Chapter 27: I Have Discovered a Proof That Horror Games Are the Worst, but This Margin Is Too Narrow to Contain It
The room was dark, and yet it was wide. The only light in it came from a short-circuit spark, crackling and spitting as if to announce the danger.
"Those damned bastards. I know supplies are short, but telling us to go out with this few people and this little gear is no different from suicide. I said so."
The man let out a heavy sigh. He knew the worth of his own existence better than anyone, and everyone still alive surely knew it just as well.
Bzzt!
A spark leapt up without warning at his side. In the brightness it threw across his surroundings—
"...Disgusting."
Corpses lay strewn without number. They were the colleagues who had left the base with him. No—calling them colleagues might already have been a stretch. Put precisely, the base had attached them to him as watchers.
"...Well. Shouldn't you resent yourselves for being born into a world like this?"
Telling himself there was no helping it, the man rationalized as he slowly bowed his head.
"This can still be used."
He searched the corpses of his former colleagues and gathered what he needed: water, medicine, food, a knife, bullets. Dog tags were useless, so he threw them away at once. If he meant to survive, he had to keep himself as light as possible.
Anyone watching might have condemned him for desecrating the dead. There was not the slightest hesitation in his movements. If someone who would say such a thing appeared in front of him, he would sooner raise his middle finger and ask:
I'm already sacrificing myself for the likes of you. You want me to worry about that too, you trash?
And no one would be able to argue. Without this man, humanity would surely go extinct.
"Haa."
Once he had secured every supply he needed, the man drew one last deep breath and closed his hand around the knife. It was something he had repeated any number of times, and still this, of all things, was what he could not grow used to. Even so, he shut his eyes, offered a prayer to God, and brought the knife down hard.
With a wet, heavy thock, a former colleague's arm came free. The man seized it and brought his mouth to the stump, where blood was welling out.
"Ngh."
Slowly, he set his lips there.
Anyone who saw would have flown into a rage, declaring he had no right to call himself human, and jabbed a finger at him. But if a person who would say that appeared—
So what, fucker. You want me to die too, then?
—the man would certainly answer just like that.
"J-just die! D-die, and turn the game o-off—end it!"
The protagonist, a middle-aged man with gray hair, flung the arm to the floor as he said it.
"Th-that's what I want to say!"
"Calm down, Izumi."
"B-but if I don't yell, I-I'm so scared I think I'm actually g-gonna cry..."
Why did they put in a setting where you need human blood to use a zombie's power? And why render a scene this cruel in such detail? I can feel the developers' malice....
"Well, if you cry, that's fine by me. Means I don't have to run the endurance stream..."
"H-how can you say that. M-Miss Koga, are you a demon?"
"What are you talking about. I'm Koga Suzuha, an angel who wants praise from everyone."
I see. So Miss Koga was a demon after all....
"B-but aren't you scared, Miss Koga?"
"Hmm."
Miss Koga considered my question for a moment, then quietly nodded.
"Well, I told you last time, didn't I? It's not that I like them, and it's not that I hate them. In the end I know it's a game, so I can't get immersed, and that means I'm not scared either. I'd rather watch people with good reactions play than play it myself."
"I've watched a lot of Dawn playthroughs, and I don't think I've seen anyone react as entertainingly as you, Izumi."
"I-I'm not having fun!"
I answered like that, and still worked the keypad, trying somehow to push the game along and finish it as fast as I could.
And then—
"GYAAAAAAAH?!!"
The instant I turned around, I had to watch a zombie's arm surge up from beneath a corpse, straight toward the protagonist. I clung to what reason I still had, yanked out the gun, and mashed the A button at once—
—but the response must have been too slow. The protagonist was already having his arm torn into, and his HP had dropped below half.
"Eeeeeek!"
The face! The zombie's face is too close! It's gross! I hate it!
The sight of him swinging an arm chewed ragged, bone laid bare, made me want to squeeze my eyes shut from looking alone. The chat, though, was feasting on that reaction of mine—a festival in the most literal sense.
"Izumi. Don't just spray the gun there. Roll back once, get your body clear, and then keep attacking."
And from right beside me, Miss Koga's coaching kept coming.
What is this? Is this place hell?
"Hah... hah... hnnngh..."
Breath's short. Mayday. Dit-dit-dit-dit-dit....
If I didn't cling to some useless thought like that, the tears were going to spill any second. Even so, I followed Miss Koga's advice, rolled back once, and opened some distance from the zombie.
Rest. Right. Catch this scary thing, and then rest for a bit. N-nobody would complain about that much, right? Playing this garbage game straight through, no breaks, until it's completely cleared is insane.
The moment I somehow shaved the zombie's HP down to nothing, the protagonist spat that line and drove a knife up into its jaw. Then, in a flash, he wrenched the blade and took the zombie's head off without a moment's hesitation.
"Ugh, g-gross..."
