Chapter 57: If you don’t have bread, eat cake.

A few days later, Jina sent a message to Soyul through Hyun.

[Hyun-nim.]

[Could you tell Soyul-nim that the avatar concept is complete and ask if she has time to meet?]

Right before contacting her, Jina had completely forgotten that she didn’t know Soyul’s number. Of course, she had registered her as a friend in VR Chat, so she could contact her if she wanted to.

‘Contacting a sickly, beautiful young lady from a chaebol family so openly feels a bit…’

She felt strange, or rather, she didn’t want to do it.

Jina was an introvert through and through.

[Soyul: Really? I’m excited!]

Soyul directly sent a message to Jina through VR Chat, without going through Hyun.

Looking at it this way, Soyul is a little more active than Jina.

Or, it could be that she was just that much looking forward to Jina’s avatar.

Jina and Soyul exchanged a few chats through DM, and then immediately connected to a private channel in VR Chat.

A familiar prairie landscape unfolded before her eyes.

And…

“Ah.”

Jina let out a short exclamation without realizing it.

The same default avatar she had when they first met, wearing a loose hoodie and short bobbed hair.

An expressionless face, a hunched posture.

What expression was Soyul making right now?

For just a moment, Jina wanted to meet Soyul in person.

“Hello, Jina older sister… nim.”

Jina approached Soyul and said with a gentle smile.

“What’s with the older sister-nim? You said you were going to call me comfortably.”

“But… it feels awkward…”

Soyul’s voice was small and weak.

She still looked very vulnerable in everyday conversations, not just VTuber talk.

She also seemed to be shy.

Well, a lot of time has passed since they first met.

Even in the meantime, they never really contacted each other.

It was natural that the relationship would be reset.

“I’m sorry. I’m a little late, right?”

Soyul stared at Jina for a moment, then nodded slightly.

“I thought you forgot my request.”

“There’s no way I could forget. Rather, I’ve been racking my brains on how to make Soyul-nim’s avatar.”

Jina made excuses, saying that the Soda model, which spread mainly among small-time VTubers, was a byproduct of that.

“Ah… so that was the avatar that Jina older sister made.”

…You knew?

“Did you know?”

“It was so famous that I looked it up. Your name was on the creator ID, so I wondered if it was you, and it really was.”

Jina scratched her head, feeling embarrassed for no reason.

That’s why you shouldn’t put your real name on your ID.

“That was originally something I was going to make for Soyul-nim, but it failed… Oh, what did you think of the Soda model?”

“It was definitely cute! It suited the Gorge Kindergarten content so well!”

“What about the animation…”

“Hmm… it was a little… like that.”

That’s right.

As expected, she was a sharp evaluator, as expected of a devoted viewer who boasts thousands of hours of VTuber broadcasts.

“This is the avatar I made for Soyul-nim, the MINA model.”

Jina sent the avatar file to Soyul.

Soyul, who received the file, stared blankly at the semi-transparent UI window, then carefully summoned the avatar.

After a while, a small and cute character appeared in the place where Soyul’s avatar was.

A round but slender face line.

Large eyes containing starlight.

Arms and legs with details of fingers and toes, even though they are short.

An avatar located somewhere between SD style and LD style.

If Soda is an elementary school student, Mina is about a middle school student.

It was a more mature, but still cute, appearance.

The key was, of course, movement.

When she shook her arms, her torso also shook, and when she jumped lightly, her view also bounced.

“Wow…!”

It was only operated with a controller.

Soyul, who felt a strong sense of reality for the first time in virtual space, exclaimed without realizing it.

“It really feels like a person has shrunk!”

Soyul installed a mirror object in the channel and moved the avatar around.

When she winked, her eyes were folded cutely.

If Soyul moved her mouth here and there, saying A I U E O, the avatar would move her mouth in the same way, in real time.

Then she shook her arms, bent her legs, and jumped with all her might…

Mina reacted to Soyul’s manipulation as naturally as if a real person was moving.

Soyul smiled for the first time since logging into VR Chat.

“It’s not completely finished yet. I have to keep refining things like expressions and movements.”

Looking at Soyul, who was completely immersed in the avatar, Jina smiled faintly as if she was satisfied.

