Chapter 8
2. The Kind Female Protagonist in a Horror Game
◃
◃
“Sister, are your feet okay?”
“Ah.”
Only then did I realize I was barefoot.
Earlier, Friedel’s blood had been smeared all over me, including my feet.
Maybe because I had also stepped on the debris from the wall the monster destroyed, my soles stung a little, but I didn’t show it.
If anything, the discomfort of being drenched in blood bothered me far more than the pain.
“It doesn’t hurt.”
It didn’t interfere with walking at all.
If it got worse, I could always scrounge up a pair of slippers somewhere along the way and put them on.
Better yet, if I found a potion.
The game had various mechanics to keep humans from dying too easily, and potions were one of them.
I didn’t know whether that was true here as well, but with a system window already existing, there was no way potions wouldn’t.
So if I got injured, I could treat it with a potion.
The cuts on the soles of my feet were minor, and a small amount would be enough to heal them.
And if I couldn’t find one, the system would probably give me one. It had already given me medicine for my feverish condition, so maybe it would hand out other quests too.
It happened when Halloway and I reached the third floor after continuing on together.
◃
[Story No. 05, “You’re It,” is now beginning.]
◃
The story window appeared so suddenly that I panicked and tried to run back down the stairs, only to smash my head into thin air and fall flat on my back.
Looking down at me sprawled out in the hallway like it was a bed, Halloway asked, “What are you doing?”
“......”
What does it look like I’m doing?
Awkwardly getting back to my feet, I reached toward the staircase.
But my hand was blocked by something.
Looking more closely, I saw a translucent barrier between the stairs leading down and where I currently stood.
In other words, I was now stuck.
Was it only affecting me?
I looked at Halloway and pointed at the staircase leading downward.
“Halloway, can you go down the stairs?”
As if I had asked something strange, Halloway answered by personally walking down the stairs and then coming back up.
But no matter what I did, whether I pushed my head forward, kicked at it with my legs, or stretched out my hand, I couldn’t get through.
Watching my ridiculous spectacle from the side, Halloway clapped his hands in admiration.
“Wow, what is that? You’re really good at acting like there’s an actual wall there!”
“......”
Did this not look like the desperate struggle of someone trying to escape?
Once I realized I couldn’t go down and gave up, a window appeared before me.
◃
[Objective : Find the goal point and call it out before the tagger catches you.]
◃
[“Now I’m it!”
If you shout those words, you will win.
If the tagger touches your body, you become the tagger.]
◃
[※Do not, under any circumstances, become the tagger.]
◃
[Completion Reward : Revolver]
◃
A revolver...? A handgun?!
I was thrilled by the unexpectedly generous weapon reward, but only for a moment.
The monsters track us by sound...
No, wait. There were demons too. As something to keep for emergencies, there was hardly anything better than a gun.
◃
[Failure results in death.]
◃
F*ck, these things are always so extreme!
It’s not like I can refuse just because I don’t want to do it!
This was a quest that didn’t even give me the option of accepting or declining.
If it was going to penalize me for failing, then why not just take a finger instead?! I’ve got ten fingers, so that’d give me ten lives, wouldn’t it?!
I couldn’t voice my scream and swallowed it back down.
Then, just like in the game, the story began.
◃
[Night falls.]
◃
Even the faint flickering candlelight was snuffed out in an instant.
I flinched, and I immediately grabbed Halloway beside me and pulled him into a tight hug.
◃
[At the end of the long corridor on the third floor stands the tagger.]
◃
...Which corridor on the third floor?
◃
[The tagger begins wandering in search of someone to play with. You slowly rise to your feet, eager to find the goal point.]
◃
I’m going to get up a lot faster than that, you know?
I sprang to my feet.
Unlike that show of bravado, I quietly crept down the corridor while holding Halloway’s hand.
“Sister, your hand is sweaty.”
“So you don’t want to hold it?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Even as I said that, I tightened my grip on Halloway’s hand even more.
“I said I don’t want to hold it.”
“But I want to hold it!”
“My hand?”
“Yes. I really want to hold it.”
“...Fine.”
That pause at the beginning was really bothering me.
I didn’t know whether I was the only one trapped on the third floor or whether everyone else in the group was caught in it too.
Maybe Halloway could move around freely because he was the final boss.
As we walked with silence as our companion, Halloway suddenly asked me, “Sister, how did you end up here?”
“I was at a cruise party and got caught in a typhoon. What about you?”
“I was working on the ship and got swept up in it.”
Halloway, shamelessly lying through his teeth without so much as a blink, suddenly began bombarding me with questions.
“Then did you come from the Vallone Empire too, Sister?”
“Huh? That’s right. How did you know?”
“I told you, I was on the same ship as you.”
...No, you didn’t. This little bastard just guessed.
“Then everyone must be nobles of the Vallone Empire, right? Sister must be a noble too.”
Since it had been a cruise party, everyone was naturally a noble.
He should have been able to tell just from the clothes everyone had been wearing when we first met, yet for some reason he was pressing me for an answer. That made him suspicious.
There had never been a conversation like this in the game, so I couldn’t even begin to guess what he was thinking.
For now, I decided to brush past the subject lightly.
“Do I not look like one?”
“No.”
Watching Halloway cheerfully affirm that without a moment’s hesitation, I was left speechless.
“You... You really...”
That was really mean....
“The nobles and the Emperor of the Vallone Empire haven’t really changed much, have they?”
