Chapter 69

I Became A Ghost In A Horror Game

The Mystery Exploration Club game was what led me to this place.

I stumbled upon this RPG Maker game when I was browsing sites to find a game worth playing.

Since my first introduction to horror games was a crude one, I had no hesitation in pressing the install button.

Having fun playing, losing, coming up with a strategy, and watching the ending.

One day, as the process was repeated, I failed at finishing this game.

Then, I ended up exchanging bodies with Ella, the tutorial boss.

I had no doubts that this was a game.

That is, until I stepped out of the world full of monsters, which is the main background of the game.

Haven't we all thought about it at least once?

If you were to enter a game set in modern times, how would places that were not implemented in the game appear?

This is what I think.

I think that it would look similar to the original world it was based on.

And somewhat add something unique to the worldview.

The existence of the Institution was mentioned even in the game, so I roughly expected it.

In the first place, it was easier to just accept what had already happened before my eyes rather than denying it.

'But it's not like I didn't consider this possibility.'

The possibility that this world isn't a game.

I asked James to look into me, but he couldn't find my identity, my home, or even the last game I played, so I had accepted it.

I did...

"This is a game that exists in reality, right?"

[Yes yes! That's right! So could you please put away your scary face? And as a bonus, the toothy monster that's strangling my neck...!]

"Who is the producer?"

[It only says M.P. Probably an underdog. Oh, now that I think about it, all the missing games were made by that person.]

"..."

"Huh? Alice, where are you going?"

"...I'm sorry. Something really urgent came up."

I created a mirror.

A mirror that reflects me. I can see myself looking somewhat nervous.

I stepped and moved from mirror to mirror. My destination is only one place.

I exited the mirror closest to my destination and walked.

I ran even though it was only a short distance.

It was a large, empty lot.

It was a place I had visited in the past, where I had muttered to myself, I see, and had walked away.

"..."

I stood in the center of the clearing and spread my aura across it.

Then something that was hidden was revealed.

"Lies."

A hidden grave of my senior.

I touched the grave with trembling hands.

This was a place filled with heterogeneous tombs in a city center full of buildings.

It's a very unique place that suited my senior perfectly.

For some reason, no other graves were visible, and only the grave of my senior was revealed.

"Why is only this grave hidden? It's like you're advertising that you had something to do with me becoming like this..."

I slowly stopped caressing the grave and took out a shovel from the mirror.

What I am going to do from now on is an act that is extremely blasphemous to anyone.

I stuck the shovel into the dirt and used my weight to dig it up.

As I continued to dig, I found something solid.

It was a wooden coffin.

I quickly removed the surrounding dirt and came face to face with the intact coffin.

I paused for a moment and opened the lid.

"...Ha."

The coffin was empty.

My body lost strength and I dropped the coffin.

And then I spoke to myself, or rather, with the hope that someone would listen.

"It was the senior, right? The one who made me like this. The one who called me when I had tried to rest behind the curtain."

It was a long time ago, but I'm sure.

It was clearly senior's voice.

When Ella's wish came true and our body naturally disappeared and was about to fall into rest, my senior's voice woke me again.

"You knew everything, right? I don't understand... What exactly happened to me? Why did you put me in the game?"

My voice is shaking. I noticed that the informal language that had become a habit of speaking had disappeared and I was only using the polite language I had always used towards him.

My words stopped, but I bit my lip and continued again.

"And if you were alive... Why didn't you come to see me?"

The air is heavy. This wasn't because of my mood.

The heavy air was a sign that it would rain soon, and dark clouds were also filling the sky, so it was almost certain.

Drip. And a raindrop falls.

Maybe it wasn't a raindrop.

"I mean, I can cry now. I don't know if you meant for it to happen, but now if I have to say goodbye to a friend, I can cry a lot. It's different than before, right?"

My wish that Ella spoke of is for my own proof.

Just like Ella wanted to prove to someone that she wouldn't hurt her friends.

I may also have wanted to prove my sincerity.

I had wondered if it was because of Ella's personality, her devil nature, that I could consider the kids friends, that I was influenced by the perceptions and thoughts of others.

The proof that I had changed from someone who didn't shed a single tear even when my best friend died to someone who could truly consider children as friends.

I shed a tear at the last moment and proved it.

"Remember that? In the past, when you told a silly joke, my reaction was always the same and you said it was boring. Maybe you didn't mean it at the time. But now!"

