My love game with them that will lead to certain death

"..."

Eriri turned her head to look at her brother who was sitting in a wheelchair, but the latter just gave an "eh hey" expression.

"Are you really trying to take this opportunity to pick up girls, you bastard brother...?!"

Chapter 50: The Name Engraved in My Heart

Ming Hai has always been a person who is not clear about his likes and dislikes. In his opinion, many things are simply divided into the categories of "acceptable" and "unacceptable", and he does not have any particularly clear likes or dislikes.

But that is only limited to "some things". In other cases, he has the same likes and dislikes as ordinary people.

Ming Hai likes sweets, likes chatting, and likes to build relationships through verbal communication. At the same time, he also hates overly sweet food, meaningless conversations, and people and things that bring him trouble.

But now that things have come to this, perhaps one more thing can be added to Ming Hai's favorite things.

That is, he quietly watched his sister Sawamura Eriri being sandwiched between Yukinoshita Yukino and Yamada Ryo, looking like he wanted to make trouble but had to try his best to endure it.

"I think you need to give me a reasonable explanation - Tooru."

Eriri, who was sitting in the back seat with Narumi, sounded particularly unfriendly. Yamada, who was sitting in the passenger seat, took out his headphones and started listening to music without noticing her dissatisfaction. Yukinoshita, who was driving, noticed this but stared straight ahead, leaving the conversation to the siblings.

After all, it is better to let brothers and sisters handle matters themselves. Outsiders who interfere may have to bear unexpected costs - this is also her experience.

"Hey, after the last gathering at the restaurant, I invited the two sisters to go out with me to relax. Otherwise, it would be boring for just you and Eriri to go out together, right?"

Ming Hai didn't even have to think twice before he came up with words to justify his behavior.

"That's all an excuse, Toru, you just want to play with onee-chan!"

"Otherwise, why would I need to ask you to play together next time when you suddenly left so politely last time, Eriri?"

"Well……"

Fortunately, Ms. Yamada, who is away from the dispute, is now wearing headphones and resting her eyes, otherwise she would definitely blurt out something like "Xiao Hai, you are yelling at me again, why don't you take a break?"

"Besides, if it's just the two of us, Eriri, you'll have to support your disabled brother, and you won't be able to have fun, right?"

After using the blame-shifting method to make Eriri shut up in anger, Ming Hai immediately stopped while he was ahead and started using both soft and hard tactics.

"You've only played with me since you were little. Besides me, the only person you've ever been around is Tomoya Aki... Now that he's out of the picture, I can't help but take you, Eriri, to meet new friends."

"…So what you were thinking was…"

"You want me to integrate into...his circle?"

Eriri's attitude softened a little because of her brother's words, but the things that really bothered her never disappeared.

After all, even if her brother had no bad intentions towards them, the way the two of them looked at the curly-haired boy would only make Eriri more uneasy.

Eriri was absolutely certain that the emotions surging beneath the calm were powerful enough to snatch her brother away.

After all, if they really didn't have any feelings for their brother, how could they pack their bags and come to join them without saying a word as soon as Ming Hai invited them?

"Besides, this trip... I have a feeling nothing good will happen."

Although it was a conclusion without any basis and even without any logical reasoning, when Eriri looked at the scenery outside the window that was constantly receding, the feeling of uneasiness in her heart still spread.

She always felt that the place they were heading to now was a little familiar, as if it was a place she had been to before.

The endless mountains and old forests, the dark sky that looks like it will rain heavily at any moment, the roads that wind around the mountainside and occasionally pass through secluded villages -

Everything around her seemed to confirm Eriri's bad premonition, becoming more and more consistent with her nightmare memory.

"Wait, um...Sister Yukinoshita, where are we going?"

Sawamura Eriri suppressed the panic that was gradually rising in her heart and spoke to Yukinoshita Yukino who was sitting in the driver's seat, and the latter answered her questions calmly.

"Hmm? XX town. The last time I bumped into Archer was when he was on his way home from XX town, so we agreed to go there again this time - why, didn't Archer tell his sister and classmates before he left?"

"XX town...?"

"To be precise, it's the shrine in that place."

Even though he could see Eriri's panic, Ming Hai just smiled and watched her calmly supplement her.

