First, You Say Hello
It begins with a greeting. First, you say hello.
I laugh. Ha, ha, ha. Exactly three syllables — not out of any joy, but from the sheer self-mockery of a situation that had shattered like dropped glass around me.
"I'm happy. Truly, I'm happy."
Even as I sat there diligently dissecting my own weakness, time kept its steady march, and before I knew it the sword in my hand had come right up to my face.
A blade black as pitch, befitting the title of the Black Swordsman. The face reflected in it was, frankly, striking.
Hard to describe in words — which was precisely what made it repulsive. How on earth had it come to this?
"I can say this with certainty. No luxury in the world, however acquired, could bring me pleasure like this."
Ha, ha, ha — the woman in black laughed. A laugh black enough to swallow the light.
Ha, ha, ha — and so I laughed along. A laughter so raw and blood-tinged I half-wondered if I'd gone mad.
So we laughed, identical, our laughter braiding into harmony. Like a single piece of music, it echoed on and on. Ha, ha, ha.
It was a discord that could bring you to tears.
Quietly, I raise my hand and draw a line through the empty air. The afterglow lingers in the sky, yellow, marking its existence. Something straight out of a work of fiction — the thing they call mana.
It crumbles into yellow dust and evaporates on the spot. Without so much as a flicker of change, all I can do is stare blankly.
I was performing a feat that could never happen in the real world, yet no sense of accomplishment followed. The reason was simple. I didn't want it.
I am inside a game now.
"Request complete. This should be proof enough, right?"
Thud. A massive horn, faintly glowing jet-black like the depths of night, lands on the table and slaps the air still.
And then, the stares gather. First, on the enormous horn resting on the table.
"……Astonishing."
Next, on the one who'd brought it — me.
It wasn't limited to the worker in front of me, either. Every eye in the hall turned my way. It would have been a lie to say I didn't feel the weight of it.
"Payment within the week."
"Ah — yes. Yes. All in silver coins……correct?"
I pressed on, doing my best to ignore the flood of stares, tangled with a dozen different emotions. Clearing a mission that had sat unsolved for a year apparently came with far more attention than I'd bargained for.
And amid it all, the smell of alcohol brushed past my nose, pinching my brow shut of its own accord.
If you're going to take on requests, fine — but why on earth did it have to take the form of a tavern? One more grievance bloomed toward that damned guildmaster.
"……Right."
I kept my complaints to myself and turned away, leaving the stammering worker behind me. The stares — laden with awe, admiration, and a dozen other things — still refused to stop.
Some people could savor that kind of attention. I was not one of them. The murmurs and the gazes didn't let up until I pushed through the door and out.
Stepping out of the building, I was greeted not by the smell of alcohol but by a thick, clammy odor of mold. The dense clumps of dust coiled together into shapes you could mistake for clouds.
The faint, distant glimpse of sky was my one small comfort. Blurred though it was, the moon — right now — shone for me alone.
"……"
So I walk, gazing up at it, still. And I remind myself, once more.
Of the last ordinary thing I ever had.
I still don't know. Why I came to this game, why I woke up inside the existence called Zeo Frizian Ernest.
I'd bought a new game for nothing more than a bit of amusement. That was all. I opened my eyes, and I was here.
There'd been no omen, none at all. Until I launched the game, it was just another ordinary day, no different from any other. And that day was the last ordinary one I'd ever get.
How on earth did I end up like this—
"What, heading back already?"
That's where the thought ends. At the voice brushing past my ear, everything stops. Why now, of all times.
In an instant, a wrong, alien sensation coiled around my whole body, and a groan slipped out of me before I could stop it. Even my feet — the lightest-moving part of me all day — froze solid in answer to it.
Something had fastened itself somewhere inside me and was squelching, something whose nature I couldn't pin down, viscous and slimy — the feeling of some winding, sinuous thing binding itself around my body.
From my extremities upward, one part after another, as if to devour me. There was no direct physical contact, and yet that sensation ruled my body all the same.
I want to call it a snake.
"Hello, Zeo."
Just before my legs gave out beneath a consciousness grown distant, a familiar white voice soaked patiently into my ears. I forced my stiffened neck to turn.
There to greet me: silver hair without luster, and yet — or precisely because of that — a mysterious mane that caught the eye all the more.
Skin pale and white as moonshadow, violet eyes holding starlight and frost within them, and sharp, keen lids cradling those eyes.
She was a fairly famous figure in the organization. Not merely for her looks — but for a rough, unrefined manner entirely at odds with them.
And, besides, for her peculiar constitution.
"I don't have anything in particular to do, so yes — back I go."
Robin Lydian Musica. A member of the same organization as me.
And a being who took an unnaturally keen interest in me.
"Oh, come on, don't be like that. What do I always say?"
She sidles closer. Even as the distance between us shrank by degrees, I had no way to counter it. That snake only grew more excited when it watched its prey run.
All I could do was pretend I wasn't afraid, hackles raised, and nothing more.
"Whatever it is, the first thing you do is say hello. You greet first."
