by Nikita Thorn
The obake girl had visibly no such intention. “Arata, Ichiro, leave us please,” said Kiku, softly.
The young ryoushi, still ruffled by the exchange, cried out in protest, “Kiku-san!”
“Ichiro,” said Arata. “Come with me.”
Reluctantly, they both left through the interior door, and Seiki could hear it slide shut.
Kiku was still looking at him. “Yes, it was staged, Seiki,” said the obake. “The whole thing. At least up until the end anyway. I was the one sending you messages from Mumei.”
Finally, someone was being honest. “Why?” Seiki asked.
“That was your audition, Seiki,” she said. “And you exceeded our expectations.”
Seiki was now shaking with uncontrollable rage. “Am I supposed to be flattered?” he said. “You think this is amusing?”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like that,” she said.
“It wasn’t supposed to have happened,” said Seiki. “You can’t do that to people!”
Kiku looked at him for a moment, before letting out a sad sigh. “Why are you here, Seiki?” she said. “Why do you play this game?”
“What does that have anything to do with—”
“Why do you play, Seiki?” Kiku asked again. “What do you want? What are you looking for here?”
“I don’t know!” Seiki screamed. He wanted his sight back. None of this would even matter if he still had his old life.
“Why do you keep coming back?”
“I don’t know, all right?” Because he had nothing else. Because he needed to escape his sorry life. Or maybe because he was desperately searching for something to convince him that, despite all that happened, it was still worth living.
Kiku sighed again. “I know why I’m here,” she said, softly. “Sometimes in life, we don’t get to choose who we are, but here we do. That’s why a lot of us are here.” She paused, her eyes still on him. “This place is very special for us. For a lot of people, it’s a sanctuary, and we choose carefully who we spend time with, because it matters to us. We didn’t expect you to have such a strong reaction, and I’m very sorry for that, but I can tell you it wasn’t for our own amusement, Seiki. We really wanted to see who you were.”
Seiki shook his head. That was a terrible excuse. “What is that even going to tell you?” he said. None of this was real, so ultimately everything was nothing more than stupid drama games. Perhaps the real betrayal was how they had made him feel like he was doing something, that his actions mattered, and that he was still capable of decisions—at least inconsequential, virtual ones. But then, they took that away, too.
“Seiki,” said Kiku. “You stepped in when you saw someone in need, even when you didn’t have to. You risked your life to warn us, even when you didn’t have to. And when you realized your mistake, you immediately owned up to it. That’s who you are, and that’s admirable. Nothing you do really matters in this world, but we all still choose to do something. Some people choose to be bullies. Some people choose to suck up to power. Then there are some people who choose to risk offending people they know they can’t fight, to defend someone not worth defending, and to try to Parry a Level 25 ninja’s dagger shot.” She smiled.
“It’s all fantasy. Don’t you see?” he said. In the end, nothing mattered. Even if they tested him, it still did not matter. He was just living out who he wished he was, who he wished he could be, or who he thought he used to be. “It’s not real. None of this is real.”
He felt as if he was begging for scraps, and they even denied him that.
Kiku looked at him very intently. “Your experiences here are real, Seiki. Your feelings are real. The situation you are put in might not be real, but what you decide to do in those situations is all real. The world gives you complete freedom, and there are absolutely no real life consequences to what you do here. You can be killing fresh Level Fives for entertainment. At this level, you can one-shot them, you know. But that has never occurred to you, has it? And, yes, there are people who do that. And I know you don’t role-play but, around us, you are courteous enough to try, and you play that hime-sama and Hiro-san game with us.”
Seiki didn’t know what to say, or what to think, now that the girl had managed to frame it so differently.
Kiku smiled at him, and Seiki became conscious he had lowered his sword.
“And there’s more to that,” she said. “When you put yourself into different kinds of situations, you learn something about yourself,” said Kiku. “That’s why a lot of us are here. What people call drama games allow us to try out different strategies. When the enemy clan is yelling insults at you, how do you feel? Can you walk away? The beauty of it is that we get unlimited tries, Seiki. And sometimes, who we want to be in this world can inform us about who we can be in real life.”
