“The Constellation of Blood, Kayama!” Sukine introduces herself and her new title with pride, her yellow eyes glistening like topaz with pride. “Pretty cool title, huh? This game is awesome, isn’t it? Ki Atama and Nexus really outdid themselves! I can barely understand half the coding in this thing, and their passive AI softwares are next level!”
I feel like I’m getting a headache. This girl, who I’ve known for years, is a murderer. I’ve been searching for her for over a month, and she’s been killing people with Thanatos this whole time? And now she’s talking with me as though she’s perfectly normal? “Sukine, stop,” I hold a hand out, closing my eyes and thinking things through. I need quiet, I need time to process.
“What’s wrong?” Her innocent voice almost hurts me. Does she really not register what she’s doing as wrong?
“You’re killing people, Sukine.”
“Pft! No way! What are you even talking about?” I open my eyes and look back at her, furrowing my brow. She’s dismissively waving her hand, discarding my concern, “I’m not killing people! I’m killing players, and only when they have more than 1 life left. I’m not a psychopath, you know that! Don’t tell me you thought I became an actual murderer.”
I clench my fists, having to bite my tongue to keep myself cool, but I do so with the help of my acting skill. My voice comes out controlled as I say, “You are killing people. You’re weakening them, and other members of your guild murder them. You’re essentially justifying becoming a part of the third reich by saying you’re only capturing people, not killing them.”
“Betsuki, what the hell?” Her voice has grown cold, and almost hurt, “Dude, I’m not a fucking nazi, ok? I’m just giving myself the best chance at survival! Don’t lecture to me as if you’re any better! Phantasia boasts to everybody who’ll listen about your murder of that girl from the Northern Star!”
“I..!” I once more bite my tongue, stopping myself from giving a heated response. I did kill Tankina, that’s true. I can’t deny it. “I didn’t want to. I would never choose to kill a player, or a person.”
“I’m not either!! I’m not killing anybody, I’m not choosing to do that! I’m just taking some of their lives, and getting a ton of EXP for it! I’m gaming the system, that’s what we liked DOING in the REAL WORLD! Remember hacking into the runescape server to give us some extra levels? Remember hunting noobs in WoW? Running minecraft servers like gods? That’s not being an asshole, that’s learning the game!”
“...I don’t have time for this,” I mumble, pulling Bai-ko’s profile up and getting ready to teleport to her.
“Don’t have time for this? Oh, what, you’re going to call me a nazi and then leave?! Real class act! What’s so different about what I’m doing here and what we’ve done in the past, huh?!”
“The stakes, Sukine,” I select the teleport option, and meet Sukine’s eyes as I leave her, “We weren’t risking people’s lives by beating them at games before.” It’s hard to tell as a result of the teleporting effect, but I’d like to think that her defiant eyes softened slightly at my final words to her.
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= = = = = =
I reappear back in the small village of the 4th floor, Bai-ko to my side and the other players milling about outside the church. “How’d it go?” She asks innocently, but I know her better than that. She’s trying to gauge from my reaction who Kayama is.
“Poorly,” I admit, heading to the stone church, “She’s…” I pause. She’s a member of Thanatos, and she’s taken the lives of players. Who knows how many people she’s indirectly killed by helping Thanatos. But she’s still Sukine, she’s still my friend. And I know her. She’s not trying to kill people, I know she isn’t. It’s just so unbelievable that she could be this selfish…But maybe that’s my fault too. I should never have killed Kiraki in the colosseum. Why does everything seem to come back to that? One choice I made when I first joined the game.
“Wow, she really is a member?” Bai-ko puts two and two together from my silence, and I click my tongue in annoyance. I took too long to answer. “And she’s your friend too? That’s tough.”
“No! She’s not my friend and she’s not a member of Thanatos and she’s not a vampire! You were wrong in every way!” I snap at her, annoyed that even when I don’t answer her she’s somehow getting information from me.
Even more irksome, she coyly smiles back at my retaliation, “Ooo, wow, so I nailed it?”
I tsk and call out, “Yuto! Are we ready to climb?” In an effort to direct Bai-ko’s attention elsewhere.
He looks up from the crowd, and smiles, waving at me with one hand and placing his other hand to his mouth as he calls out, “Ready as we’ll ever be! We were just waiting on you!”
“Alright, I get it, you don’t want to talk about it…but I, the leader of Private Eye, would be in an information debt to you if you told me how the meeting went~! Just think about that,” she whispers into my ear, before separating from me and connecting with Hong-hu. She’s right, logically. I know she is. But I need some time to think about Sukine myself, before I share what happened to anybody else. I just need to hope Haruno and Haruhi aren’t in the same boat…But they have each other to bounce off of, I’m almost sure of that. There’s no way they’d be in Thanatos, one of them would stop the other.
“Is everybody ready?” Yuto calls out, holding the final gemstone – a glittering silver diamond – above his head. The 7 of us all give a cheer in response, but mine is devoid of heart. “Then let’s climb!” He announces, turning around and kicking the door of the church open with a little too much gusto. The door flies off its hinges, and reveals that the inside of the church is…different.
Covered in shadows, the interior is impossible to see. Save for the casket sitting on the platform, upon which a single beam of light shines. It’s too suspicious. The 6 gemstones we’ve found thus far are already place, and a thin tendril of smoke emerges from the final socket and drifts towards the one in Yuto’s hand. As a unit, we all move forward. The smoke and then gemstone connect, and Yuto seems to teleport to the casket suddenly. His eyes are as wide as ours, and seemingly against his will he places the gemstone into place. I swear that I can hear a choir in the distance as a pure white mana glows around the casket.
The woman, who none of us would actually call beautiful, seems to change as she comes back to life. Her hair, which has been thin and gray, grows thick and gains the color of caramel. Her skin turns from inhumanely pale to a radiant pink, her lips growing more full and her body seeming to regain youth far more vibrant that any of us had seen before. Abruptly, her eyes open, and she snaps up, grabbing Yuto’s head.
All of us draw our weapons and prepare to charge in, but Yuto throws a hand back to stop us. Laughing, I suddenly realize why, “Almost forgot about how to lift Sleeping Beauty’s curse,” I mumble, sheathing my blade and watching Yuto go from shock to immense embarrassment. The blush that spreads across his face and turns his entire head cherry red isn’t shocking to any of us, because, “She needed a kiss.”
