Thoughts #113
Protagonist. The central figure who drives the story within a work. Every story has one, whether it's a single lead or several. And usually a lone protagonist was far better in terms of difficulty and accessibility than a sprawling ensemble piece with multiple mains.
Gray Zone was a game that followed the story of exactly one protagonist. It was a narrative-driven title, the kind that could have offered customization options to boost immersion like other companies did. Yet the freedom in character creation was more restricted than expected. You were basically stuck making minor tweaks to characters the developers had already designed. Rumors claimed they bundled all the fancy customization features with New Game Plus because they couldn't fix a bug. Of course, after decades spent in this game world, the excuse sounded like complete bullshit.
Honestly, what kind of game drops you into a bizarre new reality just because you died? It had to be the meddling of something supernatural, like the World Tree. At the same time, that very fact made me curious about what kind of protagonist it would be—in personality, ability, appearance, everything. The whole thing had been so brief and so long ago that I barely remembered the process.
What I did recall was putting serious effort into customizing the protagonist. Ines Adriana Corceiro da Silveira. Shortened to Ines Corceiro. Shortened even further, she became the woman whose in-game nickname was chosen by the player. I'd strengthened that woman dramatically through customization.
It might sound a little racist, but I changed her race to white and completely reworked her looks from the unattractive Black woman she'd been. The final appearance, loaded with my personal tastes, would have been reasonably pretty. Not on Cheon Mari's level, but still worth a second glance. It was genuinely disappointing that I'd forgotten the exact details.
What if I hadn't done it? Given the circumstances back then, the chance that I left her untouched was almost zero. It was that typical American-game nonsense—the same crap the game kept throwing at you the moment you stopped thinking about it.
I'd been so fed up with the rainbow onslaught that I figured being a little discriminatory was the only way to salvage my character. I rebuilt her from the ground up, maxed out her starting stats, and gave her top-tier traits. By that logic, she was probably quite powerful by now.
The only real flaw was that the game had described her academy days as merely average. The original content and my customization might clash. But even if it created a contradiction, the fact that I'd made her strong didn't change. And I sincerely hoped that strength had carried over to the present.
I didn't want a version of events where my customization had never happened.
"Sian? Siaaan? What are you thinking about so hard?"
"Uuuuuum..."
Even an outsider like me had fallen into this world. So wasn't it possible for the protagonist to begin with everything altered too? Honestly, if she was truly strong, the story could have gone: killed all those hero bastards, burned the World Tree, game over. Then I could have lived a carefree life on the money I'd stockpiled, shouting about heading to Mars.
Besides, that outcome would have made more narrative sense. The protagonist wasn't some pathetic forever-alone virgin at the start of the game. During her academy days she'd mainly hung out with Shannon—a brown-haired, brown-eyed Asian woman—and a tall mixed-race guy. That tall mixed-race man had been her boyfriend; the setting said they'd even considered marriage before it fell through.
"If you're not eating the picadillo, can I have it?"
"Huuuuuum—"
"You're not answering. Guess I'll have to eat the lasagna too. Oh, and you should eat quickly as well."
"Yes~"
But that was exactly the problem. Honestly, wasn't it strange for an unattractive woman to end up with a tall mixed-race guy? Whether it was the developers' shady intentions or some bizarre twist of reality, it felt off. It carried the same dissonance as a handsome male idol dumping a normal girl for an unattractive one. Of course the guy might have been unattractive too, but the few lines the game gave suggested otherwise. So making her pretty actually felt more realistic. Even if it reeked of shallow lookism, that was my honest opinion. If someone was going to save the world, they might as well be attractive while doing it.
"Are you imagining yourself turning into a woman or something? You've been spacing out forever."
"I don't think that's it... Is something complicated going on?"
"Hmm. It does feel like you've been thinking a lot more since Thursday..."
"Thursday...? Nothing happened except the normal lecture orientation."
"Huuuum, no idea. Hey, Sian. If you keep zoning out, Shannon's going to finish all the rice pudding."
Wait, thinking about it again, it wasn't such an ugly thought. If you looked at it logically, wasn't the protagonist basically stealing the character I'd customized? It was like having my own creation taken from me, so I was the one who deserved comfort. I had zero confidence I could live well as a woman, but still.
"Yum yum."
By the time I finally shook off those thoughts, the table was completely empty. When I looked up, my friend with a better personality than Hitler and the timid lizard were busy devouring the last of the food. I asked where my meal had gone.
"You were lost in thought, so I just ate it all."
"Yes. If it's not enough, shall we order more?"
"...Wait, what about my coconut drink?"
"I drank that."
Cheon Mari shook the coconut drink. The straw I'd been using was still stuck in it.
"That tasted good."
"It did taste good. Didn't have that mop-water flavor at all—definitely different."
"But that's the straw I used."
I stared at her sucking on the straw that still had my saliva on it. Cheon Mari simply shrugged like it was no big deal.
