T'balt pretended to be asleep in his bed. The clock ticked towards 5 in the morning. Chosa crept into the house, the Chosa of old. She hadn't a clue of anything that happened in the world before her. Her only thoughts were of the exhausting day of school work and the almost trivial drama between friends she knew she wouldn't keep. The apocalypse had once again been reset. All of T'balt's progress reset. And she remained blissfully aware that it was all her fault.
That was the only thing preventing him from pulling the trigger. As she slept next to him, T'balt had the gun aimed at her sleeping, ignorant, almost cute face. "She killed me" was all he kept thinking over and over and over again. Chosa killed him, drove the dagger through his heart herself.
"Bad end, Redeemer," She called him Redeemer, but she likely didn't know what it meant—that he would remember. No matter what, he would remember, and that agonizing pain would follow him to the next and all lives after. That angered boiled hot, hardening the metal ingots that formed the armor around his heart.
She deserved to die. All the time, coaxing him, making him believe that she cared about him. It was a joke and a ploy only to betray him for Monan. The depths of her cruelty, her utter disdain for him, had invoked her to murder him.
That must've been what it was. Yes. She hated him. She had spent all that time living with him, seething in rage with every look at him and every breath he took. She could make love to him with a greasy, poisonous smile that he would fall for every time. No, this was evil lying next to him, and it had always been. He hated himself for falling for it. This person, he thought he loved. This person he had thought he could marry one day.
He remembered thinking, "If I killed her now, it wouldn't even matter." When things reset again, she would live. She'd be there, and she'd betray him for Monan then, too. He would have to kill her every time… before she could kill him. "Bitch. Whore… Fucking…" His body was shaking, but still he dropped the gun, unable to pretend he could do it.
"You need to leave," he said that morning.
"What?"
"Get out of my house, Chosa."
She looked at him, incredulous, unable to fathom the depths of his words. She felt an attack, and she was always primed to defend. "What are you crazy?"
"I don't want anything to do with you anymore…" He couldn't look her in the eye, staring straight at the floor. He'd never had to break up with anyone before. His anger had turned to that placating numbness he always felt when someone left him. But this was worse, realizing that he hadn't lost something. How could someone lose something they never had? He looked ashamed, and he sounded feeble. That's why Chosa didn't take his words seriously, and she thought she'd be able to overpower his will with her own.
"I never did anything to you… Did I?"
"Just go."
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? You have the NRV to act like this." He looked up, a strange sense forming around a certain word. But she didn't care. "After everything. Just like that. No reason. No nothing. Just see you bye?!"
"See you… Bye." He opened the front door.
"Get your head out of your ass, T'balt. I'm the only person in this world that'll give anything worth a damn for you. If I leave, you have no one. Your family left you. You don't have any friends. You'll just hide in here until you die cold and alone with a noose around your neck. Do you want that?"
T'balt lowered his head somehow even further, but he left the door open, hinting at it with the flicker of his eyes. Then he looked at the ground beneath her feet.
"Fine," she said. "I have other places to be, you lazy coward." And she slammed the door behind her.
Alone. Die alone. It was how it felt every time he died. Why should this life be any different? Why should it be any different than how he normally lived?
His phone began to ring. Unknown number. That was different. He didn't want to bring himself to answer, but this had never happened before. He almost felt like he had to, even though he was sapped of any motivation. But he didn't answer. He didn't want to… with people.
All he wanted to do was sink back into his old life. When was the last time he had some time to himself? He had always been so focused on Zero Day that he couldn't remember the days that came before. He longed more than anything else to go back to those days. So he ignored his phone, cracked open a beer, and sank into his couch like he was gearing up for a waking hibernation.
"You died," the game said. He flicked to the option that followed: "Reload from checkpoint," and pressed start.
These beasts were like fodder to T'balt. His character had become so overleveled that the boss battles were trivial. He'd spent all morning killing anything that moved.
But the power system in the game left much to be desired. Simple. The main character kept most of the same powers from start to finish, and it all relied on single-combat mechanics. And it didn't come with the adrenaline of loot. T'balt often found himself stuck in a cycle of boredom when compared.
Once he found a high-level beast, he could beat it even if he were underleveled. The reflex loot still working in his system. It was like his mind remembered the advanced vision he had, but that vision made everything too easy. So he found himself staring at a lone island in the game. He remembered the glitch and started jumping towards that island. But he couldn't crack the glitch. He couldn't get to it.
His phone rang again. He ignored it again.
Eventually, he thought playing a game online would fix the lack of excitement. He remembered a game that Acelin had mentioned in a loose conversation they had in the woods.
