The Truth
He slipped the uniform shirt on with practiced ease, the stiff collar standing crisp against his neck. After years away from one, the school uniform had become familiar again. He fastened each button down the front with care and studied the figure in the mirror.
"Not bad. Looking sharp."
He muttered the compliment to himself, but the reflection still felt empty somehow.
"Where the hell did Angel run off to?"
The little pest hadn't come back since teaching him how to use Levatein's Regeneration. Maybe it had something to do with the trouble surrounding his sword.
He stared at Levatein, leaning at a slant inside the wardrobe.
"Ah, seriously. This isn't going to blow up in my face, is it?"
Worst-case scenario, they might try to take Levatein from him. Nobody was getting their hands on his precious baby. He stroked the blade once, tenderly, then slipped it into his inventory. It was an absurd weapon — a full 160-point stat boost just for keeping it on his person — but it drew just as many eyes, so he didn't carry it around in public.
He picked up the iron sword lying right beside it, strapped it to his hip, and headed for Alice's house as naturally as breathing.
Wonder what's for breakfast today.
With that happy thought, he started his Monday morning — the first day of a new week.
He threw open the wooden sliding door and bellowed.
"Good morning, everyone! Class 1-5!"
"...."
His classmates didn't so much as twitch anymore. Not that it mattered. Once the inter-class tournament started, they'd be placing their complete and total trust in him. Haha!
A gaze tugged at him from the seat in front. He turned his head toward it.
"Wh-what?"
The owner of that gaze was Violet. The moment their eyes met, her cheeks flushed and she drew her neck in like a startled turtle. Her violet hair was tucked neatly behind one ear, and hanging from that ear was the Arachne ornament he had given her last weekend.
"You were the one staring at me."
"I was not."
She raised her voice a notch, but there was no chance he was wrong. As someone with the latent ability known as Gigan, he was extremely sensitive to people's eyes.
"What, you trying to show off the earrings?"
"Forget it! I shouldn't have even..."
She grumbled and turned her face away. He tossed the next words at her casually.
"They look good on you. The earrings."
Color flooded Violet's cheeks so fast he could watch it happen.
"J-just because you compliment me doesn't mean... I'm not going to give you anything, you know?"
She tugged a lock of violet hair forward to hide her burning face, and the whole performance was unfairly cute.
"Jojun..."
Alice pinched his arm.
"Again?"
"Ah... it's nothing."
He had been gazing at Violet in perfect contentment. He hurried back to his seat with Alice before the pinch could turn into something worse.
The last desk by the window. The classic player's seat. He had barely settled onto it when the sliding door rattled open and their homeroom teacher walked in, right on cue. She tossed her faculty planner onto the podium with a careless thud and started morning assembly.
"Class president. Greeting."
"Class 1-5, atten-tion! Greetings!"
"Good morning."
"Right. Did you kids rest well over the weekend? I worked. Haah..."
She grumbled around the ballpoint pen she was chewing, the weary resentment of a working adult radiating off her in waves.
"Anyway. Regular classes today, nothing special. Class president — skip first period and go up to the principal's office."
"Me?"
He pointed at himself, wondering what this was about.
"Yes, you. Kid's already going deaf. Assembly ends, you go straight up."
Called to the principal's office, just like that? He hadn't done anything wrong.
Oh. Right.
A piece of information surfaced. The principal of this school was the Student Council President's mother. In that case, it probably wasn't anything bad.
"Jojun. You didn't do anything weird, did you?"
Alice was looking at him with open suspicion.
"Come on. What would I have done?"
He told her not to worry, but she kept watching him like he was a crime scene she hadn't finished processing.
"What, you got something in mind?"
"No. Nothing at all."
He'd find out once he got there.
Their teacher wrapped up assembly with a tired face and started tapping first period's material onto the board with chalk. He bowed.
"I'll be going then, teacher."
He left the classroom. The principal's office was on the fourth floor, if he remembered right — he'd seen it while wandering the building in search of the Otherworld. He climbed the stairs, turned left, and there it was: a green wooden sign that read Principal's Office. His memory really was pretty good.
"Excuse me."
He slid the door open, and a room that looked every inch a principal's office spread out before him. A broad desk of gleaming wood. Sofas upholstered in expensive-looking brown leather. Antique porcelain and lush greenery arranged along the walls.
And behind the desk, reclining in a black chair, a man.
Messy white hair jutted out in every direction. The circles under his eyes ran deeper than even their homeroom teacher's. At a glance, the man looked like he was advertising that something was very wrong with him.
"Who are you?"
This was definitely not the principal. The white-haired man had somewhat androgynous features, but the chest bared by his unbuttoned white shirt was far too flat. If this were the Student Council President's mother, she'd be a blonde with the same generous, maternal bust as her daughter.
"Ah."
The man tipped his head at the sound of Jojun's voice and looked over.
"You've arrived."
He raked a hand through his white hair, turned his body toward Jojun, and regarded him with grey eyes. Those eyes were strange. Unsettling. They weren't lifeless, exactly, but something about them was dead — the gaze, if he had to put it into words, of something that was not quite human.
"There is no need to be on guard. I did not harm the principal and then take this seat, if that is what you are thinking."
The man delivered that bone-chilling line and then roughly rubbed the corners of his eyes, as if he were simply tired.
"Who are you."
