Is It Real, or Just Acting? (4)
These days, if a game tries to convey a message, people call it outdated.
Of course, it's wrong to preach to others or force personal ideologies and philosophies through a game.
“As expected, they hid this kind of direction. Well, it makes sense since the developer is who he is.”
The developer of For Rosemary's Happiness, Yuseokhun, whom I knew, was someone with his own brand of romance.
He had started with an indie game made in his university's game club that became a hit, then founded a company and went on to create Grand Arts Hero.
“After all, a creator's job is to make the public anticipate and fret over things.”
I spoke while recalling the developer's first interview I had seen before.
From his school days, he had been expanding the original world he imagined, and he had been making games with this belief from the very beginning.
And as proof, For Rosemary's Happiness, which mixed infinite regression and cooperation into a romance fantasy while lightly weaving in a dark story, contained the message he wanted to convey in its raw form.
The emotion of love is invisible to our eyes. And it should never be a one-sided effort from only one person.
…Perhaps that was the message developer Yuseokhun wanted to convey.
“That's amazing. I never thought the dark screen would actually crack and shatter if I clicked multiple times! The broken pieces look like hearts too, so it's pretty.”
“It's because the direction and hidden story led to several famous streamers playing it.”
Yujacha couldn't hide her excitement, her voice slightly higher in tone. The same scenery I was seeing began to appear on the saintess's side of the screen, which had originally shown nothing.
The chat window, which had been holding back spoilers because the choices from the known ending had appeared, began to stir and branch into various discussions.
From the beginning, For Rosemary's Happiness had been famous for its various multiple endings and Easter eggs, to the point where calling it an indie game felt inaccurate.
Viewers who had initially thought it was just a simple cutscene only realized something was off when the new song began to play.
─ 「Moving forward.」
In a landscape dyed pure white, a black-haired girl stood in the middle. With each step she took amid the contrast, overlapping scenes of a person's life flashed by.
No matter which choice you made—killing Demon King Rosemary or showing her mercy—one important fact remained the same.
There was no choice that could make Demon King Rosemary happy.
In the former, she shed tears and calmly accepted death. In the latter, she pierced her own heart to break the regression tied to the protagonists and died.
“Baekseolgi, my appearance keeps changing as I move forward…?”
“…It's showing the player the regressions Demon King Rosemary has gone through. There was originally a route where you become the hero too.”
These were appearances that had been confirmed in the game's artbook or dummy data at some point. The knight beside Rosemary changed in a similar way to her with each step forward.
But the backgrounds they existed in were different. One walked through light, while the other wandered through darkness.
It felt as if, across countless regressions, both the knight and the saintess had searched for each other but ultimately lived unhappy lives.
“Huh?”
“Isn't that Red Turbo and Seven Star?”
Among them were faces both Yujacha and I knew all too well. The two characters from the same developer's Grand Arts Hero had briefly flashed by.
Perhaps that was why he had obtained the rights to criticize Miracle Ranger, which had long since finished airing on TV, quite some time ago.
In reality, in the games Yuseokhun made, the unique worldviews, settings, and character names from his previous works appeared in passing.
“I didn't expect the worldviews to be the same too.”
“If the saintess and knight cross over to the modern era and become a magical girl and a hero, that seems like a pretty plausible combination, doesn't it?”
This was the first time he had so blatantly shown that the previous and subsequent works were connected.
─ 「No matter how far I went, hope was nowhere to be seen. The happiness I felt with someone seemed like it would never return.」
Contrary to the despairing text before our eyes, the piano sound echoing in our ears and the lyrics sung by the vocalist were gentle.
“My heart hurts. Isn't there any way to wipe away the tears…?”
“Let's just keep moving forward for now.”
In that moment, I felt that we shouldn't give up yet.
Just as I had regained hope by watching Yujacha's stream, if they kept trying, they would surely meet again someday.
─ 「Demon King Rosemary is still crying while looking at you. That sorrow is like a well that can never be filled, and I even feel a hollow, empty emotion somewhere.」
─ 「The life I wanted wasn't anything that grand. I just wanted to have a child with the person I love and spend the rest of my life ordinarily….」
“Sniff, hic….”
Yujacha seemed to be crying from sadness, her voice choking up as she pitied Demon King Rosemary.
With every step we took, Demon King Rosemary's body glitched and flickered, as if trying to disappear.
─ 「Moving forward.」
There was only one choice given to us.
It was as if to say that no matter how difficult and arduous things were, in the end, people could only change by stepping forward over their past.