Ignoring my wounded feelings without mercy, Halloway continued questioning me, and I carefully recalled the game’s story.
The fact that he kept asking questions was suspicious.
In the game, Halloway approached players in the form of a child, and whenever they let their guard down, he would inform the demons and have them tormented.
After spending so much time together, one would think he’d grow close to them, but Halloway never once felt anything for them, not sympathy, not pity, not even the faintest trace of warmth.
He wouldn’t even blink if they died.
Maybe because of that, he rarely spoke to them at all.
More importantly, he had never asked questions like these...
As the final boss, his true identity wasn’t revealed until much later.
He was supposed to be a quiet, reserved child...
“Sister.”
◃
[Halloway is urging you to answer. The longer you delay your answer, the stronger his urge to kill you becomes.]
◃
Does this demon bastard not have a shred of patience?!
At this rate, that damn murderous urge of his was going to get me killed.
“As far as I know? Given that it’s an empire with a long and storied history, the noble houses and the imperial line that were there from the very founding have continued their lineage.”
I had considered lying, but seeing how much this demon, who was supposedly trapped on an island, knew about the Vallone Empire, there was a chance he had his own sources of information.
Since I knew practically nothing about demons, there wasn’t much I could deduce.
“I see... Oh, by the way, that man who tried to kill us earlier. I heard he was called Akrotic. That’s a Viscount family, isn’t it?”
“......”
As if he had noticed my suspicion, Halloway put on an exaggeratedly cheerful front.
“I’ve actually never met a noble before! I only ended up on the ship because I stumbled onto the chance and they offered a lot of money.”
He sure was chattering away about things I hadn’t even asked.
But I could not let him see even a flicker of suspicion from me.
Because...
◃
[※Warning.※]
◃
No thanks. Please don’t.
◃
[If “Future Conqueror of This World,” Halloway, ever discovers that you suspect him of anything, no matter what he does, you will receive “Bad Ending: The Agony of Burning Alive”.]
◃
With such a terrifying warning hanging over me, I didn’t really have a choice.
I looked at Halloway, who was being openly suspicious, with nothing but pure, innocent eyes.
“You got caught up in all this and didn’t even get paid.”
“The real problem is not being able to go back.”
◃
[Danger Gauge has increased by 2.]
◃
......
F*ck.
“It’s amazing that I’m with nobles right now. Then what families do you and the others belong to, Sister? As far as I know, nobles are usually addressed by their family names, but everyone here only uses their first names!”
Instead of answering right away, I hesitated.
Before entering the hotel, Cynthia and Cleta had instructed everyone to address each other by their names rather than their family names or titles, just in case.
Since only the most prominent figures of the Empire had ended up stranded on this island, Cynthia had said there was a possibility that someone had deliberately orchestrated this while targeting them. It would be best to conceal their identities as much as possible.
In ⟨The Child’s Secret⟩, everyone was referred to strictly by first name as well...
...Now that I thought about it, there was one strange thing that came to mind.
In the game, Cynthia’s identity as a princess was often exposed because of someone’s slip of the tongue, and every time it happened, the demons reacted particularly violently.
Once they learned Cynthia was a princess, they didn’t toy with her. They would kill her brutally and without hesitation.
Something about it made me reluctant to reveal the surnames of my companions, myself included.
If I lied now and later Halloway repeated it to someone else, and they said, ‘That’s not my family name,’ then the lie would be exposed, and I’d be the one who would die.
So staying silent was the right choice.
“That’s a secret. But is that really what you’re curious about?”
Besides, now that the quest had started, I was anxious because I had no idea when the tagger might appear. This wasn’t the time to patiently explain things like that.
“Yes. I find it fascinating! I’ve always admired nobles. I’m a commoner, so I don’t even have a family name. It’s not often that I get to be this close to nobles!”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Maybe you’ll take me under your wing once we get out of here?”
“I see...”
When I fell silent after that, Halloway tilted his head slightly.
“You won’t tell me more?”
“Nope!”
I answered with the same bright, breezy smile he always wore.
“You have to stay curious if we’re going to stick together for a long time.”
So if you want to hear the rest, you’ll have to kill me last.
Of course, the others would know each other’s family names too...
But I didn’t think Halloway would go around asking the others to find out.
The fact that he was even having this kind of conversation with me in the first place might have been because his favorability toward me had crept up by the tiniest amount.
The Halloway in the game had never once asked anyone questions like these.
As Halloway’s favorability increased, the story that had been nearly identical in the early stages changed completely, but the fundamentals remained the same.
The personalities of the characters, Halloway appearing in the form of a child despite being the final boss, the monsters in the abandoned hotel, and the fact that no one could leave.
And judging by how his murderous urges spiked whenever I said practically anything told me that Halloway hadn’t changed much either.
He was playing the part of a human child now, but fundamentally, he was still a demon. That had not changed.
Even in the game, he would behave with that same human-like warmth, yet feel absolutely no hesitation when it came to killing people.
“Together for a long time?”
“That’s right.”
While I search for the escape gate!
“With me?”
“Yes!”
Halloway tightened his grip on my hand.
Then he slowly stretched the corners of his mouth into a smile as he looked up at me.
For some reason, I suddenly felt a little colder.
“Alright. Let’s see if we can stay together for a very long time.”
...Excuse me, sorry.
I think you’ve completely misunderstood what I meant.
◃
◃