Her eyes curved into crescents as she waved in greeting. She urged me to do the same. I had no desire to.
For some reason, that gesture looked to me less like a wave of the hand and more like the swaying of a tail. Harmless enough at a glance — but I could never breathe freely, never knowing when that delicate little tail might coil around me.
"……Fine. Hello."
I greeted her against my will, though there was nothing well about my well-being. Sharp as she was, she almost certainly knew that too.
But she seemed satisfied that the exchange of greetings had been completed between us, and quietly lowered her tail. Her eyes still glittered, flaunting their glow.
"You've changed a little, but you still head straight home the second your work's done. No thought of staying out to play a while?"
Her hand gestured behind her — toward our colleagues, more precisely, gulping down drinks at a table. Same organization, same outfit; the invitation was to mingle a little.
"Yes, I belong to the organization. But my personal time is another matter entirely."
Of course, I had neither the luxury, nor the inclination, nor the will for such things. Shatrira, the organization she belonged to — and I belonged to — was what you'd call the shadow side of this world.
And the shadow side was exactly what it sounded like. Nothing good ever came of entangling yourself with those people. After all, there was no earthly reason to live in a dark subterranean city like this instead of on the light-flooded Surface above — was there?
Not unless the owner of this godforsaken body had a weakness held over him by the organization, that is.
"Grateful for the invitation, but I have business to attend to."
And so I refuse. I wasn't in any mood for her company — nor in any situation for it.
"I didn't take you for the kind of ingrate who'd forget a debt of gratitude."
"……"
If only she hadn't put it quite that way.
It was no empty remark. I truly did owe her a great deal. When I first transmigrated and couldn't adapt to this new world, she was the one who looked after me.
But it never struck me as pure kindness. My instinct told me so.
It wasn't a hundred-percent calculated act, but something — a clear intent to make use of me later, to milk it for all it was worth — was surely lurking underneath it all.
"Something urgent came up today, so I'd appreciate it if you'd understand."
"You do realize that's exactly what you said yesterday? Ah — and the day before, too."
My lightly improvised excuse was lightly swatted down. She'd drifted right up in front of me without my noticing, smiled sweetly, and slowly lifted her gaze.
Back and forth, tilting this way and that, she looked me over — my face, more precisely, my expression. Like a curious animal studying something it found delightful.
As the one being observed, if I may be so bold: it did not feel good.
Those eyes — curiosity mingled with something unreadable — fixed on me, and my pupils meeting them trembled uncontrollably.
A spotless white snake. A faintly sticky feeling, grotesquely alien, and fishy-smelling besides.
Unpleasant, uncomfortable, unsettling — and yet I couldn't tear my eyes away.
"……Well, if you say you're busy."
One step back. She withdrew. The snake was still smiling. I couldn't say I was pleased about that, but I was more than grateful the distance between us had widened.
Another step — and now, at a gap no outstretched hand could bridge, I allowed myself to breathe. The snake tilted her head ever so slightly and spoke.
"See you tomorrow. If there's anything you don't understand, like last time, ask me anytime — don't hold back."
On the surface, it looked like consideration. But it was a reminder. Don't forget that you owed me last time — a kind of brand, pressed into my skin.
But the fact remained that I'd been released, and so I watched the snake recede into the distance for a long moment before turning my back.
"Oh, right — Zeo."
But then, creeping along the ground, a voice seized my ankle. Like a doll with a dead battery, I turned my body stiffly — and there she was.
I had walked in the opposite direction, unmistakably. So why was the snake once more before my very eyes? In the instant I was praying no one could hear my heart about to burst, Robin's lips moved, slick and slow.
"When we part, too, you're supposed to say goodbye."
And with that, she smiled, sweet and slow. Thanks to the difference in our heights, she was looking down at me — but the one pressing down on me was her.
I couldn't breathe properly. Perhaps "pressing" wasn't quite the word — "constricting" fit better. The snake had already coiled itself around my torso and begun to squeeze.
My mind had already gone pure white. I want to liken it to a blank page.
"……Zeo."
While I'd briefly lost myself, swept away by a wave called panic, the snake had uttered my name in human tongue.
It was a disappointed voice. I jolted back to my senses — but it was her turn again next.
"You won't say goodbye to me?"
The instant the emotion in those violet pupils shifted from curiosity to something else, a sensation like hundreds of insects crawling up my spine came crawling with it.
Fortunately, I knew the right answer. I shouted it at the fastest speed of my entire life.
"……Goodbye, Robin."
"……Mm. Goodbye, Zeo."
Only then, seemingly satisfied, did the snake coil her tail and vanish. Though I had been watching her the entire time, in the single blink of an eye I lost her completely.
The street where the snake had been stood empty. Quietly, I slid down against the wall, sat slumped, and bowed my head.
"Status window! Status window! Please — status window!!!"
I screamed until my throat tore, but not a single soul was listening.
"I want to go home……please……"
From this black world, back to reality — I want to go home.
I prayed with everything I had. But there was no god to hear it.