Jojun put an edge on every nerve he had. His muscles drew taut, ready to draw steel at any instant, and his left hand quietly closed around the scabbard.
"Ah. If you kill me, you will be in a great deal of trouble. Operator 14 would have stopped you at all costs, had they been here."
The man showed both empty hands, signaling surrender.
"Operator 14?"
"Ah. You don't know the serial number? I mean the Guide. The Guide. The one who assists at a Player's side."
"Angel?"
The man heard the mutter and chuckled.
"Well. You could think of them that way. They do have wings, after all."
"Who are you."
In all his time in this world, not a single person had known Angel existed. No one was supposed to.
"A pleasure to meet you, Player. I am Mubaek, head of the Board of Directors — assigned as your collaborator in this world."
The Board of Directors. Angel had mentioned it once, in passing. An organization that handled conveniences for him behind the scenes, or so he'd been told...
"So? Why are you here?"
Ally or not, the man called Mubaek still made his skin crawl. Something in his gut was telling him this was bad.
"Rather than rush to conclusions, let us take our time. We have plenty of it, after all."
Mubaek rose from the chair with languid slowness and flopped onto one of the facing leather sofas. He crooked both hands in a loose gesture toward the sofa opposite, inviting Jojun to sit. Reluctantly, Jojun unhooked the sword from his hip, laid it neatly on the cushion, and sat across from him. The plush leather softly embraced him wherever it touched.
"First — do you know what the Board of Directors is?"
Mubaek asked it in a courteous tone. To hear him speak, he might have passed for a kindly man. But those hollow, ashen-grey eyes held not a shred of warmth.
"Angel told me it's an organization that helps me."
"Ah. So you have heard of it. An organization that helps..."
He drummed his thin fingers against the sofa a few times and smiled a twisted little smile.
"Well. That is not wrong."
He went on.
"More precisely, we are an organization that helps — and mediates. A sort of middle management, if you like."
"Middle management?"
"Yes. In a sense, we are also the ones who adjusted this world's difficulty."
"Don't tell me you're the one who set it to Hell Mode?"
The man responsible for Hell Mode — the tier above Hard Mode — was this Mubaek?
"Ah. Is that what you call it? Haha... Hell Mode..."
He laughed, and the laugh was bitter.
"Player. Have you noticed anything strange about this world?"
Anything strange.
"Compared to my world, everything's strange. Demons, abilities, Shooters — none of it makes any damn sense."
"Is that so. You have not been here long, so perhaps you would not know."
Mubaek repeated the words my world under his breath a few times, then looked at him again.
"Player. Have you seen even a single person here catch a disease?"
"No. But that's obvious—"
Mubaek cut him off.
"You would think it obvious. But in this world, the very concept of 'disease' does not exist."
"What?"
"Because I decided it would be so."
The information landed too fast. His thoughts tangled. Mubaek continued in the same even voice, as if he were discussing the weather.
"Every world has a balance. If one side rises, the other must fall. This is a law that cannot be broken."
Mubaek swept a hand through the empty air, and a pure white balance scale appeared with a dull thud.
"This world must pay a price simply for existing."
The left pan sank in a long, sliding drop.
"And so we administrators must decide the 'price' for that. For example — demons."
He flicked a finger. A black stone settled onto the right pan with a clack, and the scale found its balance.
"This is how we regulate the world's measure."
He spread both hands wide, showing off the demonstration as if it were a parlor trick.
"Wait."
Jojun's head throbbed. This was a game world. So why did it have settings this granular, this complete?
"And here is a more interesting fact. The left pan of this world — the rewards that require a price — I..."
The left pan sank and sank, with no bottom in sight.
"...brought this much."
A smile steeped in madness spread across Mubaek's face.
"Player. Then what do you suppose happens to the right pan?"
"You... don't tell me."
"Yep~ that's right. A matching price must be paid. The demons on this side rise by that much!"
Black stones poured onto the right pan in a mad, clattering cascade.
"Thanks to that, our world had been a happy one — free of war, disease, natural disasters, and all the rest."
Had been a happy world. Then what about now?
"Then what happens to the people. The people living in this world right now."
"They pay the price, of course. If they pay it properly, a happy world awaits them going forward. If they cannot..."
Mubaek's ashen-grey eyes curved in a peculiar way.
"You."
Jojun looked at him and opened his mouth.
"What the hell are you?"
"Did I not say, Player? I am an administrator who regulates this world's measure."
He added a word, almost as an afterthought.
"Merely a slightly unusual administrator who loathes this world that exists to extract Causality."
That bad feeling from the first moment he laid eyes on this man had not been for nothing. This bastard was insane. Properly, thoroughly insane.
"Now it is my turn to ask a question. Do you know what 'role' you are?"
"...."
Jojun ignored the madman and simply glared.
"That's fine. I shall tell you."
Mubaek chattered on as if he were having the time of his life, waving a hand through the air. A white syringe appeared with a snap.
"You existed in this world before you ever arrived. Ah! Not the 'you' currently inside it — I mean the body. The shell."
He rolled the syringe through empty air in a dizzying, restless motion as he spoke.
"Think of that body shell as a syringe, and listen carefully. The syringe's purpose is the last line of defense to keep this world from being destroyed. Insurance — so that a vaccine can be injected at any time, whenever the disease called demons grows beyond anyone's ability to handle."
He went on.
This world... it probably wasn't just a game world after all.