In an NTR Game, the Childhood Friend Is a Bitch Worse Than the Demon King
These days, for some reason, childhood friends have become something of a symbol of defeat — but the truth is, a childhood friend is usually a character that protagonists and their readers adore.
Having spent so much time together since childhood, she knows the protagonist better than anyone, can care for him better than anyone, and is always there as his strength. Of course, depending on her personality, she might treat him rougher than other girls would — but even then, it's usually just clumsy affection. Deep down, her heart is always looking out for him.
Truly, the god-tier childhood friend!!!
I loved that feeling only a childhood friend could have. Always thinking of the protagonist, convinced she held a special place in his life, throwing little tantrums and acting spoiled — all of it was unbearably adorable. So whenever a childhood-friend heroine showed up in a game or a novel, I almost always rooted for her first, ahead of every other girl.
But… I didn't root for every single one.
There was one exception. Let me share a universal truth with you, so take it to heart…
If a childhood friend appears in an NTR game, she is no longer a childhood friend.
She is nothing more than a bitch wearing a childhood friend's skin — a bitch more vicious than the Demon King himself.
"What the fucking hell!!!"
It was already the dead of night. In a pitch-dark room, the only proof that a man was even there was the glow of a monitor. A man wearing a headset, furiously slamming his desk mid-game — that man was named Lee Sunwoo. In other words, me.
The reason I was this furious was none other than the game I was currently playing: The Hero and Party Members.
"How is this even allowed!!!"
In the corner of the monitor sat the words "Play Time: 123 hours." That's right. I had poured my entire precious seven-day holiday into this game, burning with pure dedication.
"How the hell is every single ending one where the protagonist dies!!!"
And the more I'd burned for it, the more I raged.
"Damn it… I never should have played this piece of shit."
Tears in my eyes, I regretted ever touching this third-rate R-18 garbage. I'd stumbled onto the game while browsing sites out of boredom, wondering how to kill my vacation. That was how it started.
The splash art was flashy. A pink-haired girl with a genuinely cute face smiled out at me. That soft, gentle smile made my heart hammer in my chest. Checking her profile, I found she was the protagonist's childhood friend — someone who'd been with him since they were kids, and who set out on an adventure the moment he became a hero.
The second I saw that, I didn't need to think twice. I bought the game on the spot and started playing immediately.
An RPG with a childhood friend that cute… how the hell is anyone supposed to resist?
As someone who adored the childhood-friend archetype, it was an irresistible temptation. I threw everything I had into the playthrough. Grinding, retrying boss fights over and over, driven by pure obsession to see the ending — and somewhere along the way, a creeping sense of unease started to settle in.
The further the story progressed, the more the bright, cheerful tone of the early game vanished, replaced by something dark and hopeless.
Something feels off…
And on top of that, every time the protagonist took down a boss, his body got wrecked from overexertion. Was something going wrong? Had I been playing it wrong? I reloaded and tried different approaches, but no matter the method, the protagonist's physical condition never improved.
So this was the correct path… The thought made me uneasy, but I decided to keep going anyway.
Might as well push through…
I had no idea how the ending would turn out, right? Having played countless games and read countless novels, I knew that the greater the despair in a story, the greater the hope that followed. They were half-killing the protagonist now just to make the eventual payoff explode later… or so I told myself as I pressed on.
Watching the childhood friend who always smiled at the protagonist and poured endless affection onto him, I was certain a happy ending was waiting at the finish line.
"You fucking bitch!!!"
The result was pure NTR.
There was no dramatic turnaround of hope born from crisis. In the end, this game's true nature was nothing but a third-rate, garbage NTR dumpster fire. Just in case, I checked every other ending. Without a single exception, the protagonist died, and that childhood-friend bitch hopped onto some other guy. A true ending? Of course something like that didn't exist.
"I was being used from the very beginning."
Once I'd seen the endings, everything started to make sense. That experience of looking back after knowing the conclusion and watching every past event click into place like interlocking gears — everyone has felt that at least once. Right now, that feeling hit me hard. No matter how I looked at it, I couldn't help but conclude that every single one of these endings had been orchestrated by the childhood friend.
