Tokyo: The Player Behind the Scenes

The reason he had this feeling was that he had grasped the key to this challenge.

rule.

This isn't like a series of rules presented in a supernatural tale, where numerous conditions are laid out and then followed. Instead, he has to figure out the rules himself. The fact that those strange beings didn't kill him the moment he got off the car is also a way of abiding by the rules.

Since even the supernatural must follow the rules, he naturally needs to as well.

Accepting the agreement is one such rule.

Once you understand this, what's left is actually the simplest trial and error, which tests your patience more than anything else.

After all, the players who have made it this far are all talented. They can solve most puzzles, but not everyone has the patience to do so.

Nineteen stations, nineteen repetitions; if any are missed, we might have to start all over again.

in the afternoon.

Exhausted, Higashiyama Shin finished the game and took out his notebook to start taking notes.

Higashiyama Doku went out to play again today, and Ueda Yoshi took advantage of the cloudy weather to wander around the neighborhood, leaving him alone at home.

He had taken advantage of his free time over the past two days to gain some basic information about the three players.

Nobi Tomoyoshi needs no introduction; we can skip that.

Uesugi Hitomi is a virtual YouTuber, or VTuber, who mainly plays horror games, which is quite relevant to her profession. No wonder she didn't seem scared at all from the observer's perspective, as if she were at home.

Kosuke Iwasaki was more difficult to trace; the only leads to a car accident and the Iwasaki family.

However, Shin Higashiyama was able to sense their approximate location. Seeing that Kosuke Iwasaki was in a nursing home and recalling the other's excited appearance when he first entered the game, it was easy to guess that he was disabled due to a car accident.

I created a file for each of them in my mind, noting their game potential and game compatibility, just like creating a five-dimensional chart for company employees.

Work hard and strive to make this unscrupulous boss invincible, invincible even in the heavens.

Chapter 71: Nippori Station

An old train.

Iwasaki sat in his seat, flipping through one old photo after another.

The scenes depict the daily lives of a father and son.

Holding hands, we listened to the street musicians playing in the subway; we sat together on the chairs, sharing the same bag of snacks; we stood together on the platform, quietly waiting for the next train.

This railway seemed to be the epitome of his short life.

Through the photos and the little boy's words, he roughly pieced together the story.

The little boy likely suffers from an illness, and blindness is one of its symptoms; the actual condition may be similar to a terminal illness.

His father often took him to the hospital on the Yamanote Line to treat his illness, which is why the little boy had a particularly strong impression of the subway station. Perhaps he had seen what the subway station looked like when he still had his sight, but he certainly couldn't remember it completely.

That's why the platforms look repetitive, and why there's inexplicable darkness, as if they've been cut apart.

That was a place he hadn't seen or had lost his memory of.

No, the station looks old, like it's from the Taisho era, but the little boy should be from around the millennium, so it's probably not entirely the little boy's memory.

However, one thing should be certain.

The reason he waited for his father at Shinagawa Station was probably because Shinagawa Station was his starting point.

And where did his father abandon him? Did he deceive him by telling him to wait where he was, while he actually left quietly?

No, if that were the case, he wouldn't have been abandoned near home. Furthermore, judging from the song, the timeframe is around the millennium; a blind boy waiting on a subway platform would easily have been noticed by subway staff, who would have taken him to the police station to find his family.

Given the game's supposed real-world accuracy, this is illogical.

Unless the father planned to abandon the child and leave, going to another place to live under an assumed name, then it would barely make sense.

Because leaving a child in a crowded place like a subway station is much safer than leaving them in the wilderness, and once they get to the police station, the police can't just ignore them.

So is this the truth?

Iwasaki's mind was contemplating one possibility after another.

The train has arrived at the station.

Iwasaki pulled himself out of the photos and his thoughts, picked up the camera beside him, and stepped off the train.

Ueno Station

He, like Shin Higashiyama, is stuck here.

This is his last life today.

"If this is truly the world as the little boy remembers it, then..."

Iwasaki looked at the obviously large "elephant" and instead of waiting, he walked slowly towards it.

"Hello, may I take a picture of you?"

Unlike before, Iwasaki did not approach me stealthily to take photos. Instead, he maintained a slow pace but made the request openly and in a friendly manner.

"Woo~"

The elephant seemed to look at him with a mixture of curiosity and wariness, emitting a low-frequency vibrating sound. If you closed your eyes and listened, it would sound exactly like a real elephant making that sound.

