Chapter 65: Phase 51 - ... Why Not Kill Me Then?
The steam had begun to thin, turning from a thick, opaque curtain into a translucent shroud that clung to the marble walls. For a few minutes, the silence in the basin felt absolute. I actually thought we were offline. I thought the system had finally hit a buffer overflow and granted us a moment of genuine latency.
But the admin never sleeps. The system never actually powers down; it just waits for your pulse to stabilize before it injects the next nightmare.
A brief, cerulean blue flicker ignited in the corner of my vision.
It was a sharp, digital intrusion that made my retinas ache.
"Huh, are you still bringing that?" Velvet asked. Her eyes flickered with a dull, exhausted confusion as she watched the reflection of my HUD in the water’s surface.
[D-DRIVE GAME TRIAL CHALLENGE NO. 2 – ROUND 1 WILL BEGIN IN 6 HOURS. PLEASE CONSERVE YOUR ENERGY AND TAKE A REST. – just now]
Wow. How groundbreaking.
"Challenge No. 2."
The UI designers for this hell-scape are genuinely lazy as fuck.
It is like they just added a boolean value to a global variable right before, just in case the server crashed again: If (User.Status == Alive) { Start.Next_Torment(); }.
I nodded, my neck cracking with the effort.
Kinda lazy, I guess.
No, It is worse than lazy.
It is insulting.
They put us through a physical and psychological meat grinder, and then they announce the next round with the same enthusiasm as an OS update notification.
"Kinda lazy, innit?" A sudden teasing female voice struck my reverie.
I flinched.
I keep forgetting that the Share-Lock feature turns my internal monologue into a public broadcast for her.
"Can you stop trying to read my—oh..."
I trailed off, realizing the futility of the complaint.
"Shut up."
The reply was clear.
And quiet.
I did not bother making a ripple out of this already hazy situation.
The water was cooling now, the synthetic sandalwood scent turning slightly sour as the steam dissipated.
"Heh, why is that, love? Isn’t your information now mine too, hm?"
Velvet leaned her head back,
her wet hair fanning out like a dark halo against the stone.
Information. Data. Telemetry.
That is all we are to this system. We are just two nodes in a shared network, and she’s treating the share-lock like it’s a high-speed fiber connection.
"Now you are being hard to get," I muttered.
I was starting to hate this system altogether.
It was not just the physical intrusion; it was the way it stripped away the last layer of privacy—the right to have a thought that stayed inside your own skull.
"Well, if you really hate it, why not kill me then?"
Are you fucking kidding me?
The question hit the room like a server-wide lag spike.
I looked at her, my brain trying to parse the syntax of the joke.
Except, her eyes did not look like they were playing.
The starlet mask was gone, replaced by a composed, terrifyingly still gaze.
Is she testing my loyalty metrics? Or is this just a hole in her own logic?
If I killed her, the V-Link would just. The Share-Lock would get terminated.
I’d be alone in the dark with a 100% ego penalty.
"Don’t do anything stupid. I will kill you if that ever happens,"
I said, trying to anchor the conversation back to reality.
"Understand?"
Velvet let out a sudden, jagged chuckle.
She fisted her hand, covering her mouth as if gauging my reaction. It was a performative gesture, but the tremor in her fingers was real.
"Do you really think I would let you die?"
I continued, my voice dropping into a serious, low-res frequency.
"No~" Her reply was controlled, but it still carried that irritating, teasing lilt.
"I mean...
there should be a possibility where you have to sacrifice for someone you loved.
No?"
She lowered her tone, aiming to capture the gravity I was trying to project.
Stop... Do not say that.
If the system calculates a 50/50 survival rate, I know exactly what the math says.
I do not want to hear the logic. I do not want to think about the "Hero" trope where the protagonist makes the tough choice just to sacrifice himself in the end.
I felt a sudden, hot sting behind my eyes. I wanted to shed tears—to actually cry for the possibility of that choice. But my gamer instinct kicked in, cold and brutal.
What a stupid idiot.
If she actually wanted to die....
If she wanted to surrender all of her asserts for that, then she deserved it.
No question. That is the logic: Only the ones who want to win, survive.
"You are not a hero, Kyouya. You are just a detective."
I said it with a dry, hacking bitterness.
Don’t act like you are one. A hero saves people.
A detective just finds out how they died.
Velvet nodded, unable to deny the categorization.
"I know. But what if it ever happens? Just tell me, love. Of course, you really love me. And we have been doing so much together. There is no mask between us. You have seen my face, and the same goes for me. But still..."
She leaned forward, the water cascading off her shoulders.
"Have you ever thought it could be possible at all? In this hell of a stage, Mayo?"
I soaked my head under the water, submerging myself entirely to escape the question. The acoustic layer shifted to a dull, pressurized thrum.
Idiot.
That is what I thought underwater.
And of course, she recognized it instantly. The annoying feature of the Share-Lock made sure my insult reached her even through six inches of water.
"Mayo... I mean, Midnight," she said, her voice muffled but persistent.
"I’m serious."
I lifted my head, the water sluicing over my eyes. "Me too, you idiot times three."
I wiped the moisture from my face, staring her down.
"Also, we are on our own. Just call me Mayo. It is fine."
"Midnight sounds like you are admiring me," I added, my voice going passive.
"Really? Am I not your number one admirer now, Mayo-san?"
The tease was back. The tension broke, but the fracture remained.
"Okay, now you are being so silly. Shut up,"
I scoffed, turning my gaze back to the gold faucets.
Great. She’s adding honorifics now.
The system is counting down to Challenge No. 2, and we’re sitting in a tub of cooling oil yapping like we’re a couple in some kind of slice-of-life romcom anime.
Basically, we are so fucked.
