Episode 11: Player, Sephirah (1)
“Aiden, remember what you said earlier?”
“Hm.”
“You were still… yeah. You’re right. You weren’t in any condition to respond! You were unconscious, or whatever.”
“So you were talking to yourself, then.”
“Y-yeah! I didn’t think you’d remember that of all things.”
Aiden nodded as if he understood. Sephirah nodded along in relief.
If that was the reason, it made sense why she’d been so startled she’d even covered her mouth. It wasn’t a perfect match, but in Aiden’s mind, an image surfaced of someone nursing an unresponsive patient while pretending to hold a conversation.
“Ahahaha…”
Of course, it hadn’t been anything quite so dramatic in reality.
Phew, he bought it…
Sephirah chose her words carefully, forcing the most natural expression she could manage. Suddenly, she felt embarrassed about how earnestly she’d been talking to an NPC. The shame hit her out of nowhere after days of doing it without a second thought—likely because a long-forgotten black mark from her past had resurfaced.
The era when she’d chattered away in front of NPCs as if they could respond, beyond just the pre-recorded lines.
Wait, when was that again? When the new version dropped… back in high school?
About three years ago, when the game first launched, it had been steadily evolving, if slowly. Even small, trivial objects had realistic graphics applied; walls up close didn’t scream “texture,” and characters’ mouths moved in sync with dialogue in every language. A world where all of that was taken for granted—and enjoyed in virtual reality.
Yet even in that world, NPCs remained NPCs. Fake humans crafted down to their looks and voices, their fates dictated by player actions.
But their appearances rivaled reality. For Sephirah, that was enough. NPCs made perfect sounding boards for her one-sided monologues.
“Haa… yeah. So you remember that stuff too. Enough to bring up some random self-talk out of all the examples…”
“Of all things?”
“Yeah! Of all things!”
Thud.
Sephirah slammed her forehead against the table, grumbling in a voice thick with dissatisfaction. How could he know about that conversation of all things? Why not remember something important instead? With all the dialogue they’d exchanged, why zero in on the embarrassing bits?
Apparently, her sense for gauging a volume that wouldn’t carry to the other person had dulled since those days.
“We must’ve been close.”
“Haa… huh?”
“You and me.”
“W-well, yeah…?”
Sephirah rolled her eyes up and to the left, tilting her head. The flicker of suspicion vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Had she caught something off in how smoothly he’d glossed over it?
“Wait, is that all you know? About me?”
“…”
“You don’t know anything else! Except for that one thing I mentioned!!”
“…Yeah, that’s why I set up this meeting.”
“I said I knew that much.”
“That’s everything. I was hoping to learn more through you.”
At first, he’d planned to say he didn’t even fully grasp what a Player was. It was the truth. The one snag had been that moment when his vision blurred and he glimpsed Sephirah from the past. In short, curiosity had gotten the better of him. They’d met precisely to unravel the mysteries, and Sephirah was the key.
“I don’t know much about you. You can tell just by looking.”
“Hmmm, so you know nothing…”
Sephirah lifted the front legs of her chair, crossing her arms. Not as precariously high as in that memory he’d spied—it wouldn’t topple. Her eyes locked straight on Aiden.
“But you know all the weird conversations.”
Sephirah pondered. Even from a Player’s perspective gazing down at an NPC, it was hard to fully grasp their “backstory” from a few lines of dialogue. If there’d still been dialogue choices, she could’ve exhausted them all. Or if this whole situation followed a familiar game cliché, she wouldn’t even need to probe the lore—she could just roll with it.
But nothing here was playing out that straightforward.
Normally, you’d remember results from the previous playthrough. Something tied to the story.
“Previous playthrough.” Not time travel or repeating actions, but starting over after seeing the ending—back to before the game began.
Once games naturally incorporated stories, endings followed suit. Not every tale lacked closure, after all. As more games focused on concluding the protagonist’s arc, Players felt a pang of loss. Once the fun ended, they had to let go entirely.
The solution? Games that preserved the Player’s journey after the credits rolled: multiple playthroughs.
“Were we friends? Hmm, it’s ambiguous. Eight out of ten times, yeah.”
Sephirah tested the waters, phrasing it in a way that satisfied her. Across her playthroughs, she’d mostly kept friendly ties with Aiden. He wasn’t someone she disliked—in fact, with all their interactions, he’d grown on her.
“Eight out of ten…? So we fell out twice?”
“Whaaat… yeah, something like that.”
“I don’t remember that happening. When exactly…?”
Aiden clearly didn’t grasp the concept of playthroughs. His take on “eight out of ten” proved it—he seemed to think it meant they’d been on bad terms for about twenty days out of a hundred.
