Divorce (3)
The reception room was silent.
No one moved to speak first.
I sat and watched Shin across from me.
I expected something like this, but still… seeing her here in the flesh is something else.
A pure white dress, almost like mourning clothes. Love Area was a place where East and West mixed in strange ways, so the outfit made sense enough.
What didn’t make sense was the meteor earring dangling from her ear.
She walked into my zone… without even putting it in her inventory?
When I sent Sunken Eyes back to Love Area, I’d demanded only one thing.
If you want to stop the Second Apocalypse, bring me the meteor item.
…I might have phrased it a little more gently than that.
Either way, through her messenger I’d essentially ordered her to hand over the meteor item on the spot.
I figured she’d make a bold move, but…
She could have ignored me entirely. I never expected her to appear in front of me wearing the meteor item for all to see.
“…So why is no one saying anything?”
Meursault was the first to break. After a quick glance at me and the Commander, he couldn’t hold his curiosity back any longer.
“I heard… that the lady came looking for Master Haydam herself. Is that correct?”
Shin only nodded, an unreadable smile on her lips.
Taking the nod as an open invitation, Meursault leaned in closer.
“Might I ask what your relationship is with Master Haydam…?”
“Meursault.”
I put enough weight into his name to mean cut it out. He looked injured.
“What? The guest happens to be from Love Area of all places. Am I not even allowed to ask what their relationship is?”
Love Area of all places, he says.
Safe zones might not trade much, but everyone still knew the names of the other zones. He wasn’t some middle-aged man itching to ship every young pair he saw.
“Father.”
I looked at the Commander with a clear please-get-him-out-of-here. He nodded.
“I also came from another zone and met Luna Moon. It isn’t so strange.”
These two were impossible.
Come to think of it, Meursault had spent his whole life pining for Daphne without ever sharing so much as a cup of tea with her, and the Commander—a married man—had gone on about taking responsibility for the woman Luna Moon left him. A pair of legendary romantics.
Otome-game origins, maybe. Either way, they were useless in a conversation like this.
“We’ll talk privately for a bit. Could you both step outside…?”
“No trouble at all.”
“Ah… our apologies. We were being tactless.”
I was certain they were doing it on purpose.
“Get lost already, Meursault.”
“Just in case, I’ll leave the door open.”
“Is this guy insane…?”
I flipped him off, threw him out, and a soft little laugh followed.
Shin’s laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing…”
I asked in Korean; she answered in Korean.
“I think I’ve been misunderstanding you.”
“What misunderstanding?”
“I thought you were a hopeless psychopath.”
What?
Well, she had seemed to think that about me. Saying it to my face now… meant her mind had changed?
“I never expected you’d call Commander Hayden ‘Father’ so naturally. And it doesn’t look like you poisoned Meursault either.”
It wasn’t mockery about playing house with NPCs.
It sounded more like relief. Like she’d found a possibility.
“You never did that in the original route. Why keep them both alive?”
“Because I need them.”
“If you need someone, you don’t harm them. Is that your rule?”
I hadn’t exactly thought of it as a rule, but she asked so seriously that I gave a short nod.
“Yeah… something like that.”
“If that’s the case, I don’t need to be afraid of you right now.”
I still wasn’t sure what she was driving at, but after watching me with the Cola Area NPCs, she’d decided I wasn’t what she’d imagined.
At least, from what she’d seen herself, I wasn’t a full psychopath.
“Why would you be afraid of me? I don’t harm players. I even sent your messenger back alive.”
“That was because you ‘needed’ to.”
She left that little insight hanging with a faint smile.
“Honestly, when I heard from my messenger that you’d already taken control of the military… I was truly terrified.”
“Taken control of the military? Did that Sunken Eyes guy say that?”
“Yes. He said you were commanding the army in the Commander’s place, so I assumed you’d already killed both the Commander and Meursault. Looks like my messenger misunderstood.”
Sunken Eyes must have piled it on thick once he got back to Love Area.
Worth scaring him, then.
I looked at her steadily.
“You’re about what I expected.”
Her eyes went round with surprise.
“Similar to what you expected? How exactly did you picture me?”
“Bold. I didn’t think you’d come in person, though. But…”
I propped my chin on the armrest.
“Didn’t your messenger pass along anything else?”
“Anything else?”
“He should have delivered something more important.”
“Ah… that. I’m still not sure how to take it, honestly…”
She lowered her eyes for a moment, then murmured.
“All-Zone Clearance Privilege…”
She rolled the words around her mouth like a smooth stone, then looked at me.
“Dopamine Addict. Is it true that you can stop the Second Apocalypse?”
“Of course it’s true.”
I lied without so much as a flicker of expression—and another voice dug into my head, not Shin’s.
[You really have no conscience…]
I stiffened for a second, then recognized the voice as Luna’s.
You can send telepathy now?
I tried thinking it at her, and luckily an answer came back.
[It’s because other meteors are nearby.]
