I’m the Nuisance Character in a Horror Game
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Rumble… Boom!
A thick bolt of lightning struck down with a blinding flash, and a woman screamed as her body convulsed.
“Kyaaah!”
“It’s okay. It’s just lightning.”
A man carefully wrapped his arms around the startled woman, soothing her.
Perhaps embarrassed by the strange atmosphere, the woman gently pushed the man away and smiled awkwardly.
“I-I’m sorry. I was just so startled.”
“That’s understandable.”
While I stood there half-dazed, she looked at me with concern.
I averted my gaze from her and stared at the abandoned hotel in front of us.
“Miss Evelyn, are you okay?”
That woman gently shook me and asked, while I stared blankly at the gray abandoned hotel through the heavy rain.
Even drenched to the bone, she had a sunshine-like charm.
With long sky-blue hair and eyes, a high-bridged nose, and pink lips, she trembled from the pounding rain yet still worried about me.
Just one look was enough to tell who she was. Her presence was unmistakable.
She was the female lead of ⟨The Child’s Secret⟩.
And Evelyn.
The quintessential nuisance character, the kind who delivers suffocating frustration that no horror game can be without.
From the very beginning, she throws both the female and male leads into danger and uses others as bait to survive.
She does everything she is warned not to do, gets people killed who never needed to die, and survives until the very end herself.
As if paying for all the karma she had built up, she ends up dying in the most brutal and agonizing way among all the dead.
And what if that nuisance character were none other than me?
It was only after seeing the massive abandoned hotel before my eyes, still steeped in its former fame, that I realized where I was, along with the memories of my past life.
And there was only one thing I had to do.
We must never enter that hotel.
Even the sign was no longer recognizable.
Even the word “HOTEL” written at the end of the sign looked utterly ominous.
As a chilling dread seeped into my entire body and a sinister aura seemed to prick at my skin, I swallowed dryly.
My body trembled purely from fear.
The only person here who truly knew how vicious that abandoned hotel was, was me, someone who had played this game.
We’ll die.
If we go in there, we will definitely die, without even a shred of hope.
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* * *
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I knew it felt familiar…
Of all times, it had to be now…
I bit down hard on my lip, barely suppressing the scream that threatened to escape.
An abandoned island exuding a gloomy atmosphere.
On that island stood a towering, luxurious hotel.
Its overwhelming presence hinted at its former glory, but it had long since fallen into faded obscurity.
There was no special reason behind it.
It was simply a story that appeared again and again in the horror genre.
A tale of sacrificing the entire island’s population to lure something in,
A story about a madman slaughtering every traveler on the island,
A rumor about the hotel owner secretly imprisoning guests underground and conducting human experiments…
The rumors were endless, but not a single one had ever been proven true.
No…
Even those horrific rumors eventually vanished as if nothing had ever happened.
Countless years had passed, and now there was no one left who remembered the island or the hotel.
However, I alone knew, having played the game set in this place.
Just how dangerous this island truly was.
And among everything here, the most dangerous of all was that hotel.
That luxury hotel was the main setting of the horror game ⟨The Child’s Secret⟩.
Strange incidents and accidents unfolded within that hotel, a place said to be impossible to escape once you entered.
A place reeking of the stench of the dead, where tragic events never ceased.
Simply stepping inside gnawed away at a person’s sanity and stirred primal fear.
Given such a premise, it was no surprise that the game was rated adults-only.
True to that reputation, the horror game was infamous for its extreme brutality, while at the same time being praised for its incredible illustrations.
It was a horror game where more than half of the players quit midway, saying they were too scared, despite having started it because they fell in love with the artwork.
Among all that, the most dangerous are probably the five demons living in that hotel.
Inside the abandoned hotel, the main stage of the game’s story, resided five powerful demons beyond anything humans could handle.
Living up to their fearsome reputation, the demons were unspeakably cruel and showed no mercy to humans.
For reasons unknown, the five demons had been sealed on the island, and they never forgave intruders who entered what was essentially their domain.
People like us, for example.
Despite the demons’ threat, the main characters of the horror game stood their ground inside the massive and terrifying abandoned hotel, relying on one another and developing bonds of affection.
But at times, there were also those who betrayed others and caused trouble.
After enduring all those trials and hardships, one would finally face the strongest of the five demons, the final boss of the horror game.
And yet, there had never been a single player who defeated that boss and escaped the abandoned hotel safely.
Everyone met despair through a bad ending.
I did hear there were normal and happy endings, but…
No player had ever seen an ending other than the bad ending.
Even among bad endings, the way you died at the end differed depending on how you progressed the story.
