Your Commander-in-Chief – Chapter 257

After finishing our lunch, the three of us headed toward the floor where the VR Game Club was located.

Sohee effortlessly bounded up the stairs, but Ellie and I had to stop and catch our breath every few steps.

“Ha…”

“Ugh…”

Sohee’s gaze pierced through me as she stood at the top of the stairs.

“Hey, just wait a minute—”

“Please hold on…”

It was tough. I felt like my chest might explode.

Climbing the two and three floors of stairs felt like battling a high-level raid boss.

“Ugh… If it were Deron…”

“Same here. Oh Blood Demon King… this physical body is too weak…”

Eventually, Ellie and I knelt down.

Clutching our pounding hearts, I looked up at Sohee, but she didn’t offer me a hand.

“You two… really should exercise more,” Sohee pointed out my lack of fitness.

As frustrating as it was, I couldn’t deny it.

Breathless and not quite mountain climbing, we finally reached our destination.

The VR Game Club was located at the very end of the fourth floor corridor.

“Hah…”

As soon as Ellie reached the fourth floor, she collapsed on the ground.

But I held on. Being slightly healthier than Ellie meant something.

For some reason, it felt like I had won.

I looked down at Ellie with a smug smile.

“That must be the place.”

Sohee, making a sulky face as she looked at Ellie and me, pointed at a classroom at the end of the corridor.

A solidly closed door with a large sign above it.

[VR Game Club]

[Recruiting members.]

It didn’t give off a special vibe, but it was still too early to be disappointed.

I imagined the clubroom beyond that door and smiled.

They said it was the VR Game Club.

There surely had to be several state-of-the-art capsules inside.

“Extracurricular activities…!”

Ellie seemed intrigued by this notion of club activities, her eyes sparkling as she rose.

The breathlessness from earlier was nowhere to be seen.

“Let’s go!”

I ran down the corridor with Ellie.

Even though Sohee’s gaze was on my back, I didn’t stop.

Pat-pat

Dada-da

We quickly arrived at the closed door.

From inside came a buzzing noise.

“Uh, that sounds weird…”

“It’s the capsule starting up. Someone must be playing a VR game inside.”

“But it’s lunchtime…?”

“It looks like one of the seniors is making good use of the lunch break.”

“I see…”

I stopped talking to Ellie and took a moment to catch my breath.

This was our first encounter with the seniors who might have already been active.

I had to at least appear polite.

Knock knock—

I gently knocked, extending a small hand.

But there was no real response from inside.

Why was that?

I put my ear against the door, trying to eavesdrop on the sounds from within.

Wiiiiing—

It was the sound of a capsule operating.

Just one.

Other than that, there was no noise at all.

This meant that aside from whoever was inside the capsule, there likely wasn’t anyone else present.

I cautiously opened the door.

Creeeak—

The sliding door revealed the interior of the classroom.

Thick curtains hung by the windows, and various trash lay strewn across the floor.

It didn’t look like a place prepared for club activities at all, and my face stiffened.

“What the…”

“It’s way too filthy.”

It was filthy beyond belief.

Filthier than Harang’s room.

Most of the litter scattered on the floor was made up of bread wrappers and plastic bottles bought at the school kiosk.

On top of that, dust wafted up from how long it had been since anyone last cleaned.

The capsule itself wasn’t in good shape either.

“It’s outdated…”

Indeed, the capsule was an old model that was released quite some time ago.

It even rattled and shook ominously, looking like it could break down at any moment.

“Ugh…”

Sohee, who had arrived late, also frowned upon seeing the interior.

“Hayun, Ellie. Are you really going to join the VR Game Club?”

I hesitated to answer Sohee’s question.

The state of the clubroom, which I had been looking forward to, was a mess.

And the capsule was too outdated for this to be an environment suitable for playing games.

As I was struggling with how to respond, the buzzing capsule suddenly stopped working.

I wondered if it was broken, but it seemed not.

There was a rustling sound coming from inside the capsule.

Someone who had been hiding inside was about to come out.

I took a step back with Ellie and stared at the entrance of the capsule.

Bang-!

“Eek!”

A loud noise suddenly echoed out.

It sounded like something heavy was banging against the capsule lid from inside.

Bang-bang-bang-!

The noise didn’t stop.

How long had it been?

A crack appeared in the tightly shut lid, and a girl wearing thick glasses crawled out.

She was about 170 cm tall.

Being slightly taller than Sohee, that was accurate.

Her chest was smaller than Sohee’s.

“Huh…?”

The girl who crawled out of the capsule looked at the three of us, tilting her head in confusion.

I checked the name tag on her chest.

The dark blue name tag read [Seongsin].

“Are you perhaps hopeful applicants…?”

A voice carefully emerged from her lips.

Seongsin’s voice trembled slightly and was very soft.

I took a slow breath and asked Seongsin, “Um… Senpai…? Is this really the VR Game Club?”

“Ah, um… yes, it is…”

“Why is the classroom this dirty…?”

