Farm Management Game (2)
"...."
"...."
...
...
Fuck.
The window swam into view.
Wouldn't jumping be better than getting torn to shreds?
A pathetic thought if there ever was one. But given the situation, I couldn't help it. Like a protagonist being chased by a killer, throwing himself off a cliff into the sea.
"..."
...
I couldn't even get a word out. Hell, I still couldn't lift my head.
I let my gaze wander in a wide arc around the Demon King, taking in the room. Dark, quiet, and spacious. For the Demon King, who'd been alone in this place all this time, this game might have meant more than just a game. Maybe, to her, the world inside Little Farm was the real one, and this was the fake.
Her city on Mars, packed with so many lights it blazed. Unlike here, there hadn't been a sliver of darkness in that place.
What kind of ridiculous sentimentality is this, you dumbass Baek Dongha...
People get sentimental when they're about to die.
My eyes kept spinning around her, avoiding her. I knew. Sooner or later I'd have to look at her. Whether I lived or died.
And then, the way you'd peel a strip of scotch tape off your skin, I carefully, carefully moved my gaze to the Demon King's face.
...
I'd seen that face before.
It was the face of people hit by Dorothy's mental collapse skill. First the color drains from their eyes, then the movement stops, and before long they're nothing but a hollow shell with the soul gone.
Now I just need to disappear too.
Heh. Have I lost it? In novels, people always drop a famous last line before they die. This one might rank above average.
"Hey."
The Demon King's voice echoed through the silent castle. I felt like I was floating in a pitch-black night sea, surrounded by man-eating sharks.
"Hey."
Answer her. Live or die, you've got to find out.
"...Yeah."
Even to my own ears, I sounded like a terrified badger.
".....Why'd you do it?"
A flat, affectless question. Exactly the sequence I'd expected. So the answer I gave was the same.
".....I'm sorry."
No answer came back.
I looked back at the character select screen. Where the Demon King's's beloved pink-haired tycoon character had been, a hollow phrase now sat in its place.
You think an apology's gonna make this go away... fuck...
But what else could I do? All I had was my mouth.
Her bare feet came toward me. Slow. Distinct. Pad. Pad.
The terror that had been filling my chest eased, just a little.
You've fought well on your own, Baek Dongha.
Memories of everything since I'd arrived here flashed by. The breaking, the shattering, the blood, the moments that were never easy. That's enough. It's over. This is far enough.
A whisper of movement.
?
The Demon King walked right past me—I'd had my eyes gently closed—and stood in front of the game console.
"Resurrection."
A vast whoosh of light unfurled around the console.
...
She was casting Resurrection—a revival spell said to require the combined mana of twenty-six high priests—on a lump of iron. It was a cultish scene if I'd ever seen one.
"Resurrection."
"Resurrection."
"Resurrection."
The console groaned and roared with each cast, like an engine that wouldn't turn over.
Stop.... just stop.
The Demon King looked for all the world like a mother groping her dead son's balls.
And a part of me was hoping for a miracle too. Maybe, just maybe, the pink character would come back.
But of course nothing of the sort happened. The light wrapping around the monitor faded.
".....It's not working."
The Demon King sank to the floor right there. She undid the hair tie she always wore, and the black hair gathered on the right side spilled onto the ground.
"Hhk, hngk.... euhhngk... euhhk....!"
Then she hugged the game console and collapsed onto it, sobbing.
.....What am I supposed to say?
Even my reasonably functional brain couldn't come up with an estimate. What does a bus driver say to parents who lost their child in a crash?
A verbal apology isn't going to cut it.
What was needed now wasn't emotional window dressing, but an intuitive solution. Bringing up insurance money to a bereaved family would be unforgivable—but the difference here was that a character could be remade.
"...I'll remake everything from scratch."
Her vicious wildcat eyes pierced straight through my heart.
I'd felt this kind of rage from her before. When she'd caught the rescue letter I'd sent. Back then, it had felt like a tangle of complicated emotions. The color of what she was showing now wasn't varied, so it was easy to pick out.
Rage. Emptiness. Grief.
Don't flinch. Flinch here and you're finished. Nothing. Not a damn thing.
I laid a hand on the Demon King's shoulder. Small and white, like any other girl's.
"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, but we can't undo it... so I'll make it again."
"..."
"It'll go faster with two of us."
"..."
The silence that didn't come back felt like it was demanding I pay a steeper price.
I swallowed.
I really, really didn't want to say this, even as empty words.
"Even if it takes decades."
Just barely audible. At my low mutter, the Demon King's closed ears perked up. And through the black hair, I saw a flash of red eyes turning toward me.
"...Alright... swear it to God."
"...? I'll swear."
Huh?
Did I see that wrong?