This was the place where he had gone to travel without informing the public in advance, carrying his luggage and disappearing for several days—a dilapidated shrine located in a remote town that no one cared about.

But Eriri's intuition told her that this was not a good place.

As expected, after arriving at the destination, the desolation of this small town deep in the mountains reminded Eriri of the remote towns that serve as the main stage in horror movies.

The town's facilities were intact but most of the houses looked dilapidated, there were few pedestrians walking on the roads, there were no popular tourist attractions, the location was not good, and it was a rural area that did not receive any subsidy funds - this was the first impression that the town gave to Eriri.

"I've been here before... Why do you still come to a place like this?"

After helping her brother with limited mobility to get out of the car, Eriri asked questions without hiding her confusion. After all, no matter how you looked at this place, it didn't look like fun enough to make people linger and want to come back a second time.

"I'm here to return something."

Although her brother answered her question in a weak voice, he did not explain what was going on directly.

"Eri, if you're interested, you can go play around with Yamada-sister. I need to discuss something with the second young lady of the Yukinoshita family."

"Well……"

"Yeah, it's a big adventure."

Although Eriri was somewhat reluctant, she also understood that this was her brother's subtle order to leave, and there must be something that he didn't want her to hear - so she was half-heartedly dragged away by Yamada, who was eager to wander around.

"Is this the place Archer came to last time? I feel like if it were me, I wouldn't be willing to come here a second time."

After parking the car on the side of the road and locking it, Yukinoshita Yukino looked at the curly-haired boy sitting in a wheelchair with a cane, waiting for him to explain the situation.

"Is this the second time, right? Ms. Yukinoshita's road trip."

However, the boy's straightforward words instantly wiped out the calmness on her face.

Yukinoshita Yukinoko had never explained to him in detail how unforgettable the most unforgettable experience of her life was.

Chapter 51 Familiar Stranger

If the characters in the simulation cannot be confused with the real people for him, then if the person who appeared in another simulation - the person who left a deep impression on him in the previous simulation - meets him again, will he think the same?

Ming Hai Toru would occasionally get stuck in this dilemma.

The bizarre novelist Toru Narumi, who had been through thick and thin with Yukinoshita Yukino in the first simulation, had disappeared from her life for more than a decade. The bassist Toru Narumi, who had left a lingering impression on Yamada Ryo in the second simulation, had also passed away several years ago - if they wanted to, they could have walked out of this shadow long ago.

But when they appeared in the third simulation, the moment they saw themselves, the light in their eyes was still the same as before.

This is a bit difficult to handle.

In the past, Ming Hai distinguished the girls in the simulation from the girls in reality and treated them as two different people, so he could do what he wanted without any worries, even though he knew that everything he did would always be a knot in their hearts - as long as the goal was achieved and the level was passed smoothly, it would be fine.

But now the situation is a little different, especially when he really sees with his own eyes that their life trajectories have become very different because of his own life trajectories.

Perhaps it was out of a compensatory mentality, or perhaps it was because his inner moral concepts did not allow him to continue to accept the kindness of Yukinoshita Yukino and Yamada Ryo towards him as if nothing had happened - Minghai decided not to play dumb anymore.

At least they should be able to find a real home for their feelings towards the deceased.

"I am very grateful to Miss Yukinoshita for taking care of me in every way, but if I am not mistaken, it is because you regard me as the senior who once shared weal and woe with you."

Because they have exactly the same face and a similar personality, she can't help but regard him as another form of that person in this world - Yukinoshita Yukino knows that this might be regarded as transference.

"...at least I hope so, even if the truth may not be so."

Yukinoshita Yukino lowered her head and turned away. She had always played the role of a steady and reliable elder among the four people, but finally she rarely showed her true vulnerability - and this made Minghai feel a little familiar.

It would be better to say that this current look is the look of the Yukinoshita Yukino that he knew.

"I'm sorry, as an adult woman, I've been deceiving myself by performing this kind of clumsy one-man show, and I've even asked you, a high school student, to perform with me... This is definitely too much, right?"

Sure enough, she started her usual escape mode.

It seems that even though Yukinoshita Yukino has grown up, and after experiencing the unforgettable things before - her habit of running away when she encounters something that she cannot control has not changed at all.

"No, I don't think so. On the contrary, I don't think it's hard to understand that someone would be obsessed with someone for more than ten years."