“Well, since no one comes by…”

“Isn’t the capsule too outdated? Is it safe to use?”

“At least it’s functioning…?”

“Didn’t you want to replace the capsule?”

“I wish, but… the school hasn’t provided any support…”

I rubbed my face at Seongsin’s words.

Just as I let out a long sigh, a group of students approached from behind Ellie and me.

Judging by the black color of their name tags, they looked like freshmen like us.

Consisting of both boys and girls, they came closer but quickly turned around upon seeing the state of the classroom.

“Ahh…”

Seongsin, buried within the capsule, sighed regretfully as she observed through the door.

“Um… Senpai.”

“Ah, yes.”

“Where are the other club members?”

“They all graduated…”

“All graduated? So, are you here alone now?”

“Yeah. Right now, I’m the only one in the VR Game Club.”

I nodded at what Seongsin said and began to think.

Surprisingly, the conditions didn’t seem too bad.

The messy state of the classroom indicated that the supervising teacher didn’t care about it, and the fact that despite having such old equipment, the school wasn’t providing any support meant they didn’t pay much attention to the existence of this club.

“I’ll join.”

“Really…?”

I nodded at Seongsin’s words and turned around.

Ellie and Sohee, who stood behind me, looked at me with wide eyes as if they couldn’t believe it.

“Ha, Hayun… you’re really going to join this place?”

“Hayun… is that really it? Do you want to spend your school life in this trash heap?”

“Both of you should listen. It seems like it wouldn’t be a bad place.”

I began outlining the advantages of joining this VR Game Club in my mind.

The lack of school interest meant they wouldn’t care about what we did during club activities.

In other words, it meant that we could use this place as a resting spot after school.

“Hayun…”

“Hayun… are you a genius?”

As expected, Ellie recognized the brilliance of my idea.

But Sohee was different.

She looked at me as if she were scolding a misbehaving child.

I pouted.

“I’m going to join.”

“…”

Sohee didn’t respond.

But I knew.

If I joined, Sohee would follow suit.

“Hey, this is great… Having more members means we can receive a larger basic activity fund…!”

Seongsin, who had been silently listening from the back, smiled brightly and rushed to a corner of the classroom.

While it seemed she heard everything I said, her reaction suggested that she didn’t particularly have any attachment to club activities either.

Seongsin busily fished something out from under the heap of trash and brought out a paper to us.

“Here… it’s the application form!”

Could I really take this as is?

I frowned while looking at the membership application Seongsin handed over.

It felt somehow unpleasant since it was sticking out from under a pile of trash.

But what could I do?

I accepted the application, grimacing.

“Sohee.”

“Yeah…”

“Are you going to do it? I’m doing it.”

It was a question I threw out just in case.

After hesitating for a while, Sohee finally nodded and wrote her name on the application form.

Watching her, Ellie and I filled out the forms as well.

“Welcome to the VR Game Club…!”

Seongsin embraced the application forms we handed over with great care.

She adjusted her thick glasses and spoke.

“Uh, well… I need to go submit these, so… I’ll be going now…? Feel free to use the classroom as you like…”

In the end, the three of us were left alone in the filthy VR Game Club.

*

The afternoon classes began after lunchtime.

But what awaited us wasn’t a time of sitting at desks studying.

“Everyone must have seen the promotional posters in the corridor, right?”

As the afternoon class started, our homeroom teacher spoke from behind the podium.

According to the teacher, there was a rule stating that students must participate in club activities at this school.

So this afternoon class wouldn’t involve studying; instead, we were allowed to freely roam the school and see how each club functioned.

Of course, students who had already joined a specific club would move to their assigned classrooms.

It seemed that my application from lunchtime had been submitted, as Sohee and I were members of the VR Game Club.

Just as we exited the classroom and prepared to climb the stairs again, we heard small footsteps echoing from afar.

I didn’t need to look back to know.

It was Ellie.

“Hayun! Sohee!”

Breathlessly, Ellie rushed to us, leaning against the stair railing.

She was exhausted from just that small amount of running.

I stood at the top of the stairs, admiring Ellie’s weak state.

“We’re… going to the VR Game Club, right?”

“Yep.”

“I want to go with you…”

Since we were in the same club, there was no reason to separate.

I nodded and replied.

“Sure.”

Thus began our ascent up the four flights of stairs.

Ellie and I climbed, sweating as we conquered this mountainous set of stairs.

“Ha…”

“Ha…”

Finally arriving at the fourth floor.

However, the atmosphere was slightly different from what I remembered.

At the end of the corridor, the door that should have been tightly shut for the VR Game Club was wide open.

No, it wasn’t just open.

The entire section where the door should have been had been torn off, and the messy interior was clean and tidy.

Not only that.

The old junky capsules were nowhere to be found, replaced by brand-new capsules installed neatly in the middle of the classroom.

It seemed the door had been removed to make way for those large capsules.

Sohee, who had been silently observing this scene, half-grinned and spoke up.

“It looks like the school finally provided support…”