Boasting an atrocious level of difficulty, the horror game drove away even its remaining players, who cursed it endlessly, saying they would never have touched it if not for the illustrations.
Thus, ⟨The Child’s Secret⟩ became a tragic horror game that faded into obscurity.
All that remained were the illustrations of the five demons with their dazzling beauty, and those of the main characters who entered the abandoned hotel.
The reason I was pointlessly reminiscing about this game was simple.
Because the abandoned hotel with no dreams or hope is right in front of my eyes.
My body tensed up on its own.
I refuse to die.
As if knowing that I would never go inside, the heavy raindrops pounded the ground even harder, as though they might bore straight through it.
Shwaaaa―
In this situation, with torrential rain pouring down, the best option was to enter the abandoned hotel to take shelter for now.
This was an island, and we were castaways.
But, but…
I do not want my limbs chopped off!
I tried to run away from the abandoned hotel first, but someone grabbed my wrist and yanked me back.
That grip was strong enough that I could not shake it off, and it was filled with irritation.
As that person let go of my hand mercilessly, I fell backward, and my entire body was splattered with muddy water.
“Aaah!”
Pain shot through my back and hips, forcing a scream out of me.
Instead of apologizing, the man who threw me aside glared at me with a deeply furrowed brow and snapped angrily.
“Please stop making a fuss, Miss Evelyn!”
That bastard!
The curse nearly slipped out, but I instinctively composed myself.
We were nobles attending a party aboard a ship, and an unexpected typhoon had struck, causing the vessel to be shipwrecked.
Caught in the typhoon, we were fortunate enough to survive and woke up on the island that served as the main stage of the horror game.
Quite a number of nobles who had been aboard the ship with us were now missing, but one thing was certain. There were only seven people here, including me.
True to a horror game setting, there were no other humans on this island. In fact, as we moved around, we never once saw anyone other than ourselves.
Everyone was confused, yet at the same time devastated by the realization that we were the only ones here.
That was precisely the moment that signaled the beginning of the story.
And after meeting them, I lived up to my role as a nuisance character by whining nonstop.
I whined so much that I sat down halfway, crying that my legs hurt. I said I was hungry, stole Moran’s food, and when my behavior was pointed out, I cried again, complaining that they were nagging me.
I cried that I could not walk anymore and ended up being carried on someone else’s back. I whined so disgustingly that even professional crybabies would back away.
After enduring that nonstop ever since we were shipwrecked, it was only natural that they were completely sick and tired of me.
And yet, the reason they did not throw me away was thanks to that kind female lead.
Even as the atmosphere grew hostile because of me, the female protagonist remained calm and kept her bright smile, soothing them and placating me.
The female protagonist, who endured my incessant whining to the point that even a demon would get tired of it, was no different from an angel.
“I am completely fed up with having to drag you around while you cry and make a scene!”
The man standing in front of me twisted his face viciously, saying he was fed up.
It was a miracle that he did not start cursing outright.
Given everything I had done, I could not even talk back.
In fact, even though I had fallen in such a pathetic way, not a single person reached out a hand to help me.
They merely clicked their tongues, their eyes saying they had expected as much.
Just as I was about to carefully choose my words to respond, a system window suddenly appeared before my eyes and flickered.
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[Werner looks down at you with a contemptuous expression.]
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[➤What should you say?
1. W-why are you doing this to me?! I am so scared!
(.·´¯(>▂<)´¯·. )
2. H-how dare you say that to me?! Look at this! My dress and my hair are a complete mess!
((╬▔皿▔)╯)
3. F-fed-up…? What does that mean?
((⊙_⊙)?)]
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Do you really think I would not know what “f-fed up” means?
Choice window, is this really the best you can do?
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[Time limit: 10 seconds.]
[※If you do not make a selection within that time, one will be chosen automatically.]
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From the start, the system itself seemed desperate to turn me into the nuisance character of the game.
More importantly, what is with that choice window?
Where did the core seriousness of a horror game go, for something this bubbly to pop up?
As the ticking sound of the second hand echoed in my ears, I stretched my trembling hand toward the system window.
I resolved to resist as much as possible this system that was itching to turn me into a nuisance character.
I pressed option 3, the least awful one. Really, the very least awful.
Ding!
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[You have selected option 3: “F-fed-up…? What does that mean? ((⊙_⊙)?)”]
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As if it had been waiting for this, my mouth slowly opened on its own.
Just like the emoticon in option 3, my eyes widened, and with a completely clueless expression, the words I had chosen spilled out automatically.
“F-fed-up…? What does that mean?”
At that moment, the air sank.
The sound of the rain seemed especially loud because it was pouring.
…Right?
It was not because everyone was at a loss for words, right?
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