Surviving Among the Entities

I stared blankly at the moon in the sky, forgetting the cigarette I was smoking.

“Why is the moon blue?”

The drizzling raindrops hit my face. There was an overhang at the separated trash collection area where the smoking room was installed, but it couldn’t block the raindrops carried by the night wind.

‘How strange.’

According to the rules of web novels, the color and number of the moon are evidence of another world, but mistaking fiction for reality is an early symptom of schizophrenia. However, I don’t have any mental illnesses, so that must be a natural phenomenon.

“Come to think of it, I’ve seen a red moon before too.”

I was so curious at the time that I looked it up, and learned it was caused by the scattering of light in the atmosphere.

‘This is probably caused by a similar reason.’

I smoked a cigarette and searched about the blue moon on my phone. Right before searching, I suddenly recalled knowledge from a game I used to play.

“If you got hit by the Blue Moon, you just had to reset the game.”

Sometimes it’s faster and easier to start everything over than solve the problem. With that thought, the search results for the blue moon were as expected.

[In reality, the moon can appear blue when the concentration of dust particles in the atmosphere becomes dense due to volcanic eruptions or large wildfires.]

Damned fine dust. I’ll die of lung disease from fine dust before my time.

‘Hm?’

While heading back after putting out the remaining butt, I found a worm that had been squashed and flattened, likely stepped on by someone. Despite its ruptured body, the worm was still squirming to survive, a sight that was both disgusting and pitiful.

“I must have stepped on it, my bad.”

After confirming the worm remains on the bottom of my shoe, I apologized and returned to my room.

‘If the blue moon was that vivid, shouldn’t there have been some buzz about it online?’

I logged into various communities to check the reactions. But there were no posts about the blue moon on any community.

‘I guess it’s only visible in our area.’

Is there just a lot of dust in our neighborhood? I tried writing a post on the communities to ask, but I couldn’t post anything anywhere.

[This ID is blocked. Block duration: 99,999 hours. Reason: Malicious posts]
[This ID has been blocked for 999 days. Block reason: Malicious posts]
[Your IP has been blocked. Block reason: ‘Stop spamming malicious posts, you lunatic.’]

I figured as much, there was no community that had lifted my block.

‘Malicious posts? I was just posting my personal thoughts and engaging in civil debates.’

It’s not just me doing that though, isn’t that how everyone uses these communities? Why are the community admins holding me to such a strict standard?

‘Time to revisit that place.’

I’ll use my computer instead of my phone. I got up from my bed, turned on my computer, and accessed a community comprised of numerous boards.

‘Still blocked here, same here, and here too, and here as well…’

Each board was like its own site, but just like other communities, my IP and ID were blocked on almost every board.

“Is this the harm of power?”

I heard that board moderators are unpaid laborers chosen from the community users, not employees of the site operators. While work motivation is generally determined by compensation, it seems these people worked hard for free because they got a taste for power, and I was a victim of that power.

‘I should check the newly created galleries.’

I looked at the ‘New Minor Galleries’ section at the top. My purpose for using these boards was to gain knowledge and discuss that knowledge with people, so I wanted boards with a certain level of users. I rarely checked the new minor galleries since most had few users.

“This one looks good.”

Luckily, this board I’d never seen before had many users and was active.

[Stop this madness!]
[No more tactical nukes!]

But half of the active posts were filled with hateful content.

“Ah, the trolls are harassing the new boards.”

Not like me, an innocent victim, but actual malicious trolls.
When I clicked on a post, one of the vile images trolls often use came into view.

“Halkers.”

Seeing the photo of a nude elderly woman with her legs spread made me uncomfortable.

‘Does this old woman know that she’s being mocked on the internet by countless strangers like this?’

She probably doesn’t know. The old woman in the photo didn’t look young. That meant she was very unlikely to be internet-savvy, and it was highly possible she had no idea her nude photos were being used as a symbol of hate among young netizens.

‘This old woman must have had her youth like us once.’

I looked closely at the old woman’s nude photo. Although the passage of time etched on her body has made her stray far from modern beauty standards, this old woman too must have had a period of youthful, radiant beauty in her past.

‘Who knows what she looked like back then, but if a nude photo from her youth surfaced, there wouldn’t be only people mocking her like now.’ tastes are vast and deep, so there would be those who love her current appearance. But more would have appreciated her youthful looks, calling it a “pretty pic” instead of a “gross pic”, leaving comments like “Nice!”

“Humans don’t change, only time does.”

I closed my eyes and imagined the old woman in her youth. Her smooth, unwrinkled skin and blushing body would have emanated a peach-like fragrance. Instead of her pained expression now, she might have worn a seductive look, licking her lips enticingly at a lover, most likely a man.

