Living Inside a Game (1)
Living Inside a Game (1)
The elf doctor living in the cyberpunk world said to me.
"It's depression."
"Excuse me?"
The elf doctor, seemingly accustomed to that kind of reaction, continued speaking without even glancing at me.
"Statistically, over 75% of citizens living in Neon City have experienced feelings of depression. So you don't need to be too shocked."
"Ah, is that so?"
"Of course, if you actually get diagnosed with clinical depression, your socialization score will drop and you could face serious disadvantages."
Well, what the hell was I supposed to do about that?
I frowned at the doctor's noncommittal speech.
If your socialization score dropped, you'd receive penalties across all social systems, just like the censorship system of some communist country in my past life.
It wasn't something I could just ignore.
Maybe because they had an eye implant, a green light mechanically flickered along the doctor's iris.
"First, the initial detailed diagnostic question. Since when did you start thinking you were depressed?"
"I've never been depressed, though?"
I'd never been depressed, so what was this about?
Of course, for the sake of my precious socialization score, I had to have never been depressed.
Honestly, any normal citizen living in Neon City—where extreme 'capitalism' and reckless 'transhumanism' were rampant—would have given the same answer as me, a hundred times out of a hundred.
A plummeting socialization score?
Absolutely had to be stopped.
For example, even if the interest rate on my loan suddenly multiplied by five.
- 'That's not much of an increase, huh?'
That was the kind of situation where you'd receive congratulations.
Whether the doctor knew my feelings or not (they probably did),
they continued speaking in a businesslike manner.
"It's fine to think back to your childhood. There's no need to make it so difficult."
"...No, that's not it."
The question wasn't difficult; this situation where my socialization score could be obliterated was the difficult part.
My earlier statement that I wasn't depressed was cleanly ignored from the start.
"......Haah."
What a headache.
It seemed this wasn't a situation I could just brush past.
Childhood, huh....
Thinking about it, a fair bit of time had passed.
Including the fact that I ended up living inside a game world.
1. Living Inside a Game (1)
It was summer.
"...Ah. Cleared it."
The ending credits were rolling on the monitor screen right in front of me.
The names of countless people who contributed to making the game were scrolling up one after another.
But the ending was one thing.
I didn't have the leisure to enjoy the credits.
I stretched and leaned back against the chair.
Udeudeuk. With that sound, my hazy mind cleared up a bit.
"......What time is it? Whoa, it's morning?"
Sunlight was coming in through the gap in the curtains.
So the time that had passed was.......
Roughly 20 hours.
...I really did do nothing but play games like a madman.
What was left for me now....
Wrecked physical condition, a flipped day-night cycle, the self-loathing from having thrown away my weekend, and a snapped mental tether, more or less.
Hmm.
A very satisfying weekend.
I'd played for about 20 hours in one go, but my actual playtime was even longer than that.
Because for about a Dal now, I'd been sacrificing my weekends to do nothing but play this game.
The game's genre was cyberpunk..., sort of.
It was slightly unorthodox.
A cyberpunk world where demihumans like orcs and elves coexisted? Seriously.
Personally, I thought that part made it more fun, but still.
Also, you couldn't really call it arcanepunk since there was barely any magic.
Of course, the 50% discount was the biggest reason I'd started playing.
Anyway.
Because I'd focused entirely on the game for a whole Dal, my already narrow social circle had narrowed even further.
But I had no regrets.
Thanks to that, I had the ending credits right in front of me now.
I chalked it up as a mental victory.
[THANKS FOR PLAYING...... AND─.]
While I was spacing out for a moment, new text appeared on the monitor.
The rolling credits had ended before I knew it.
Only one English sentence remained, thanking me for playing the game.
I wasn't sure why it said AND instead of END.
Yeah. It was fun, so I'd played 20 hours straight.
But I was way too tired to savor the afterglow of clearing the game.
Ugh, my eyes hurt.
I gently rubbed my eyelids, which had been bloodshot and stinging for a while now, and with my other hand, I hammered the Enter key on the keyboard.
"I'm going to sleep no matter what."
[New mode unlocked.]
"I'll just check this and then sleep."
Hmm. This couldn't be helped.
A second playthrough-only mode that only appeared after clearing the game?
The gamer soul inside me shouted that I should at least check the new mode before getting some deep sleep.
Well, I'd already decided to do a second playthrough anyway.
I could just think of it as checking out the new mode while I was at it.
Though, since I was sleepy,
playing right now was a bit much.
I'll just make a new character and sleep.
The character's gender, naturally, had the unspoken rule of being female, but since I'd done my first playthrough as a female character, I decided to go with a male character this time.
Since I'd made up my mind to go with a male character, there was no need to painstakingly customize the appearance.
I quickly skipped through with the default settings.
Let's see here.
"Is this it?"
The 'Scenario' setting that determined the character's background and starting location in the game.
Among them, one option I hadn't seen when I first started caught my eye.
[ - Challenge - Stranger of the City]
[ - You are a John Doe unwelcome in the city. The place you open your eyes is the city's old garbage landfill... SKIP]
Yep. Right to skip.
I felt sorry for the planner who had worked hard on the game's setting, but I wasn't curious about the background right now.
If I really got curious, I could just pull up a wiki tomorrow before playing again.
At a time when I was this sleepy, I physically lacked the strength to do a deep lore-dive.
I quickly checked only the 'Traits' section, which was already determined by the scenario and had the biggest impact on gameplay.
"Frailty, Feebleness, Animal Hostility, Weakness to Drugs, Weak Stomach.... Ugh."
They'd made the character a complete wreck.
