Ghost Plateau (2) — The Mugunghwa Flower Has Bloomed

"There's still so much left to do!"

That was her — the girl who'd seized my hand with a smile so bright it could have lit the plateau, and dragged me straight into this. By my count, I had been imprisoned in a game of The Mugunghwa Flower Has Bloomed for six hours now.

"The—mugunghwa—flower—has—bloomed!"

The Demon King had her palms clapped over her eyes, stuck to the tree like a cicada. Six hours in, her energy hadn't dipped in the slightest. That huge grin of hers stretched so wide it threatened to hook over her ears as she snapped her head around. I found myself cursing her for the first time in a while, hoping her neck might actually break if she kept whipping it like that.

"You! You moved! You're it!"

"...Yeah."

I had become a strip of dried squid with every last drop of life sucked out of me.

"...Eheheh."

Our footsteps crossed at the center of the field. The Demon King gave my shoulder a couple of encouraging pats and threw me a wink, as if to say, You got this!

I'm gonna die. I mean it.

This was one of the Demon King's chronic conditions. The moment she started a game, she lost all sense of time, all sense of endings, and simply did not stop.

Six hours earlier, I had actually been fine with this.

"The mugunghwa flower has bloomed!"

The Demon King was a beauty who sat well outside the bounds of ordinary human standards, and her smile had a charm nothing else on earth could touch. If she ever went to Earth and charged ten thousand won a pop just to smile at people, she could have made a comfortable living. And here she was, without a trace of gloom on her face, whirling around again and again, utterly beside herself with excitement — over a children's game, no less.

...And besides.

She had floated the asinine suggestion that the penalty be forehead flicks, but I wasn't about to plant another gravestone on this plateau, so I talked fast and twisted the stakes into a home-cooked meal once we got back. In other words, I had taken this for a healing game: easy on the body, soothing for the soul.

We were playing to thirty. I filled my side first. Thirty to twenty-nine.

"I won. When we get back, you're making din—"

"What're you talking about? Don't you know deuce? You're only ahead by one."

...

The sore-loser Demon King pulled a fast one, exactly as expected. I was a little curious how she even knew the word deuce, but fine — I'd play along. Compared to the bottomless cheapness she was capable of, this was a concession I could live with.

Deuce. From here on, first to lead by two points wins.

Except the deuce never ended.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

She caught me with supernatural precision the instant I so much as twitched.

"You moved!"

"...This counts? ...Fine. Whatever."

And again.

"You moved!"

"Come on, calling that moving is a bit—"

"Nuh-uh. Don't make excuses. Excuses are the worst."

The Demon King, first-class referee, was so exacting she seemed ready to call the microscopic tremors generated by convection currents in the mantle beneath the earth's crust. So I decided to just hand her the win. What was one day of cooking, really?

The problem was that whenever I was it, she startled and flinched every single time I turned my head. Apparently a love of games and actual skill at them existed in inverse proportion.

And if I even tried to pretend I hadn't seen her get caught dead to rights—

"H-hey?! You! I just flinched — why are you letting that slide?"

Hopeless at the game, and still pathologically competitive. She'd probably take that to her grave. Assuming she even ages.

After swallowing it down for as long as I could — long enough I was about to put down roots — I finally spoke up.

"How about we stop and do something else? We've got a lot of stuff planned."

"No. We have to finish this first. If you put off today's work till tomorrow, the dog that chased the chicken comes running right back, you know."

"I want to do other things too, though."

I was her one and only best friend. Surely I was allowed to say at least this much?

Of course, I didn't come out with Listen, you glutinous-rice husk of a girl whose only claim to existence is being all soft and squishy — do you have a shred of manners? This is exactly why you don't play with shut-in tower freaks, for fuck's sake. I put it a little more delicately than that.

".....Then... everything we've done so far... what was all that for..."

To me, the one slowly withering from sheer boredom, it was a reasonable request. To her — the girl who had sprinted through hours of The Mugunghwa Flower Has Bloomed without once letting the tension drop — the news that the game was stopping landed like a bolt from a clear sky.

Her whole face fell.

...

Wow.

Looking that pathetic is a talent all its own.

...I was the one in the wrong.

How long had she been waiting for this day, up there at the top of the Tower? Telling a girl like that to stop here — wasn't that too much?

"...Sorry. That was on me. Let's pick it back up. My turn, right?"

I told her we'd start again, swallowing it like bitter medicine.

And so another eternity crawled by...

At last, a chance arrived to bring her down. Or rather — a chance for the game itself to collapse. Unlike me, who was steadily coming apart at the seams, the Demon King's focus had started to fray, and the number of times she startled when I turned around had dropped off sharply. She was a growth-type monster, though. There was still no sign of her stamina hitting bottom.

Please... just a little more...

The score sat at ninety-seven to ninety-six. She was ahead by one. The Demon King stood about ten paces from me, the one who was it.

