PDS Chapter 1.2

Just then, Yeon Suho, still staring straight at me with those deep, abyss-like eyes, spoke again.

“Sleeping outside for so long will give you a cold, Senior.”

“Damn it, a cold is the least of my worries right now.”

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“…….”

“…I-I rarely get colds anyway. And who gets a cold in this weather…?”

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I appreciated the concern, but…

My voice trailed off as I spoke. I’d unknowingly gotten a little too cocky in front of someone who could snap at any moment and brutally kill me on a whim if he felt like it.

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Was the title of this bad ending going to be <The Consequences of Talking Back to an Unfathomable Being>?

I was wondering if I should immediately apologize for my impudence when the guy, whose abilities and motives were still completely unknown to me, muttered under his breath,

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“I catch colds, though…”

“…….”

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Oh, I see.

So, the guy who casually stabbed me in the neck over my poorly chosen answer, and roamed around freely even when the game was paused could catch a cold in this season, even while wearing his summer uniform. Good to know. Very useful information.

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…I felt like being sarcastic, but at the same time, strangely, a bit of… human connection? Was he sickly? Now that I think about it, he’s thin and his skin is pale…

Then again, those delicate hands had been strong enough to kill me… twice… Shit.

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“Do you… remember what happened before?”

Confused and experiencing a serious disconnection between reality and the game, I impulsively blurted out another potentially dangerous question before I could even stop myself.

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Wow, was I always this reckless? 

I’d experienced firsthand how dangerous meta-commentary could be, yet here I was, pushing the boundaries again.

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But it was important to figure out how much he knew. What if I overlooked something and ended up making another dumb mistake?

Honestly, I was terrified of his answer. 

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Yes, I actually remember everything from beginning to end, and I’m going to keep following you and killing you over and over again so you can never leave this game?

…What the hell would I do if he actually said that?

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I gulped nervously.

Immediately after that, Yeon Suho opened his mouth, his expression completely unreadable.

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“Remember?”

“…….”

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“Would you like me to remember this moment for you?”

“…Huh?”

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Hearing those words, I forgot all about my anxiety and let out a sigh of relief.

‘Would you like me to remember this moment for you?’

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That was the line that appeared when saving the game. I’d heard it countless times from Yeon Suho since entering the game.

The words, the intonation, everything was exactly the same. The being in front of me now wasn’t some rogue AI, a homicidal android driven by a destructive urge towards the player, but Yeon Suho, the save point, which was one of the game’s functions.

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“…….”

For some reason, my endless, baseless suspicions subsided somewhat. Maybe he really was nothing more than an NPC. Maybe this was all just a clever trick, an attempt to break the fourth wall, to make the player feel uneasy and over-immerse themselves by having a game character seemingly acknowledge them.

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A character breaking the fourth wall and addressing the player directly might have been a novelty at first, but it was a pretty old technique. I was probably more freaked out than I should be because, unlike playing a normal game where I’d be staring at a screen clicking buttons, I was experiencing everything through a living body, with all my senses intact.

This was a game. He was a game character. His words might be creepy, but he was a being from another dimension, unable to lay a finger on me in the real world.

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Of course, the problem was that I couldn’t just quit the game and walk away right now. And his actions were far more terrifying than his words. Still, I told myself I didn’t need to be that scared.

The worst that could happen was dying. It didn’t even hurt, and I could just restart as many times as I wanted.

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‘Can’t let my guard down completely, though.’

He could still get in my way, that much was certain. So, while maintaining a healthy level of caution, I decided to ask him again, trying to probe for more information.

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“How did you get out of the classroom?”

At the start of the game, Yeon Suho is supposed to be trapped in Class 2-3, unable to go anywhere. The back door is jammed shut, and the front door has been tightly locked from the outside with a padlock.

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The sliding back door of our classroom was always a bit stiff. If it closed the wrong way, the door and frame would get misaligned, making it near impossible to open without some serious finagling, even if the lock was undone.

Because of that, the other students and I didn’t use the back door much and always used the front door. The teachers weren’t thrilled about it, but since they were aware of the issue, they grudgingly tolerated it.

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Yeon Suho, being clueless about this little quirk, walks into the classroom only to find himself trapped when the front door gets locked. In a normal playthrough, I would have to practically rip the door off its hinges to free him, at which point he’d start crying about his ordeal.

I could usually glean a few clues about the story at that point… 

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As I wracked my brain trying to recall the playthrough, Yeon Suho tilted his head and asked,

“The classroom?”

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“Yeah. Weren’t you in our classroom?”

“Ah… yes, I was.”

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“Did you see anyone suspicious this time?”

“Huh?”

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In the original playthrough, after rescuing him from being locked in the classroom, he would say:

‘I think someone deliberately locked me in here. Not long after I entered the classroom, I saw a human shadow reflected on the glass of the door, and then heard the sound of the front door being locked from the outside.’

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He would then explain how he yelled for help because he was still inside, but the mysterious figure just walked away, their footsteps echoing down the hallway. The front door was actually locked, and there was no key to Class 2-3 to be found anywhere even if you go in the teacher’s office, so he was probably telling the truth.

Whoever locked Yeon Suho in must have been a key character in the game. I hadn’t encountered anyone fitting that description in my previous playthroughs, though.

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Yeon Suho’s expression turned thoughtful, and he muttered to himself, almost as if he was thinking out loud.

“Now that you mention it… there was someone like that.”

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So, did he see them this time or not?

As I was trying to decipher his vague response, Yeon Suho suddenly looked up and continued,

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“Not long after I entered the classroom, someone locked the front door and left. But the back door, though a bit broken was open, so… I managed to get out.”

“…….”

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I narrowed my eyes, studying his face, trying to figure out what he was really thinking.

Was this an act? Or had he somehow… learned something from the previous resets?

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His pale, almost bloodless face was completely unreadable, giving nothing away. He was so eerily calm that it only made him more suspicious.

The more I thought about it, the more questions I had about him, even disregarding the current, bizarre situation.

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‘I always just brushed it off, assuming that’s just how it was—but come to think of it, why did he even go into a third-year classroom when he’s from a lower grade?’

And it was strange that he had been waiting by the door for me, too. It was these little things that made me realize Yeon Suho wasn’t just a normal NPC.

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If he knew I was on the rooftop, why not just come up? Why did he wait quietly until I opened the door?

To begin with, he was the type to just stand in a corner, silently watching everything I did unless I actively spoke to him. Because of that, even when he talked and moved naturally like this, he sometimes felt less like a real person and more like a mindless system, an inanimate object.

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‘Actually… he is a game character, so it makes sense to say that he doesn’t have self-awareness.’

I was the one projecting human emotions and camaraderie onto him, even though he was nothing but a manufactured system, a collection of code. Thinking about it that way filled me with a sense of emptiness, like none of this mattered.

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Enough. 

Trying to shake off the weird feeling, I reached out and ruffled his slightly disheveled hair without much thought.

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Surprisingly, it was finer and softer than it looked, almost like dog fur.

“Well, whatever. It probably doesn’t mean anything, but go ahead and save this, too, along with everything else. That’s your job, after all.”

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