I Can't Believe I'm Watching All of This
I Can't Believe I'm Watching All of This
【......Humans are truly incomprehensible creatures.】
The four fangs embedded in the man's nape snarled.
Time, which had seemed eternal, abruptly drew to its close. But the man's face remained utterly serene.
【Grrrrr.......】
The woman's cry, her teeth buried in his neck, gradually faded.
Blood streamed from the stretched and widened wound. Yet the man paid no attention to the scarlet spray erupting from his own neck.
【Abandoned at birth.】
The force gripping his neck slowly loosened.
The man moved his tattered arms to support her scarred waist, holding the woman steady so she would not fall.
【Robbed of her freedom by those very humans.】
The woman's breathing grew ever weaker.
【And ultimately, raised as a vanguard Wolf for the clowns who frolic in the sky.】
The woman leaned against the man's nape. No—she collapsed against it.
The four fangs embedded in his neck began to slip free.
The man raised a hand and gently pressed her head, keeping her teeth from leaving his flesh.
A candle flame, ready to gutter out in the slightest breath of wind.
The woman could no longer see, hear, or feel anything.
The man closed his eyes, then murmured.
【You, for the first time, possessed a will. Acted upon it. And succeeded.】
A small fissure appeared on the man's body.
【Wolf, who spent a lifetime bound in shackles, robbed of freedom.】
The hand pressing the woman's head crumbled away. A crack formed on his face. His body fell apart in fragments.
【You chose sacrifice and wished for my extinction. So I shall accept the end of my time.】
The man lifted his head, a faint smile on his lips.
A sky filled with ominous, pitch-black clouds.
His body collapsed inward.
His arms detached, his legs shattered, half his face split and fell. And still, the man held the woman in his arms, his back straight and unbowed.
One eye, the one not yet destroyed, opened.
An abyss capable of devouring even the darkening sky revealed itself.
【I shall accept 'death.' And.......】
The heavens twisted.
An endless darkness poured down upon the earth through the cracked rift.
A world gradually losing its color.
What remained of the man shattered into dust and scattered.
The woman did not fall.
She stood upright on her own two feet, like a victor after a grueling struggle.
Soon, darkness engulfed the world.
In that colorless world, only the woman retained her own hues.
"......Fuck."
I couldn't suppress my fury at the text on the screen. Yet, careful not to accidentally skip over any text, I cautiously clicked the left mouse button.
['No. 999 : The Edge of Eternity' has been added to Endings.]
A new ending, the first added in three years.
[You have collected all Endings. Now you may view Endings freely.]
And the period marking the end of this goddamn long, long journey.
I stared at the text floating on the screen and leaned back limply in my chair.
"Crazy bastard."
The curse slipped out before I knew it.
Part of it was aimed at myself, for seeing every ending of this text-only piece of shit game that came out over a decade ago.
The other part was aimed at the Creator, who designed every ending from 1 to 999 around a single character's death and misfortune.
"Haa......."
A craving for the cigarettes I'd quit two weeks ago hit me.
If I ever found out the Creator's home address through some genuine coincidence, I would go there without hesitation, by any means necessary, and bash his skull in with a soju bottle.
'A being whose existence itself is a crime.'
I forced down the surging urge to smoke and moved the mouse.
I clicked the [New!!] ending archive, then took a screenshot of the bookshelf packed tightly, without a single gap, with entries 1 through 999.
"Haa."
Sighs kept escaping me; what could I do about it?
"......."
Maybe because I'd bought a good chair for my back—and I'd been sitting in it long enough—leaning into the backrest tilted me almost horizontal.
A dark ceiling.
Well, of course it was dark; the lights were off.
Turning them on wouldn't make things look particularly special either.......
I stared at the dark ceiling for a long while.
Maybe because that dim space felt like a perfect representation of my current state of mind.
Just empty, and hollow.
'A devil of a bastard.......'
But it seemed a spark of the rage I'd thought extinguished still lived in a corner of my heart.
"Puuuuu!!"
I had to scrub my face with my hands several times just to calm the fury that was erupting like a seizure.
But the anger refused to die down.
Ten years flat.
I'd known this thing longer than most 'ballsy' jerks out there.
And after knowing it for a decade, I'd been struck viciously from behind. So brutally I couldn't get back up, with an impact that shattered my skull.
"The last one, couldn't you just have let her be happy for the last one, you balding piece of shit......!!"
With 999 endings, most of the main cast met happy conclusions multiple times. All except one.
The only character who appeared 999 times and whose circumstances never once changed.
'Wolf.'
A girl known to every character simply as Wolf.
A character who always sacrifices herself for someone else's happiness, or is the first to meet ruin.
There wasn't a single exception.
I'd seen 999 endings, and the girl died 999 times.
There were no more endings left.
"Was one time really that hard......?"
The strength drained from my body. I didn't seem to have the energy left to even be angry.
All she wanted was to survive, but this goddamn Creator didn't even grant the girl her life at the very end.
It felt more absurd and empty than when the coins I'd randomly invested hit the jackpot and the friends who heard about it became friends I 'once knew.'
The feeling of having my whole life invalidated, I guess.
Some might laugh and call me crazy for getting so immersed in a mere game. That's fine. I think I'm kind of a lunatic myself.
So now it's time to part ways with this godforsaken game and go back to being a normal person.
I'd ground away at it for roughly ten years, and it threw it back in my face. There's no reason to stay together anymore. I'll let it go and use the remaining money to find a new companion.
Yeah. That's the right move.
Raging and ranting would only hurt me in the end.
As the last dying ember of anger sputtered out, I felt a sudden void in my heart.
I sat up straight in my chair with blank eyes. I placed my hand on the mouse. I moved the cursor to close the game window I'd left open.
"......?"
My eye caught a message window on the small title screen below, something I'd never seen before.
Knowing I shouldn't get my hopes up, I moved the mouse anyway.
The cursor that was heading for the 'X' instead brought the game title back up to full screen.
【Did the stories I prepared please you?】
【 Yes / No 】
A genuine psycho, maybe?
I clicked.
【If I ask 'in what way?', I won't be able to hear your answer, so let me ask differently.】
【It is a single chance. If I were to grant you, the one reading this, one chance.】
【Do you have the confidence to complete a story you can be satisfied with?】
【 Yes / No 】
I clicked.
【Only once. If you fail, it is over. You will lose everything you have.】
Choosing an option auto-saves. There was only one chance from the start.
【If you fail, you lose everything. Even if you succeed, the only reward is your own personal satisfaction.】
My own personal satisfaction. That was enough. Did this goddamn son of a bitch think I was clinging to this and viewing all the endings because I wanted some kind of reward? He's definitely insane.
【You're a madman. I'm almost curious to see what you look like.】
That's my line.
【This is the last question.】
【Will you challenge the 1,000th ending?】
【Yes】 / 【Yes】
"Madman."
A dry laugh escaped me.
I moved the cursor without a moment's hesitation.
**
"Ha."
Never thought I'd see the day I'd be staring at that cliché unfamiliar ceiling.