Faint, but—the Demon King smiled, just a little.
...What's this sense of unease?
The Demon King remade her character. The reborn pink-haired character was sprawled out with her legs crossed behind mine, who was busting his ass harvesting potatoes.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
The Demon King had a strangely satisfied look on her face. Why did she look happier now, stretched out like a starfish on a wooden cart, than she had riding the roller coaster?
"I wanna ride a donkey."
"...Then ride one."
"Gotta have one first. They're five thousand potatoes each."
"Yeah. That's expensive. What, do they lay golden eggs?"
"I wanna ride one."
"I don't think I can buy you one. I don't have five thousand potatoes."
"...My old character could've bought a hundred thousand donkeys..."
"...They do installments? Twelve months?"
Being one hundred percent at fault, I'd been reduced to a position where I had no choice but to fulfill her every colorful, selfish demand. I'd already been getting beaten up and shaken down, but now she was extorting me without even a pretext. What's that called again? A salt-farm slave?
"My character wants carrot juice."
"How does a character even talk."
"She wants some."
"I'll start a carrot farm right now."
"She wants it now."
"How much?"
"Five hundred potatoes."
"That vendor. Isn't that guy a total scumbag? Looks like a bandit to me. Just catch him and I'll buy it with the bounty..."
"Are you buying it or not?"
"There's potatoes left in the warehouse, so wait."
There weren't. I'd handed over everything except this month's rent. Four days of working like a dog harvesting potatoes, all cleaned out by that spoiled Demon King. This is why you have to marry well. Maybe not marrying at all is the way to go.
The Demon King gazed contentedly at her pink character slurping down five hundred potatoes' worth of—no, carrot juice.
"Heheheh..."
The Demon King's character had gone from a universe-spanning tycoon to a country bumpkin in worn-out overalls. And yet the Demon King looked happy.
"Want a sip?"
"You can't give me one."
"That's right."
Just like Nine.
Then the words that came out of her mouth froze my brain.
"Eheheheh. Heheh. This is fun."
....!?
I whipped my head around at the unease I'd been feeling this whole time.
"...What did you just...? What did you say?"
"...Huh? What did I say?"
The Demon King's unfathomable abyss revealed itself before my eyes. I tossed a potato in. It just kept sinking. I never heard it hit the bottom.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
The room was filled with nothing but the quiet sound of a hoe. A wave of dizziness hit me.
"Can I go to the bathroom?"
"A hundred."
"Here."
I paid the doubled toll and stepped out into the dark hallway.
Thud. Thud.
...
Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud.
What if.
What if, just hypothetically.
What if, really.
What if all of this was the Demon King's design?
The moment I raided the Demon King's potato warehouse, the game froze like it had been waiting. And then the character was deleted. It meshed together too precisely to be coincidence.
In that case, the following sequence fell into place naturally.
She hiked the taxes so I'd steal the potatoes. She deliberately showed me everything she'd built over all those years, to crank up the guilt when it got deleted.
...
And above all else: when the Demon King had been sobbing, her eyes had been dry.
All of it was her design? She'd spent a world she'd built over decades... for this moment? To keep me by her side for decades, farming? Right next to my character. Making me farm potatoes so she could grind the ones I harvested into carrot juice and chug it?
A chill crawled up my back. The genre had just changed to thriller.
Just how long... how long had she been planning this? Since she made me farm potatoes? Since we started the game? Or... before I even got here, from the moment she made her character?
...
"Pfft."
No way in hell.
I'd gotten so used to overthinking everything that I was coming down with a case of paranoia. My imagination's been getting bloated for no good reason lately. The Demon King, who's innocent down to her bones, cooking up some elaborate scheme like this? That's not even a stretch. That's a full-blown delusion.
I survived this time somehow. Next time, I'll be careful not to screw up.
I splashed my face with cold water and took care of business. A hundred potatoes a visit. Might as well get my money's worth.
Thud. Thud.
When I reached the game room again, a small sound from inside made me prick up my ears.
.....Heheh.
!?
...Heheheh.
Behind the closed door, the Demon King was harvesting potatoes, laughing under her breath. She was laughing. She was definitely laughing. Like any other demon.
A lock clicked shut around my heart.
...
From the very beginning. All of it. I'd been dancing in the palm of her hand.
Crazy... crazy demon bitch...
The genre had changed. To thriller.
...
Like this... I should just turn around... I want to run.
Yeah. Let's do that...
I turned around, searching for an exit that didn't exist, and started walking blind.
Quietly...
Quietly...
Click. Creeeak.
!!!!
The Demon King opened the door, poked her head out, and said:
"You're back? Come in."
Her red eyes curved like a crescent moon. That wide mouth opened, and it pronounced my death.