Chapter 147. Meeting Ruin
Crash!
“Hey, calm down.”
“I-I’m fine. I am calm.”
“Uncle... You’re going to collapse like this.”
I logged out of the game.
Before the old man had even finished speaking, I came out and started searching for an album I hadn’t opened in a very long time.
I had lived while forgetting the past...
No.
Was forgetting the past really something I had chosen to do?
Was it really my own ability?
Was my fear of the past truly nothing more than my own emotion?
Had I really forgotten all those things of my own free will and lived while being satisfied with that?
Were all those incidents that had completely changed my life really things that could be forgotten so easily?
Thud.
I barely had any old belongings left, so finding it wasn’t difficult.
All I had left were the things I had accumulated now.
The problem was whether I had even the tiniest bit of courage to open this album I had found so easily.
I had heard all kinds of things from the summoned old man.
If everything he said was really true...
If it was true...
If it really was...?
“...Haa. I’m seriously calm now.”
“You don’t look calm....”
“No, when I think about it, my life was already a complete mess from the beginning.”
“I was already living a life controlled by someone else, so what difference does a few more months make?”
Heh.
I’ve grown too.
Or maybe I had just become numb.
Whatever.
All this did was give me an even clearer justification for burying the Chairman for good.
“Your hands are shaking.”
“Sh-Shut up!!! It’s because I’m low on magnesium!”
“Do you have any idea how carefully I manage your diet...?!”
“Argh! Be quiet! Just give me more meat dishes!”
Haa.
After joking around a little, I felt somewhat better.
I didn’t want to admit it, but I couldn’t deny that the summoned old man’s pointless jokes and playful way of speaking had softened the shock I was feeling right now.
Flip.
My hands tingled as though they had fallen asleep.
I repeatedly clenched and opened them before slowly opening the album.
There were pictures of my mother.
My father.
And me as a child.
The photo had been taken when I was very young.
Judging by how I looked, it was probably around the time I entered elementary school.
Two years after this photo was taken...
My parents died.
But even that fact wasn’t as shocking as what I saw in the picture.
My father looked nothing like me.
My mother didn’t resemble me in the slightest either.
And the child in the picture looked so different from me now that I almost wondered whether it was really me.
‘...This is more shocking than I expected.’
The moment I confirmed reality, a tingling sensation raced through my entire body like lightning.
My vision spun.
For a moment, my consciousness cut out.
I couldn’t breathe.
I barely managed to force air out of my lungs before struggling to inhale again.
I pulled out my middle school album.
Then my high school album.
Even the resident registration card I had thrown somewhere in a corner.
Only after looking through all of them did I realize that as I grew older...
I had gone through a horrifying transformation.
The kind of shocking change that should have been impossible without surgery.
I sat there in shock for a long time, unable to say anything.
Finally, the first words I managed to utter were—
“...What the fuck...?”
“You used to be pretty cute.”
“Round and soft-looking.”
“I like you better now.”
“You bastards can say that so lightly because neither of you is living in your original body right now!”
“And that’s not even the problem!”
“So?”
“Do you hate hearing that?”
“...Thanks.”
Then...
Was the reason my memories of the past were so fragmented also the Chairman’s doing?
I had always believed I forgot everything because I didn’t want to remember.
But when I thought about it...
The past wasn’t something you could simply erase because you wanted to forget it.
How had I forgotten it so easily?
Thud.
I dropped the album from my hands and collapsed onto the floor.
How should I describe this feeling?
I really had no words.
The shock was beyond anything I had imagined.
Even if my entire life until now had been false...
I had always believed that, along the way, I had at least met people who were real.
I had always been lucky with people.
But if things were like this...
Then all of those blessings...
All of those facts...
Were lies too, weren’t they?
Completely.
Without even room for debate.
...
Then what exactly was the difference between me and an NPC in the game?
“Ugh... My head hurts....”
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to accept this....”
I thought I had finally escaped this kind of worry.
After meeting the Chairman at that restaurant before, I had thought it was completely over.
...
What was I supposed to say?
I...
I really didn’t know.
“All the past I remember was created by the Chairman.”
“And all the past I don’t remember was erased by the Chairman.”
“Then even the present where I think I’ve escaped him...”
“Was that created by the Chairman too?”
Where did it begin?
Where did it end?
Had it even ended?
Without thinking, I looked around.
But there was nowhere I could lean.
