Another Player
I’d assumed Daphne was just an NPC.
Name:Meursault's Wife
Romance Route:Merry Bad Ending (Hayden)
Affiliated Zone:Cola
Equipped Item:Enchanting Violet Eyes
The absurd username Meursault's Wife was one thing.
But her romance route was the Merry Bad Ending — Hayden?
Even I, the player who had cleared every zone, had never heard of that route in my life.
What does “different version” even mean?
At the very least, it was clear my system version outranked Daphne’s. I could open her character profile, but she didn’t seem able to open mine.
Wait a second…
This world’s Daphne was a player on a different version from mine.
Luna Moon was presumably a player as well.
Daphne and Luna Moon knew each other.
Which meant—
Luna Moon was almost certainly a player from a different version than mine too!
Just like me, Taejeong, HomebodyHubby, and Tibalom.
Daphne and Luna Moon might have been possession-syncs — players who woke up inside this game around the same time.
“Possession-syncs” sounded a little ridiculous, but still.
If they possessed into the game earlier than we did, a lot of things start to make sense.
Information about Luna Moon I didn’t know. Daphne acting in ways that didn’t match what I remembered.
If they weren’t NPCs but players, of course their behavior would diverge from the game I knew.
The real problem was why players like them had appeared as NPCs in Apocalypse: Safety Zone in the first place…
“Haydam?”
I had been staring blankly up at her, and Daphne’s voice carried a note of suspicion.
“Why are you looking at me like that? As if something’s floating above my head?”
Does a normal person say that when you stare at them? Is she testing whether I can see the system, or is she just talking?
Now that I knew Daphne was a player, everything about her felt suspect.
I thought it over for a moment.
Should I reveal that I’m a player too?
But there was no advantage in telling Daphne right now. I still didn’t fully understand what a different-version player even meant — and she was a veteran who’d possessed in earlier and effectively taken over as the zone’s mistress. Why would I show my hand to someone like that?
If word reached the commander through her that I wasn’t Luna Moon’s son but a player, that would be a problem too.
So how do I extract Daphne’s player information without revealing that I’m a player myself…?
Obviously, by trading on Luna Moon’s name.
Now that I was free of whatever effect Enchanting Violet Eyes had, the emotion naked in Daphne’s gaze was unmistakable.
It was goodwill — pure and simple.
If she’d felt nothing for Luna Moon, she would have looked at me with hostility instead.
But if she was a player who regarded me with eyes full of warmth…
Unlike in the game, she probably felt no revulsion toward Luna Moon’s child.
I dipped my head slightly in apology.
“I’m sorry if that made you uncomfortable. Looking over people’s heads is a habit I inherited from my mother.”
“A habit you inherited from Luna Moon?”
“She used to stare right over my head — and other people’s — from time to time.”
“……”
Daphne’s expression turned complicated, as if she were turning something over in her mind.
I didn’t miss the opening.
“And the reason I found you in such a rude way… is because I need to deliver my mother’s last words.”
“Luna Moon’s… last words?”
The claim that Luna Moon had left a will for her made Daphne’s violet eyes tremble hard.
It wasn’t fear or disgust.
I could feel a considerable amount of expectation in her gaze.
In that case…
“Would you clear the room? She said these words were only for you, Lady Daphne.”
At that, Daphne ordered her servants without the slightest hesitation.
“Everyone, wait outside the mansion.”
“Lady Daphne!”
The servants who had been watching our standoff in helpless confusion reeled at Luna Moon’s soft, quiet name on my lips — or rather, at Daphne’s response to it.
“You’re going that far for a child who climbed over the wall on his own?!”
“Even if he is only a child, we cannot leave the two of you alone!”
“It’s fine. Go.”
When Daphne refused to hear them, the servants switched targets and started scolding me instead.
“Young Master Haydam! If you did not come here to insult Lady Daphne, please leave at once.”
“Request a proper audience and speak with her then!”
I already requested a formal meeting ages ago. What are they talking about?
Daphne looked between me and the servants, then let out a small sigh.
“Seeing that even all of you no longer listen to me… I can understand why this child climbed the wall. He must have figured a pathetic woman who can’t even manage her own servants wouldn’t have the right to complain if he hopped the fence and walked in.”
“N-no, Lady Daphne…!”
“That was never our intention…!”
The servants exchanged frantic glances, decided this was the moment to retreat, and filed out of the mansion in disciplined formation after bowing deeply to Daphne.
When the last of them shut the lobby doors behind them, silence settled over the house.
…Not the reaction of someone who was hostile toward Luna Moon.
If she’d been wary of me, she never would have emptied the mansion and stayed alone with me.
Even if I was only a ten-year-old kid.
I still didn’t know what exactly Luna Moon and Daphne had been to each other, but if both of them had been players, the odds were high that they’d been allies.