On top of that, there were even more bad traits beyond the negative ones I'd mentioned, continuing on.
Was I lucky that at least a trait like 'Chrome Allergy' wasn't visible?
Was this telling me to do a second playthrough?
Or telling me not to?
Was this the subconscious masochism of the creator crawling into the planning document and manifesting into the final product?
Even when I tried moving the mouse to delete the attached negative traits, they wouldn't disappear.
Only concise text appeared: 'Trait modification is not applicable for this scenario.'
......That's not the end of it, right?
Surely they didn't just wreck the character for no reason.
Of course, there was no rule saying I absolutely had to choose this scenario for my second playthrough.
But still, since it was a scenario nominally given only to those who cleared the first playthrough, I couldn't just ignore it and move on.
I scrolled all the way down.
Only then did I start seeing yellow text signifying positive traits, instead of the red text for negative traits.
Several positive traits were visible.
But among them, the one that stood out the most was.
"......Outstanding Magic Talent?"
Oh.
This was kinda tempting.
"I just can't resist concept play."
But wait, you could actually be a Mage in this game, huh?
Like I said earlier, I'd barely seen the word 'magic' while playing the game.
I never expected I could play as a Mage only after clearing the first playthrough.
I'd look up strategies and stuff tomorrow.
For now, I'd make the character, and once I woke up from sleep, I'd go at it again from the crack of dawn.
With that thought, I pressed the game's start button.
* * *
And when I came to my senses.
I was standing in the middle of a garbage dump.
On top of that, my body had regressed to about 10 years old.
At first, I wondered if it was a dream.
Unfortunately, it wasn't a dream.
Honestly, at first, I was a bit excited.
Ending up inside the game I was playing—wasn't that a common plot development even in novels?
Of course, that excitement didn't last long.
For about a full day.
I went without a single drop of water, let alone food.
I ran and fled from the corporate killer drones that cleaned the organic waste in the dump.
When I finally met someone who I could communicate with, they said I looked like I had nothing, punched me in the solar plexus, and then I went tumbling down a mountain of trash.
That snapped me awake real quick.
Even now, I still don't really know what sin I committed to suffer like this.
If I had just gone to sleep immediately without making a second playthrough character, would this not have happened?
I agonized over it dozens of times, but the answer didn't come easily.
Game world or whatever the hell, I had to survive first.
Like that, I survived for roughly 10 years.
The reason the timeline isn't exact can't be helped.
Because I spent several more years just scraping by in the garbage dump after that.
It wasn't a situation where I could care about time.
Anyway, in that process.......
I tried to latch onto the game's protagonist and ride their coattails (there was a separate protagonist).
Through all sorts of hardships, I escaped the garbage dump and entered Neon City, the center of the game's story.
Ignoring the gazes around me calling me talentless and clueless, I joined the protagonist's party and mooched off their boundless resources.
Ultimately, by progressing the game's main story line, I even succeeded in saving the city from near destruction.
(Of course, the protagonist did about 95% of it alone.)
Now that everything was over.
All I had to do was live peacefully and happily, but.
"Hmm.... Ultimately, it looks like a Grade 3 depression diagnosis will be issued."
"Ah."
...Thinking it over like this.
I had been in a state where it wouldn't be strange to get depression.
But separate from that, it was definitely right to avoid a depression diagnosis from a specialist doctor.
Even if you got a full recovery verdict later, it remained permanently on your record, and your fallen socialization score wouldn't be easily restored.
It was something that would hinder my happy-happy (subjective) Neon City life.
And I had learned a certain 'magic' a long time ago to resolve this situation.
Among all the magic I could use,
it was the most useful, and the one I'd used the most.
Judging by the reaction of the elf doctor, who was hesitantly looking at me without uploading the diagnostic results, it was a magic that worked almost 100% of the time.
That was.
I took out the magic (a data chip containing credits) I'd prepared for times like this.
I shielded it with my body so the sealed surveillance cameras I'd already checked wouldn't see, and passed it over.
The bribery magic.
The elf doctor, looking very accustomed to it, didn't change their expression at all and placed the electronic document they were holding on top of it.
"Ahem, hem. I will notify you of the results later via message."
"Ah, thank you for your hard work."
There's a strange rumor going around in society that bribes don't work well on elves.
Not true.
They work fucking great.
That's because the elves living in Neon City had already tasted both the bitterness and sweetness of life.
Most of the elves I'd encountered didn't match the image people usually had of elves.
Maybe those rumors were spread by low-grade citizens living in the lower layers, harboring fantasies about elves?
Still, they were an elf, nominally.
At the entrance of the hospital, there was a plant bonsai, something rarely seen in Neon City.
Looking closely at it, even that turned out to be a mechanically made ornament.
Equipped with an air purifier function to boot.
At that point, I realized this doctor was completely jaded by the mundane world.
I still found it difficult to understand the sensibilities of this city's people.
"Then I'll be going now."
Now that the situation was resolved, there was no need to waste any more time.
Probably, the elf doctor also wanted me to leave quickly.
That way, they could check the data chip with the credits too.
The elf doctor, who had gotten up from their seat before I knew it, escorted me out. Was this the effect of the magic, after all?
Being a Mage saved my life.
"And also."
"Yes?"
"You seem to be under a lot of stress. At times like that, doing something you want to do without thinking about anything else seems like it would be a great help."
"Ah.... Something I want to do, you say. Thank you."
"Don't mention it. Have a pleasant Neon City, then."
And so, my first heart-fluttering mental health evaluation came to a close.
* * *
[...So, you're saying you're just going to stay inside and play games for a week without going out?]
"Yep."
[.......]
The doctor told me to.