What Happened in Another World
"...Haaah... I really... cleared the whole thing...?"
Slowly I leaned my stiff, aching body back and stretched, then looked at the monitor sitting in front of me.
"...Why, though?"
White Snow's Guardian Knight was the third expansion of Icarus Chronicle, a JRPG with a respectable cult following. The other expansions, The Verdant Assassin and The Blazing Revolutionary, each had branch points and endings that could fairly be called happy ones. And yet Vector Soft—the studio that had always insisted every story contained a happy ending—and its writer, Cat's Eye, had for some reason spun a tale with none at all.
Unlike any other expansion, every ending branch was devoted solely to whether Aiden, the figure who served as this pack's protagonist, lived or died, or to assembling the party that would bring down the final boss, the Frostflame Dragon Mircania. There was even an ending in which you simply killed the dragon, never learning why the Frostflame Dragon—once the guardian dragon of the north—had been seized by madness, or why it had begun to raise a vast blizzard across the northern lands.
"...Something feels wrong. Are they planning another expansion?"
There was a small, subtle gap in the story. I couldn't tell whether I was the only one who sensed it, or whether some thread was meant to connect not in this expansion but in the next. The questions had been gnawing at me, so I quietly opened the company's homepage and began to write a review threaded through with lament.
"Hmm... I think I laid out the disappointments and the strengths pretty well, don't I?"
If not, well—close enough. I clicked the post button and sank back into my chair.
"Haaah... Still, it's a shame. The ending routes are either total annihilation, or you kill the boss and walk away feeling unclean..."
Or else the one where Aiden, the guardian knight, turns into a vengeful wraith. This expansion offered only three endings, and not one of them felt remotely happy. I had tried every branch in the firm belief that a happy ending had to exist somewhere, and the letdown left me utterly drained. Setting aside, of course, the fact that somewhere along the way I had become a shut-in, holed up in a one-room apartment and doing nothing but gaming for an entire month.
"Hwaaam... Somehow I haven't slept properly in days..."
I had gone in with enormous expectations, which only made it hurt more. The Frostflame Dragon Mircania, who had shown herself once in the main story, Mucresia of the Heavens, and Aiden Calinix, my favorite character across the whole series—I had never doubted the two of them would take the lead. The main cover at launch had even depicted the Frostflame Dragon and Aiden together, which only fed the hope. I had wanted so badly to believe there would be a peaceful ending in which the two of them somehow went on living once more as the guardians of the north. By now, of course, that hope had shattered to pieces.
"Haaah... How can there be no happy ending..."
I let out a small sigh and quietly opened the window. The stale reek of cigarettes drifted in, along with the familiar voice of a drunk old man, and I shut it again at once. It was the same everyday scene I always knew. Tonight, though, the sight and the smell filled me with a strange revulsion, and with a small sigh I sank little by little into sleep.
"Ugh..."
The bed felt unusually hot tonight. I shifted quietly where I lay. It wasn't only the heat—my throat stung, and for no clear reason my breathing felt tight. Through that sensation I slowly opened my eyes, and what I saw was smoke filling my room, and beyond the window a red shape growing little by little clearer.
Heat pressed in on me as it filled the room, and I sat up in a hurry. What in the world was happening? I looked around through the confusion, and all I could see were flames that had already begun to swallow everything.
"Wh-what... is this..."
Crackle— whoosh—!
Faced with the blaze consuming every part of my home, I could no longer keep my head clear, and I flung the window open in desperation.
"Ngh—!"
The moment it opened, heat slammed into me, and smoke surged in so hard that I staggered and collapsed to the floor. The smoke was already too thick for me to even think of standing and closing the window again.
Bang, bang—!
"Is anyone there?! There's someone in here!"
Somehow I got the bedroom door open and pounded on the front door. Smoke rising from below meant the fire had started, at the very least, in the unit underneath. Would the firefighters come for me? Flames were already spreading into my own place. The kitchen and the balcony were burning. Could I still survive?
Despair, and the fear of death, filled my head faster than any will to live rising inside me. Even now I could barely breathe. The urgent need to get out somewhere collided with the rational question of what would give me the better chance, and my thoughts simply would not turn.
Sssk—
The handle I grabbed to open the front door was already as hot as it could be. The instant my hand touched it I flinched and clutched at my palm.
"Haaagh—?! No, I have to get out... Help me! There's someone in here!"
I kept hammering on the door and shouting, desperate to escape this place. All that filled me was the wish to survive somehow—to go on living quietly, playing the games I loved, however disappointed I was. Even so, no voice answered. No sound came at all. Even if a fire engine's siren were wailing somewhere out there, I would hear nothing from inside.
My vision blurred. The toxic gas filling the apartment had begun, little by little, to eat away at my consciousness. And around the time my sight was half gone, flame started to crawl through the gap in the door that had stood between the kitchen and my bedroom. The hell of fire I had seen beyond that glass would swallow my room next.
My breathing was already choked off. At a point when everything had become meaningless, I let my ruined hands—battered from pounding the door and clawing at the walls—drop limply to the floor, and quietly despaired.
"Cough—kheh... h-help... I'm... here... ah..."
As if to prove to me that there was no way left to survive, carbon monoxide coursed through my body, trying to cut my consciousness loose. Just before awareness went out, I felt the heat of the roaring flames. I couldn't even scream. I curled in on myself and closed my eyes against a searing pain I no longer wanted to feel.
If I fell asleep now, it would hurt a little less. Taking that thought as comfort, I simply went on wishing, in silence.
In the next life, let me never suffer heat like this again.