I stared at my phone screen.
An illustration of a girl appeared. The heroine caught her boyfriend coming out of a luxurious inn room with medieval style, together with another woman. Cheating? Yes. No way that's wrong. Even though the CG was blurred, the messy bed behind them was still visible.
But when I entered the choice menu…
I swallowed my saliva.
The choices that appeared were only two:
[1. I understand, you must have your reasons.]
[2. I… am also at fault.]
I rubbed my eyes.
There's no third option? There's no *break up* button? *slap*? or at least *leave*?
I scrolled the screen down, hoping there was a hidden option.
There wasn't.
The system really forced the heroine to apologize to the cheating male target.
My hand clenched.
I took a long deep breath.
I understood how this game worked. If I didn't choose anything, the timer would run and force an auto-pick.
"Fine," I whispered.
I chose the second option:
[I… am also at fault.]
The screen froze for a split second, then a new CG appeared: the heroine lowering her head, her lips trembling, while the male target turned his face away with a disgusted expression.
"If you know you're at fault, you should've never approached me from the start," he said.
Then—fade to black.
Red text slowly appeared in the middle of the screen:
Bad End: The heroine loses all self confidence.
Game over.
I stared at the screen… for a long time.
"Looks like I'm gonna get beaten again today."
An otome game. That's what I'm stuck playing right now. Ironic, isn't it? Of all the genres in the world, why did I have to be trapped in the most… romantic one?
The reason is simple: my hands. They're the only part of my body I can move reliably. Ever since I was a child, I've been like a broken doll.
At the orphanage, the volunteers liked to move my body from the wheelchair to a normal chair just to take pictures of me wearing cute hats. They laughed, saying I was adorable. If I fell, they would call a nurse. I could never stand. I could never protest.
Then when I left the orphanage and got a subsidized house from the government… I became a doll for the gangsters around my new place of living.
How happy those gangsters were. They found someone who could not fight back, could not escape, and could not report.
From age 9 until 18, I was always their toy. For example today, where I was turned into a gameplay machine.
The girlfriend of one of the gangsters who lived in the block behind the house where I lived forced me to finish the otome game that she said was currently popular.
She often said: "You just need to press buttons on the smartphone. Even a crippled person can do it."
That's my status: A crippled creature.
I was just a disabled human who lived in a narrow room with a half-paralyzed body and dreams that could never be reached.
I looked at my face in the mirror—pale, weak, and could only sit in a wheelchair.
I lowered my head. My breathing felt heavy. Every chest pull felt very torturing.
'Should I just… suici—'
The sound of heavy footsteps could be heard approaching from the hallway in front of my house.
Drag. Drag.
I dropped the smartphone when the door of the house was kicked from outside.
BRUAAK!
Three thugs entered. Their faces were not unfamiliar. One carried a plastic bag of beer, another chewed gum, and the gangster's girlfriend—that woman—immediately put her hand on my shoulder.
"Did you finish my order?"
Her hand was rough, her black nails grabbed the collar of my shirt and pulled me close.
"Don't tell me you still haven't succeeded in getting the secret ending? You only need to press buttons. You're not told to marathon, you worthless cripple!"
Another thug grinned seeing the smartphone lying on the floor. "Look. Seems like we need to give him a lesson so he takes finding the secret ending more seriously."
Thud!
The gangster's foot connected with the wheel of my wheelchair with a loud thud.
My body jerked violently. My back slammed against the wheelchair's backrest. The force of the impact sent me hurling to the floor, and my cheek smacked against the dirty ground.
Their laughter exploded loudly in my small room.
Laughter that… I had heard since I was nine years old.
For me, the sound of adult laughter was the same as a prior warning of incoming pain.
Pow!
See? I was right!
One by one kicks immediately aimed at my stomach. My chest was empty. Almost no air entered. I opened my mouth like a starving fish, trying with all my strength to take in breath.
"How about we kill him now?" The subsidy money on my small table was grabbed and put into their pockets. "Besides, he won't get subsidy money anymore because he's already an adult."
"Eii. Wait a bit, babe!" The gangster's girlfriend stopped him. "You can kill him after he gets the secret endings from the game Court of Betrayal."
They left after placing the smartphone on my palm, leaving the door open.
I lay on the floor, silent for quite a while. As if the world no longer had any sound.
Slowly, I wiped a little blood from the tip of my lip with a hand that was still trembling.
It's been 18 years of my life like this.
People who didn't understand my condition would gossip about me. They often talked behind the house, wondering why I didn't work. The era was already modern, they said we could work even if we were paralyzed and stayed inside the house all the time.
You know, I had already tried to do various things: becoming a writer, painter, web design, and many more. But every time I just took one step, those gangsters would destroy what I was doing.
I also had tried to run away, but they immediately found me and dragged me back here again.
Night fell.
The shadow of the street lamp entered through the window gap.
Slowly, I crawled to stand my wheelchair back up, then climbed onto it.
I pushed my wheelchair out of the house.
Even though I had only moved a little, I could already feel several pairs of eyes directed at me. They watched from behind the house's alley. 'Look all you want!'
The edge of the night road felt cold. The air mixed with the smell of recently finished rain, sticking to the skin of my face.
My wheelchair creaked softly as it passed the sidewalk. The front wheel had once gotten stuck in a crack of broken asphalt, but I forced it to keep going.
At the intersection, the red light held back the flow of cars for a moment. The zebra cross stretched in front of my eyes, wet and sparkling reflecting the street lights.
And there—there was a young girl standing exactly at the other end from where I was.
The reason I went out when it was nearly night was so I could meet her.
The name tag on her chest wrote, Aria Winters.
I realized my life would never have the romance genre, but it's not wrong to admire her, right?! Is loving someone without hoping to be loved back wrong?
The world that was originally gray suddenly had many colors when I looked at her.
The street light turned green and she walked closer toward me.
I wanted to do something that wasn't someone else's order tonight. Something that… I chose myself? A wish like that suddenly appeared inside me. Would I have the chance?
It seems like my sudden hope will be granted.
I saw that Aria's gaze didn't pay attention to the surroundings. Her head lowered, both thumbs busy typing on the smartphone screen while crossing the zebra cross. She also didn't listen to the engine sounds of various vehicles because earphones were stuffed in her ears.
Meanwhile from afar—
SCREEEECH!
The sound of a truck's brakes was heard, breaking the air.
The headlights of that truck which were glowing red stretched out like a blade of light, pointing straight toward the zebra cross even though it was swerving like the head of a snake.
'Is the truck driver unconscious?'
The driver looked limp, his head thrown backward.
Time suddenly felt frozen.
All sound was pulled out from this world.
This was the right time to realize my only hope, to do one thing that I truly did by my own will. 'I have to save her!'
I pushed my wheelchair.
My hands gripped the push rims until the skin of my hands was scraped and bled.
The wheels of my wheelchair ground the asphalt, leaving a straight mark.
I didn't have time to scream "watch out".
What I did was just ram her body from the front.
That push threw her out of the collision path.
Her phone slipped from her hand, floating, then fell and hit the asphalt. Her earphones half detached from her ear. She rolled, stayed still, and was shocked. The emotion of anger was about to appear, but her beautiful eyes immediately opened wide when she saw the light from the truck's headlights illuminating my face.
In the split second before that impact reached me—I was able to feel… for the first time in my life, my movement wasn't forced. Not because I was ordered. Not because I couldn't choose. I chose myself. I moved my own life.
Then—
BOOM!!
The truck's head slammed into my wheelchair, and crushed my body completely.
The world felt like it was shattering into pieces. Until finally, darkness covered everything.