Declaration of Surrender

"I understand getting worked up—it's the entrance ceremony, after all. But honestly, jumping out of your seat and screaming while the Dean is giving his address—!"

The scolding from the professor—a slab of burly muscle stuffed into a white sleeveless shirt—never even reached my ears.

There was only one thing surfacing in my head.

'I really did die, didn't I.'

A few minutes ago, I had died. And not in some gentle, painless way, either—a monster I had never laid eyes on had drained the strength from my entire body and strangled me to death.

Wait, no—had it snapped my neck? Ah, fuck it. What difference did it make? Dead was dead.

"Ashburn. I'll be watching you closely from here on out, so I expect you to straighten up your behavior. Understood?!"

"Yes, sir..."

"Hmph, that answer had no spine at all! I asked if you understood!"

"FUUUUUUCK! I SAID I GOT IT—!"

"...?!"

The professor froze, apparently never having expected me ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to scream back.

I kicked my chair over and bolted for the exit.

My head was already fried from being freshly killed, and now this muscle-bound meathead was ranting and cursing me out from up front—how the hell was I supposed to sit there and take ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it?

"And your armpits smell absolutely rancid, by the way!"

Why was he even wearing a sleeveless shirt?

Under the stares of every student in the hall, I sprinted outside and made straight for the dormitory.

'I just want to hide somewhere. Anywhere.'

Dorm assignments were supposed to come after the ceremony, but thanks to the three days I had already lived here, I knew exactly where my room was.

Men's dormitory, first floor, Room 1101. Easy to memorize, and since the corridor running from the entrance was one long straight line, the sightlines were excellent—a room I liked.

Studio-apartment sized. An old bed, a wardrobe, a desk. The bare-bones setup was, if anything, soothing.

I perched on the edge of the bed and, almost without thinking, ran a hand over the back of my neck.

"Aaauugh..."

The sensation was still there, vivid as ever. Even in a world this crawling with monsters and with humans every bit as monstrous, that thing was unlike anything I had seen in all my years living as Ashburn.

"Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts."

Eyes shut, I dug around for the nicest thought I could find. The memory of winning rock-paper-scissors and getting to grope my childhood friend Seria's chest was, at long last, enough to slow my pounding heart.

"Hoo... I was a certifiable lunatic, wasn't I, Ashburn."

How had I even worked up the nerve to ask to touch her chest right there and then? Even by my own standards, what a piece of work.

Once I had steadied myself, more or less, I pulled the information window back up.

"Every single entry is exactly the same as before."

So we were playing every regression-story cliché completely straight. And seeing it laid out like this, the sections that had been redacted last time now stood in crisp focus.

"Bride of the Flower Shoes."

So it was some kind of epithet. But why bride? It was not as if Clara was a married woman.

'And honestly, she was just as shocked as I was.'

When that bridegroom thing had crawled out of the shoes, Clara had looked every bit as stunned as I felt—which meant she had not been running some calculated honeypot act on purpose.

"More importantly—if that thing's the bridegroom, doesn't that make me the dreaded Golden Sun overnight?"

Never mind that I was not blonde, had never seen the inside of a tanning bed, and was not remotely jacked. But if that was how I looked to him—some Golden Sun come to NTR his bride—then couldn't the Flower Shoes Bridegroom actually have been a knight of pure, devoted love all along?

"Bullshit."

Enough of that. I had a rough grasp of the situation now.

"Give me back my dating sim."

Because this was no cutesy romance simulator. This was squarely in ghost-story-and-haunting territory—the same vein as the SCP Foundation or the Backrooms, the kind of lore the whole community used to nerd out over.

Which meant—

"This is the one genre you never, ever want to be trapped in."

The worst of the worst—the kind of story where human lives are treated, quite literally, like disposable consumables.

While I was still turning the confusion over in my head, the chatter of male students and footsteps pounding like drumbeats rose from outside.

"Over here! Over here!"

"Whoa, I finally get a room of my own?"

"This is so great. Living with my little siblings every single day, you know—"

"This'll be my first time ever sleeping in a bed."

The entrance ceremony was over. Time for the male students to be shown to their assigned rooms and unpack their things.

'A few hours of free time before dinner.'

Which meant I had more than enough time to think about the message now floating in front of my eyes.

The notification window had appeared right before me. I could begin the Story.

It was the same message that had popped up when I died earlier—so what the hell did it actually mean? The access conditions now read "Met," so it seemed that fully opening the information had unlocked something.

"..."

I bounced my leg and folded my arms. If I had a cigarette, I would have lit one right then. Sadly, no such luck.

