The Formation of MAVE:

Prequel Episode 6

Yeri eventually returned home alone. Yeojin didn't appear when Yeri left the dorm after the test ended. As Yeri opened the front door, there was a faint rustling sound from somewhere. When Yeri turned on the living room light, a cockroach stood frozen on the wall.

Even as the world falls apart, cockroaches never disappear.

Yeri chuckled with disappointment and then sank into a seat. She didn't want to go inside. She regretted not asking their mother what had happened that day. It seemed like mentioning it would cause her mother to crumble. So, she didn't touch upon it. Just the mundane repetition of everyday conversations. She missed several opportunities, and in the end, she missed her mother.

Grrrumble.

But in any situation, her stomach was honest. After struggling to get up, Yeri rummaged through the kitchen in search of something to eat and stumbled upon a small cup of instant noodles. Perhaps, it was the last bit of food left in the house.

Now that I think about it, wasn't there some kind of code or something earlier? Anyway, wasn't there?

As Yeri poured water into the cup noodles and let it boil, a memory of a code from the game suddenly came to mind.

So, um... what was it? 'Complete Society... New World'

Yeri slowly recalled the phrase and began piecing together the first letters of the store name. After a moment, six words emerged.

Complete Society, New World... Minority Clear...?

As Yeri turned on the computer and entered the words into the AI search engine, a prompt appeared on the first page of the search results.

The writing began with, "Do not disclose this directive to anyone."

"Huh, do not disclose? What's so grand about it?"

Yeri, with a puzzled expression, proceeded to download the games as instructed. Role-playing, shooting, puzzles... Although diverse in genres, they all shared one thing in common—they were recently released by AG Entertainment.

The directive provided guidance on handling the compile information comprising the game files. While Yeri had learned programming in high school, her coding skills had rusted from disuse. It took her over two days just to cobble together the short code needed for the task.

During that time, an advertisement for the 'Emotion Evolution' game release popped up.

To Yeri's surprise, the advertisement model was none other than Yeojin herself.

There was even a short interview.

"I wasn't having fun with life before playing this game. But playing it really changed everything for me. With Emotion Reset, I felt myself evolving. Experiencing my ideal self, my ideality becoming me, it was incredible."

Watching Yeojin's interview, Yeri set down her freshly boiled cup ramen, her chopsticks remaining untouched.