After the Bad Ending
“...Well, it's a shame, but I expected it.”
One of the magical girl novels I'd been faithfully following had just reached its finale. It was a bad ending, sure, but the author had planted so many hooks along the way that while I was disappointed, I couldn't really complain.
“Whoa, look at the comment section on fire.”
Unlike me, though, apparently the other readers weren't taking it so gracefully.
“Idiots. It's just a novel. Why are you all like this?”
After sneering at the blazing comment section, I got out of bed and made my way over to my laptop.
“You gotta take it in stride, like me.”
The story was over, after all. Figured I should leave a comment or two of my own.
“Whew. Feeling better now.”
After leaving exactly 5,699 characters' worth of a comment, I lay back down in bed, completely at ease.
Well, it's not 5,700 characters, so I should be fine.
That was the last thing I remember.
“...F**k.”
Right now, I was standing inside a burning building.
“Where even is this?”
I'd closed my eyes for a single blink and woken up somewhere else entirely, so for a moment I genuinely thought I was dreaming. But the heat radiating from the flames before my eyes, and the thick, acrid stench in the air, drove home the truth that this was no dream — this was reality.
“O-Okay, first I need to get out of here...”
The instant I frantically thrust my hand forward, something strange caught my eye.
“...?”
A hand that looked like it was clad in sharp, black armor. Where my own hand most definitely should have been, there was something else entirely.
“...!”
A shiver of horror ran down my entire body as I desperately scrambled around the burning scene, searching for a mirror.
“F**k...”
Staring back at me from within the glass was a monster.
I... I've...!
I had become a monster.
And not just any monster — one with the utterly game-breaking ability of Time Stop.