I couldn't finish my sentence.

What on earth am I talking about? Was my first friend so precious?

The senior is now a suspicious person who is no different from an enemy.

"...I'm so stupid."

And foolish.

Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.

It started to rain in earnest.

I just got caught in the rain. My clothes are wet and cold.

The occasional wind seemed to lower the temperature and give me a physical feeling of rolling waves.

"...It's cold."

When I was young, it wasn't bad to get caught in the rain sometimes, but now it just makes my body heavier.

Was it really that difficult to take a single step out of the rain?

"Are you okay?"

I opened my eyes wide. I quickly looked back.

"Ha-rim. Why are you here?"

She was standing there holding an umbrella.

Looking at the bag she was wearing, it looks like she was on her way home from school.

I seemed to have coincidentally overlapped with Ha-rim's path.

She won't be able to see the grave, so my appearance won't look strange.

But she, Ha-rim, was looking at me questioningly.

"Did you cry by any chance?"

"That can't be right. It's rainwater."

"I see. Being constantly exposed to rain is not good for your health."

Ha-rim put an umbrella over me and led me by holding my hand.

"Where are we going?"

"My house! There are extra umbrellas and the others are waiting."

My legs, which did not want to go anywhere, moved.

I walked as Ha-rim led.

Looking at the children waiting, it seemed like they were all trying to play together because they had some free time since school ended early.

"For some reason, I felt like someone was here, like I was connected to them, so I separated from the others and took a little detour down the street, and Alice was here."

"I see. Thank you for the umbrella."

"No problem, because we're friends!"¹

Ha-rim smiled at me, and I smiled back.

"Friends, yes."

We arrived at her house before we knew it. It was no different from the house I visited when I was Ella.

Because that world was a place that imitated the outside world.

As Ha-rim led me into the entrance, the children welcomed me.

"Alice is here too!"

"I was surprised when Ha-rim suddenly walked away."

"Alice, you're all wet, you'll catch a cold."

As I looked at the children welcoming me, my gloomy feelings seemed to have been washed away.

I had vowed to keep my distance from them, but now it seems like I can't keep it at all.

"Let's take a shower first!"

"I want to go in too!"

When Eun-jeong said that, I punished her by flicking her forehead.

Then, I followed Ha-rim's guidance and headed to the shower room.

My clothes got wet, so I had to borrow Ha-rim's clothes, which felt strange.

Anyway, I grabbed the doorknob to take a shower.

...There's someone behind me. I thought Eun-jeong had crawled in again, so I raised my hand to flick her again.

"?"

There was Ha-rim tilting her head.

Because she shared one umbrella, Ha-rim also got wet from the rain.

It is an unexpected crisis.

Even though we are the same age outwardly, we will never be able to wash together.

I immediately looked at the floor and asked her to wash first.

Ha-rim tilted her head to express her doubts, but went in first as if she was disappointed.

I guess she wanted to talk while taking a shower with me.

Only after she washed up was I able to take a shower.

"Now that we're all gathered together, we're going to take a moment to discuss what happened today!"

If it's something that happened today, they're referring about that Vtuber. Come to think of it, I didn't erase their memories.

"..."

James said that the agency isn't strict enough to catch every minor paranormal activities.

No matter how I think about it, it didn't seem like a minor incident... It wasn't even a ghost in the first place.

Well, I think I understand what he meant.

He meant that if I don't erase their memories, he wouldn't bother to erase it.

I think I understand why James' subordinates made fun of him for forever staying as a sergeant.

Although I am grateful.

"It was really amazing, you know? I didn't know Kyeong-min would suddenly disappear!"

"Actually, I only vaguely remember it and it doesn't feel real... But anyway, thank you for saving me."

"Alice worked very hard. Eun-jeong also played a part."

"Hehe!"

It is true that Eun-jeong was a great help, but I was the one who suffered the most.

I found it annoying that Eun-jeong proudly puffed out her chest.

"...If you do something like that to me again, I'll be angry."

"He... He..."

If you think about it, this kid seems to be the one who bothers me the most.

Eun-jeong noticed my gaze and looked at me, but I wasn't so angry that I'd make her anxious, so I lifted one arm and made space at my side.

Then she came over and clung to me.

"Squishy~"

I petted Eun-jeong like that. This devil-like kid. She looks cute when she stays still.

"The shampoo smells good~"

"Okay, okay."

