In the room where I had woken up after sleeping with I Seora, I was able to find my wallet and phone without difficulty. Come to think of it, the reason I hadn’t gone looking in the other rooms on the first day was that I hadn’t wanted to thoughtlessly rummage through the place where this body’s parents were—or had been—but there was absolutely no reason I couldn’t ransack a place called my room.
With the phone I’d found, I immediately checked the money in my bank account.
The cash in my wallet was a measly hundred thousand won at best. For a student, it was a decent sum, but far too little to live alone.
If there wasn’t more money on the card, I’d be in dire straits. Since I could check how much was in the account on my phone anyway, I checked with a mixture of tension and anticipation.
I had no way of knowing the password for the banking app, but I could check whether it had been registered with a fingerprint.
As a result, inside the account, to my astonishment…
“Th-three hundred million?”
There was a little over three hundred million won.
Wondering what this was, I went straight to the transaction history and found that my older sister had been sending three million won every month.
Since rent didn’t seem to be paid separately, that three million won was, in its own way, essentially spending money.
Saving up three million won a month—an amount that could be considered a salary to some—for several years was precisely how there came to be three hundred million won.
From that, I could estimate that this body’s birth parents had died about ten years ago.
Because that was when my sister had suddenly started sending three million at a time.
Of course, it was possible my sister had started earning money from then, so I shouldn’t blindly trust my guess, but it wasn’t a very important matter.
Even in dating sims, it’s rare for the exact time when this body’s parents passed away to become important later on.
After checking the account history on my phone, I flopped down onto the bed in delight.
‘Suddenly I don’t feel like going outside at all…!’
As long as no one was after my chastity, I felt like I could stay in this world forever.
Three hundred million won wasn’t a number you came by easily. Though the amount was a bit small, it was no different from winning the lottery.
The lottery.
To think I’d won the lottery that I might only win once in my lifetime. I was a bit elated, but soon smiled bitterly.
But just the day before, I’d been assaulted; if I hadn’t figured out how to unleash my ability in an instant, I’d probably still be having a terrible time with the owner of that doll right now. Or rather, the student council president instead of me.
And if the student council president had gone through that terrible time, I would have been haunted by nightmares every day thereafter.
Because I was fairly kind and prone to feeling guilty.
I didn’t think I’d easily feel guilty no matter what wrong I did to extras whose faces I hardly saw, but the sight of a woman who’d shown me unconditional kindness being caught without even being able to resist because of me was something I couldn’t help but feel guilty about.
Therefore, no matter how much more money I had here than out in society, staying here seemed likely to give me many reasons to feel guilty. If an opportunity to leave arose, I’d have to seize it without fail.
Since I didn’t know what the original owner of this body had been thinking, saving up the money sent by the older sister she supposedly hated, I couldn’t spend it carelessly either.
Should I use money only for urgent things like food and stress-relief desserts?
I turned off the phone that kept crushing my motivation and conjuring bad thoughts, then lay down on the bed.
Instead of a white ceiling that looked liable to drive me insane, there was a ceiling with clouds drawn here and there on blue wallpaper. It was a room more suited to a boy than a girl, but better than one plastered entirely in white.
…If only I could rest forever just looking at this ceiling.
Rather than using the computer or lying around doing nothing, there was something I needed to resolve first, so I left the room and went up to the second floor.
The place I had mistaken for my room. When I got there, instead of going inside, I immediately leaned against the door and slid down to sit.
“This is just a guess, so just listen. This is my sister’s room, isn’t it?”
Perhaps because I wasn’t face-to-face with my sister, the word ‘sister’ came out relatively easily.
After all, I could say ‘sister’ all I wanted when talking to myself. It was just that having to call her that in front of someone younger than me tended to provoke a sense of shame.
After confirming that no answer came from inside the room, I felt slightly relieved.
“If this isn’t my room, then this must be someone else’s room, and that leaves only one person. If Inna allowed a CCTV to be installed in front of it, and you think about the reason one would install a CCTV there, it must be because she considers herself dangerous.”
Inna and my sister had spoken in a confusing way that made me think it was really my room. But if this room wasn’t mine, another reason came to mind immediately.
The possibility that the owner of this room was so dangerous that a CCTV had to be installed to monitor her in real time.
In other words, my sister in this room was dangerous. When I checked my phone, a screen connected to the CCTV here had appeared, so the original reason it was installed must have been for that purpose.
“I don’t know why you thought that way. I don’t know why you made it into a room coated white either. So I’m asking this purely—what meaning does this room hold?”
