Secret of Hell

Before I could even start playing, I had to make an account on Gear — the gaming platform pretty much every streamer who touched a game even occasionally used, and the largest of its kind in the world.

I couldn't exactly walk the audience through making an account on stream, so I blacked out the screen for a moment and signed up.

"Nickname... well, I use it on stream anyway, so I'll go with Ian0125."

Plain "Ian" was already taken, so I tacked 0125 onto the end. The day I'd started streaming.

Once I was logged in, I downloaded SecHell, the game Hae-myo had gifted me.

"Is this one actually that scary?"

"I don't buy it..."

I kept running my mouth at the chat, and before I knew it a notification popped up that the download was done. I launched the game, and an old building hunched in a creepy stretch of woods filled the screen.

"Why would anyone build a hospital out here?"

"Underwear? Relax. I already put a diaper on."

A joke at that level was fine, right? I'd run a Fetish World Cup stream yesterday. A diaper gag was nothing.

"Alright, starting for real?"

I clicked the play button in the bottom left.

"Aah—! Jesus!"

The second I hit it, the screen erupted in static and a sound crawled out of the speakers that made my skin want to leave my body. Like nails on a chalkboard, except someone had mixed something even worse into it.

"Don't make fun of me! I know ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠plenty of you yanderes just jumped too!"

Trying to pin it all on me like I was the only one? Not a chance. I pressed a hand to my still-pounding chest and bantered with the yanderes for a bit. Just like the chat said, the viewer count was about to break eight thousand.

They're swarming in like they smelled blood.

I dragged my eyes back to the screen.

"This is the building entrance, right? The whole place looks like it's about to collapse."

The game had dropped me in front of the hospital. Moonlight caught a building riddled with cracks, filthy from years of neglect. Some of the windows set into the walls were smashed out, and the surrounding woods only made the whole thing feel worse.

"I really don't want to go in. Can I just turn around?"

When I spun the camera, the front gate came into view. That was probably how I'd gotten onto the grounds — except it was shut now, which meant the character must have climbed over.

"Fine. Stop rushing me."

I let out a long breath and started walking toward the building, even though every part of me wanted to do the opposite. The moment I crossed the threshold, the camera cut away and a cutscene started playing.

The protagonist stepped into a pitch-dark lobby, sweeping a flashlight across the space. She looked around, then startled hard at a rat skittering across the floor — and I jumped right along with her.

"J-Jesus!"

I felt so stupid I just shut up and watched the rest of the cutscene. While the protagonist caught her breath after the rat, the camera pulled back to show someone watching her from the dark. Then the video ended.

"...What was that? That wasn't a ghost... right?"

"Oh, come on... I can't do ghosts. I really can't."

The second I took control and moved the character, a door slammed shut behind me with a sound that filled the whole lobby.

"Eek!? W-what was that!? Why did the door close!?"

"I-I'm really scared..."

I couldn't even make myself take a step forward. And this protagonist — she was a woman, by the way — why had she shown up in the middle of the night? What, was coming during the day going to kill her?

"Ah, Alpha noona! You sent me nine hundred and ninety dollars... if you were gonna go that far, you could've just made it an even thousand and gotten a Discord call..."

She'd left off ten dollars on purpose. I knew it. Just to mess with me. And I couldn't even complain, not when she'd dropped that kind of money.

"C-can I turn the lights on in here?"

I swept the flashlight around, but there was nothing that even resembled a switch. Was I seriously supposed to keep going with nothing but this little beam?

"Th-thanks? Seriously, thank you."

I meant it. That half-hearted kindness was genuinely welcome. My brain had completely stopped working. All I wanted was to shut this game down as fast as humanly possible.

I started moving the way the yanderes told me to — and someone's footsteps echoed through the dark.

"Eek!? Don't—? Don't you dare!? Stay away!!?"

Huh? My own footsteps?

I'd been too terrified to look at the game and had been staring at chat instead, which is how I caught that. I nudged my character forward on a hunch, and sure enough — there it was. The same footstep sound from a second ago.

"...Alright. Shall we get started for real, then?"