Seeing Soyul like that, it’s worth working day and night.

“Is there anything you want to be modified in terms of design? Like the hairstyle or eye color.”

Soyul alternately looked at her avatar in the mirror and Jina’s avatar, JINA, then shook her head.

“No. It’s good now. Because…”

Soyul trailed off and stretched out her arm.

Her slender index finger barely touched Jina’s cheek.

“This avatar looks like Jina older sister’s avatar.”

“…Does it look a lot like it?”

“Yes. Especially the round but slightly drooping eyes… For some reason, it feels like I’m looking at you, and it’s friendly… I like it.”

Soyul smiled shyly and continued.

“I really feel like I’ve become your younger sister.”

Jina felt a lump in her throat at Soyul’s sincere words.

The memories of staying up all night and the tiredness disappeared like snow.

This is why Jina puts so much effort into making avatars.

Jina tried to act nonchalant and replied.

“Well… I made it based on my avatar. I guess it’s not entirely wrong.”

“Hehe…”

Soyul smiled happily and operated the controller again to move Mina around.

“Ah! Still, if I had to ask you for one thing…”

Soyul hesitated for a moment, then carefully opened her mouth.

“I wish the costumes were as diverse as Han Ari’s.”

“You can add as many costumes as you want.”

Soyul’s expression brightened once again at Jina’s answer.

It was a bright smile that she couldn’t see in the default avatar.

[Thank you so much, Jina-nim.]

When she contacted Hyun to deliver ‘Mina’ to Soyul.

[Chairman Jung was very happy. He said that his granddaughter seems to have brightened up a bit since meeting Jina-nim. Oh, and he also said that he would pay the price for the avatar properly.]

The message that Hyun subtly slipped out lingered in Jina’s mind.

[He also said, ‘I hope Soyul gets brighter and tries hard to get treatment’, and when he said it so earnestly, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed.]

Jina usually doesn’t pay much attention to other people’s circumstances.

But this time, for some reason, she kept worrying about it.

‘It seems like it’s because of the avatar…’

Jina felt a strange sense of responsibility.

It felt like Soyul had really become her sister.

So she was even more careful.

She was worried about touching her wounds unnecessarily.

She was worried about becoming unnecessary interference…

“Um… Soyul-nim.”

“You can call me comfortably, older sister. You can talk comfortably too.”

“Ah, um. Okay. Um… Soyul-ah.”

But Jina finally decided to ask.

If she kept ignoring Soyul’s pain, she felt like she would have bad dreams.

“It might be an uncomfortable question, but…”

Jina trailed off.

She tried to act nonchalant and indifferent as usual, but it wasn’t easy.

“I’ve heard the story roughly… Is it true that you can’t walk at all in reality?”

Soyul’s expression darkened for a moment at Jina’s question.

But Soyul forced a smile and answered calmly.

“…Yes. It happened because of the accident.”

“Is it hard even if you get treatment?”

“They say I can walk again if I get treatment steadily, but…”

Soyul couldn’t continue and lowered her head.

“…I don’t have the courage.”

The voice that barely flowed out after a long gap was trembling faintly.

“It’s too painful… and…”

Soyul bit her lip tightly.

“If I have hope… and it doesn’t work out…”

Then, I really won’t be able to get up.

“Then… how about practicing the feeling of walking in virtual reality with this avatar?”

“Walking in virtual reality… It’s not really walking.”

Soyul’s words were not wrong.

It is possible to visually reproduce the movements of a realistic avatar.

But giving the feeling of actually walking in the world of virtual reality… is difficult after all.

In the end, it’s no different from controlling a character in a first-person perspective game.

Some companies have released devices that give the feeling of actually walking in virtual reality as research prototypes.

But even that is just an improved treadmill.

Soyul, who has difficulty with her legs, could not use it.

“In the end, virtual reality is ‘virtual’, no matter how realistic it is, right?”

Soyul said with a bitter expression.

Then why did Soyul want ‘realistic movement’ so much?

Soyul.

Perhaps, she wanted to be free to move, even in virtual reality, away from the constraints of reality…

Jina was lost in thought for a moment.

Then she opened her mouth as if she had made up her mind.

“If you can’t walk…”

“First, shall we try flying?”

“…Pardon?”