Intersection
ShutInDarling’s sister… worked at my mother’s company?
And my mother’s company was the one that made the first series of this game I was possessing, Safety Zone?
None of it was easy to swallow, but the first thing I asked ShutInDarling was this:
“You got possessed into a game your sister’s company made, and that didn’t strike you as weird?”
The mere thought that my mother might be involved had thrown me off-kilter for a moment. This bastard, though—he’d known from the start that he’d been dumped into a game connected to his own sister, and he’d stayed that absurdly calm about it. I couldn’t believe it.
ShutInDarling answered with that trademark blank, harmlessly stupid look of his.
“My sister’s company only made the first series, okay? Online Safety Zone is like the fourteenth one if you count by series.”
The series number didn’t seem especially important…
“Did it never occur to you that you got possessed because it was a game your sister made?”
“She didn’t make it.”
What was he talking about now?
“You just said your sister worked at Salvation Project.”
“Yeah, she worked there, but she wouldn’t have been involved in production. My sister’s a doctor.”
“A doctor?”
“I told you I used to be sickly.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“She became a doctor to fix me. Then out of nowhere she said she was taking a job at a game company, which was pretty weird, yeah.”
…This guy was going to be no help at all.
If a doctor sister walking into a game company only registered as “a little weird,” then of course he’d had no particular thoughts about being possessed into a game that company made. Which raised another question: had my mother hired a doctor for her game company?
“Why would a game company need a doctor?”
“I heard she did medical consulting. That’s all I know.”
“…….”
I didn’t know much about my mother’s company either, so there was no reason ShutInDarling would have detailed intel on his sister’s workplace.
I figured there had to be some connection the moment Luna Moon wore my mother’s face…
Early on, I had speculated that Safety Zone might be a replica of this world—that someone had built a game-shaped passageway linking the two. And maybe that someone had been my mother’s company.
In a way, that might even be a relief. If Luna Moon wore Mother’s face not because they were the same person, but simply because she wore the face of the person who made the game, I could shake off at least some of the unease.
What was certain was that our possession of this world was no accident. At the very least, ShutInDarling and I had deep ties to this game. As for the others, who knew.
I thought it over for a moment, then said:
“Someone in my family worked at that company too.”
Telling ShutInDarling outright that it was the company my mother founded felt a little too risky, so I settled for saying one of my family members was connected to it.
“What? For real?”
ShutInDarling startled, and only then did his expression turn serious.
“Then… is our possession connected to that company?”
Yes, you idiot. Now we were speaking the same language.
“It’d be a hell of a coincidence if it weren’t. Exactly how it affected our possession is something we’ll have to figure out from here.”
“How are you going to figure that out?”
“We’ve got Taejeong, and I need to ask the other players too—whether they’ve heard of Salvation Project.”
“Oh right, you said you can use the chat system.”
How many of them would even know about Salvation Project? Some players, like me, might know the name without connecting it to the game. Most of them were game addicts who probably didn’t even know where their own family members worked. There would be clueless types like ShutInDarling, too. And maybe—just maybe—someone out there had already guessed why they’d been possessed.
The system-unlocked players I was connected to, the ones I had identified, were only a tiny fraction of the possessed.
“If there’s an intersection among the players… we might be able to figure out why we were possessed. Maybe even how to go back.”
I’d thrown in the part about going back to give him a little motivation, but ShutInDarling’s face stayed dark.
“A way… to go back?”
“Why? Is that a problem?”
“Honestly, I don’t really want to go back.”
“What?”
Come to think of it, when I’d told him dying might send him home, he’d hesitated for a second before dropping it. He hadn’t been worried something would go wrong—he’d been deciding whether he even wanted to return.
He’d said he’d been sickly. That I could understand. I myself had spent reality as a chronic dopamine-deficient wreck, so I wasn’t exactly homesick either. Taejeong had even said he was happy to be possessed if it meant he got to clear a game. Tibalrom… that guy had seemed like he wanted to go back, though.
“But you said your sister became a doctor just to fix you. You two seemed close. Isn’t that better than dying like a dog out here?”
“Even if I go back, I won’t live long.”
Ah, damn. I hadn’t wanted to hear a story this heavy.
“I’d live longer surviving the Second Apocalypse in this body.”
“I… see.”