I wanted to stop looking at chat with them roasting me like that, but then I'd really feel like I was alone in here, so I couldn't. Besides, having them tease me that brightly almost helped.

"I'm supposed to grab a key from the drawer at the front desk?"

I went ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠back to the counter across from the entrance and opened the drawers the way the yanderes told me. Most of them were empty, but one held a key and a bell. I picked up the key and asked,

"What's this bell? Should I grab this too?"

I grabbed it before I even finished reading those messages. A bell rang — damp, warped, and wrong — and I nearly jumped out of my chair. I tried to throw it away, but I had no idea how, so it just kept ringing.

And then that thing appeared in the lobby.

"Hic!? Wh-what the hell is..."

Even through a screen, I couldn't move. A black body with nothing but a pair of red eyes, standing perfectly still and staring straight at me. Dark smoke drifted around it, and from the moment it showed up, that nails-on-chalkboard sound started up again — the same one that had come with the static at the title screen.

It slowly lifted a black hand. The scraping sound swelled, louder and more violent, until the hand rose to eye level —

"WAAAAAH!! WAAAAAAAH!?"

— and then it was right in my face, shoving those red eyes into the camera. The screen cut to black. When it came back my character was standing in the lobby again, but I couldn't have cared less.

"Hic! H-hnn... hic!"

My heart was slamming against my ribs. I felt a little weird saying it, but it was pounding harder than it had yesterday with noona. Hard enough that I wondered if it was about to burst.

"A-Acacia... hic! Thanks for the donation. That's a ten-minute ban. Hic!"

I forced my shaking hands to move and hit them with the ban. How could anyone type something that horrible?

"I-I'm gonna go grab some water."

I'd been so badly startled the hiccups showed no sign of stopping. This wasn't going to work. I needed water. I put a trembling hand on the desk and stood up, took one step, then another — and my legs just gave out.

"Ow..."

I clutched the knee I'd slammed into the floor, and I could feel the tears welling up.

"Shii... I told you... hic! I said I didn't want to..."

My body had gotten smaller, and my tear ducts had gone weak right along with it. They finally gave out. Tears rolled down my face one after another as I sat there holding my knee, and that was when I noticed a yellow light coming from my hand.

"What is that...?"

I rubbed my blurry eyes and looked again. The light was gone.

"Must've imagined it."

The pain had already faded, so I didn't think much of it. I got up and went to the kitchen. By the time I came back from drinking some water, chat was a rolling wave of apologies.

"What's with all of you? What did you do now?"

They must have heard me hit the floor.

"Haa... how am I supposed to hate my yanderes when they do this?"

They could take a joke too far, sure — but they always read the room afterward and came in with comfort like this. Who in their right mind hates people who actually care about them?

"It's getting weird, so go back to normal chat. I didn't get hurt."

"No. I already started. I should see it through, right?"

I steeled myself and put my hands back on the keyboard. The bell summoned the ghost — Acacia, they called it. Which meant as long as I didn't touch any bells, the ghost wouldn't show up. I kept that firmly in mind and kept playing.

"Hic!? H-hnn. Snf... hic!"

I finally broke down crying. I'd tried to hold it in, but this? This was too much.

"Who... ties a bell... hic...! to the floor with string... ugh."

I'd been picking my way through the building with extreme care, dodging every bell they'd planted and making sure I didn't accidentally pick one up. Along the way I collected fragments of torn letters and words scrawled on the walls in blood, piecing the story together as I went.

I barely cleared the first floor, then the second, and finally climbed to the third — the last one. The second I reached the top of the stairs, a bell strung across the wall on a thread went off, and Acacia appeared. I couldn't even describe how terrifying it was to hear that ring when I least expected it.

"Y-you're all so mean...! Hic! You could've... hic! You could've warned me!"

I tried to stop crying. I couldn't. Back on the old Earth, something like this never would have made me cry. I still startled just as easily as I used to — but the way I processed it now was so much more fragile.

I finally got the tears to stop and started the game again. It took more than five minutes. By then, of course, it had already been clipped.