Thinking back, that childhood-friend bitch always forced the protagonist to push himself whenever she was in danger, always demanding he sacrifice himself for her own benefit.
"That bitch."
She'd cry and beg him not to overdo it — and those very words only made him push himself harder. Then, once she'd squeezed every last drop of advantage out of him and he was no longer useful, she switched over to another man without a second thought. She never let any of it show on the surface. The childhood friend always acted like she put the protagonist first, like she'd give him her liver and gallbladder if he asked — when in reality, she was the one devouring his liver and gallbladder more greedily than anyone.
"This is not a childhood friend!!!"
God… just how vicious of a bitch was she? How could someone occupying the childhood-friend slot toy with the protagonist this thoroughly?
Having grasped the full truth, my soft little heart was already shattered into pieces — and those pieces felt like they'd been fed straight into a blender.
"Hic… hic…"
I felt so sorry for the protagonist. Right up until the end, he never even realized his childhood friend had betrayed him. He died alone, sacrificed for her sake until his final breath. How tragic and miserable a story was that? The protagonist had worked harder than anyone, sacrificed more than anyone — and all he got in return was an NTR ending…
"If I'd been Ronan, I would've just beheaded a bitch like that on the spot…"
If I'd been the protagonist of this game, I never would have acted like Ronan. I wouldn't have shown a shred of mercy to a devil wearing a childhood friend's face. Whether she lived or died, whether she went to hell or not — unlike Ronan, I was fully confident I wouldn't lift a finger to save her.
"Haa. Why am I getting this invested in a game? What am I even doing…"
But what was the point of any of this? I turned my head and glanced sideways. The clock already read 4:45 a.m. It was just a game, wasn't it? Getting this worked up over it was pathetic, and completely meaningless.
"I should just sleep."
A hollow sense of self-loathing started creeping in, and with it, the exhaustion I'd been holding back finally burst free. For seven straight days I'd barely slept properly just to clear this game. Now that it was over, I deserved some rest. I shut off the computer and threw myself onto the bed.
◈ First Clear Privilege
Without ever seeing the message the game had sent me.
"Nngh…"
Normally, when you sleep after being completely drained, you wake up feeling incredibly refreshed. After seven days of nothing but catnaps just to clear one NTR game, waking up like this should have felt fantastic. But I didn't feel refreshed at all. The moment I opened my eyes, there wasn't a single part of my body that didn't hurt.
It wasn't like I'd done any intense exercise, so why was my whole body this sore? I started feeling myself over — and that was when I finally realized something was wrong.
"Where am I? Who am I?"
White bandages were wrapped around my abdomen and arms. The smell of medicine hung over my entire body. Given my current state, I was probably in pretty bad shape. At first I wondered if a burglar had broken in during the night and beaten me half to death — but that didn't seem right.
It wasn't just my body that had changed. Looking around, the place I was lying in wasn't my room, and it wasn't a hospital either. With a sinking feeling, I walked over to the full-length mirror in the corner of the room and looked at myself.
"What? Why is Ronan here?"
What stared back from the mirror wasn't Lee Sunwoo. It was Ronan — the protagonist of The Hero and Party Members, the game I'd been playing right before I fell asleep. Black hair, a pretty handsome face, and eyes that somehow still held a glint of will. I knew this boy. Even if he'd gone from a 2D illustration to a 3D reality, there was no mistaking it. This was Ronan.
"Is this a dream…?"
No… why the hell had I become Ronan? In a situation this incomprehensible, the natural first assumption was that you were dreaming, and that was exactly what I thought at first. But I was forced to realize almost immediately that this was no ordinary dream.
"Urgh…"
A violent pain flared from deep inside my bandaged chest — so intense it was hard to even breathe. It felt like the organs inside my ribcage were being torn out one by one. I can guarantee you this pain was absolutely not a dream.
"What the hell is this?"
It was way too vivid to be a dream. No, seriously, what was going on?
"Ronan? I'm coming in."
While I was still stuck in this completely absurd situation, the door opened.
"You fucking pink slut bitch…"
"Wh… huh???"
And I came face to face with Ronan's childhood friend — Amy.