Farm Management Game (1)
The Demon King was stuffing the 400 gold she'd shaken down from Bisang into a yellow piggy bank.
"...You saving up money?"
At my question she snatched the piggy bank to her chest and glared at me, wary as a cat about to give birth.
"You take a single coin out of this, you're dead."
...Did I eat something stupid? Why would I touch your piggy bank?
"What are you saving up for?"
My curiosity was piqued. What could a sitting Demon King possibly want to buy with saved-up money?
"...There is something. It's a secret. I'll tell you later."
She came closer, rattling the piggy bank with a clink-clink as she spoke.
"You'll like it too. Hehe."
...A parachute, maybe?
After eating a combined breakfast-and-lunch on account of our uninvited guest, I sat down in front of the game console. More accurately, I was dragged there. The Demon King mashed buttons on the controller, picking a game.
Beep. Beep. Beep...
Thunk.
No! Fuck! Something else! Anything elseeee!
The cursor stopped on Bubble Bobble. The trauma of three days spent getting chewed out by the Demon King came flooding back all on its own. I'd even had nightmares of being chased by a pink dinosaur, that's how bad it was.
I'm done. I said I'm done!
A few days had passed since then, but I could still hear that boing, boing echoing in my inner ear. If I played any more of it, I might lose some irreplaceable piece of my soul.
"You want to play this again, don't you? Same here."
The Demon King giggled at the faint tremor in the corners of my eyes. Unlike me, who felt nauseous at the mere sight of a dinosaur's face, it seemed those sessions had become treasured, happy memories for her.
Not even close. You got that completely, fucking wrong.
"But we can't. You've got something you have to do today."
She scrolled right past Bubble Bobble and kept going, way down the list.
....!
This is—!
Live alongside the animal friends of Sprout Village, cultivating happiness as you go.
A tragic masterpiece we'd tried to start before, only to get shoved aside by Iron Fist. A tagline so wholesome it brought a dad-smile to my face all on its own. With a game like this, even that savage Demon King and I could play together, smiling, without a single fight.
I mashed the character creation button. A warm light ushered me into Sprout Village.
Please enter a name.
A name... Baek...
That's when I suddenly wondered what the Demon King's name was. It couldn't actually be "Demon King," right? The monitor was split in two. I looked at the name of her character, sitting to the right of mine.
666242
...Guess she just mashed whatever keys were in reach.
I didn't particularly need to use my real name either, so I mashed random numbers the same way she had.
956223
I finished typing and hit the create button. The peaceful sound of a country ox-cart rolling along filled the speakers.
"You'll like this once you try it. It's a game that makes you feel good."
"Yeah, it looks like it."
"Now that we've made characters, let's decorate the village. I'll show you how."
She looked a little pretty just then. A game like this... maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all.
"Thanks."
Day three of digging potatoes. Just potatoes. Nothing but potatoes.
Just kill me...
What the hell was the director of this game thinking, that son of a bitch. If I ever saw him, I'd take this hoe I was holding and cave in the back of his skull. This farming sim was infuriatingly realistic. They dump you on a plot of land where not a single blade of grass will grow, toss you a stick, and tell you to farm.
....God damn it.
Poke. Poke. Poke.
Right. What's a game guilty of, anyway. The problem was the little psychopath who'd been putting me to sleep for three hours at a stretch, three days running, then sending me back to dig potatoes.
The result of this relentless hoeing: I'd dug close to 4,800 potatoes. And of those, I'd already handed over nearly 3,000 to that Demon King bastard.
"It's almost been six hours. You got those 300 ready?"
This corrupt-official of a girl had dumped a dirt hut the size of a cow shed and a vegetable patch full of rock chips on me, the newbie, then demanded the completely unreasonable tribute of 300 potatoes every six hours. The Demon King, casually walking off with potatoes soaked in my blood and sweat.
...Honestly, you don't even fucking need them.
My character was wearing rags even shabbier than the leather clothes I'd worn back in the day. Meanwhile, the Demon King's character — maxed out to the point of stagnation — was dripping diamonds from head to toe. Her character was currently on Mars, knocking back Dom Pérignon.
I asked carefully.
"Heehee..."
She laughed as she looked down at me farming through an astronomical telescope from Mars.
What the fuck is so fun about making me dig potatoes you don't even need. You little shit. I don't get it.
No — maybe the very premise of "understanding" her was wrong from the start. She was the Demon King, after all.
"Uhohoho. This is so much fun. It'd be great if you rode it with me... Heehee. Oh wait, you don't have a rocket?"
She was spinning around and around on the roller coaster she'd installed on Mars, making sure I could see. Meanwhile, my character just farmed on, arms trembling, pouring sweat.
....She's just like those girls.
No — at least they had a purpose. Eat cake at dawn. Drop the armor off at the blacksmith. Watch me do a ridiculous dance and laugh.
This is pure evil.
No purpose at all. Just focused on tormenting me, and nothing else.
Except that wasn't it. Her purpose was—
"Want me to cut the potato tax from 300 down to 100? And you won't have to pay when you go to the bathroom, either."
Her sweet proposal. So sweet it could rot every tooth in my head — I wagged my tail at it instantly.
"Really? Can you actually do that?"
"Of course. We're on the same team, after all."
Done. No more worrying about drowning in taxes. And that dogshit rule where I had to pay 50 potatoes every time I went to the bathroom — since I went so often — was gone too.