Suho questioned while stroking his chin.

"What was that? This is the first time I've seen something like that since we created the club!"

Suho said that when they looked for the Vtuber ghost again, she left a message on the YouTube channel saying that it would be closed for an extended period of time and ran away.

Seeing as Chika hasn't returned yet, I guess she's still being chased somewhere on the internet.

I feel sorry that Lost is getting chased for this long, so I'll have to ask Chika to come back around tomorrow.

"After all, there are supernatural things in this world that we don't know about."

"It's getting a little out of hand."

"But that's kind of fun."

Ha-rim nods her head. It was a gesture of agreement.

But Ha-rim continued her words as if that wasn't the only thing she wanted to say.

"Maybe we should be more careful."

Ha-rim began speaking as the club president.

"I think we need to be careful as long as there are such things, and frankly, we did something that we were told not to do last time during the necromancy. If something supernatural happened, we could have been in trouble"

"That's right. Let's be more careful."

Kyeong-min agrees.

Ha-rim warned them that they should be more careful when taking action.

However, paradoxically, the activities of the Mystery Exploration Club also meant that they were not intimidated by this incident and kept investigating, only this time more cautiously.

"Anyway, this is the first ghost we've seen. Let's record it."

Ha-rim took out a pen and wrote in a notebook. She said that one day, when she graduates, she will keep an identical copy of the book in the club room.

"Now then, let's talk about our next activity."

"Next activity? Is there something else?"

"Of course there is! The car scrap yard you see after passing the intersection. There's a strange noise there. It's like a machine, but like it's alive..."

The children are sitting and talking. Everyone exchanges opinions about the next activity with excited expressions.

I erased their memories because I was afraid they might be in danger, and I'm not thinking of restoring them.

...But if they can continue to enjoy only moderately safe stimuli like this, I thought maybe I wouldn't need to erase their memories.

POV Switch - 3rd person

"Let's see, what about the psychic we caught last time?"

Carol asks one of her subordinates as she organizes documents in her office.

Empty coffee cans piled up due to non-stop work roll and fall on the floor.

"He didn't seem to have any loyalty. As expected, he seems to have received a request from Pinocchio from the Workshop."

Carol sighed.

"I guess that's how it is. Haa... Why are the demons so unruly? They try to steal things because they don't get a deal. It's all because of a certain someone who made all of this and left them unattended."

"...?"

Her subordinate was suspicious of Carol's strange words, but it wasn't the first time Carol had said something strange, so they ignored it.

"At least we can communicate well, right?"

"... That's right. Compared to Peter Pan, whose ability to communicate is questionable, he is a great person. If you look at it this way, our Alice is an angel... Oh, speaking of that, what happened to the place where Peter Pan appeared last time?"

Her employee searched through the locker of D documents she had organized.

She ran her fingers through each one until she found a title that started with P, then opened it and recited it.

"Peter Pan appeared in the disputed area around 17:26 with the sound of laughter. He was observed to float in the sky for about 3 minutes before disappearing. At the same time, about 120,000 soldiers and 700 civilians at the scene also disappeared. They all returned 2 hours later, but most of them were showing symptoms of narcotic psychosis."

After getting annoyed at the scale, Carol took a fresh can of coffee and gulped it down.

The employee didn't dare say a word about how that much coffee is bad for her health.

"It's no different from last time. Please continue to research ways to efficiently treat the people caught using the isolates in the institution. The methods currently employed are ineffective in many ways and cost a lot of money."

"All right."

Tap. Tap tap. Silence came again, and only the sound of tapping on the computer filled the space. Another few minutes later, Carol was rubbing her eyes as if they were hurting.

'The management of the branch's quarantined entities went smoothly, and the new manager's handover was completed. The criminal caught last time needs a more brutal method to be quarantined more safely, so I contacted the committee... Oh, there's a lot of work to do. I don't know how I ended up in this job... Ugh... I miss Alice.'

Tiriring!

"What is it..."

A message came in with various symbols.

An order from the upper levels of the institution. The message included everything from numerical codes to simple riddles, and even biometric recognition and fingerprint scans. It seemed appropriate to say it contained all sorts of things.

'I wonder what orders they've given.'

Carol looked at the document step by step. Then she soon frowned.

"...This is quite troublesome. Merrin, we've got one more task."

"Yes, just tell me."

"Information about the heads of research at other branches. Please gather as much as you can."