Dead Trigger (1)

I woke to morning light.

The day I'd spent wracked with a cold had ended, after everything, with a simple meal and a deep, unbroken sleep. I remembered Claire belatedly catching on and sending rice porridge up to my room, remembered how much it had irritated me even as I ate it. But after I'd lain down in bed—nothing. My memory simply cut off there.

Which meant I had slept the entire day away.

"Haa. So this is what they meant by 'recovery from fatigue and abnormal sleep patterns.'" Then again, looking at it from another angle, was there any realistically better way to recover? Fair enough. Nothing beats a good meal and a long night's sleep.

There was nothing to be done about the time already lost. After all—

Knock, knock.

"I've brought your breakfast."

—breakfast had already arrived.

Today's meal was, once again, rice porridge. The fact that Claire had hurriedly summoned the maids to clean my room yesterday seemed to have done some real good; I didn't think my stomach would protest this time.

Except.

"I'll take my leave."

Two things were different. First, the maid had been replaced. Normally this errand would have fallen to Camila, but given what had happened, the story had followed the game script and swapped in a new maid. And second—

Just from her face, I can tell she's absolutely thrilled to be here.

—this maid clearly despised me. I knew exactly how Karsein was regarded within the ducal house, and the maid's intimacy box was a shade of white even darker than yesterday's.

By any measure, that was not a good sign.

Camila had fed Karsein strange things, sure, but she wasn't the type to spread slander or inflate rumors. This maid, though? Give her an ear somewhere to wag, and she might become a genuine threat to me. If that happened, my intimacy with the servants of House Vagrand would keep eroding, drop by drop.

"So in the end, the ducal house is a place I absolutely have to escape... but right now, I can't."

A world with a rigid caste system bolted into place, waiting for me with dangers that made Korea look like a stroll in the park. For all I knew, things were already happening that I didn't fully understand.

And here was the irony: the most dangerous place was also the best place to lie low and survive for now. Escaping wasn't even a dream I could afford to dream yet.

"First, I work through the story and dodge any choices that raise dead flags. If I can manage more than that, I kill the dead trigger itself."

On some community board, a user had once coined the terms: choices that dropped you straight into a bad ending were called Dead Flags, and the events that could activate those flags were called Dead Triggers.

It was the perfect description.

Flag needs no explanation. Trigger—a trigger, exactly as the word says. The moment a dead flag sprang out depended on how the events unfolded, and the gun stays trained on you until its time comes.

That was why everyone had been left scratching their heads, baffled by when, where, and for what reason some innocuous choice suddenly veered into a bad ending.

And now that I was inside the game, I was almost certainly standing in front of a colossal dead trigger.

"...I need to get Camila out of there first, don't I."

Even after my transmigration, the story hadn't deviated much. Karsein had collapsed from a cold, and his personal maid Camila had come under suspicion. She'd been named the prime suspect and thrown into solitary confinement.

If things stayed on this path, I was going to die—no question about it. Because of the monstrous dead trigger attached to a character named Camila.

There were faint hints available, at least: the maids' intimacy boxes and their direct reactions. Camila was the most beloved and socially gifted of all the maids, so much so that you could count on one hand the people in the ducal house who held a grudge against her.

And such a maid just had to be assigned to me, so the arrows of blame were bound to be flying my way. Getting Camila out of that solitary cell wasn't a choice. It was a necessity.

But before that—the episode came first.

Clack.

My door, which the maid had at least had the decency to knock on, swung open without so much as a by-your-leave. Well—I could let it slide for this particular person. After all, she was the eldest daughter of House Vagrand.

"What is it, Arina?"

***

Arina strode across the room and stared down, with visible distaste, at the pathetic excuse for a dining table—laid with nothing but a single bowl masquerading as a meal.

"You refused every dish they lovingly prepared, and this slop is what you asked for instead?"

I'd expected as much, but hearing it to my face still sank my mood. Not that I needed to tell her the truth myself. I already knew better than anyone that explaining would be a waste of breath.

"It's the same food as the rest of the house. What's the problem?"

"The same? The head chef who set that food on your table yesterday would faint dead away if he heard you say that."

"Ha."

"So you can still laugh, even now. When your family is about to shoulder an enormous disgrace because of you."

That laugh had slipped out of me out of sheer disbelief. As pathetic as it looked, this meal had saved my life. Not the gaudy banquet Claire and she had ordered up—this had saved my life. I bit down the words that nearly burst out on the spot, and that was where the hollow laugh came from.

I had plenty to say. I forced myself to hold it in.

Ding—!

So the main story finally begins.

What a magnificent lineup of options. The instant the episode kicked off, the path forked into several branches, and from the unbearable to the outright trap, every one of them was on display.

[ 6. That's not why you came, is it? ]

"That's not why you came, is it?"

There was no way Arina Vagrand, of all people, had come all this way over a bowl of porridge.

"This isn't something that really needed to be delivered to me, is it? That thing in your hand—you came here to show me that, didn't you?"

"Hoo. Right. You're correct—I didn't come here over your meal. Wait a moment. There's more I need to bring."

Shortly after, Arina returned carrying another stack of documents. Even at a glance, this pile looked far larger than the first.

