The Misaligned Button
"Ugh, my head..." I stared at the paper packed tightly with handwriting. Nothing was changing; if anything, my headache was only getting worse. Letting out a sigh, I crumpled the paper into a ball.
...To be honest, I hadn't thought helping the students would be this difficult. No matter how much I chewed on it, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd made a massive misjudgment. I never expected things to get this tangled...
I knew the playable characters' backstories, their settings, and everything that was destined to happen to them. It wouldn't even be an exaggeration to say I knew them better than they knew themselves. However, the blind spot I had overlooked was far larger than I could have ever anticipated.
"Hmm, around this time, Orca should be... Well, I made sure nothing happened to her. Is she fine? The Imperial Princess should be okay too, right...?"
I hadn't accounted for the timeline. In any other game, maybe I wouldn't have had to worry about this. Usually, games only have a single protagonist. You know how in those web novels where the main character falls into a game, they often only have to keep their eyes on the original protagonist? I might have been able to do the same.
But in this world, there wasn't just one protagonist—no, there were a whopping five playable characters. And it wasn't like they were running around in different worlds, either... They shared the exact same location and the exact same timeline.
Because the game focused heavily on whichever character the player selected, the other characters—while slightly more prominent than ordinary NPCs—never really got their fair share of the spotlight. What do I mean by that? ...Let's look at an example.
There was an episode where five students who loathed the Devil Possessed banded together to ambush Orca. It was an event that triggered fairly early on, and its difficulty was notoriously high. The problem was that while that episode was playing out, the other playable characters were still moving.
While Orca was getting caught up in an ambush, some students might just be going about their ordinary, peaceful daily lives, while others might be crossing paths with crucial lore drops at that exact same moment. I was pretty sure there were even cases where two major incidents unfolded simultaneously...
Well, you could just call that a quirk of a game with multiple protagonists. But now that the game had become reality, that quirk had transformed into my biggest headache.
"I can't pinpoint exactly when which event is going to happen!"
The timing was too vague. Unless a game belonged to a genre that was obsessively strict about time—like a mystery or a time-loop game—most of them described the passage of time in broad, atmospheric strokes. A spring afternoon, just as the flowers began to bloom. Something like that.
This vagueness made it impossible to predict the future. I knew roughly what would happen, and how the students would resolve or fail their conflicts if I weren't here. But when? There were already too many variables at play, and my mere presence in this world had already caused a massive butterfly effect.
...Take the Orca ambush incident I just mentioned. The window for that event had already passed. This morning, while I was still trying to soothe my aching head after the Watcher's visit, Orca had suddenly grumbled to me. She said some weird bastards had been picking fights with her one after another lately, and she had no idea what their problem was.
Orca had just complained about it in passing... but the moment I heard it, I knew for sure. They were the culprits of the Orca ambush incident. Conveniently enough, she mentioned there were exactly five of them. Their appearances matched the descriptions I remembered, too.
...But why had they only whined and picked verbal fights instead of launching a full-on ambush? It was because Orca hadn't been underestimated. In the prologue, the fight between Orca and Leo was hardcoded for Orca to lose, no matter what. She was programmed to fail. Naturally, the entire story was built on the premise of her defeat.
But what was the actual outcome here? Leo lost. ...On top of that, public opinion among the students was that he had been beaten rather pitifully. In other words, it went like this:
Originally, five students who looked down on Orca after her prologue defeat to Leo were supposed to ambush her. But they didn't. Why? Because, contrary to the prologue, Leo hadn't beaten Orca. Far from being looked down on, she had cemented an even more terrifying reputation.
So, even though they harbored resentment, they didn't dare make a move. The reputation of the feared Devil Possessed remained completely unscathed. They never got the chance to think, Oh, maybe we can actually take her down. The catalyst for their courage had vanished.
...Well, I could accept that much. It was a bit of a shame to lose one of Orca's growth drivers, but it wasn't completely irreplaceable. It wasn't even an episode that offered her any profound mental growth anyway; it was just an event designed to leave another scar on her heart.