The curly-haired boy also lowered his head and looked at the ground following her gaze.

"After all, when a person truly dies, no one will remember his existence anymore."

Tombs are not built for the dead, but to leave memories for the living.

If that person has never died in one's heart, then for the rest of the people, he is just like someone who has gone on a long journey and has never really left.

“So, even if you—or Yamada—are looking for this sense of familiarity in me, I have no problem with that. Because I may actually have what you want.”

"...?"

What does it mean…?

Yukinoshita Yukino didn't quite understand.

That's natural, after all, this is the effect Ming Hai wanted.

So, how can I achieve my desired goal without making a fuss and at the same time express my true feelings to these two girls and make them feel at ease?

Answer – Wrap the truth in a white lie that won’t hurt anyone.

"It's true that since I was a child, I have occasionally dreamed about memories that don't belong to me."

The campus life was muddleheaded, and no matter how hard I racked my brains I would always get stuck on the deadline, with the editor urging me, "If you don't submit your manuscript, you won't get paid this month." It was a boring life with nothing to do all day long and I could see the end of it at a glance.

"But in this kind of memory, there are also flashes of warmth."

He was not lying. For Ming Hai, there were indeed many precious memories in the first simulation that he could not forget to this day.

For example, when he first saw Yukinoshita Yukino in a hospital gown in the hospital ward, he sat by her bed and argued with her about why his new work couldn't sell.

"There was also a time when I held a young girl's hand, led her out of the cage that bound her, and fled to the ends of the earth in a second-hand sports car."

"...?"

Looking at the astonishment gradually solidifying on Yukino's face, Minghai could only smile bitterly and nod.

"If having memories that you haven't experienced flash through your mind is a form of reincarnation, even though it sounds a bit absurd, I can't come up with any evidence to refute it. After all, this is the fact - I remember everything that bothers you."

Ming Hai responded to Yukinoshita Yukino in a different way. This was the best identity he could think of to make up for himself without exposing himself as a participant in the simulation game.

"Just think of it as repaying a favor. I'm not so cruel and cold-blooded as to watch a girl lose her appetite for me and then take advantage of her kindness to do things for me."

If he didn't repay this favor, he wouldn't be able to rush towards this "death" as if it had nothing to do with him.

"You...are you really..."

Yukinoshita Yukino blinked, finding it difficult to take her eyes off the boy for a moment.

She tried hard to suppress her trembling voice. The excitement of finally confirming the guess she had made in her heart from the beginning made her reach out her hand and try to touch the cheek of the curly-haired boy sitting in the wheelchair.

"Maybe, but I'm also Sawamura Spencer Toru, Eriri's brother."

The boy's calm words awakened her from her dream and made her stop moving.

"Whether it's the people in your memory or the people in Yamada's memory, they all died young without exception."

"If I can't escape "this time", it's probably my fate. In this case, can you please consider my last request——"

The calm-looking boy said something that Yukinoshita Yukino had never thought of.

"Don't leave 'that child' alone."

Don't let her relive the pain they went through before.

Chapter 52 You Can't Deceive Me

Although admitting that he is a good liar may leave a bad impression on others when they first meet, Ming Hai does not shy away from this fact - in many cases, he can tell lies, big or small, without even thinking about it.

If other people had such a "skill", they might be timid and explain to others "I'm just good at lying, but I don't necessarily lie actively" and fall into the trap of self-proof. But Ming Hai never tried to prove anything to others, he would just nod happily as if accepting praise and agree "Thank you for the compliment, lying is also a skill."

After all, the social options, big and small, encountered in life cannot all be determined by black-and-white choices to determine whether the future is perfect. The world needs exquisite gray to polish and embellish it.

There is also a bit of sincere white emotion hidden in the black humor woven by lies. Perhaps this is the most sincere farewell gift that Ming Hai can give to Yukinoshita Yukino and Yamada Ryo as Sawamura Spencer Toru.

"Please don't leave that child alone."

Just like “every time” before, just like “they” did.

"…What's that tone of voice?"

Yukinoshita Yukino also realized the deep meaning behind these short words and could no longer maintain her composure.

"After listening to what Sister Yamada said, Sister Yukino, you should have realized it, right? The 'Toru Narumi' she mentioned also died early due to an accident before he even reached the age of thirty."