"Ugh, screw it."

Staring at the info window all day was not going to make it suddenly coo, "Aww, aren't you a cutie."

"I already came back to life once. Who's to say I can't do it twice?"

Reincarnated Ashburn, descend!

"Story, begin."

The moment I gave the command with a tilt of my chin, the next message popped up.

"Huh?"

A single book materialized as space itself twisted and warped. Weren't space-related spells supposed to be the exclusive domain of specialists?

The book that had appeared gave off a faint scent of flowers, its cover wound about with vines. Written across it was the title: Where Did the Red Flower Shoes Come From?

"Uuurk—!"

The instant the book opened, something surged up my throat. My body clamped down on pure instinct, wrestling back a wave of sudden nausea—and in the same breath, a flood of sentences poured into my head as though someone had force-fed them to me. I could feel it: the moment I opened my mouth, they would come spilling out, ready or not.

"Mmph—!"

In the end, I could not keep my mouth shut. I braced myself to spew vomit—what came out instead were sentences.

"Once upon a time, in a small mountain village called Deliz, there lived a girl who loved flowers—"

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

The next lines unfolded in my head one after another. Taking the stories Clara had told me during the time we had spent together as their raw material, the sentences knit themselves into completion.

"The girl's name was Clara Rose."

And so, alone, the moment I broke ground on the very first paragraph of Clara Rose's Story—

'What?'

Defect? Hunting? My brain had not finished parsing the words—but reality, as it always does, came calling without a shred of courtesy.

"KYAAAAAAAH!"

From beyond the window, from the direction of the girls' dormitory, came the screams of students.

"She got stepped on! Arinne got trampled to deeeath—!"

"Run! Ruuun!"

"What is that thing?!"

"A monster! It's a monster!"

"G-ge-get a professor!"

"It came out from under Clara's feet! It's Clara!"

They were shrieking so loudly that those blood-curdling screams carried all the way to my room.

'Oh, hold on—'

I clamped my mouth shut to stop the Story, but it was already too late. The screams swept straight from the girls' dormitory into the men's.

"D-did it crawl out of a World Scar?!"

"You absolute lunatic! Stop analyzing it and RUN!"

"Fuck! That kind of thing belongs over at the elite academy's side—why the hell is it coming for us?!"

"I-I'm pinned! It's crushing meee!"

"GAAAAAAH! My foot! My foooot! It's flattened!"

I threw my door open and checked the corridor. The male students, swarming the hallway in search of their own rooms, were being bowled over one after another by the stampeding crowd.

Worse, some of them lay there mangled, their bodies mashed flat like something pressed in a waffle iron. From the look of it, they had been trampled by the Bridegroom, which was now sprinting straight at me at full speed.

Yes. The Bridegroom of the Flower Shoes. A body painted pitch black, its entire form wound tight with vines. The thing that had killed me was charging at me like a tank, intending to do ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it all over again.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

The instant I saw it tearing down the corridor hard enough to smash it apart, I stepped back inside my room. Pure instinct, nothing more.

"Is this son of a bitch Usain Bolt or what?!"

The only thing the two of them had in common was skin color—and god, the bastard was fast. There was absolutely no outrunning that thing.

I slammed the door shut and scrambled to find anything that could serve as a weapon—

KRA-BOOOM—!

A single body blow shattered the door to splinters. Then it lunged, seizing my throat without a moment's hesitation.

"FU—CK—! SON OF A—!"

I thrashed and swung my fists, but the vines latched onto me began siphoning the life out of me all over again. And then I understood: I had not died of suffocation the first time.

My neck had been snapped.

KRA-CHAK!

"Go fuck yourself."

I raised my middle finger at the window that had appeared in front of me. Clara, sitting in the seat beside mine, flinched hard and scooted as far away from me as she could manage.

Defects? Suppression Rates? I had pieced it together with the game-strategy expertise I had built up over a lifetime as Lee Min-cheol: finish the Story, and the Defect's Suppression Rate rises—effectively sealing it away.

But—

'The second I start the Story, it pulls maximum aggro and comes straight to kill me?'

All it had taken was two sentences before the thing came and snapped my neck.

If anything, the difficulty being this obscene made the choice refreshingly simple.

"I give up."

I would surrender, clean and tidy. Just... keep my head down and stay out of its way. That was the most rational path available to me.

Dying twice was already horrific enough. I had no intention of dying any more than that.

"U-um—"

Clara, having noticed the cold sweat running down my face, spoke up hesitantly, and I answered her.

"Don't talk to me."

"O-okay. Sorry."

And with that... I gave up on being the Storyteller.