Now, here is a pop quiz. I already have to stitch together a timeline that is incredibly convoluted and full of holes... What happens when that timeline gets twisted out of shape, and scheduled episodes start disappearing entirely?
Ta-da! I have absolutely no idea! No matter how much I rack my brain, I can't predict what incident will happen when.
"Sigh..." I give up. Just... let's not do this anymore... Trying to be too perfect is a one-way ticket to burnout. Yeah. Let's just play it by ear, judging things based on the general atmosphere and situation.
Besides, trying to predict the future based on the game felt pretty meaningless at this point anyway. Yesterday's incident had made me feel like I needed to prepare, so I tried mapping out the timeline, but it only made me feel more hopeless.
If you button the first button wrong, all the other buttons will end up misaligned too. And as for me, I hadn't just buttoned the first one wrong—I had practically put the whole shirt on backward. Like a rolling snowball, I began to fear that the simple act of putting Orca to sleep was going to balloon into something monstrous.
"My head hurts... I just want to play games..."
Was it because I had tried to do something so out of character, only for it to yield zero results? A profound lethargy washed over me, making me feel as though I were wearing clothes soaked in water. People really shouldn't try to do things they aren't cut out for. Maybe it was because I had tried to make a plan when I'd never planned a single thing in my life, but my brain felt like it was cramping up.
Alright, let's take today off. I'll stick a "Closed for Today" sign on the Counseling Room door. I've finally caught up to where I was in my game before Haze smashed my laptop anyway... Let's just enjoy ourselves today.
I couldn't even begin to describe how devastating it was when the laptop broke right in the middle of a story arc I was dying to see. The game kept dropping hints about the protagonist's long-lost father, whom he'd been searching for his entire life, and my save data got wiped right before the big reveal... Since Orca had started sleeping in the Counseling Room, I had even prepared a headset. If I just play like this...
"Hello, Professor."
"H-Hieeeek?!"
Just as I was grinning, giddy with the anticipation of gaming, a voice suddenly drifted into my ear. Startled out of my wits, I jumped up, lost my footing, and tumbled to the floor.
"Oh dear, I am sorry. I did not expect to startle you so..."
A silver-haired girl wearing a blindfold over her eyes looked down at me. Anastasia. ...Why was she here? Even though she couldn't see, I got the distinct feeling she was gazing at me with concern.
"S-S-S-Since when...!"
"Right around the time you said, 'My head hurts, I just want to play games...'"
"You should have knocked before coming in!"
"I did. When there was no response, I thought you might not be here, but when I turned the handle, the door opened."
Fortunately, I wasn't seriously injured, but I gingerly massaged my head, which had grown hot from the impact of the fall. It throbbed painfully, and while I desperately wanted to roll around on the floor clutching my skull, there was something far more important to address.
...Surely, she didn't see it? I wanted to believe she hadn't since I had scrambled to grab the paper even as I fell, but this was a world of mana, devils, and Hypnosis. I couldn't be absolutely sure, so I asked her in a trembling voice.
"D-Did you... see?"
"Do not worry, Professor. I will not tell anyone that you enjoy playing games."
"...Thank you."
What a relief. It seemed she hadn't seen what was written on the paper. I couldn't use Hypnosis on Anastasia right now. ...It wasn't entirely impossible, but since I needed to build a certain level of trust with her first, it was out of the question for the time being.
Of course, having my love for gaming exposed was a bit embarrassing. Especially since I was caught right at the moment I declared my intention to slack off and play games at work. To anyone else, I was the textbook definition of a salary thief. That was a bit of a blow, but she wasn't the type of girl to lie. If she said she wouldn't tell anyone, she meant it. ...Right?
"...So, what brings you here? Shouldn't you be in class right now?"
"I skipped. When I told them there was an urgent matter regarding the Church, they understood."
Scratch that. I was suddenly worried sick. To think she would sacrifice the Church as a pretext just to skip class. I felt like I was seeing a side of her I never knew existed.
"I would like... to have a consultation."
"..."
My expression hardened. ...While the notes I had scribbled down were mostly useless, one thing was absolutely certain. Anastasia shouldn't have had any worries deep enough to seek out a counselor. At least, not at this point in time.