‘There would be no pubic hair either, and the colors of the photo might have glowed with the radiance of youthful beauty.’

The her in my imagination raised her arms more boldly, revealing her sensual figure and the vigor of youth. She spoke provocative words, appearing far bolder and more active than her dying look in the current photo.

“Ah.”

Shamefully, I got an erection.

‘How intriguing.’

The subject in the photo didn’t change. Whether her youth or old age, her inner self remained the same, only time had passed.

‘If the outward appearance changes, the subject is no different from anything else.’

What defines a person is their inner self; outward appearance has no bearing.
Yet a person defined by others is solely determined by their outward appearance, with the inner self having no influence.

“I should write about this and have a discussion.”

Though this is a game board, since it’s full of posts on this topic, it can be considered a relevant subject.

“I should include a photo too.”

I saved the old woman’s nude photo I had just seen. In an ordinary post, this photo would just be obscene and hateful. But the post I’ll write will contain philosophy and art on how humans are defined by the passage of time.

The same nudity can be divided into sin or art depending on whether it’s exhibited on the street or in a museum, so this photo will be treated as such too.

[The Flow of Time and the Human Body, and the Definitions of Humans by Self and Others]
[Author: IAmADebater]

I wrote the post and waited. After about 10 minutes, enough time for people to have read my post, I checked to see if anyone had left their thoughts in the comments.

“Let me check.”

After taking a shower, I checked the post.

[This ID has been blocked by the Youho online manager.]
[Block duration: 9,999 years / Reason: Spreading gross pics and nonsense rambling]

Today, I was blocked from yet another gallery.

“…The moon is still blue today?”

For two consecutive days, the moon has been blue. Since yesterday, I had been roaming communities in search of a new sanctuary, which made this phenomenon even more baffling.

‘There was no mention of a blue moon anywhere.’

I smoked a cigarette while feverishly searching on my phone. But as expected, there were no stories about a blue moon.

[The crescent moon looks pretty tonight.]
[How does it perfectly split into a half like that? Looks just like a waffle.]

Instead, there were only unbelievable stories.

‘Crescent moon?’

The post with attached photos was made 10 minutes ago.

[Such a pretty photo.]
[I prefer crescent moons over full moons.]
[The sky is clear today, perfect for taking photos.]
[It’s been so long since we’ve had clear skies nationwide. No fine dust or rain, perfect for a nighttime stroll.]

The comments were only about that.
I looked up at the sky again.

“A blue full moon.”

And raindrops hitting my face from the blowing night wind.

“…..”

Nothing matched up.

‘Could it be…?’

It was a crazy thought, but I recalled when I first saw the blue moon.
At that time, the first thing that came to my mind wasn’t a natural phenomenon, but an entity called the ‘Blue Moon’ from a certain game.

“Surviving Among the Entities.”

An indie game with the goal of surviving for as long as possible against entities – urban legends, superhumans, extraterrestrials, anomalies, and monsters.
It was a game I used to enjoy, and the Blue Moon was one of the entities that appeared in it.

“Could it be…”

The next thought that occurred was possession. But it’s not possession. My body hasn’t changed, my home is the same, and the world hasn’t changed either.

‘Then did the beings from the game become reality?’

It’s an insane thought. Fiction and reality should be separate, so the possibility of this insane thought being real was nonexistent.

But out of curiosity, I accessed the [Surviving Among the Entities Gallery].
This game was a one-man indie project, and since the developer had trouble coming up with the unique entity characters alone, he created this gallery to get help from many users.

‘It was one of the top minor galleries.’

Many people would post the entities they created on the board, and if the developer liked them, they’d be added to the game. So the board had a lot of posts and users.

[No search results found.]

But the board had disappeared.
I hadn’t paid any attention to the game or board since getting blocked from other boards for similar reasons about half a year ago, so it might have closed down in the meantime.

[‘Surviving Among the Entities’ returned no search results.]

However, there was no information about it even on Google.
It used to be a fairly famous indie game that even won indie game awards, but now it was as if such a game never existed, without a single piece of information remaining.

[This game does not exist.]

Even the game I had downloaded on Steam was no longer in my library.
As if it had never existed in this world, the only place it remained was in my mind.

“…..?”

I looked up at the sky again. The blue moon was brighter and larger than the previous night.

“It’s an insane thought, but what if…”

I put out the cigarette I was smoking in the ashtray.
On my way back, I stepped on some more worms by the entrance of my studio apartment.

“If that blue moon is the one I know…”

This time, there were two of them.

“Then in five days, I will become a mass murderer.”