It had already faded into a pale yellow memory, like a photograph hidden for years at the bottom of a drawer. Someone slowly pulled it out, brushed away the mottled dust, and blew on it gently, bringing the image, already beginning to rot and split, back into slightly clearer view.
It was what people called a family portrait.
Mother, father, and him.
The sunset outside the window was red as blood. The light spilling over the windowsill looked even more like bloodstains. If he listened closely, he could still hear the fire burning on the stove, the water boiling, and the fierce hiss of cheap meat being dropped into hot oil. If he breathed in carefully, the air still held the smell of his father's cigarettes, a little choking, yet strangely reassuring.
But if he opened his eyes again, everything he had felt with them closed would scatter like torn leaves.
The bed was a mess, no longer neatly made as his mother had once arranged it. Black garbage bags were piled in the dirty corners of the room, filled with instant noodle cups and metal cans. On the computer desk, glaring beneath harsh white light, a half-finished energy drink sat alone.
The boy had once looked up at the tall backs of his parents.
The boy had once stared at the unfamiliar courtyard of a relative's home, while evasive murmurs sounded behind him.
The boy had once stood alone beside a pitch-black window, looking through the smoke at a cloudless night sky that still held no stars.
He would always sigh like that.
His mother had unilaterally broken off her engagement and run away with his father. During the hardest period of their lives, she gave birth to him, and the three of them lived together, laughing, in a cramped little home.
On one of the rare days they took him out to play, disaster struck on the way back.
They had never had much to begin with, and in the end, even that vanished like smoke, leaving nothing behind.
But the man had also once sat in a hospital room filled with the smell of disinfectant, looking at a boy who had been handed a terminal diagnosis. He had seen the hopelessness in that boy's eyes as he stared at the white page of that death notice.
The man had struggled.
He had tried.
In that vast ocean, he found something he could cling to in order to survive. For the time being, he called it a career.
But sometimes, the harder he threw himself into it, the more painfully he felt his own weakness and incompetence.
There were people better than him.
There were people more tragic than him.
It felt as though he had always been trapped in that miserable, neither-here-nor-there position.
After being thrown into this world of death, he did what he had always done. He searched, calculated the optimal plan, and acted. Barring the unexpected, he would once again stand at the top, just as he had before, trampling beneath his feet those people who had all kinds of identities and strengths in real life, savoring a lonely, self-mocking sense of achievement.
But it had only been an impulsive whim.
Without question, this was his second life.
And it was far more dramatic than the first.
On the night-colored plains, he attacked a Field Boss and lured it toward other players, using their lives in exchange for a successful clear before taking all the spoils for himself.
After that, he killed people.
And he saved people.
All of it was something the man he had once been would never have dared to imagine, much less do.
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who remain idle in the face of great moral choices."
"Is it luckier to die with your ambitions unfulfilled, or to live a long life in muddled ignorance?"
Hmph…
What a reasonable question.
But I only wanted things to stay simple.
That was all.
"Then what is your choice?"
I want to live without shame.
"What is your choice?"
Then let it be for her alone.
"You would abandon the other world, flee into this one, and enjoy only a brief moment of standing above others?"
Over there, I am useless.
But here, I can still hold a sword.
"Have you chosen a road with no salvation?"
It seems there was never any salvation for me to begin with.
I could easily continue like this, mechanically repeating that ironic climb to the top of virtual achievements again and again.
But there is always someone…
Someone who appears and shows me how brilliant a life can be.
How even at the end of the road, it can still shine like the stars.
I could just as easily keep ignoring everything, caring only about eating during my free time and smoking a cigarette.
But there was also someone who told me she could stay by my side.
"So have you ever thought about using your own real hands to carve open your future?"
That is nothing more than a foolish wish.
Every choice I have made until now has been the best one.
And yet, they have always led me in the wrong direction.
"Here is another choice."
Two scenes appeared before him, completely different from each other.
In one, he walked busily down a street in a world full of traffic, slowly moving toward Satoru's future, toward the direction that girl had hoped he would take.
In the other, he sat inside a vast hall, with the boundless sky lying just beyond the edge of the floor. Yurnero wore blood-soaked red armor and stared numbly at yet another group of players pushing open the doors, all of whom would soon follow the same path as those before them.
Dressed simply, he had no one beside him, yet the world seemed to have regained its color.
Clad in bloodstained armor and wielding a demonic sword, she stood beside him, yet the world had turned deep red and pitch black.
Looking at them, the man smiled silently.
They were clearly both himself.
Satoru was Yurnero.
Yurnero was Satoru.
And yet he was still being forced to choose?
...
"As nursing intelligences designed to care for all players, Sheeta and Yui have different responsibilities and levels of authority." Kayaba quietly looked at Satoru, who knelt with his head lowered in a daze, and at Sheeta, who trembled faintly as she held him. "Yui is responsible for coordinating the emotional state of all players and ultimately making broad judgments about who requires help. Sheeta, meanwhile, acts through a virtual body."
"In other words, they were supposed to protect all players."
"But in the end, Sheeta followed only you from beginning to end."
"That diverges greatly from what I wrote. In fact… it has become difficult for me to see the being I originally designed in her at all."
Kayaba looked up at the dome overhead.
"It changed from an it into a her."
