in place.
Annoying, but not exactly uncommon.

Ever since my character’s rank was promoted to Commander and my face had been shown on broadcast during the offline event, people flocked to me more often.
I was about to ignore it, but there was something off.
I squinted and looked closer.

The name next to the “Soldier” rank title was…
[Gonyanyannyang2]
What the hell? That was almost exactly my username. My username was gonyanyannyang — without the “2” at the end.

So, someone else was using a name that was basically identical to mine, with just a “2” slapped on the end. Guess there really weren’t many good usernames left.
I clicked on Gonyanyannyang2 and watched them for a bit.
Why was someone with a name that sounded exactly like mine spinning around me like that? Did they like the Commander uniform? But that was a tank outfit, and their class was a medic holding a quill and tome.

Curiosity got the better of me, so I kept watching.
The moment I did, the character suddenly stopped dead in their tracks, like a wind-up toy that ran out of batteries.
Then, a chat bubble appeared.

[General] Gonyanyannyang2: “Honeybread.”
Are they going to ask what I’m wearing?
[General] Honeybread: “ㅇㅇ?”

I responded to the call and started typing out a response about the Commander tank uniform, but the next message completely blindsided me.
[General] Gonyanyannyang2: “Um, could you lend me some money…?ㅠㅠ I need to move to the base, but I don’t have enough… I promise I’ll pay you backㅠㅠ”
It was a desperate-sounding plea.

Judging by their “Soldier” rank, they must have been a returning player.
Did they come to me directly without asking anyone else? Or did they get rejected by everyone else and decide to try me next?
[General] Honeybread: “Why me?”

When I directly asked why, Gonyanyannyang2 hesitated for a moment before responding in a timid tone — though if he were truly timid, he wouldn’t be begging for money in the first place.
[General] Gonyanyannyang2: “Ah, well…”
[General] Gonyanyannyang2: “You’re the Commander… You looked like the strongest playerㅠㅠ”

It was an answer that could either make sense or not, depending on how you looked at it. Well, it wasn’t entirely unreasonable. People in power usually had money, so in his own way, he’d made a logical choice.
But was the base transfer fee really that high? It was hard to believe that someone would need to borrow money just to move to a base. Sure, the market prices and fees had skyrocketed after we lost two bases, but still — base transfer costs shouldn’t have gone up that much.
[General] Honeybread: “Hold on.”

I told Gonyanyannyang2 to wait for a moment and walked over to the base transfer statue to check the fees.
The cost to move to the nearest base was 3,132 Amber.
…Yesterday, it had been around 1,200. It had more than doubled. Well, considering we’d just lost two bases, the penalty increase made sense.

So that was why this newbie was wandering around, desperate for cash. At level 43, he was probably gearing up for dungeon runs, burning through money on equipment. And now, with the base transfer fees spiking, he was flat broke.
The questline wouldn’t end after just one or two base transfers either. He’d be running back and forth for a while.
Closing the map, I turned to the newbie, who was now trailing behind me, looking up with wide, hopeful eyes.

Since I was partly to blame for the fees going up, I might as well help out. I initiated a trade request.
[System] Gonyanyannyang2 has accepted your trade request.
[General] Gonyanyannyang2: “!!”

[General] Gonyanyannyang2: “Thank youㅠㅠ”
Level 43. He still had a lot of quests ahead of him.
[System] You have registered 500,000 Amber as a trade item.

This should be enough for several base transfers and some basic endgame equipment once he hit the level cap.
I waited for him to accept the trade. But instead of a confirmation, there was silence.
Did he disconnect?

Just as I was about to call out to him in the chat, a white chat bubble appeared.
[General] Gonyanyannyang2: “Isn’t this too much…?ㅠㅠ”
Newbies were all the same. Soloist used to say the same thing back when he was a newbie and I gave him money.

[General] Honeybread: “Nah, you’ll burn through it fast.”
[General] Honeybread: “And the market prices spiked because of me, so…”
[General] Honeybread: “Just take it.”

[General] Honeybread: “You don’t have to pay it back.”
Before he could say he wouldn’t be able to repay me, I shut down that possibility.
After a brief hesitation, Gonyanyannyang2 started to register items in the trade window.

[System] Gonyanyannyang2 has registered 4 Uncommon Lethal Scrolls as trade items.
[System] Gonyanyannyang2 has registered 5 Ant Egg Salads as trade items.
[System] Gonyanyannyang2 has registered 5 Purified Superior Enhancement Stones as trade items.

Junk.
To a newbie, these items probably looked valuable, but for someone at max level, they were just inventory clutter.
It was kind of cute, but there was no way I was accepting them.

[General] Honeybread: “Take them out.”
[General] Honeybread: “They’ll just take up space in your inventory.”
When I pointed it out, the newbie seemed to deflate a bit. One by one, he started removing the items from the trade window.

Once the trade window was cleared, I hurried him to accept. He finally did, albeit a bit slowly.
[General] Gonyanyannyang2: “Thank you! I’ll definitely pay you back!”
[General] Honeybread: “I said you don’t have to pay it back.”

I repeated it, but whether he heard me or not, the newbie just bowed repeatedly and then shuffled over to the base transfer statue.
After selecting a base, his character completely vanished.