Chapter 26: Still Water
The dark corridor remained silent.
I stood inside it without moving.
The door waited ahead.
Darkness surrounded everything else.
The same darkness.
The same corridor.
The same unbearable feeling that something existed just beyond what I could see.
The first time, I had thought it might have been the final mistake of a dying brain.
A hallucination born from blood loss and fear.
That explanation no longer worked.
I had died again.
And I had returned here.
My eyes remained fixed on the door.
I did not look behind me.
There was nothing behind me that I wanted to see.
For several seconds, all I could hear was the memory of the gunshot.
Then Alice's face appeared in my mind.
Her hands wrapped around Kohta's arm.
Saeko standing beside me, refusing to let go.
Rei carrying Shizuka-sensei away from the wreck.
I had no idea whether they escaped.
No way to return.
No way to ask.
They might have reached the estate.
They might have been surrounded minutes after I left.
Saeko might have circled back looking for me.
The thoughts kept moving without reaching anywhere.
I lowered my head.
This was worse than dying the first time.
Back then, I had left almost nothing behind.
A dorm room.
A few unfinished assignments.
An internet history that deserved to die with me.
This time, people had watched me leave.
People might have waited for me to return.
Something moved in the darkness.
Not physically.
The feeling changed.
Attention settled more heavily against me.
My skin tightened.
Whatever grief had kept me standing still disappeared beneath something older and simpler.
Fear.
I started walking.
The corridor made no sound beneath my feet.
The door never appeared to move closer until suddenly it was directly in front of me.
I did not question it.
I reached for the handle.
The moment my fingers touched it, the corridor vanished.
—
I woke on a wooden floor.
My first breath came violently.
I rolled onto my side and dragged in another.
Then another.
My hand moved toward my head.
Nothing.
No blood.
No pain.
No—
I froze.
The pistol lay less than a meter away.
The same pistol.
For several seconds, I could not look anywhere else.
My throat closed.
I remembered cold metal against my skin.
My finger refusing to move.
Sakamoto-san's voice.
The hand catching my sleeve.
I pushed myself backward until my shoulders struck the side of a couch.
The pistol remained where it was.
Motionless.
Ordinary.
I hated it.
My breathing became too quick.
I pressed both palms against the floor and concentrated on the wood beneath them.
Smooth.
Cold.
Real.
Not an alley.
No footsteps.
No dead surrounding me.
A refrigerator hummed somewhere nearby.
Traffic passed faintly outside.
Normal sounds.
I shut my eyes.
Slowly, my breathing settled.
When I opened them again, the pistol had not moved.
Of course it hadn't.
I forced myself to crawl closer.
Every part of me resisted touching it.
Leaving a loaded gun on the floor was still stupid.
Trauma did not make bullets less dangerous.
I picked it up by the grip.
My hand shook.
The weight was familiar.
That made it worse.
I engaged the safety and placed the pistol on the far end of the low table, where I would not have to keep looking at it.
Far enough that I could pretend it was no longer there.
Close enough that I could reach it if something tried to kill me.
Apparently, compromise survived reincarnation.
Only then did I examine myself.
Different hands.
Uninjured knuckles.
No cuts across the palms.
My ribs did not hurt.
My ankle held my weight when I stood.
The body felt young and healthy.
Not athletic.
But not neglected either.
A full-length mirror stood near the hallway.
The face reflected in it resembled mine.
Not exactly.
A little younger around the eyes, though perhaps that was only because this version had not spent several days watching people die.
Dark hair.
Average build.
No visible scars.
I raised one hand.
The reflection copied me.
"Still me."
My voice sounded slightly different.
Close enough.
A phone lay near where I had awakened.
Its screen remained lit.
Beside it sat a wallet and a set of keys, as though someone had dropped everything at once.
I picked up the wallet first.
Cash.
A bank card.
Identification.
The photograph showed the face from the mirror.
The name was mine.
Hiro Takahashi.
Twenty years old.
The address seems to match this apartment.
No convenient letter explaining why I lived alone.
No family photograph waiting beside the identification.
The apartment itself was small but comfortable.
One bedroom.
A narrow kitchen.
A bathroom.
A living room occupied by a couch, low table, television, and several shelves of manga.
Whoever this version of me had been, at least he possessed reasonable hobbies.
I searched the bedroom.
Clothes.
School papers from what appeared to be a nearby university.
A laptop.
Receipts.
Nothing that suggested another person lived here.
Good.
I was not prepared to explain reincarnation to someone's mother before breakfast.
I returned to the phone.
The screen displayed a black background covered by a red symbol.
My stomach sank before I even read the name.
Darwin's Game
For a moment, I simply stared.
Then I sat down.
"Of course."
Another death game.
Apparently, reality had discovered a genre and decided to commit.
A notification remained in the center of the screen.
Player registration completed.