Seiki shook his head, feeling very tired. “Not in my case,” he whispered, perhaps to himself. The best thing he could hope for nowadays was just to remember where he put things, and not to accidentally drop his pills, or the gel cap, or these damned transmission discs, so that he would not have to spend the next fifteen minutes crawling on the floor looking for them.
“I’m very sorry for what happened,” she said.
Seiki took a deep breath. “Would you have eventually told me?”
“Yes,” said the obake. “If we like how you handle the whole situation, whatever the outcome, we sit you down in the OOC room, explain everything right away and make you an offer to join us.”
“So everyone was in on it.”
“Everyone in that room,” she said. “Well, except Hiro, since his deal was full immersion. The only time he was ever out of character was during that talk when we asked him to join us, where he explained that he wanted full immersion, and that he wanted to fight, a lot. You see, we run these RP events all the time, and members can choose if they want to be clued in or not. Maybe we forgot you were not an RPer at heart.”
Seiki said nothing.
Perhaps she could see that he had softened his stance, so she went on, “The other day, when we were speculating if you could have been Reiji, you know what Hiro said? ‘What the hell are you talking about, Kiku? They look nothing alike! How can Seiki-san be Reiji?’ Sometimes, it gets a bit annoying.”
Seiki looked at her. “Reiji of the Shinshioka Scientific Society?” If he had not been so angry, this would have been amusing.
“Yeah, I don’t know who started that rumor,” she said. “Anyway, Hiro’s never quite figured out how to be in a different character on top of his own character, so we kept him out of it.”
This whole thing was starting to feel more complicated than the whole alternate storylines with the samurai and ronin class quests. Seiki closed his eyes for a second to calm himself. Now that it had come to this, he might as well understand everything. “So how was this supposed to play out?” he asked, opening his eyes again.
“I’ll explain. I know you don’t want to be here right now, so I’ll walk you out,” said Kiku. “The newer members don’t know and we don’t want any more drama tonight, right?” Seiki could only sheathe his sword and follow her through the door.
Whether by design or coincidence, they encountered no other players as Kiku led the way around the building toward the back door. There was no bridge on the other side, but a small raft Seiki could stand on. The obake girl, with her ability to run on water, towed him easily across, and they soon were between a small cluster of low buildings and tiny gardens.
“It was meant to be very simple, really,” said Kiku. “When you come to see this mysterious Mumei, you will accidentally run into Akari, who is being chased. Susumu shoots some arrows at you to scare you a bit and make the threat seem realistic. Then we send Hiro and Arata out, since you’ve met Hiro. If he doesn’t invite you, Arata will, and Hatsuo will shoot some more arrows at you from afar. And while you are busy dodging those, Akari slips in and the same scenario plays out.”
Now w
ith this explanation, it did seem very simple. “But I didn’t come to Nanamura.”
“No. We were trying to think of something else, but then Hatsuo said that he had a way, and that he needed to borrow a few clan members. So we gave him the go-ahead. Arata and Susumu went with him, and poor Shuji, who had to start a brawl and who had to sit in prison for half an hour.”
“And who exactly is Hatsuo?” The man seemed to be everywhere, acting suspiciously.
“Oh, Hatsuo?” said Kiku. “He’s like an actor for hire, and he runs a few other actors for hire. We’ve been using them for ages. Ichikeya uses him too, you know. They’re not an official group, but we call them the Anonymous Players, since sometimes they create and level a character just for a specific purpose.”
Seiki thought about it. “But Akari inviting the ninja in was not part of the plan.”
“No,” said Kiku. “We were supposed to have a fun night of hide and seek for the clan members, and end with us catching the intruder, and get rid of her. But then she completely broke character, and used that as a distraction to invite her colleague in.”