Every page was a profile of a servant working within the ducal house—what duties they had handled until now, what tasks they were currently performing, all of it investigated with meticulous thoroughness.

Which raised the obvious question: why was she showing me this? That was the real subject, surely.

"House Vagrand is currently in an extraordinarily busy season. With a major event approaching, we're pouring an enormous amount of time into its preparations, and there are other reasons stacking on top of that. And then you had to go cause an incident—so now, regrettably, we have no choice but to pay out even more money."

I could piece it together.

If every single servant was stretched that thin, then there was only one thing she could be getting at with me.

"So. You want me to pick the maid who'll serve me?"

"Well spotted. Since Camila, who endured your tantrums without complaint, is now under suspicion because of you, I intend to arrange other work for her—if only out of pity. The suspicion will be cleared soon enough."

With that, Arina seemed to hand the choice over to me.

But this wasn't a choice being offered. It was a rebuke dressed up as one.

She was dwelling on the fact that Karsein, as a master, was so vicious that no servant would willingly attend him—and that Camila had shouldered the work anyway, cutting straight through to that truth.

Right. She just hadn't said it out loud.

"All of this trouble has piled more work onto an already overburdened house. And it all happened because you neglected your own health."

That was what she was saying—no different from a scolding.

But.

I could not understand it at all.

How is any of that Karsein's fault?

He was the victim here, if anything. Forced to shower in cold water, dragged somewhere while sick only to be met with indifference, sent home without a single proper meal—

And then handed a dessert laced with malice on top of it all. He was nothing but a victim. Setting everything else aside, he was in no position to be chewing anyone out.

"Mother's going to have a headache over this too. If you have a conscience, you'll handle it yourself before it reaches her ears. The whole family suffered that way because of you, once again—"

And ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠there it was again—that family, family droning on and on.

I'd felt it from the very beginning, but her personality was, once again, exactly no different from that woman's.

"Kim Minhyuk, why are you so desperate to embarrass our family at every turn? Do you have any idea how hard it is to hold my head up because of you?"

"Unlike other kids your age, you live in a happy home on the money Mother works so hard to earn. So please, have some shame. Stop dragging dirt into our household."

Because it was the exact same thing I'd heard from my eldest sister in that house.

Ding—!

Right at the moment the bile was rising up my throat, a choice appeared. The right move was to pick the answer fast and kick this woman out—but in the end, I couldn't hold it in, and I fired back.

"The only one suffering here is you, doing this to m—!"

BEEEEEP! BEEP!

In that instant, my vision flooded crimson, my words were seized mid-sentence, and a warning window slammed itself across my sight.

The whole room hummed as though crimson warning lamps had flared to life on every wall, and a siren seemed to be shrieking relentlessly against my eardrums. At last, the status window opened.

Ha. Fuck.

Because I'd finally cracked and pulled something reckless, this monstrosity had popped up on me.

"Random," it said. But with a penalty like this, "random" was practically a death sentence in disguise.

It was bitterly absurd—apparently I wasn't even entitled to say what I wanted to say... though, fine. This one was on me. My mistake.

Still, I hadn't come away with nothing.

"At minimum, I'm only allowed to intervene within the story itself."

I'd gained information.

I could bend a given choice, but I couldn't refuse the choice itself at its root. That meant, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at the very least, I had to speak the key required lines. I also learned that while a choice was on screen, my actions outside of it were restricted. And... that the next slip-up would come with a no-mercy warning to kill me.

Considering it was information I'd bought with my life on the line, the price had been outrageous—but any one of these little cracks might someday become a flaw in the system I could exploit.

Be careful, Kim Minhyuk. Don't let your emotions take the wheel.

And so I had no choice but to sigh at the timer floating in front of my eyes, knowing the game would resume at any moment.

"Mother's going to have a headache over this too. If you have a conscience, you'll handle it yourself before it reaches her ears. The whole family suffered that way because of you, once again—"

Arina's line replayed in my ears, as though freshly entered into the record. My own outburst should have been audible to her too, but she showed no reaction whatsoever—or rather, it felt less like she'd ignored it, and more like it had simply been erased from ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ever having happened.

Forget complaining—I need to survive first. Pick the right answer, and... huh?

Mid-grumble, I spotted something lying on the floor beneath the shelf, glowing faintly. A Memorial, unmistakably.

The map for Karsein's room... that would be the carriage doll.

Memorials revealed Karsein's past, and though they were sometimes maddeningly hard to find, they could also point to the crucial key for resolving an episode.

I already knew the broad strokes of what happened here, but—

I'm certain that's not all there is to it.

It wasn't just gut feeling, either. The moment I reached for the carriage doll with the choice still hanging in the air, my vision flared brilliant white.

***

It was an ordinary day, warm with sunlight.

Following the spring rays, the citizens of the empire started their day with vigor, their faces brimming with life.

The spring sun reached even the slums. Even for the children who didn't know their own parents' faces, children who had been nothing but abandoned on the streets, the spring that arrived after a bitter, bone-deep winter was gentle and warm.

And then, one such day—

Life kindled in the eyes of a lady who had wandered the whole empire with dead eyes, searching for a single child.

"Ah...! Here. Here you are!"

And the person standing before that newly-alive gaze was—Karsein.