A headless zombie swaying back and forth, then collapsing as blood sprayed—there was absolutely no way to pretty that up with wishful thinking.
That's what I wanted to say....
"O-okay, then I'll s-save for now and t-take a break."
HP's empty, so I'll drink some bloo— no. A potion.
Something about the chat was off. All I was doing was trying to drink a potion, and yet a whole meadow was sprouting in there.
Did I look that pathetic? Well, yeah. People watch horror-game streams to see exactly that. Miss Koga said my reactions were incredibly fun, so it isn't a response I can't understand. She's right beside me this very moment, covering her mouth and laughing.
"...Huh?"
Was there a line like that when the protagonist drank a potion?
The thought flicked through my head, and in the same instant—
Rrrrrumble....
A tremendous roar rose from the ground, and the dark room blazed white under an enormous short-circuit spark. All around, of course, corpses lay in numbers beyond counting.
Wait. I've definitely seen this scene somewhere....
I hadn't touched the controls at all, and yet the protagonist's view dropped downward. And what was there—
"HYAAAAAAIIIIEEEEEEK?!"
—was a huge zombie's hand, swollen with livid veins, clamped around the protagonist's leg.
"Ah..."
This was definitely in the teaser....
The floor gave way in an instant. The game's protagonist was dragged, in that same instant, down through the collapsing floor by the zombie's hand.
What I saw down there was a zombie vast and revolting on a completely different scale from anything so far.
"HYAAAAAAAAAH?!"
From between a long, split mouth, a glistening tongue filled the space in front of the protagonist—no, filled my entire view. How was I even supposed to describe something that disgusting? My brain couldn't do it. Not this.
"Izumi. This is the final boss of the first stage."
This thing is the first stage? No. I really, truly hate horror games.
And then I watched sticky saliva drip from above onto my character's head, a sight so awful it wouldn't have been strange to faint on the spot.
"HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!!"
"Hic... hnn... I-I don't want this anymore.... I w-want to stop. Hic. I want to stop..."
In the end, I lost my grip entirely.
"Nngh."
I had ended up crying twice in a single day. But the second time? It was a horror game made to be terrifying specifically so it would make people cry, so... it was fine to consider that one invalid, wasn't it?
"You calmed down?"
"Mm..."
The stream, well—obviously, Miss Koga had ended it for me. I hadn't been in any state to look at the chat, or to shut the broadcast down myself. Fortunately, she said nothing had gone wrong. If anything, everyone had enjoyed watching me cry....
"If you're calm, want to see what you looked like earlier?"
"...Eh?"
Miss Koga smiled brightly and pulled her phone from her pocket. She unlocked it and opened the gallery, and what came up was a video of me.
"W-wait a second! M-Miss Koga? Why would you film something like...?!"
On the phone screen, I had both legs drawn up onto the chair, both hands clamped over my head, my eyes turned away from the monitor.
"Well? Isn't it incredibly cute?"
"I-it's not cute, so stop—p-p-please turn it off! N-no. Delete it!"
"Come on. I'll be the only one who watches it, so let me have it."
I could definitely feel the heat climbing into my face. If I looked in a mirror, I would be as red as an apple.
"I-I don't want you to?!"
"So mean."
In the end, I had no choice but to forgive Miss Koga for keeping the video, on the condition that she absolutely never show it to anyone else.
Could Miss Koga actually be a fallen angel....
"Then I should get going. You don't have to see me out."
Right to the end, I still couldn't quite meet Miss Koga's eyes. But an offline collab had already taken an enormous amount of courage, so I told myself it couldn't be helped.
"I'll text you once I get home. Even if you're lonely by yourself, hang in there, okay?"
"...I-I'm not l-lonely at all."
Miss Koga said that, stretched, and got up. I kept my head lowered and lifted a hand toward her to wave—
...Huh?
Even if you're lonely by yourself, hang in there, okay?
By... myself?
Now that I thought about it, Mom was away on a business trip again this time, and she wouldn't be coming home for a while. My sister went without saying. Watching the house alone was something I was used to, but tonight, alone at home...?
What flashed through my mind was the giant zombie from Dawn Never Breaks, showing that glistening tongue between its torn mouth.
"N-no..."
"Hm?"
At my mutter, Miss Koga turned her head, if only for a moment, and looked at me.
"Did you call me?"
I know. I know this is an incredibly troublesome thing to ask. But if I let Miss Koga leave like this, I will never sleep tonight. No—not just fail to sleep. I'll spend the whole night shaking by myself. If it gets bad, I might cry again.
But I'm scared. That thing is definitely going to show up in my dreams.... Calling it trauma wouldn't even be enough. Just imagining it is already putting a wetness in my eyes.
"M-Miss Koga."
"Hm?"
"U-um, th-that is. T-tonight, h-here... c-could you s-stay over?"
The pitch-black eyes of Miss Koga, which I was properly meeting for the first time today—
"...Huh?"
—were unmistakably colored with bewilderment.