If it was really installed because you’re dangerous, then why did I wake up in this room?
Was it because I was so lonely that I wanted comfort from the owner of this room, with whom I have a bad relationship? Or was it because of the supernatural ability this owner might possess?
My sister’s supernatural ability that I hadn’t been able to check back then. The system dwelling in this body had such inefficient aspects that even if someone I didn’t love was threatening, it couldn’t even properly check their supernatural ability.
Of course, I had initially thought the eyes that let me see names, supernatural abilities, and lastly roles were too dull, but having lived in this body, I was starting to understand.
Extras overlapped with the functions of seeing something like a black mental illness and checking affection levels, so even if someone queen-like changed her appearance, you could tell by approaching her.
Instead, when I had been able to check my sister, I hadn’t been able to do so properly because the system had momentarily stopped after taking a blow from someone presumed to be an unidentified heroine.
Would the things I hadn’t been able to check properly back then come back to haunt me later?
With no answer forthcoming, I didn’t bother waiting and simply went downstairs.
The reason I’d spoken while thinking there was no one in the room was simply to organize my thoughts.
Ignoring the impulse to turn back and open the door even now, I returned to my room.
*
“If you had lost your memories, forgetting them forever would be the best choice for us, but… you’ll regain them again in order to punish me.”
The woman who had been listening behind the door finally straightened her body, which had been leaning against it.
Had Erika assumed there was no one behind it, or had she known of her existence?
Seeing that she hadn’t bothered to open the door, perhaps she had known unconsciously.
A cowardly younger sister who, though she possessed a shield close to the strongest, hid first because she was afraid to see her.
But having opened her mouth to release the words she held inside only after hearing Erika’s footsteps descend the stairs, she herself was surely the same kind of coward.
“I will wait—for the day you punish me. And with the exact same heart, for the day I completely forget what happened that day.”
Those contradictory words contained a conflicting heart directed at Erika.
The heart wanting to see Erika move forward alone while punishing herself, and the heart wanting Erika to remain by her side, having forgotten that day’s events.
“But you’ll have to do everything quickly. Because you must do all of that before I consume you in whatever sense. —Your older sister isn’t the patient type, you see.”
Because that conflicting heart was in fact skewed to one side, the heart that endured was inevitably very weak.
Leaving behind a warning that would not reach its target, the figure of a woman—whether she was the real body or an illusion—vanished from inside the room.
An empty room. And in the hallway before it, the scent of the one who had left lingered briefly before vanishing.
[Erika’s main scenario has a time limit. If the final boss can no longer endure herself, it will definitively enter a bad ending.]
*
A dark night.
Someone approaches and grabs a swaying drunkard who seems intoxicated.
“Excuse me, are you alright?”
The drunkard couldn’t properly see the face of the person steadying her, but she heard the voice clearly.
It was a voice that seemed to gently embrace everything; to it, the drunkard couldn’t help but pour out her entire story.
That there was no one left for her now, and that she’d been fired from her company.
That voice spoke mystically, patting the drunkard’s shoulder with her hand.
“Please return home. There, you will find the family you thought you had lost. However, if that family does not last forever and vanishes, come to this place. Because God is watching over you.”
—If only you could be happy.
A single business card slipped into the drunkard’s embrace. And with that, feeling a peace as though she had returned home, the drunkard collapsed face-down on the ground.
A woman who had been dusting off the spot where the drunkard had leaned as if soiled by filth looked down at the drunkard lying sprawled on the ground and thought of a certain girl.
‘Do as you please.’
Along with those cold eyes that hadn’t treated her like a fellow living being.
To break that arrogant confidence, she had to build up strength by any means necessary.
If she left the narrow well called school and built up strength in the sea called the city, she would eventually reach her as well——.
“I said I’d make her regret it, didn’t I?”
Over the sight of the unconscious drunkard with a face full of tears, the woman saw overlaid the image of a white-haired girl who would wear such a face every day from now on.
Before and after.
Had the main scenario begun, and then the woman started obsessing over Erika?
Or had the system already guessed that the woman would become obsessed?
To the woman who knew nothing about the system, none of that mattered.
122 people, including the drunkard before her.
It was still a meager number, but the end could only be magnificent.
The seeds that would become Erika’s bad ending advanced into the darkness in order to make others believe.
In a place Erika knew nothing of, someone’s obsession with her only grew greater.
The moon watching over all of this merely floated in silence.