In the room with the lights off, Delta palms were sweaty as she watched Lin fingers tap rapidly on the joystick and buttons. She didn't know if she wanted him to beat her score or not.
On one hand, she hoped Lin was just temporarily despondent but still maintained a calm mind. But on the other hand, if his mind was calm while other things were going wrong… that would be terrifying.
A madman isn't scary; what's scary is a madman who can clearly put his crazy ideas into practice.
Tap, tap, tap.
Lin was like a robot, mechanically and precisely shooting down every target. In his unfocused pupils, only instinct remained.
In his blurred vision, the incoming targets were no longer simple dots. Their shapes shifted from circles to ovals, then sprouted hair.
The black trails of light stretched into crimson streaks, and finally, within that flesh-colored mass, a pair of hideous eyes opened.
Thump!
Lin pressed the button, as if pulling a trigger.
Steaming blood splashed onto his expressionless face, yet he simply continued shooting targets with total indifference.
How many more had to be killed to reach the end?
No matter how many…
"I think game designs are very unfair sometimes."
"..."
Lin pupils snapped back from their unfocused state to normal. Delta leaned back on the sofa, listening to the rhythmic clicking of his fingers. She said with great feeling, "This game—unless the machine breaks—it will never have an ending. Players can only keep shooting targets until the player themselves is shot down."
"The designer never left a possibility for victory. From the moment you enter the game, the player is just marching toward death. In the process, they encounter increasingly difficult enemies. They are endless."
"Even if the machine breaks, the player hasn't won. To me, it feels more like a mockery—it's just a temporary reprieve. But as soon as you re-enter the game, what awaits you is another failure."
"So, it's really unfair. Why is one side destined to lose?"
licking his lips languidly, Lin fingertips touched the loosened buttons. "Because that is the game's mechanic. From the moment you become a player, there is no other choice."
"Then it's a trash game."
Hearing such a petulant comment, Lin movements faltered for a fraction of a second, missing a target.
Immediately following was a drop in health and a combo reset, forcing him to start accumulating score from scratch.
"Compared to this game, I prefer the 'Demon King and Hero' game my sister and I played as kids."
Seeing this, Delta happily raised a finger, her eyes drifting toward the ceiling in a trance. "The Hero sets out to defeat the Demon King. At the start of the journey, he has several companions willing to die for him. They set out on the road to subjugate the Demon King with high spirits."
"But the game setting is that throughout the journey, the player will constantly lose companions until finally facing the Demon King alone. This is an unchangeable fact, written in the fixed rules before the game starts. The only thing the player can choose is what to do after losing a companion."
"Keep going, or end it there."
"If you choose to end it, the Hero goes home with the remaining companions. Years later, another Hero defeats the Demon King, while the Hero and the survivors live lives that aren't exactly happy, but aren't miserable either."
"After every companion dies, there is this choice. At first, my sister and I thought watching our friends die was too cruel, so we ended the game after the first companion died."
"But… a game that ends at the beginning, what kind of game is that? After steeling our nerves, we decided to treat the companions as 'destined-to-die' plot points. They weren't real people anyway. In other words… yeah, the 'gamer mindset.'"
Her bright smile slowly faded. "So, when the first companion died, we chose to continue. But to our surprise, after deciding to go on, the Hero would gradually learn what kind of person the sacrifice was through the descriptions of other companions and the first companion's keepsakes."
"I remember it so clearly. He was a hearty, generous middle-aged man. He had a happy family but still set out to fight the Demon King for the greater good. He loved mushroom stew, had a little habit of hiding private stashed money, and every month he donated his savings to an orphanage."
"A person only becomes 'three-dimensional' after they die. My sister and I realized then what would happen next, but we kept hypnotizing ourselves—it was just a game, we were players, just keep playing."
"So we cold-bloodedly kept pressing 'Continue,' watching companions die one by one, watching the Hero's memories after they died, seeing the Hero hold more and more keepsakes. The bright smile vanished from his face until finally, he stood before the Demon King alone and scarred."
Delta waved her hands in the air, trying to describe the scene, a strange light in her eyes.
Meanwhile, Lin silently played the game. The score on the screen climbed higher and higher, nearly breaking the 300,000 mark.
"We thought it was finally over, that the Hero would defeat the Demon King. But we never expected that the Hero… lost."
"He carried the convictions of all his companions, yet he was utterly defeated. He didn't even last ten moves before being pinned to the ground."
"If the game had ended then, I might have thought it was an interesting game. It would have told me that persistence doesn't always lead to success, and giving up early might lead to a better ending."
"But the game only truly begins after the Hero dies."
"The Hero is killed by the Demon King, but he returns to the start of the journey to experience it all over again. We thought the Hero could change the past and save his friends, but nothing changed. Even when he tried his hardest, he just watched them die in a different way."
"What made it even more agonizing for me and my sister was that after the companions died again, their original stories expanded. Complexity, contradiction, kindness, bravery… with every death, they became more vivid. At that point, I felt like an executioner, killing real people over and over again."
"Just like the first time, there was a choice to 'Go Home' after every death. Every time… every time… the hand I used to press 'Continue' turned from light to heavy. We sat in silence before the companions' bodies for a long, long time."
"If you want to know the stories of these venerable people, you have to face their deaths first."
Her voice was so gentle, yet filled with such sorrow.