2. Tutorial (1)

I wanted to deny it.

No — I had to deny it.

There was just no way this could be real, right? I was Kim Minhyuk, a perfectly ordinary college student in South Korea! A fresh-faced freshman who'd only just finished the CSAT, at that!

No matter how much that knocking voice called me "Karsein," there was no way that person was me.

It's a dream. It has to be a dream.

A bad dream. The kind I'd wake up from after one more sleep, back in my little studio apartment.

'Yeah. If I just pull the covers over my head and sleep it off, surely...!'

"...Well, shit."

The profanity burst out of me, loud enough to be heard. The game UI I'd only ever seen on a screen was materializing in reality, as if to insist this was no dream. I pinched my cheek, praying it wouldn't hurt — and it hurt like hell.

Far too realistic a pain to be a dream.

The prize money of fifty million won had become "anything you desire, one thing." The moment that text appeared, the answer was already decided.

Being trapped inside a game was beyond my control. But clearing this game was the only way back to my world.

Which meant I had to survive to the end as Karsein — a character who could die from the mere act of breathing.

'Ha... Okay. Fine. First things first, let me get a handle on the situation.'

Karsein Vagrand.

The protagonist of this game, a seventeen-year-old male character.

Among endless, unpredictable dialogue choices, one careless pick and his life would evaporate on the spot — a walking sunfish of a character, dying at the slightest touch.

'No need to think any further than that.'

This game belonged to the old-school genre of RPG Maker titles, built on a dated tool called RPG Maker. All it demanded of the player were the choices that cropped up again and again. In this simple, story-driven game, those choices were the single most important rope holding Karsein's life in their grip.

The moment my thinking time ran out, the UI changed.

The tutorial, first of all.

This was where the player first encountered the mechanic of choices.

Karsein, freshly woken from bed, hears from a knocking maid that the Duchess has returned. Will he go greet her, or won't he? That's what the game asks.

Think about it naively, and the Status Window says something like this:

He's sleep-deprived. Why would he bother going?

His mother would surely forgive that much, right? But the moment you think that way and hit option 3—

'Yep. Very sunfish of you — you die on the spot. Turns out you're an ungrateful bastard who couldn't even show his face for the mother who just came back from working herself to the bone.'

So option 3 isn't even selectable to begin with. You're railroaded into going no matter what. And at a glance, the other two options look interchangeable — either way, you'll end up meeting the Duchess somehow.

But.

Then why, why, did the choice appear here in the first place?

-Slosh.

The icy water of the bathroom met my fingertips. That was when the reason for the choice became clear.

Yes. This is exactly how vicious the choices are.

The water drawn for bathing was freezing. Drawing water this cold in the dead of winter was, for all intents and purposes, a complete disregard for the comfort of the person meant to wash in it.

For Karsein — who was expected to answer to "young master" while living under the roof of a lavish ducal house — this wasn't mere unfairness. It was grounds for outright fury.

And that was precisely why this choice existed.

Try to bathe, and the game slaps a Cold status ailment onto your character because of that freezing water.

But skip the bath and show up anyway, and he reeks to high heaven — so that's not an option either. Even in the game, where it was just a handful of pixels, the grime caked on his body was plainly visible, and no one would mistake him for presentable enough to greet anyone.

In fact, in the tutorial run where I skipped the bath, his family and the servants beat him down for being a lout with no manners. After that, even trying to smooth things over just led straight to a bad ending.

Which meant there was only one answer.

Accept the Cold ailment and wash. However unreasonable. However unjust.

"God. What a lovely memory that just dug up."

I remembered taking cold showers even in this kind of winter cold — courtesy of a certain younger sister of mine who deliberately shut off the hot water.

Thanks to that bitch who "accidentally" spilled soup all over me, I'd been forced to scrub myself down in freezing water more than once.

Astonishingly, in this game too, Karsein was in the exact same position I'd been in. Because the one who'd ordered the cold water drawn for his bath would be the third sister, no doubt about it.

The scheme was cunning: he wouldn't be able to wash, so he'd either fail to come out or refuse to come out at all. Then the family scolding would follow as naturally as night follows day.

But here's the thing.

You overlooked something, you see.

-Splash!

"Kwah! Now that's refreshing. Really!"

Because I'm not Karsein. I'm a guy who's been through that exact experience more times than I can count.

As I lowered myself into the tub brimming with icy water, the displaced volume sloshed over the rim and spilled across the floor. It had been a while since I'd taken one of these, but I was long since used to it. My skin burned, my nerves screamed past numbness and into pain — and in that state, I dumped freezing water over my head as well.

"Fuck it. Come at me, then."

Grinding my teeth, I scrubbed away at hair that refused to lather in the cold, and washed myself raw.

Stepping out of the bathroom and back into my room after the freezing shower, I was wide awake. Sharper than I'd been in days.

By my prediction, the next thing to do was get dressed. Fast.

-Thud thud!

"Karsein. Just how long do you intend to lie there sleeping? Are we to make Mother wait, of all things, when it is we who should be greeting her?"

The door rapped twice, accompanied by a voice I guessed belonged to the eldest. The message was clear: I'd already been dawdling far too long. In the tutorial, lingering too long on the choice screen had triggered a defeat condition and a bad ending, too.