It occurred to me that the possessed players might share more intersections than just Salvation Project. That for some of them, life in this world might simply be better than the one they’d left behind.
Six years after graduating from the military academy, the first thing waiting for Platon when he came home was Anton’s roar.
“What the hell did you do during the graduation speech?!”
Anton looked like he’d sprinted the whole way—his clothes and hair were a mess. Platon didn’t comment on his father’s appearance. He answered flatly.
“If you were that curious, you should have come to the ceremony.”
Anton’s blood pressure visibly spiked; he bellowed.
“You little—! I already heard about it from Lord Haydam!”
“You met with Lord Haydam?”
Surprise flickered across Platon’s face, then settled into a faint smile as he nodded.
“If you had such an important appointment, missing the ceremony is understandable. I understand completely.”
“Y-you little…!”
Anton looked too stunned to form words. Then, realizing that getting worked up only cost him, he took a deep breath and dropped heavily onto the living-room sofa.
“…You received a standing ovation for the graduation speech, I hear.”
“Lord Haydam told you that?”
“Yes. He said he’d regret not seeing it for the rest of his life.”
Platon looked thoroughly delighted that Haydam had praised him to his father.
“So the standing ovation is real. I thought you didn’t get along with your classmates.”
“They care about the Zone no less than I do.”
Anton’s brow creased slightly.
“A speech… for the good of the Zone? Is that what you gave?”
“Yes.”
To Anton—who had assumed a graduation speech would amount to empty slogans about everyone swearing loyalty to Lord Haydam—this was both unexpected and ominous. It meant his son had delivered a distinctly political address at a ceremony attended by the Commander himself. Platon didn’t look like he’d been shot for it, though. And since Haydam had almost certainly put him up to it, the Commander wouldn’t have taken offense. Anton pressed on.
“What kind of speech earns a standing ovation?”
“I said that from now on, we should admit every eleven-year-old child—not only the children of a handful of officers or the ones with sponsors.”
“What?!”
Graduation ceremonies weren’t attended by the Commander alone. The Zone’s ruling class—its officers—were there as well. And in front of those officers, he had pointed out the privileges they and their children enjoyed? Delivered by the son of the man who sat near the very top of that hierarchy?
H-Haydam, you…!
Anton understood at once that the whole thing had been Haydam’s strategy. Banning officers from the subjugation campaigns really had been a move to freeze them out. But using the children of the very class he meant to sideline to raise open rebellion? That was something else.
A standing ovation from the cadets meant the other graduates agreed with Platon. The officers had watched their own children—and their sponsored cadets—endorse Platon’s position with their own eyes. Claiming the whole affair was merely Haydam’s political attack would be a hard sell now.
“Wait—what about His Excellency? What did the Commander say?”
“His Excellency supported our position, of course. He announced that starting after the subjugation campaign, academy admission would switch from a recommendation system to an examination system, and that every eleven-year-old in the Zone would be eligible to sit for it.”
“What? It was decided that easily?”
“He invited anyone with objections to speak up on the spot. No one did.”
“Hah…!”
Only then did Anton understand what Haydam had meant by saying he would regret missing the ceremony for the rest of his life. If Anton had been there, it would never have gone through so smoothly. He himself sponsored a fair number of children.
For the officers, making their own sons into commissioned officers mattered—but turning sponsored orphans into officers mattered just as much. A sponsored child who became an officer naturally joined their faction, then sponsored orphans of their own and raised young officers to strengthen the group. That was the system that had kept the Zone’s factions alive.
And Haydam had smashed it with a single graduation speech—using Anton’s own son to do it.
To wring a man’s son dry over a single adjutant post…!
If things continued like this, he and Platon would become targets for the other officers. Of course, if Haydam covered for them there was nothing to fear—but would he actually take responsibility? Darling Outsider’s words still sat heavy in his mind.
He’s really going to make Platon his adjutant? Did you verify that properly? Someone like Haydam would scam you with an adjutant post and then some.
I still can’t trust him. I need a safety measure.
The one silver lining was that admission had shifted from recommendations to examinations rather than banning sponsorships outright or barring officers’ children. That still left them room to work. An exam didn’t guarantee the absence of corruption.
Sweet-talking a few instructors won’t even be difficult.
As if to laugh at that very thought, a few days later the Commander announced the setter of the academy’s entrance exam.
“The first entrance examination will be written by Haydam.”