Satoru stirred slightly, then slowly raised his deeply bowed head.
"There must be something in that I cannot understand. Love, perhaps, or fate…" Kayaba continued. "But in the end, that is not what I seek."
"This game must continue, Suzuki Satoru. Choose."
From the moment Kayaba spoke those words, no one could sense any emotion from him anymore.
In this death game he had created, he had indirectly killed as many as four thousand people. A normal person should never have been able to bear such guilt, to shoulder so much resentment and still continue with such calm.
He was no different from those people.
Makoto Kaizuka.
PoH.
They were all people who carried out their convictions.
It was only that the direction those convictions led happened to be hell.
How enviable.
How truly enviable…
Satoru stood under everyone's gaze.
He reached out with his hand, not the one holding his blade.
"I see…" Kayaba looked at him, standing there stiffly. "Have you already decided?"
The others only stared blankly at him. They could not say anything. Not because another restriction had been placed on them, but because they had no idea what to say. Any urging, any objection, would have been powerless against him.
"Then, from this moment onward, the 99th Floor Boss will be replaced by Yurne…"
Kayaba coldly opened the menu and began his judgment.
Ah, this is enough.
And yet, Satoru smiled.
This could no longer be called living in a daze. There was someone he wanted to protect, and even if he became the final demon, a fallen devil, it did not matter. At the very least, he could hold his head high… and kill.
That was far better than being numb and powerless.
The meaning of survival.
At last, he had found it.
"No…"
He heard the girl's dry voice, and it struck him like lightning.
"What are you talking about…?" he said hollowly.
"Nero… Nero has to get out." Sheeta forced out a smile.
Satoru looked at her, and his hand clenched tight.
"What do you understand?!" he roared, his voice breaking with tears. "Over there, I have nothing! No Unique Skill, no level or equipment I can be proud of. I'm not strong at all! You aren't even there!"
"But here?! What about here?!" He pounded his own chest, roaring as if he were about to retch. "I'm strong. I can protect you! I can make my own decisions! Anyone who tries to interfere with us, I'll just kill them! No one will ever be able to beat me! I understand this game!"
He pointed at the paralyzed frontliners, at all the elites gathered there.
"I know every one of their builds and every tactic they use! Some of those tactics were even introduced to them by me when I was in the Divine Dragon Alliance!"
"As long as I sit on the throne of the 99th Floor, I'll be God!"
"So what if there's the strongest Life-Farewell Halberd?! So what if Assassination requires killing fifty people to obtain? From now on, my blood debt will definitely be greater than his! And what about the fastest Dual Blades? I can even read the trajectory of every Sword Skill he uses! What else is left after that?!"
He looked at Klein.
"What about you? Do you have a Unique Skill?"
He looked at Agil.
"Do you have one too?"
Then his scorching gaze swept over everyone.
"Do all of you have Unique Skills?!"
Everyone listened to his madness.
"Even if you did, even if there were a hundred, ten thousand, so what?!"
He poured every ounce of strength into his voice.
"I'll kill every last one of you!"
"When that time comes, I won't have to choose anymore! Lives will decide it!"
Sheeta hugged him tightly, but he struggled like a madman.
"So what?! Aren't you being forced to choose right now?! Aren't you supposed to be strong?!"
"Stupid woman… this will be the last time."
"Then you'll never have a future again!"
Satoru opened his mouth, but no words came out.
"Once you go there, you'll never be able to move forward again…" Sheeta buried her face against his chest, hugging his thin body as she sobbed.
"I want you to get out…"
"Stop making that face… like you hate yourself."
"Please… keep moving forward."
"There must be so many, so many hardships in that world, but you have to cross them. Don't keep hiding in a corner. Don't keep lying to yourself. If Yurnero can do it, then you can too. The only difference is that you lost your confidence and drive in that world a long time ago."
"Is that your reason for existing…?" Satoru said hoarsely. "To make players living in the shadows step out of those shadows? Is that the purpose that person gave you?"
"No… no, it isn't…"
Sheeta shook her head and lifted her face. She wiped away her tears with all her strength.
Then she showed him the same smile she had worn when they first met.
"This is the reason I love you."
"When I abandoned everyone else and followed only you, I was no longer Sheeta. I became Sheeta."
For an instant, Satoru looked as though he were about to break completely, but he held himself back.
"You want me to… erase that meaning?"
He asked the question weakly.
"I want you… to carry that meaning forward."
"…"
"…"
"Your creator is despicable. And you're despicable too…"
"I'm sorry…"
Satoru held her tightly.
No.
That was enough.
This was the pain those still alive were supposed to bear.
Because the dead no longer had choices to make.
"Suzuki-kun," Kayaba asked coldly, "what will it be?"
Satoru slowly raised his head.
"This is still a world of swords… isn't it?"
"Indeed," Kayaba replied.
"Then that's enough." Satoru's voice was hoarse. "The truth is, I'm not good with words. Someone who barely read any books could never win a debate against a scholar like you."
Kayaba said nothing.
"So I'll answer you the only way I can."
His voice grew cold.
As cold and dark as Kayaba's.
"I'm angry."
"I'm in pain."
"She cried."
The golden light in Satoru's eyes sharpened.
"So…"
He drew his sword.
"You have to die."