I prayed.

God. If you're listening — please don't let the Demon King trip on a rock, or sway in the wind, or yawn. Just let this game end.

I finally understood why people go to church. When you're desperate enough, there's no one else quite in that guy's league.

I recited the phrase at a pace that was neither slow enough for her to pick a fight over nor fast enough to be unfair.

I whipped around.

"..."

"..."

Right behind me, the Demon King had frozen with one pale hand stretched out, motionless as someone struck by high-tier ice magic. Her pupils didn't so much as quiver. She didn't even roll her eyes. If The Mugunghwa Flower Has Bloomed were ever added as an Olympic event, she would have been the most promising ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠prospect on the circuit.

...It's over.

Looking at that unmoving figure — no, that genius taxidermied in place — I was certain. The curtain had finally dropped on this wheel of torment.

Huh. Why were my eyes getting wet?

Eight hours? Nine?

Whatever. What did it matter now... It was really, truly over.

I gave a weary little laugh, covered my eyes one last time, and turned my back on her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to face the tree.

And then—

A tap.

Her hand touched my back.

"It's ov... it's over..."

The Demon King clapped a hand over her mouth, drowning in the emotion of it. Yeah. That's your gold medal. Congratulations.

Part of me wanted to throw my arms around her, hoist her onto my shoulders, and fire off a celebratory cannon. That was not the model answer.

I wasn't about to rain on her parade now.

For the moment, galling as it was, I had to play the part of the defeated — bowing before the result.

I admitted my loss with a round of applause thoroughly seasoned with bitterness.

"Congrats."

"...Thanks. I only made it this far because of you."

There was no clock, and the Ghost Plateau sat in perpetual dark, so I couldn't have said whether it was day or night. We'd started right after eating our packed lunches, so it was probably the middle of the night by now.

...It's finally ov—

Time to get the campsite ready. I was about to tell her to pull the camping gear out of those terrifying demon hands of hers when I noticed she was scribbling something on a piece of paper I'd never seen before.

"...What're you doing?"

I leaned in to glance at the contents, and—

"No! You can't look at that!"

The Demon King snatched the paper behind her back mid-sentence. What was on there, a savings-account PIN?

"We should set up camp—"

"Wait. Next up is..."

?

A crack split the air. The Demon King shoved her head into the fissure and peered around inside.

Next up... is...?

A wave of terror rolled through me like a tide and took the strength right out of my legs.

A rolled-up sheet of paper slipped from where it had been tucked in the Demon King's bag. While she wasn't looking, I spread it open.

!!!

Fuck!!

I came within a hair of tearing the paper to shreds right there. The bucket list stretched on after that with no end in sight. And scattered through it, here and there, were death games — the kind that, once started, you were guaranteed to die in.

...

Effective immediately, I'm taking charge.

If I kept granting every demand of this playtime overlord, even a regressor with infinite resurrection would have his psyche cracked open and drop dead on the spot.

I tugged on the hem of the Demon King's skirt. She had her upper body shoved into the ruptured gap in space, rummaging for something. She turned back with a smile, her cheeks flushed a warm pink from the thrill of picking the next game.

"Hm? What is it?"

"Listen. You don't have the first clue what the romance of camping is supposed to be, do you? All you want to do is keep playing games... I'm kinda disappointed."

"...What?"

She startled — this girl who had clearly believed she was steadily assembling the perfect camping build.

She'd worn a camping guidebook thin on the kitchen table every single day. The words I'd just thrown at her were bound to land.

"...What did you just say?"

"Don't tell me you..."

"..."

"You're not a camping newbie, are you?"

The hit landed. The Demon King reeled. This imaginary camping master with a grand total of zero actual trips tried to hide her fluster, shifting from foot to foot. She was going for unbothered — for cool — but the damage was there: her pupils were shaking hard.

"Th-then you tell me. What's supposed to be romantic about camping."

"..."

I remembered a commercial slogan printed on a flyer at the front of a shop, from back when Rebecca had sent me on an errand to buy an outdoor sleeping bag. In this stingy world, a decent sentence was a rare enough thing that it had stuck in my head.

"You make your nest early, before night falls, and you light a lantern. Then you watch the dark settle in around you, little by little, and you feel it: I'm surrounding myself with light, together with someone precious. No matter how dark it gets, I feel safe. You get it? That's the romance of camping."

I had no idea if it would work. But if I stood here any longer I was liable to get dragged into a finger-wrestling match, so I had to try something.

"Th-the world... you..."

The Demon King clapped. Why a clap had to sound like a cannon going off, I couldn't say. I pitied the mosquitoes that would wander into her house without knowing any better.

Judging by the reaction, my little speech had landed.

"You — consider yourself graduated from camping newbie! Amazing! That's a gorgeous sentence."

And then, with those demon hands of hers, she started pulling the camping set back out.

"Let's get the campsite ready, hurry!"

"Yeah."