Prologue — Observation

It was 3:14 in the morning.

The studio window was shut and the air conditioner was off. Turn it on and it made noise; make noise and the neighbor next door would bang on the wall. So I left it off. My shirt was glued to my back.

The only thing still alive in the room was the glow of the monitor.

Lovers of the Constellations.

I had bought it at half price last winter and wiped it off my drive three days later. This summer I installed it again, and this time I left it there. After work I would heat up dinner and turn it on. That had been the shape of four months.

The ending credits were scrolling across the screen.

Behind the credits, the last still settled into place. A count's bedroom. The curtains were half drawn, morning light cutting in on a slant, silver hair spilled across the bed. A white sheet had been pushed down to the line of her shoulders, and below it her bare back was left uncovered.

The woman was smiling. It was a face that had not smiled once in the entire game.

A single line appeared in the dialogue box.

I cracked a can of beer. The hiss of it going flat was the loudest sound in the room.

I took a swallow and looked at that still. A picture I had poured four hundred hours into. There were sixty-two save files, and nineteen of them belonged to this woman.

It was good.

It was good — and somehow, it didn't touch me at all.

I loaded the saves and ran the other endings through once each.

The last image of Lillian's route was the school sparring grounds. The night after the ranking match, her red hair sat on the spectator steps with a flame cupped in her palm. Two buttons of her uniform were undone, and the nape of her neck was still wet with sweat. Off-screen, footsteps approached; she killed the fire.

Eileen's route ended in a temple corridor. She was holding out the arm where the Holy Stigma had been erased, wearing an ordinary dress instead of priestly robes. Light from the window ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had caught on her shoulder.

Bellatrix's route was the water's edge. It was night, and she looked back over her shoulder with her ankles in the water. Dark patterns were climbing her wet legs.

I flipped through all four, one after another, and finished the can. They were all good pictures. Beyond the fact that they were good pictures, I thought nothing at all.

I remember why I put this game back on four months ago.

There was someone I had been with for seven years. When we ended, she said I hadn't loved her — I had only been afraid of her disappearing. I still don't know whether that was true. What I do remember is that not a single sentence of argument came to mind.

The next week, I installed this game.

In here, people don't disappear. Affection doesn't drop. Saves don't get deleted. Load ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠any of those nineteen files and that woman is always standing in the same place.

That was how I spent four hundred hours.

The credits ended and the gallery window opened.

The stills I had collected stood in a grid. Twenty-three of Serena, eighteen of Lillian, twenty-one of Eileen, sixteen of Bellatrix. Six cells were still locked.

I was scrolling when my hand stopped.

A Chapter 3 background still.

The Royal Capital Back Alleys. A man slumped against a wall with his head tipped over. The whole thing was graded in gray, so you could barely make out the face. A single black line had been drawn across his throat.

Serena was standing over him. One line of dialogue had been saved with the image.

It had been four months since I last looked at this scene.

The first time, I clicked past it. I clicked past it on the second playthrough too. In four hundred hours I must have walked over it twenty times or so. Today, for some reason, the cursor stopped on top of it.

I wanted to know his name.

I opened the walkthrough wiki and skimmed the character list. Four main heroines, six supporting heroines, twelve male side characters, nine hostile factions.

He wasn't there.

I typed chapter 3 corpse into the search bar. Two board posts came up. It took a few seconds for the results to load. Late enough that the page was slow.

I pulled another can from the fridge.

Kael Arden.

He had a name. A surname, even. And not a single line of dialogue.

I said it out loud once. Kael Arden. The sound wouldn't stick in my mouth.

The developers had given him a name and never given him lines. Or there had been lines, and they had been cut. Games were full of leftover data like that.

I leaned back into the chair.

For four months I had cleared four women in this world. I knew when each of them broke and when each of them smiled. I knew Serena first picked up a sword at twelve. I knew Lillian cried the day she made page four of the paper. I knew that at thirteen someone took Eileen's cat away from her.

And I knew nothing about the man who dies in Chapter 3.

I hadn't even known he had a name until today.

"Why did that guy have to die."

The words surfaced in the room and sank again.

Of course I knew the answer. To show what Serena could do, you needed a corpse, and if the corpse had a name the reader would feel sad, so they didn't give him one. That was all.

It was efficient design.

But the name was still sitting in the data. Someone had gone as far as giving that man a surname. Arden. The name of a fallen baron house, and inside the game that family name appears exactly once.

Whoever named him and then gave him nothing to say had, at the start, meant to give him something to say.

I pushed up out of the chair. The clock read 3:40. I had to be up at 6:30.

I reached for the mouse to close the window, and my fingertip slipped.

The screen went out.

It wasn't the power. It wasn't the game quitting either. The monitor simply turned black, and the case fan kept spinning the way it had been spinning.

My face was reflected in the dark glass.

It was the face that had sat in this room for four hundred hours. Hair flattened on one side, shadows under the eyes, nothing at all around the mouth.

That face looked at me.

The angle was wrong.

I tipped my head to the left. The face on the screen did not. It just watched me, straight on.

I shoved the chair back. The wheels scraped across the linoleum.

The face on the screen smiled.

I did not.

White letters surfaced on the black screen.

I reached out and pressed the monitor's power button. It didn't press. Not because the button wouldn't go in — my finger never touched it. I was sure I had pushed, but something sat between the tip of my finger and the plastic, and I slid off it.

Another line of text stacked itself underneath.

Third playthrough.

That was not a word the game had.

The letters rose slowly.

My throat was dry. The can was empty.

"...What is this."

My own voice sounded like a stranger's in the room.

I took my hands off the keyboard.

There was no reason to answer.

This was a dream, or something a sleepless brain had put together, or something that had gone wrong somewhere. Any of those, and there was no need to talk back.

My mouth moved first.

"It was fun."

The letters scattered and gathered again.

Light leaked out of the monitor. It wasn't white. It was a light with no color at all. There was no reason a thing like that should exist, but I had no other way to say it.

"I'm not going to protest."

That was what I said.

"Because I don't have the right."

The letters paused for a moment.

"I watched for four hundred hours. I watched Serena break twenty-three times, and I liked it every time. And through all ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of that I walked past the man in that alley twenty times, and until today I didn't even know his name."

My throat was dry.

"So if someone watches me the same way — I don't have anything to say about it."

The light thickened.

"...What are you talking about."

The light swallowed the room.

There was the sensation of the chair disappearing. The backrest against my spine was gone, the linoleum under my feet was gone, and the damp air I had been sitting in because I couldn't run the AC was gone.

Even as I fell, I could still see the screen.

One last line was waiting there.

It smelled like mold.

Damp straw and old oil, mixed together and clinging to the back of my throat.

A moment ago I had been sitting in a studio apartment at three in the morning.

My eyelids were heavy. It took time to get them open.

And then I saw the ceiling.

Not concrete. Not wallpaper. Wooden rafters, and from one of them a spiderweb hung, swaying very slowly.

I tried to lift an arm. It lifted, but it was heavy. The wrist was thin, tendons stood out across the back of the hand, and there was dirt under the nails.

It was not a hand I had looked at for twenty-six years.

A sound leaked out of my throat. Not a laugh. Not a scream.

He had a name. He had no lines. He would die in three days.

That was everything I knew about myself.