Yet he knew about Player systems. He remembered self-talk irrelevant to the game. Sephirah’s seldom-taxed brain was spinning.
“…Timeline-wise, when did the stuff you mentioned happen?”
“Timeline?”
Aiden cut into her tangled thoughts without waiting, posing a question she couldn’t easily answer.
“That’s… timeline’s a good word for it.”
“You’d know. When we were acquaintances—you, us, me.”
Aiden leaned in closer. Half-risen from his chair, he stretched toward the table, eyes fixed on Sephirah.
Clunk.
The front legs of her chair hit the floor. Sephirah had gone slack upon seeing his expression. Players weren’t the type you could read perfectly from their face alone.
But Aiden wore an expression she’d never seen—an almost human mask hiding unease.
“Player. You—you all—clearly know me. You have memories of journeying together.”
“Yeah, pretty much…?”
“I have none of that.”
He danced around the point unnecessarily. His magic differed from a Player’s, yet he wouldn’t specify what. His lore wasn’t as fleshed out as other characters’—enough that it impacted reviews.
Still, Sephirah liked NPCs like him: ones you could help, advance alongside. Aiden appealed to her.
Now that same NPC was speaking to her with an entirely different personality.
“…Lately, no matter where I am, memories of Players surface out of nowhere. Sometimes a simple chat proves useful; others, it overlaps with similar experiences; I’ve even recalled the moment one killed me.”
“Aiden…?”
“But every time, the Player in the memory has a different face. Sometimes the memory’s identical, but the Player changes.”
In normal cases, NPCs didn’t remember prior playthroughs—rerolling a book didn’t rewrite the text. But anomalies happened, usually from “save data” bleeding over. NPCs learned of past encounters, kills, mercies, lifestyles—and reacted accordingly.
They might rage at being paired with someone else this time. Or team up to fix old mistakes. Beg not to erase a happy ending. Or, most commonly, harbor grudges against repeat killers.
All familiar meta-fiction tropes.
“All those countless encounters with endless Players… when did they happen?”
Aiden recognized every Player. An NPC oblivious to playthroughs, aware of everyone who’d touched the game since launch, lost in confusion.
“…”
So that’s his ‘backstory.’
Sephirah’s face darkened as she pieced it together. Her self-imposed rule: even if immersion let her speak freely, never mention the “game” to NPCs.
But with Aiden breaking that rule first, mere days after setting it—what now?
“…Player. You weren’t from here. Guests from another world.”
“Yep, that’s me.”
“What’s that other world? Not some distant land metaphor—what, why, how did you come? I need to know.”
“…I see.”
So he knew Players that way. Sephirah nodded, recalling similar cases from her playtime. Lines connected in her mind, mapping possibilities.
NPCs recognizing Players was commonplace now, but details varied.
Does this specific NPC see the world as a game? No—if so, despair or fury would show.
Thus, he knew Players but not their reality. That fit.
Does he see Players as allies? No—why physically restrain an ally while fleeing?
Enemies, then? Ambiguous. Wary, yes—but not outright hostile. No reason to hate yet.
The conclusion? Laughably basic.
It all depends on what I do from here.
Player “choices” mattered more now.
“Alright. I’ll tell you something. Might not be what you wanna hear.”
Sephirah straightened in her seat, pulling her chair closer to the table and leaning back properly.
In a world of unoriginal meta-fiction, her first choice:
“How about the story of when we first met?”
Talk about this game’s prologue.
“…She’s late.”
In the forest at the crack of dawn, the boy waiting for Sephirah muttered to himself. It was Loqi.
He remembered her saying she’d “be right back.” Unprecedented events kept piling up, but that very chaos kept him from fleeing—rooting him in place, awaiting his self-appointed guardian.
He couldn’t track time precisely, but “right back” had long passed.
“You said you knew where those people from earlier went. Can’t you send me there now?”
The NPC’s question hung in the air. The Player stared into space before answering. An elderly Player who’d only returned to the game hours ago.
“…It hasn’t even been an hour yet.”
“How’d you measure that? There’s nothing here.”
“Even so, it’s been less than thirty minutes.”
“How do you even know that…”
The Player in the old man’s form gazed blankly at the sky. Loqi likely found his silence—speaking only when prompted—profoundly mysterious. No way to know he was checking the in-game clock or relieved medieval folk grasped hours.
“…So we wait more?”
The old man nodded.
“No rush even after a full hour. Hasty moves might make us miss each other.”
“That’s…”
The most loathsome foe no Player could ignore: Loqi Mendacium.
“…Fine. Whatever.”
He waited in silence for his guardian.