─ 「We must move forward.」
Just as the character's movements slowed, as if time itself was flowing more and more slowly, and just as it seemed we could go no further, as though a transparent wall stood before Demon King Rosemary—
─ 「Ah, so you've always been by my side. My happiness had always existed right nearby. Why did I only realize it now?」
A shape reflected in Demon King Rosemary's eyes as she looked toward the player.
A black knight clad in jet-black armor. The moment that wraith-like existence appeared beside the Demon King—
─ 「After all, something as important as the emotion of love is invisible. Rosemary, you always said you repeated regressions for a more hopeful future….」
He wiped away Demon King Rosemary's tears, trapped behind the glass wall, and spoke in a calm voice.
That black knight was probably the male protagonist who, like her, had repeated regressions in search of his lover's happiness.
─ 「In truth, my happiness was all the time I spent with you. It would have been fine to die without defeating the Demon King, and living ordinarily would have been fine too. Even the fleeting moments I spent with you made me happy.」
─ 「Sir Knight….」
─ 「Of course, happiness isn't eternal. The dust of this cold world will eventually find us, and we might not withstand it and collapse.」
The knight who had first married Rosemary, had a child with her, and struggled in despair to remember every regression they shared.
Anyone could infer his identity from the lines he exchanged with Demon King Rosemary now.
─ 「But… even so, if we can stay connected by the name of love, helping each other as we move forward together.」
─ 「…….」
─ 「That alone would make us happy. Every moment I spent with you was happiness, after all. Rosemary.」
The knight in black armor with rags draped around his neck like a scarf nodded toward Yujacha and me, the players, as if in gratitude.
─ 「You don't have to repeat regressions anymore, Rosemary. We can step over the past and move toward the future.」
Then the identity of the transparent glass wall blocking the player and Demon King Rosemary was revealed.
The Hourglass of Regression, called the source of regression. It was the massive structure that had tormented the game's characters until now.
─ 「From the beginning, regression wasn't important. Our love didn't change no matter how many times time was turned back.」
The black knight took Demon King Rosemary's hand, just as the player had, and walked toward the massive glass wall blocking them.
─ 「So we have to move forward once more.」
Swish,
CRASH—!
─ 「Our love… will begin again from here.」
─ 「Our happiness will begin again from here.」
The glass shards scattering in all directions looked like sparkling starlight, and within them, the Demon King and the black knight embraced each other with tears of joy.
Just like the two of us players right now.
─ 「Every single day I spend with you makes me happy.」
And the scene that followed showed the two of them in a small cottage, forming a large family and living happily.
─ 「For Rosemary's Happiness HAPPY END.」
Seeing Rosemary and the knight's bright expressions, it seemed they had broken the regression and, following the solution Yujacha had found, regained their lost child.
> [Mission for citrus_yuja completed!]
> [Ah, what a juicy taste of pure love.]
By the time the game clear mission succeeded, the timer read 23 hours and 39 minutes.
Having barely met the target, I checked the message that had flown in through CodeCode.
Surprisingly, Yujacha apologized to me and explained why she had asked for the photo.
The extra remark that she didn't need the photo even though the mission was successful was a bonus.
But hearing that, I wanted to support her instead. After all, she had probably worked hard on the game aiming for the photo.
A promise should be kept. And it would be better than her being scared because she didn't know my face.
“…Is this how you take it?”
Perhaps because it was my first time taking a photo to send to a woman, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't avoid ending up with strange compositions.
“This one came out okay, but the toy display case in the back got caught in the frame—”
Clueless as I was, I had been taking the photos directly through the CodeCode mobile application,
“…This is a huge problem.”
While checking the photos I had taken, I accidentally pressed the send button.
“Wow! The mission succeeded! And we cleared it with a hidden ending that most people don't know about! What? It's the first time the happy ending has appeared?”
And at that moment, Yujacha, who had been happily discussing the hidden ending with her viewers after the mission success, reacted with—
“Ehehe, now I can check Baekseolgi's face…”
After about ten seconds of silence and a surprised expression on the virtual character—
“Ah, I'll keep this to myself. He's such a baby, a total baby.”
She spoke in a voice brighter than anyone else's, like a young girl.
The only time she made a reaction or spoke in that tone was when she got excited talking about the 19+ otome games she liked.
Even after watching streams for ten years, I tilted my head at hearing Yujacha's real voice, which I wasn't used to.
Did the photo come out ugly?