"Well, friends can do that much."
What country's friends casually suck on other people's straws? Even if we were living together, this was crossing a line.
"Besides, thanks to my mistake we've already shared a toothbrush, shared utensils, shared a laptop, shared a bed, and even shared porn. So what's one little straw—ow ow ow!!!"
It was truly something to brag about.
The thing called memory was always easy to distort. You could distort it yourself, circumstances could distort it, or some physical element could distort it. What was certain was that memory was so malleable it needed to be handled with care. Otherwise you risked denying your entire life.
Exactly like someone thinking about the past.
She stepped into an exhibition hall lined with endless photographs. The setting felt alien, yet the content was anything but. After a few steps, childhood memories appeared on the walls as vivid photos. A time when she knew nothing and everything was wonderful. A little farther and memories from when she was slightly older hung there—the period when she first truly understood what life meant. A few more steps revealed a person that made her smile. Memories with someone she once considered precious. She smiled and kept walking.
"Ah..."
This time it was a school scene. Playing together, laughing—it had been a truly good time. The photo was taken from a nice angle, so she stared at it intently. Then, as if she liked what she saw, she reached out and stroked her own image in the picture.
"...?"
But something was wrong. When she touched herself in the photo, the face twisted strangely. It looked grotesque, like two people had been superimposed. She stroked the photo again, puzzled by the phenomenon.
"What is this..."
It was not a good choice. The more she stroked it, the more her image in the photo changed—distorting, warping, fading, vanishing, transforming. By the time the changes finally stopped, the person in the photograph had become unmistakable.
"Cheon Mari...?"
A demon was smiling. The very demon who had stolen her life. Lim Hana shook her head as if she'd seen something wrong. She immediately began scanning the other photos, practically fleeing.
"What... what is this?"
But there is no paradise at the end of flight. Every memory photo had been tainted. In the places where she should have been, only that woman remained. Reflexively she ran, searching for any image without Cheon Mari. The exhibition hall was infinite; no matter how far she ran, there was no end. Instead, Cheon Mari in the photos only grew larger. Eventually her figure devoured the entire photograph.
She closed her eyes while running blindly. After keeping them shut for a long time, she gently opened them. When she turned her head, Cheon Mari had thankfully disappeared. She wasn't in the photo. Of course, that meant no one was. The endlessly distorted photographs seemed to display someone's ruined past. From a distance they also looked like an expression of hatred toward someone. Interestingly, Lim Hana knew exactly who that target was. At this point in time, there was only one person she could possibly hate.
"No... no..."
She denied it, but the denial changed nothing. How could she turn the actions she'd committed in reality into lies? Not when so many people remembered them. It was something she could never accomplish, never even begin.
She didn't know how much longer she ran. At last the end of the exhibition hall appeared. There hung the largest photograph of all. No—it was a moving image pretending to be a photograph. The short clip, about a minute long, repeated only one thing: scenes of her insulting the friend she had once believed in and loved. The moments that had started everything.
She couldn't bear it. Her knees gave out.
"I-I'm sorry! I must have gone crazy for a moment...! I never meant to do that to you..."
Everything was terrifying. The ruined reality filled her with regret. She kept babbling confused excuses. The things her uncharacteristic self had done caused her moral agony.
"Just forgive me once... I'll definitely pay the price for ignoring your words... I won't do it again... Please..."
Unfortunately, the chance that such pain would disappear was slim. That was why someone placed a hand on Lim Hana's shoulder. It felt like her soul was being ripped to shreds. She lifted her blurry gaze.
"Peekaboo?"
There stood Cheon Mari. When Lim Hana tilted her head in confusion, the other woman pulled a matchbox from her pocket. She wondered what it was. It didn't take long to realize it had been a mistake. Cheon Mari threw a punch. With a dull thud, Lim Hana rolled across the floor. The bizarre pain made it impossible to think straight. Cheon Mari immediately climbed on top of her.
"Drugs felt good, right?! I'll put them back in for you!!!"
She pulled several blades of grass from the matchbox. Lim Hana tried desperately to resist, but there was no way she could win.
"D-don't—kyaaak!"
"If you disappear, Sian is mine! All I need is for you to disappear! Ahahaha!!!"
The feeling of facing an existence she could not resist. In the end the grass entered her mouth, and a sensation like exploding fireworks surged through her.
Thud!
"Haaaaak! Aaaak!"
That was when she opened her eyes. The pure white space had transformed into pitch darkness. She shot upright as if leaping out of the nightmare and gasped for breath. She instinctively turned on the light and only then released a long sigh.
"It was... it was a dream..."
It had been an utterly terrible nightmare. Her body still trembling, she reached for the phone on the table. The first thing she saw was an obituary notice announcing that yet another of her friends had died. A horrifically grim message to wake up to.
Another one of your friends has passed away.