Other meteors? Those earrings?
[Yeah. The more meteors gather, the more of my true body’s power I can use.]
True body’s… power?
That tiny, soft, fluffy fist-sized body I’d been dealing with didn’t feel like a “true body.”
So that wasn’t your real form?
[Of course not! I told you I was born way before you. I wasn’t originally this baby.]
Hmm.
No wonder she looked far too young to have been born over a decade ago.
So that wasn’t the real body.
The mental age fit the current size perfectly, though…
[Don’t think rude things! I can hear everything right now!]
While Luna grumbled over telepathy, Shin simply stared at me, lost in thought.
After a long silence, she finally spoke.
“You can stop the Second Apocalypse? Don’t lie to me.”
[This girl isn’t falling for it?]
Well, if she’d believed me on the spot, that would have been disappointing in its own way.
She lifted her gaze and went on in a quiet, even voice.
“If you collect nine meteor items, you’re granted the power to stop the Second Apocalypse… No matter how I think about it, an All-Zone Clearance Privilege couldn’t be that vague. You must have received something more specific.”
“You’re saying I lied about the privilege?”
[You did lie…]
With Luna muttering like the voice of my conscience, I continued.
“Then tell me what you think an All-Zone Clearance Privilege actually is.”
“At best, a title—or the right to keep using an item as-is.”
[Sharp.]
I had to agree she was sharper than expected.
I’d only assumed she wouldn’t believe me. I hadn’t expected her to leap past that and land on the truth so cleanly.
At this level… I could entrust her with one meteor item.
As I’d said before, I had no intention of holding every meteor item myself.
No point getting greedy and becoming a target.
I would only gather them all after dealing with that Unicorn Area player.
So “I don’t harm those I need” was the real deal.
She was the first system-unlocked player I’d met aside from the Unicorn Area one.
If I could sweet-talk her into peacefully handing over “one of the meteors she has,” that would be ideal.
[Gasp! How did you know she has more than the earrings? Can you sense them too?]
The way she asked if I could sense them meant Luna could detect other meteors’ presence.
She had just said she could send something like telepathy because meteors were close. That was how she’d known about the other item.
You said “meteors,” plural. Even if the earrings are a pair, you wouldn’t phrase it that way.
[Meow! Right, I did…]
Since Luna had so helpfully confirmed “multiple,” Shin currently held two items.
The Love Area earring pair, and…
The pistol she took from Home Protector, most likely.
Better to take the earrings from her if I could.
Having decided, I spoke.
“Shin. You have a point. But there’s something you don’t know.”
“Something I don’t know?”
“In this world, ‘God’ truly exists.”
[What?]
“What?”
Luna, why are you surprised with her?
“I wondered what you were going to say…”
She wore a mocking little smile.
“Trying to reverse-recruit me while I’m mid-cult playthrough? You don’t actually think I’ll fall for that, do you?”
[Oh, what the heck.]
Luna complained too.
[You said there was a god and I thought you meant something real, but you’re just scamming again?]
Call it recruiting, not scamming.
“Shin.”
I added it in a gentle voice.
“Have you ever thought about why we were possessed into this world?”
She looked wary of my intent, but answered anyway.
“We got possessed when we went to the convenience store at the address you posted. You got possessed at a convenience store too, right?”
“That’s the method of possession, not the reason.”
“You’re saying our possession had a different reason?”
“Yes. More precisely, a ‘purpose.’”
“A purpose…?”
Even if she didn’t trust me, she was curious. Her head tilted slightly toward me.
I smiled faintly and went on.
“The purpose for possessing us into this world. It was to stop this world’s apocalypse.”
She snorted.
“Possessed to stop the apocalypse? I could say that too.”
I pressed on whether she mocked me or not.
“A player of your level should already know this world isn’t just some game.”
“…Of course I know it isn’t a simple game.”
When I phrased it as acknowledging her skill, she accepted that without resistance.
She still didn’t accept God’s existence.
“But that doesn’t prove a god exists.”
“Why do you think we weren’t simply possessed—why make us clear the same Safe Zones for years first?”
Her eyes wavered slightly; she hadn’t thought that far.
“It was practice for saving this world from the end. Because the god of this world needed ‘veteran players’ who could save it.”
“Needed… veteran players?”
“Yes. And among them, I—the all-zone clearer—was given the power to stop the apocalypse.”
[I know it’s pure nonsense, but it somehow sounds plausible. A talent of its own, I guess.]
Shin was silent a moment, then answered still smiling.
“It sounded plausible, but I can’t believe a god ‘possessed me’ because it needed me. As long as you don’t know about my ‘possession,’ I can’t acknowledge a ‘god’ either. Too bad.”
She said she couldn’t trust me, but her smile was tighter than before.
Time to drive the wedge in.
I opened my mouth.
“You deliberately chose Love Area, didn’t you? Knowing you’d be possessed.”
“…!!”
Her eyes flew wide as she stared at me.