Why the sudden mercy, I wondered — and then her next words laid the truth bare.
"Eheheh, and in exchange, that chess loss from before is 1-1 now, okay?"
!!!!
Everything clicked into place.
Wow... she really holds a grudge...
She was still sulking over the games she'd lost before, so she'd dragged me into a completely unrelated farming sim to get her revenge.
Vicious... she's vicious.
Four days of buildup, all for this one moment. A fresh chill ran through me at the sheer, bloated size of her competitive streak and her obsession. A girl like that had been getting her ass handed to her this whole time — honestly, it was a miracle she hadn't slapped me yet.
"Hehe. Wanna take a ride?"
She held out her controller to me. Did she actually think I was dying to ride the roller coaster she was on?
I don't give a single fuck.
If I had that kind of free time, I'd rather ask her to cut the potatoes some more. What I wanted even more than that was for her to just let me stop playing this goddamn game and rest.
"Here!"
The Demon King set her controller on my hand like she was doing me a favor. She seemed to want me to feel the fruits of everything she'd poured into this game.
"Go on, go on. Don't be shy — take a ride."
Her eyes sparkled as she urged me to hurry up and ride. The look on her face said she was hoping I'd be moved to trembling by the bargain-bin cutscenes of this ancient indie game.
"Thanks."
Even I could tell how dry and stiff that answer was. She furrowed her brow.
"...What? You don't really want to ride it...?"
A chill settled over the room.
"As if. Move! The front seat's mine!"
Vwoooooom!
A roller coaster in a pixel game. It raced along rails she must have spent a long time building. The same looping animation cycling over and over — cheap production all the way.
"Isn't it great?"
At least I didn't have to press any buttons, so it was slightly better than digging potatoes.
"Isn't it great?"
"Yeah."
"...Isn't it great?"
"Yeah."
"..........Isn't it great?"
"It's like being a marlin swimming through a night sea of melted stardust."
I was one thing, digging potatoes for three days straight — but the Demon King had been riding this thing beside me for three days too. This wasn't ordinary crazy. This was next-level insane. She kept acting so human that I kept catching myself measuring her by human standards, without even realizing it.
"Alright, I'm done. I'll give it back now."
I handed her controller back. My farm mattered more. Tax season was coming up fast, and a drought had completely wrecked my last harvest. I didn't have time to sit around riding this thing.
"Uhohoho. Too bad. I spent decades building this roller coaster... Heheh. I'll let you ride it more. Just until I get back from the bathroom."
Having bestowed a kindness I hadn't even asked for, she puffed her shoulders up as far as they'd go and left the room.
Decades? Did she mean real time, or time that had passed in the game?
...Who cares.
There was something more important.
Let's clean her out!
I didn't even need to take everything. The potatoes she'd been shaking me down for over three days straight — I'd just move those over to my account. Then I wouldn't have to worry about taxes anymore.
I made the Demon King's pink-haired character sprint like hell after getting off the roller coaster. Then I walked her into the vault she treasured so much.
Sparkle. Sparkle.
Whoa... what is all this... look at that shine.
Gold, silver, jewels, and items scattered everywhere. I only cared about the potatoes. I opened the potato bin she'd been stuffing my potatoes into this whole time.
Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands...
The numbers look ready to punch through the screen.
?
....
Is this a bug?
More potatoes than I could count at a glance. So many the digits looked ready to punch through the screen.
You've got this many and you still made me pay tribute in potatoes, you fuck?
The more I thought about it, the more she had to be a complete lunatic.
Fine. I'll pull a million, stash them in my warehouse. She won't even notice. Then I'll just take them out and pay her when I need to.
A truly perfect plan. It felt a bit like paying taxes with money you'd stolen from the IRS, but this had been exploitation from the start.
Alright... one million... done. Withdraw.
...?
The game suddenly froze.
...Huh?
....What? Lag?
The instant my character lifted the potatoes labeled 1,000,000 from the chest — as if they'd made a pact — the frames cut out.
Uh,, uh?
Pat. Pat.
!!!!!
I heard the Demon King's bare feet walking this way.
Oh fuck! What kind of bullshit luck is this!!!
God damn it! If I get caught, I'm dead for sure!!
"Oh my, were my precious potatoes that tempting? You Alibaba son of a bitch? I have no more business with you. Goodbye."
BAAANG!
"NOOOO!!!"
I mashed the controller like a madman. But the pink-haired character, who'd been grinning as she pulled out the potatoes, didn't move an inch.
"No, no."
I thrashed, frantically mashing the confirm key, the cancel key, the d-pad — tap-tap-tap, beep-beep, beep-beep.
Click. Creeeak.
"I'm ba—"
A twist of fate, maybe. The lag that had been hanging there finally cleared, and every button I'd been slamming processed all at once. The screen whipped around at high speed. The vault closed. The Demon King's frozen character jerked around in every direction. It returned to the main menu. And then a button that made my heart drop just looking at it got pressed.
Delete this character?
Warning: Deleted characters cannot be recovered.
Huh?
Wai—
This character has been deleted.
...
Clink... roll, roll.
The can of beans the Demon King had brought dropped and rolled toward me. I didn't have the courage to look at her face. In the aluminum of the can, the hollow laugh of a man who'd given up on life was reflected back at me.