The Seed Within
[Don't worry! It will hurt. A minor curse shall make you miserable: Tongue]
Judging by the description, it was some kind of debuff I had no way to resist—yet I couldn't feel any particular change.
Nothing went wrong the whole time I explored the maze. Even when a monster came lunging at me, nothing happened.
But the moment I turned around, fragment of light in hand—spilled from that orb-shaped radiance—and began retracing my steps back through the maze...
EVERY ANGEL IS TERROR
A song came drifting from somewhere.
WOE IS ME
A melody soft as a lullaby, mournful as a dirge.
AND YET STILL, KNOWING OF YOU, I SING YOU, ALMOST DEADLY BIRDS OF THE SOUL
A song only I could hear.
No one but me, alone in this place.
WHO ARE YOU
I am...
EVERY ANGEL IS TERROR
And as the singing slowly died away, a dark presence shoved its way rudely into the gap.
My whole body seized up, and the light slipped from my fingers. My legs stopped dead, as if nailed to the ground.
As if some massive, invisible root had coiled itself around me.
Something was waiting for me. In the darkness squirming before my eyes—beyond the light, in the shadow's embrace. It was a chill so cold that even my body in the real world flinched.
FORWARD
LEFT ✛ RIGHT
BACK
Click.
Left. Left side first.
But instead of the script announcing that I had turned left, something else surfaced on the screen.
Of all the moments for this lunatic to start punning.
Click.
Right.
I couldn't move right, either.
Back.
I couldn't go back, either.
Now only one path remained to me.
Forward.
To press on ahead.
To go inside.
To step into the embrace of that thing—a presence whose shape I couldn't even begin to make out, as if it had carved a shadow from the world and draped it over itself.
A curse that could not be resisted. Irresistible in the most literal sense of the word.
After all the trouble of finding the light by the shortest route possible, all that was left now was to find the seed, till the soil, and tend the garden. And one curse received at the wrong moment looked ready to bring the whole plan crashing down.
This was the first time I'd crossed paths with this bastard in this run, but I doubted I could sweet-talk my way out of it the way I had back when I passed out in the maze and woke up.
The black shadow slides into the mouth of the dot character, already swallowed in darkness.
I didn't so much as scream. I simply accepted it, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
E V E R Y A N G E L I S T E R R O R ⸎
Far away, I could hear the others kicking up a fuss around me.
And yet, strangely, none of it felt like it was harming me.
No. Scratch that.
It was harming me, all right—this piece of trash.
"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Mr. Seon?"
...Come to think of it, that 'YOU LOST' script was the first I'd ever seen.
It hadn't appeared back when I died taking a wrong turn in the maze, either.
So why did that message show up only this time?
"Wait, there are exactly seven of us, aren't there?"
The moment Hosu the emcee finished his explanation in the lounge, Lee Nahyeon cried out, glancing around at everyone.
That's right. Exactly seven.
"Hold on a moment. Before that, there's something I need to check first."
I hurriedly cut Choi Jaeha off.
'You see, the final play requires a minimum number of participants, that it may be enjoyed in company. For it grieves me less when a quarter of the friends who play my games perish than when half of them do.'
That was the truth I'd heard straight from Do-ssi during our showdown.
"How many people die in that final play?"
"If you're curious, you'll simply have to come and enjoy it for yourself. Where's the fun in a game when you already know how it ends?"
"I was told that the more you win at the games, the happier the things it would bring."
For instance, the 'Fragment of Life' inscribed on the 'Stab-Stab Darts' board.
That was probably the chance to avert those deaths.
Because if I won, I would know for certain.
"Then I'll give it a go."
I was almost there. I knew how to get the water, and I knew the path to the light. My tongue was still intact, so there'd be no run-in with any irresistible curse this time. All that remained was to find the seed.
Then again, maybe the system was designed so that the seed would only appear once I'd found both the water and the light, come home, and finished tilling the earth.
Which meant I couldn't let this chance slip away.
What is this?
The dot character, still holding the fragment of light, stands motionless in the front yard. I stare blankly at the maze I've just escaped without a hitch.
Why hasn't anything changed?
I tilled the earth, cleared away the swan carcasses, twisted a rope out of the monster I'd killed in the maze and refilled the well—I did everything. So where is my seed?
I barely managed to settle the anxiety churning in my gut. Lee Jinsu was right—I mustn't rush. Planting and raising a plant was never going to be finished in a day or two to begin with. Might as well get some rest at home while I was at it.
After a few days of sleep, something was bound to be different...
I came to all at once.
Along with a violent thirst, as if the inside of my body were shriveling up.
My throat is dry. Parched. So terribly dry. My esophagus feels so withered it could tear like tissue paper.
Water. I have to drink water. Where is the water?
Water. The well. Parched throat. Water. Guts. Hide. Water. Rope. Water. Water. Water. Water.
Click.
Click.
Click.
I barely manage to get the house door open and stumble outside. The unbearable thirst makes my skull feel like it's about to split open. I'm dizzy, as if every last drop of blood has drained out of me.
Click.
Bang.
Click.
Bang.
Click.
Bang.
I shove my head into the well and gulp the water down in a frenzy. Each mouthful is sweet as nectar from heaven—so sweet my throat aches from it.
Only when the satisfaction came, every vessel in my body feeling brimmed full with water, did the thirst finally ebb away. Only then did the scream of instinct, that desperate wail for water beneath my drought-parched throat, at last fall silent.
Ah.
Q: "How often should I water it?"
A: "Whenever you hear the cry of craving."
Ah. Ah... At last, I understood. Where the seed was.
It had been inside me all along. From the very beginning. Since the moment I first opened my eyes in this garden.
(Ugh, isn't this basically some kind of parasite? This is straight out of Alien... where the guy becomes a host and then later he's just birthing aliens all over the place...)
I knew exactly what I was going to do to myself. The way I always had.
(Was that me? I suppose I got a little too absorbed in it earlier—the nerves, most likely. It's quite all right.)
Even if it broke me.
(I have no intention of stopping here.)
That thing over there is just a character. A scrap of data made of nothing but zeroes and ones.