Seiki was starting to understand that breaking character on purpose was a serious offense for some of these people, which was why they had appeared so shocked.
That was when he realized another thing: that Akari had been the one to frame it as a lie, a betrayal, and if it had not been for that, and if the clan had had a chance to do what they wanted to do and come clean on their own, he suspected he would have reacted much better.
He looked at Kiku. Perhaps this had been clear to everyone from the beginning, and Seiki debated whether he could have been overreacting. “She used me, didn’t she?”
“She used all of us.” Kiku smiled. “Whoever she was, she was good. And you know what’s very interesting about this?” she asked, her eyes sparkling. “After we killed them, neither of them had anything at all on them. No money, no potions, no post paper. Nothing. Completely untraceable. The houshi girl invited her ninja friend in, but then they took nothing. Makes you wonder who these people are, and why. Makes you wonder about Hatsuo, too, actually.”
Seiki thought about something. “Could Hatsuo have been Teruo?”
Kiku tilted her head sideways. “That’s what hime-sama is having people check out right now. You can spend Favors to check log-in records in the Shogun’s Archives.”
This was yet another level of game. Seiki was starting to feel that the White Crane Order had no idea what they were up against either, and that maybe his anger, at least some of it, had been misplaced. Tonight, nothing had turned out the way it had seemed at the beginning, and this was one of the rare occasions that Seiki was looking forward to going to bed and being unconscious for a while.
Replaying the events leading up to now in his head, Seiki remembered something about Akari.
“She had these skeleton keys,” he said. “Level 25 keys that she used on the sewage gates.”
Kiku perked up. “You got the name of the crafter?”
Seiki racked his brain. “I don’t remember. Three syllables.” He shook his head. “Sounds a bit like Mumei, but not really,” he said. “Not very useful, is it?”
Another thought crossed his mind and he stared at Kiku. “This isn’t, like, the second act, is it?” he asked. His sense of reality had been warped, and for all he knew they could be lying again.
“This is real,” said Kiku. “Cross my heart.” She really did so, before producing an item from her left sleeve. “This is not as good as yours, but use it for now.”
Jade Steel Dagger, +26 attack. Damage 2.4. Speed 1.4. Range 0.3.
That’s right; he had left his Kohagane dagger on the third floor of the White Crane Hall…
“If you run more than three hundred feet away from your named weapons, they’re considered lost and they disappear, so you have to file a report at the Bureau to get them back,” Kiku said. “Actually, we tried to keep it for you, because that could not have been three hundred feet. But the calculation’s always a bit wonky when you change floors. And the fact that it was forced off your hand could affect the calculation.”
She thrust the dagger into his hand. “Take it. It’s yours now. Sell it for gold. Pawn it. Whatever. I feel like we owe you at least this much.”
Seiki bit the inside of his cheeks. Now that they were being honest, there were still things he needed to say. “I can’t apologize for thrashing that wall,” he said. As far as he knew, that was the very least they deserved. “But I’m sorry for scaring Ichiro. I wasn’t really trying to kill him.”
He paused.
“At least I hope I wasn’t,” he added softly. “And I can’t take credit for that Parry, because I didn’t know what it was.”
Kiku laughed, softly. “Oh, Seiki,” she said, then she was looking at him in a way that, in any other situation, would probably have made him blush.
The path had led them to a stone wall at the end of the territory where there was a tiny wooden door, which opened into a field southwest of Nanamura. Kiku stopped at the doorway. “I know we haven’t earned your trust,” she said. “But you’ve earned ours.”
Kiku has added you to the White Crane Hall guest list. You may now enter the territory without an invitation from clan members.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” said Seiki. “This isn’t going to change my mind.”
“Maybe not now.” Kiku smiled. “But maybe when you’re sick of running the same dungeons and missions and battles.”
She then sighed, a bit wistfully. “At least, tell me we’ve left an impression.”
“You have,” he admitted. He could now see why people would be affected by such blatant attention and approval. And suddenly, he did not trust himself to be around them much longer, lest they managed to really convince him somehow.