Pie had also been created like me...
But Pie had overcome reality by herself.
And Aien was actually relying on me to keep going.
I staggered to my feet, left the room, and sat down on the sofa in the living room.
I didn’t know how I was supposed to accept or understand any of this.
I touched my face.
This face...
Wasn’t my face.
It was the face the Chairman had given me.
Was that why I hated looking in mirrors?
So I wouldn’t think it was strange even if the face I remembered and the face I had now looked completely different?
Then what about my dislike of making eye contact with people?
My hatred of leaving the house?
The fact that even when I had barely any money, I still forced myself to save enough to go to PC cafés...
And eventually came to love games?
Rustle.
“What’s wrong?”
Then...
Then what about Pie?
The emotions I had been confused about.
The feelings I had finally managed to define.
The feelings I couldn’t easily say out loud.
Were they real?
I had grown up inside an environment created by the Chairman.
Following a script provided by the Chairman.
Developing exactly according to the Chairman’s intentions.
So were the emotions I possessed...
Really mine?
“C-Could you call Dorfin...?”
I wanted either Dorfin or Jin here right now.
Either one.
Those two were at least outside the Chairman’s grasp.
If they hadn’t been manipulated...
Maybe they could speak using thoughts and emotions that weren’t controlled by him.
Bang!
I slammed my fist down onto a piece of furniture I had only recently bought.
The fact that I still controlled my strength enough not to break it made me feel slightly relieved.
At least I still had some reason left.
That meant I still had enough room in my head to think rationally.
“...Aaaagh! Seriously!”
“I thought this was already over!”
“We already went through this whole damn ritual once before!”
I had spent the entire night sitting there with my head in chaos after that previous incident.
Pie came over, somehow helped me calm down, and I managed to move past it.
So why?
Why did this keep happening?
“I’ll kill him...”
“No.”
“No... Not kill him....”
I would absolutely...
Absolutely overturn every part of that man’s plan.
I would never allow him to achieve the result he wanted.
He said this was practice, right?
That the World Gate’s world was practice...
“Baby? Did you call meee?”
“...Dorfin.”
I looked at her.
“Can I meet that person called Ruin?”
Dorfin tilted her head at my question.
Then she gently sat beside me and softly pulled me into an embrace.
Normally, I would have hated that.
But Dorfin was the only adult I could rely on.
Maybe because of that, I couldn’t bring myself to push her away.
Apparently, somewhere deep down, I had already been relying on Dorfin without realizing it.
She was the person I had immediately called for.
Maybe it was because she was my teacher.
“Did something happen?”
“It did.”
“For about twenty-five years.”
Something felt slightly off.
I pushed Dorfin’s arms away and stood from the sofa.
And knowing her personality, there was no way she was simply looking at me with pity right now.
When I stepped away and glanced at her...
She was smiling softly.
She was probably thinking something like—
Oh my~ Our baby’s instincts have gotten muuuch better~
“Dorfin, do you know the blacksmith in the Isolated Sea?”
“Of courrrse~ That guy’s completely broken~”
She giggled.
“That person once said, ‘If only he had fighting spirit, he would have passed.’”
“Then did you know he was inside the game too?”
Apparently not.
Dorfin looked genuinely surprised.
Then, as though she understood why I wanted to meet Ruin, she slowly nodded.
“...He said the world inside the game was a world the Chairman made for practice.”
“Oh my.”
Dorfin’s eyes widened.
“So he really waaanted to become the god of a new world?”
“My, my. He acted sooo much like he didn’t~”
The summoned man’s words had felt impossibly heavy to me.
Apparently, they carried just as much weight for Dorfin.
“Hmm~ So that’s why he made Baby look exactly like that person~?”
“Yeah.”
“Dorfin, why didn’t you tell me that?”
“Did you know too?!”
“Baby.”
“There are sooo many worlds out there.”
“Do you really think there wouldn’t be a single person who resembled that person somewhere among them?”
...
Fine.
Whatever.
The important part was that the Chairman was trying to use me to investigate the possibilities of a new world.
Did the Chairman really think of me as his avatar?
Then...
Those violent emotions I sometimes felt inside the game...
The emotions that were so intense I could barely follow them...
Were those not mine?
Were they the Chairman’s?
No.
If that were true, then exactly how much of me was—
“Baby.”
Dorfin smiled brightly at me.