One minute, then. In the game, you had to hunt down hidden clothes within the time limit. This was the one moment I was grateful reality was reality — no crawling around the room half-naked, frantically rummaging for clothes like some pathetic bastard.

I grabbed the plainly visible clothes here and there and threw them on, finishing with about twenty seconds to spare.

"Hey, Karsein. Just how long are you planning to sleep in?"

Second warning. Judging by the line, that would be the second sister.

In the game, the door swings open the instant time runs out, so this warning had popped up alongside an alert. Of course, right now, I would be the one opening the door.

-Click.

I opened it carefully. Sapphire-blue eyes — the mark of the Vagrand bloodline — poured down on me.

Arina, who looked expressionless but was unmistakably cold. And Claire, arms crossed, face twisted in open displeasure.

"Why are you this late? I told you explicitly to be informed in advance."

"Must have been dragging his feet. Camilla would never let things slide like this otherwise."

Dragging my feet, my ass.

I was late because of the youngest — the one making disappointed faces behind your backs and sticking her tongue out to tease me.

'...No, wait. I'm not the only one drawing that disappointed look, am I?'

The pale white boxes floating above the surrounding heads — and the slightly darker ones — proved it.

Most of the Vagrand servants, it seemed, genuinely regarded this situation as a disappointment.

"You're ready, so let's go. Mother will arrive any moment."

At Arina's word, Claire and Flora fell in behind her in a line, and I followed along more or less at the rear. I could hear the maids whispering among themselves, but my body felt wretched enough that none of it registered.

We crossed the corridor, passed out of the mansion, cut through the courtyard — and the main gate came into view.

We opened the gate early and waited a few minutes before the Duchess's carriage appeared and rolled into the yard.

Going by the clock, if I hadn't beaten that timer, this would have been a genuinely humiliating late welcome.

The carriage rolled to a stop and the Duchess stepped down. All three sisters sprinted forward at once, none willing to be second in greeting their mother.

"Why on earth are you all standing out in this cold?"

"Your hardship matters more to us than the cold, Mother."

"Exactly, exactly. Mom worked the hardest of anyone."

"You girls, honestly."

"Moooom—!"

"My. What's gotten into our youngest today?"

"I just missed you. Heehee."

As Flora nuzzled against her, the Duchess affectionately stroked her youngest daughter's golden hair. A picture-perfect scene of a loving mother and daughter.

She showed the same deep attention to her other two daughters ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as well, offering warm words — why come out in this bitter cold? — with a faint smile touching her lips.

And in that moment, my choices appeared.

Having actually washed and come out on time, the difficulty of this choice had dropped considerably. The answer was option 3, plain as day.

If I'd come out unwashed — or not only been late, but failed to come out at all — then instead, someone would have snapped why are you only returning now, and someone else would have claimed they'd been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bullied all this while. Wrong answer, straight to the bad ending, no redemption.

'Honestly, I don't know all that much about the Duchess Isabella, but...'

For me, right now, she was a breakthrough waiting to happen.

The UI had appeared, the Status Window had appeared, choices had appeared — so other game systems clearly existed here too. The white boxes and the slightly darker white boxes floating above people's heads were part of this game's inner workings as well.

Those values rose and fell, and the gauges surged or sank depending on outcomes. What influenced them most was Karsein's behavior — in other words, the protagonist's every move.

And that was the single escape route I'd managed to unearth in this hopeless, nightmarish game.

The white gauge boxes I'd come to call Intimacy.

At first, it was nothing more than a number that shifted with your dialogue choices. But if you accumulated enough Intimacy, a genuine relationship formed with Karsein — conversations changed, behaviors shifted.

The crucial part was that these relationships also influenced the choices themselves. It was the one and only means of creating allies inside a ducal house full of nothing but enemies.

Looking at the current state of Intimacy, everyone else's head carried nothing but a blank white box or a faintly shaded one. Only Isabella's box was different.

Three full segments. Out of one hundred percent, a value of thirty percent.

If she was, at this point in time, the only person capable of standing as Karsein's ally and helping him clear the game — then she was worth pinning at least a sliver of hope on.

"You've worked hard, Mother."

I dipped my head slightly, playing the part of a son come out to welcome his mother home from her territory. And then—

"Mm."

The reply came back before my words had even finished leaving my mouth.

But so curt. So frigid. She was her child too, and yet the reaction was night and day. She'd staged such a tender, heartwarming tableau with the other daughters — and this was her response to Karsein's greeting?

And then an ugly old memory surfaced unbidden.

When I'd come out to greet my mother returning from a long business trip — having scrubbed myself down in freezing water just to be presentable — that time too, I'd gotten exactly this kind of clipped reply.

The cold shower and the hurried rush out the door were never the problem. The situation itself had simply been unwelcome from the start. It's exactly like my own case, isn't it?

-Thank you. I'm glad you came, sweetheart.

The warmth she lavished on her daughters, and the difference in her response toward me alone — I could see that scene superimposed perfectly onto Isabella.

"You've worked hard, Mom. Let's go inside — dinner's already prepared."

"Yes, let's."

No way. It couldn't be. Surely not you too.

Not you. You of all people mustn't be like that.

Praying — genuinely, desperately — that the situation I was imagining had not unfolded for Karsein, I followed behind a family that was no family of mine.