The little boy may have never seen a real elephant before and could only fill in the gaps in his imagination through his father's descriptions.

If you look closely, you can indeed see that many of the features of this elephant are exaggerated, such as its unusually long trunk and unusually large ears.

Iwasaki wasn't sure if this meant he agreed, but he raised his camera and took a picture.

chapped.

A photograph slowly emerged.

A chilling aura emanated from behind him, but after another roar from the elephant, the chill merely lingered and did not directly kill him as it had before.

"Is the key point to get elephant protection?"

Iwasaki pulled out the photo and looked at it.

Still on the platform, the little boy had a bright smile on his face and was holding an elephant balloon in his hand, which seemed to be a gift from Ueno Zoo.

His father, however, wore a forced smile.

"Are these photos taken in a timeline that goes backwards?"

Iwasaki wasn't quite sure, because neither the father nor the son had changed much, and the photo was rather blurry, making it difficult to discern their general expressions.

A few minutes later, the next train arrived, and the ghosts and monsters seemed to stir again.

"Woo!"

The elephant roared and charged in one direction, knocking several illusory humanoid figures out of their physical forms, causing them to scream in agony.

Iwasaki quickly seized the opportunity and ran towards the train door.

"Ho ho."

The train doors closed, and looking at the chaotic platform, Iwasaki wondered what to think.

Distinguishing between friend and foe is also a key aspect of this game.

It seems that anyone who hasn't launched an attack is someone you can win over.

Unfortunately, this is a game where life is at stake, and he doesn't have much capital to squander.

Otherwise, you can try and fail indefinitely, trying every method imaginable.

Next stop, Uguis Valley Station.

Iwasaki went outside.

Relying on the experience accumulated earlier, we narrowly made it through the platform and successfully arrived at Nippori Station.

In an instant, the platform seemed to become much clearer, or rather, more modern.

It suddenly transformed from a platform from the Taisho era to a millennium-style platform from the Heisei era.

As he stepped off the train, he was surprised to see a passageway, and he could even vaguely see the bustling crowd at the end of the passageway, the noisy atmosphere, and even the surroundings seemed to brighten up in that instant.

He shook his head, raised his camera, and framed the scene.

chapped.

A sharp scream suddenly came, almost piercing his eardrums.

The scene before him was like shattered glass; the passage before him turned into deep blackness, enveloping him.

instant.

He confessed here.

"Sure enough, it gets harder as you go on."

On the bed, after gritting his teeth and enduring for a while, Iwasaki slowly recovered from the shock of his recent death.

Of the three players, Iwasaki is probably the most adapted to death.

It's probably related to his real experience of almost being killed by a truck, or it could be because he's paralyzed and can only feel his head.

"Why has Nippori Station changed so much?"

After thinking for a while, Iwasaki felt that Nippori Station might be the little boy's destination.

That's why they are so different.

"Cough cough."

Whether it was psychological or not, he began to feel signs of aging.

"If one life represents one year of lifespan, then I should have already wasted eighteen years."

"But in my opinion, there is probably not that many, so it is more likely that two or three lives represent a year of lifespan."

"If you calculate it that way, I've probably lost six to nine years of my life."

"Because the losses were all in a short period of time, I was able to feel them."

"So it seems that the ten years of lifespan reward for second place might not even be enough to make up for the lifespan lost in the game. Am I just too bad?"

"Or is there some undisclosed reward rule in this game?"

Of course, even so, he wouldn't mind trading decades of his life for a full recovery.

He was determined to win first place.

Chapter 72: Thousand Leaf Cookies

(daily)

"The three-day holiday just vanished like that!"

"There's another test today!"

"I must be dreaming, today should be Saturday!"

4 month 11 day.

on Monday.

Higashiyama couldn't accept that his three-day holiday was over and that he was facing the tragic fate of taking a test, so he went mad.

Then, Shinichi Higashiyama slapped him on the back of the head, resetting his brain switch, and he obediently went to wash up and prepare for breakfast.

Indeed, holidays are always too short for anyone.

These past few days, Dongshan Du has been leaving early and returning late every day. Even when he comes back, he has a silly grin on his face and is always holding his phone. Even if he puts it down for a moment, he will pick it up again the moment he hears a message.

Are all couples in the throes of new love like this?

Unfortunately, this budding romance ultimately came to nothing.

Finally, as a memory of youth, it is the white moonlight hanging high in the night sky.

Ding dong.

At seven o'clock sharp, Chiba Shion rang the doorbell.

Good morning, Dongshan-kun.