And yet Daphne had chosen to hide herself rather than come find the boy known as Luna Moon’s son first.
She still feels warmly toward Luna Moon and waited for her to come — and still didn’t seek out her son. Why?
In the way she looked at me, I read a faint trace of guilt.
She wronged Luna Moon somehow.
Once I thought that far, Daphne’s guilt toward me made perfect sense.
Originally, Luna Moon had been Hayden’s lover.
But Hayden had married Daphne instead — and as far as Daphne knew, that was why I, Luna Moon’s son, had been dragged through the slums all this time.
So the story was something like: she drove out Luna Moon, a fellow player, and married Hayden herself in order to clear the zone?
If so, the words Daphne wanted to hear right now were obvious.
“My mother said…”
I kept my eyes locked on those violet irises, watching every flicker of her reaction as I continued.
“That she forgives you… That she knows it wasn’t your fault.”
Daphne reeled back hard at that.
“…That’s a lie.”
So she had been hoping to hear it.
She just didn’t believe it right away.
“You made that up to win my favor, didn’t you?”
Her voice shook. I answered with a shamelessness that even I found impressive.
“Of course not. Why would you think that?”
“Because that girl never would have forgiven me so easily.”
Daphne frowned and bit her lip.
“Even when I told her I had no choice for the route, that it wasn’t what I wanted — she never believed me. And when I asked her for help, she was the one who walked away cold!”
“Mother said you’d find it hard to believe, too. She told me that if you did, I should say this.”
It was a ridiculous word to drop in this situation, but I judged nothing else would land harder.
“Meursault’s Wife.”
“Th-that—!”
Daphne’s face went scarlet.
Like someone whose dark history had just been unearthed.
If I ever made it back to reality, I decided, I was never going to pick a username lightly again.
“H-how much did Luna Moon tell you…? Don’t tell me you even know what we really are…?”
So Luna Moon really had been a same-version player as Daphne.
I fought down a smile and answered politely.
“Actually… Mother passed away while she was still explaining, so I never heard the whole thing. So please — as my mother’s friend… would you tell me?”
Daphne’s eyes never left my lips, as if she already knew what was about to come out of them.
I let the last words fall slowly.
“About the players.”
“Before we talk, though…”
Having banished every servant from the mansion, Daphne prepared the refreshments herself.
Even as a possessed player, she had clearly spent no small amount of time living inside this game; every motion of heating the water and steeping the tea looked practiced and natural.
She poured tea into my cup, then spoke with a small sigh.
“I hope you won’t take it too hard once you’ve heard everything. Your mother truly loved Hayden, and you were born from that love. You’re the fruit of a love that crossed dimensions.”
Well… I wasn’t the fruit of that love. I was just a fraud pretending to be it.
Still, if I wanted to hear more, all I could do was nod quietly.
Hm?
…For a while now, Luna Moon’s ring had felt a little hot.
It was different from the warmth it gave off when I faced Commander Hayden.
With the commander, it had felt like the ring was glad to meet him and reluctant to part.
Now it felt… slightly excited. Tense, almost.
“Where should I even begin…”
Daphne leaned back against the antique sofa, its gold-leaf floral pattern gleaming, and murmured to herself.
“First of all, a player is… a possessor.”
“A possessor?”
“Luna Moon and I aren’t people of this world. We… one day, without warning, found ourselves possessed inside a ‘game.’”
“……”
Possession into a game.
So these people had been playing a game and gotten sucked in too.
Daphne stopped talking and watched my face carefully.
“…You don’t believe me, do you? That your world is inside a game.”
She seemed to think my silence meant I was reeling from the revelation that this world was a game.
I was simply curious about something else.
Which game Luna Moon and Daphne had been possessed into.
Daphne got game-possessed too. And yet her version is different from ours… Did she possess into one of the Safety Zone series?
Safety Zone was a game with a decent history — it had started as a pixel title about ten years ago and now had both console and online series.
I had played the newest online version, Apocalypse: Safety Zone.
“What game was it?”
“Pardon?”
“If the world I live in is inside a game, I’m curious which game it was.”
“……”
No answer came from Daphne for a long time.
She seemed reluctant to say which game it had been.
But which game they had possessed into was an important question.
If it hadn’t been a Safety Zone title, that would mean there could be other players who had entered through entirely different games.
“Was it something so terrible you can’t bring yourself to say it?”
“Ah… no. It’s just… a little… embarrassing to admit…”
Embarrassing?
It wasn’t as if the Safety Zone series was some filthy otaku game she needed to be ashamed of.
“It was… a hand—”
“A hand?”
“……”
Daphne hesitated to the bitter end, then squeezed her eyes shut as if she had no choice and forced it out.
“…A handsome middle-aged men romance simulation game…”
“…Excuse me?”
A handsome middle-aged men romance… what?