"So what's your favorite game?"
"It's called Scars Guard. It's a first-person shooter with cool graphics and really intense multiplayer. Because you only get one life. I play it like every day. I even get to the finals on almost every game," the boy explained. Before killing another beast. "But I guess it's got nothing on this."
T'balt thought, Why not and bought the game with the money he would've used for half of the electric bill. He played for an hour, making most of his time in the battle royale section of the game. All players dropped in a single map. One life only. If you died, you lost, and that was it. No trying again. The next game would be full of new people that you didn't know and wouldn't play the same. He would laugh every time he died and then get increasingly focused on the next life in, knowing what he learned wouldn't help him later.
It only took his third try to make it to the final four in one of the games. It was an intense round, and T'balt spent most of it crouched in an isolated house until the other combatants closed in around him.
He shot, but someone else shot first, and the "Eliminated" Screen popped up on his monitor. "Damn…" He exploded out of his chair. "That asshole must be running cheats or something. I definitely should've killed him." But he knew full well he just said it to compensate for his level of suck.
T'balt stared at the elimination screen for a moment as he waited for his heartbeat to slow. But he only stared, not letting his brain have an opportunity to think. Elsewise the otherside was on Chosa… "that bitch." That was why. "Who says I got a problem with dying alone?"
But the words were an oxymoron. At some point, he had found and put on a choker. It was a gift from her for his birthday. He never wore it because it was always a bit too feminine and goth for him. But she always insisted he tried it. There was a single chain link on the front. He knew what that meant now, a signal of her possession of him. He was nothing more than that. But now the choker felt like the perfect place to leave her memory… as a noose around his neck.
He fiddled with the chain as he took a drink of his eighth beer. But then on the screen, he read the words captioned underneath his dead body. "Killed by UnNRVed"
The phone rang again. "SHUT UP!!" he screamed. Unconsciously, he flung the open beer bottle at his phone, buzzing on the counter. It shattered into beer-soaked shards across the floor. His phone was soaked and covered in specs of glass.
T'balt felt his head starting to thump. He squeezed his head, covering his eyes, trying to get the pain to stop. But the phone kept ringing.
He went to grab it if only to get it to stop. But he shanked his hand in the attempt, forgetting about the glass. "Damn it. God damn it." He shook the pain out of his hand. The phone rang again. This time, he was ready to fling it out the window into the nearest dumpster and kick that dumpster into the ocean. But when he saw the screen, he saw a notification. A message from the same number calling him.
"It's Monan. Pick up the phone."
His heart dropped. The phone rang again... His heart jolted back to life, thumping in overtime. He answered as if the call were from god himself. "Hello…"
"I told you she was bad news." That was what he said. There was a gloating in the way he said it, like he was now the smartest person in the world. Like T'Balt's agony was an inevitability that he could've avoided if he had just listened to the drunken ramblings of a friend.
T'balt stayed silent.
"T'balt, you there?"
"…Yeah."
"Good. Hope you don't mind, but the goth bird gave me your number. I had to memorize it, though. Another piece of advice. Keep the memory sharp. Obviously, the shit you write down doesn't carry over… It's a hassle, though. So take it from me and keep to the important stuff."
"Why?"
"Do I have to explain to you how the human brain works, dumbass?"
"Why… couldn't you just leave us alone? Because of you… Chosa.. she.. she.." He could hardly pull out the words.
"Relax, kid. I was there. I know… You broke up with her this time, didn't you?"
"How did you know that?"
"Good," Monan said under a low rolling chuckle. "Listen. I just called to remind you… that I'm hunting you."
T'balt wanted to scream at him. "Stop. Don't. Why. I'll kill you!" But none of that came. Just a murmur where his rage she would've been but had escaped him.
"I got a little worried since you didn't really try to look for me last time. Thinking you just saw that I wasn't at the church and assumed I left you alone. No, that would be stupid… He must've been up to something good. This round, I need to act fast, get him in a way he'd least expect it. And you lost. You should follow your own advice. The game ain't just about strength."
"Please…" T'balt uttered.
"What?"
"Please. Leave me alone. I don't want any part of this. I just want to be left alone."
"But T'balt… You're the only one I have to play with. Why would you say something so cruel to me?" He laughed. "Listen, just kill me once, and it'll all be over. I'll leave you and that little old church alone. And you can get that good ending you want so bad. Until then… I'm going to kill you, and I'm going to keep killing you until the world stops turning and undoubtedly resets. Then I'll kill you again. You understand?"
"Please…"
"See ya when I see ya." The line went dead.