Kiku smiled and pointed ahead. “After Nanamura, you’ll come across a stream and, if you follow it a bit, you’ll get to the Main East Road and be on your way.”
“Wait,” said Seiki. “How did you know about that?”
“Fuyu-chan told me. Actually, she asked us when we were planning it and offered to help. She said she could help incentivize you to avoid brawls and Patrols, and she asked me to point you in the direction of Mannaka Village at the end.”
Seiki had to think about it for a second, before it struck him. “The enhancement scroll,” he said to himself. Fuyu had known all along that he would not be reaching his territory box to deposit it, and she knew that having the scroll on him would motivate him to be careful on the journey to avoid losing it. Seiki could not help but ask himself how much it had unconsciously affected him.
He thought he had been careful, even before agreeing to go to Ichikeya with Fuyu. And now he began to fathom that the trap might have been even more sophisticated than he had imagined.
“The scene at the vegetable shop,” he said. “Did you purposely have Teruo at Level 13 so he would be difficult for me but not impossible, and Akari one level below me so she would seem weak?” And not to mention the fact that they had her be a houshi, so she would be able to keep him alive if he made a mistake.
“Yes,” said Kiku. “That was Fuyu’s idea.” Then a thought crossed her mind and she whispered, “You don’t believe it was…” She trailed off.
Seiki could not hold back his laughter when he saw Kiku’s horrified expression. He understood it perfectly now. This was a completely different kind of play, a sophisticated and convoluted one, a kind that before tonight he had never suspected existed.
“You people,” he said, shaking his head, and causing Kiku to stare at him in surprise at his swift shift in mood.
After a while—after the White Crane Hall was far enough in his back and he found a safe-looking spot he could log out from—, Seiki gazed into space as he recognized that whatever Fuyu’s intention had been, she was right about one thing: he was now curious.
Chapter 11
Early morning was mild in the red
cedar forest. The leaves were bright green in the gentle sun, the grass was wet with lingering dew, the air was filled with birdsong, and Seiki was in a unique kind of dilemma.
On one hand, he wanted to get the trip over with as soon as possible, now that he had discovered it was tangled in all kinds of complicated matters. On the other, after what had happened in the White Crane Hall, he felt he needed some time alone to sort himself out—since even after a full night’s sleep, his brain was still full of jumbled thoughts.
He believed the White Crane Order had been sincere about their attempt to recruit him, and he supposed that in a different mindset perhaps he could have been swayed. But their little clan event night had somehow gone terribly wrong, and Ichikeya was involved somehow. Fuyu clearly knew more than she let on, and here he was, delivering a mysterious piece of paper to Kano Castle, which he was starting to have an uncanny feeling would end up complicating things even more.
But he had started it, and he would finish it.
Seiki drew a deep breath. This world was supposed to be simple and entertaining. Yet, he had somehow made it difficult for himself again, as if he had not enough unpleasant thoughts to keep his mind occupied in real life.
“Or maybe it’s just Fatigue,” he said to Fubuki, who snorted gently in response. He had not felt the effect, but he guessed it would kick in soon, since it had been almost six hours since he had left Shinshioka. “Or maybe I’m just taking all of this too seriously.”
They were making their way down the stream and, according to Kiku, the Main East Road should not be too far ahead. Just an hour’s ride, and it would be over. And he would be more than glad to be done with it and maybe do nothing but sell charms for Kentaro for a while, or find a mind-bogglingly boring quest he could spend a few hours on. As he made his way further into the Wilderness, he had a feeling that he was walking further and further away from everything he knew. Yet, somehow, it was not an unfamiliar feeling, and it greatly bothered him.
“Or maybe it’s what the Wilderness does to you,” said Seiki again. “Makes you appreciate civilization.” It had not been six hours but, in a way, he was starting to miss Shinshioka. “Look, Master Tsujihara, now that you’re gone I’m just talking to my horse and she can’t even answer.”