Below it was my newly created profile.
Hiro Takahashi
Rank: D2
Points: 30
I looked at the unfamiliar mark reflected along the side of my neck.
A dark, barcode-like symbol stood out against the skin.
I touched it.
The area was still tender.
The invitation had already been accepted.
Probably moments before I arrived.
That explained why I had awakened on the floor.
The previous occupant of this body had opened the application, pressed something he should not have pressed, and been bitten by something that should not have been able to emerge from a phone.
Excellent judgment.
I closed the application.
The icon remained on the screen.
I searched through the menus for an option to cancel the account.
There was none.
Turning the phone off and starting it again changed nothing.
Darwin's Game was still installed.
My profile was still active.
Naturally.
I remembered the series.
Not perfectly.
A mobile game involving real battles, supernatural abilities, clans, and people who treated murder as a competitive hobby.
The protagonist had been—
Kaname.
There was a blonde girl.
A chain user.
A florist.
A man who enjoyed cutting people apart far too much.
Everything beyond that existed as disconnected images and vague events.
Useful enough to know I was in danger.
Not useful enough to provide a walkthrough.
I put the phone down.
For once, I was grateful nothing happened.
I had died less than—
I did not know how long ago.
Minutes?
Hours?
Time inside the corridor did not feel measurable.
I leaned back against the couch.
Silence filled the apartment.
There was no reason to move immediately.
No corpse outside the door.
No masked killer crossing a bridge.
No argument downstairs.
No one depending on me.
That last thought hurt more than expected.
I looked toward the window.
The city continued normally beyond it.
Cars moved through an intersection.
People walked along the sidewalk.
A woman rode past on a bicycle with groceries in the front basket.
Somewhere in another world, everything had ended.
Here, someone was probably late for work.
I wondered whether Alice had stopped crying.
Whether Kohta could walk.
Whether Rei managed to keep Shizuka-sensei upright.
Whether Saeko had returned to the wreck and realized I was not coming back.
My fingers tightened against my knees.
I had not said goodbye.
There had been no time.
Even if there had been, I would not have known what to say.
Sorry. I have to lead several hundred corpses away now. Try not to wait for me.
That would have gone over well.
I lowered my head.
The worst part was knowing I had made the choice myself.
Not the final one.
The first one.
The gunshot behind Alice.
I could have shouted.
I could have warned Kohta.
I could have let someone else notice.
Instead, my hand moved.
I saw her in danger and fired.
Would I do something different now?
I already knew the answer.
That irritated me.
I had spent a considerable amount of effort insisting I was not a hero.
Apparently, my body had stopped listening.
Time passed.
The sunlight shifted gradually across the floor.
At some point, I stood and entered the kitchen.
The faucet worked.
I filled a glass and drank.
The water was lukewarm and carried the faint metallic taste of old pipes.
Technically drinkable.
Emotionally disappointing.
I opened the refrigerator.
Soda.
A different soda.
Several cans of coffee.
More soda.
Not one bottle of plain water.
I closed it.
Then opened it again, in case water had appeared through divine intervention.
It had not.
"Terrible."
The former owner of this body had apparently believed carbonation was a personality.
I took one can, examined the label, and returned it untouched.
I did not like soda before dying.
Death had failed to improve it.
From the kitchen window, I could see a convenience store across the intersection.
Bright sign.
Glass front.
Normal people entering and leaving.
I could buy water there.
Food too, probably.
Maybe a toothbrush that did not technically belong to a stranger who shared my face.
The idea of stepping outside made my stomach tighten.
Darwin's Game existed out there.
Players existed out there.
Someone could attack me.
Then again, staying inside would not make any of that disappear.
I needed to understand the date.
The city.
How long remained before the events I remembered.
Whether the name Kaname Sudou existed anywhere online.
But first—
I looked back at the refrigerator.
Soda.
Coffee.
More disappointment.
"I need a drink."
Plain water.
Cold, preferably.
I took the wallet, keys, and phone.
At the door, I slipped on a pair of shoes that fit perfectly.
Of course they did.
My hand closed around the doorknob.
I opened the door halfway.
Then stopped.
The pistol remained on the table behind me.
My stomach tightened.
I did not want to carry it.
I did not want to touch it again for some time.
But I had just confirmed that this world contained people with supernatural abilities who murdered each other through a mobile application.
Going outside unarmed because the weapon made me uncomfortable would be impressively stupid.
I sighed.
Yeah. I need to bring the gun.
A sharp scrape came from behind me.
Something crossed the room.
Before I could turn, my arm had already moved.
My fingers closed around something familiar.
I looked down.
The pistol rested in my hand.
The grip sat perfectly against my palm, my index finger safely aligned along the frame.
I stared at it.
Then slowly looked back at the empty table.
For several seconds, I could not speak.
Then—
"…What?"
End of Chapter 26