"FUCK YOUR LOADING!" I screamed. "LET ME OUT OF HERE!"
Of course, nothing happened. I could yell all I wanted but eventually the darkness of the loading screen faded and I was back in the room with the ten doorways. Doorway 2 was now unchained. Doorway 1 was now chained, and no matter how much I pulled at the metal, I couldn't get through.
I slapped my open palms against the flagstones, inhaling sharply at the pain. I'm not sure how long I screamed into the void, but it didn't make a difference. In the end, I was still crouched like a wild animal on the floor, and the ten doorways considered me in silence.
I stood up suddenly.
I almost marched strai
"Inventory."
"Who wants your fucking ham sandwich?" I demanded, feeling physically nauseous. The vision of the girl slaughtered like a pig on the table tried to pull my stomach out through my throat. I slapped away the screen and sat down again, holding myself to contain the feeling of wanting to be sick.
That was a beginner scenario? What would a hard scenario be like?
What would even happen when we finished the game? Would we all be able to leave?
The desire to hide in this waiting area was strong.
And then what? Just stay here without even knowing if something would change, until I died?
Wiping the cold sweat from my forehead, I stood again, more slowly this time, and walked to the second doorway. Resting my hand on the wooden frame, I could feel it waiting beneath my touch, like something ready to devour me.
Fighting the urge to jump away, I walked through.
The air was humid. The room I sat in was richly decorated with intricate carpets and warm yellow clay walls, reclining lounges with jewel-toned fabrics, brass vases and lamps.
"This is... Arabic?" Rohan said, blinking from where he sat on a lounge next to me. He was wearing light, flowing clothes that suited him far better than the outfit he has worn in the last scenario, but he still looked faintly ridiculous with his facial markings and long fringe.
Opposite us, a third person was blinking and looking around too. He was a lanky boy with short, unnaturally bright red hair and a pretty face, like the real life version of a male lead in a shoujo manga. He turned large, friendly brown eyes on us and smiled.
"Hi everyone! I'm Striking Red Crane."
The absurdity of his greeting made me laugh in spite of myself. His friendly smile faltered.
"Ah, sorry. It's a habit. I'm a bit nervous."
"Oh no, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have laughed. I'm Maria."
"Hi Maria! Then you must be... Dr Uchiha...?"
Rohan looked both defiant and embarrassed at the same time.
"Unless you're Pretty Princess Peach?"
"NO!"
"Where is Pretty Princess Peach?" I asked, looking around. There were only three of us in the warm, sunlit room.
"No idea. I'd love to meet her."
I looked questioningly at Striking Red Crane.
"What? Oh... Do you... You're '100% Maria', right?"
Lee Wai Meng, I am going to kill you when I find you.
"Why?"
"I guess it's true that you don't really engage with other gamers. You don't know who I am, do you?"
"Should we?" Rohan interrupted grumpily.
"Do you two know each other? In real life?"
"Yes, we're friends. What's this about you and Pretty Princess Peach?"
Striking Red Crane rubbed his head sheepishly. "I'm a game streamer. I'm kind of well known for speed runs of games. And PPP, she's a streamer too, but she does more song covers than anything else. Her avatar and persona are really cute. She's kind of an idol. No one really knows anything about her though."
"You'd like to meet her here? You might still not learn anything about her, though. I mean, I made my appearance look like my usual game avatar. I don't look like this in real life."
Striking Red Crane looked deflated, like a puppy that had been scolded. A cute guy.
All this talk of identities though...
"Name," I muttered, almost inaudibly.
A Mandarin Chinese name. This didn't tell me much other than the fact that he really was Striking Red Crane. I would have been amused to find out he was actually Pretty Princess Peach.
"So what now?" Rohan asked, standing and stalking around the room. There was nothing that indicated what we should do next. My mind drifted back to the last scenario. I hoped everyone was alright. Rohan seemed okay, at least, but I had to ask.
"I'm fine," he replied brusquely.
"Don't be a jerk."
He fiddled with his fringe and cast a rapid glance in Striking Red Crane's direction. "Sorry. I'm okay. Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I am."
We were probably both lying.
"What was your first scenario like, um... Striking Red Crane?"
"Just call me Red. It was wild! I think it was based on like, Jack and the Beanstalk, or something? We had to battle a giant!"
I tried to imagine what that would have been like.
"It actually wasn't too hard. We just had to be quick, which is my specialty of course. Get down the beanstalk faster than the giant and then cut it down. We got some nice items. It was kind of fun!"
I'm glad someone had fun.
"What was yours?"
"Uh... I think one of my friends said it was based on Bluebeard?"
"What's that? A pirate story?"
"No, some guy was marrying women and... well we never found out if he was just killing them and taking their money or... eating them."
Red turned pale. "What the fuck? That's so... Why was yours like that? Wait, it wasn't you that had to marry...? Wow! Scary!"
I wanted to pat him on the head. "I'm okay. We survived."
"Well, this is a game, right? If we die, we can just start again?"
"Of course."
What damned 'of course'? I had no idea, I was talking out of my arse at this point.
"There's someone coming." Rohan had taken up a mysterious position in the small entranceway by the door, his fringe dramatically hiding half of his face.
"How have you not changed in ten years?"
"Who is it?" Red asked.
"Looks like an old woman. This is the start of our adventure!" Rohan dramatically swept back his hair. I pushed him to one side.
Outside the house, the sky was bright blue. The building itself seemed to be made of mudbrick, coated in shining white stucco, and was festooned with unknown plants, bright green and lush. A long stairway ran up the hill to the house, and from this vantagepoint, I could see a vast sprawling city of similar buildings spreading out before them. Here and there I could see public fountains, a giant marketplace crammed with people, patches of greenery marking public parks where more people were gathered under the shade of the trees to converse...
"The devs really worked hard on this," I breathed.
"You think we're still in the game?" Red asked, poking his head over my shoulder. "We've isekai'd, obviously!"
"Then why were you saying earlier that if we died, we'd probably just start again?" I asked, suddenly annoyed.
He looked caught out. "I... I think I'm just trying to convince myself," he admitted. "This whole thing is just so weird and scary. I have to tell myself whatever to get through it."
Now I really wanted to pat his head. He smiled sweetly at me. "Let's get through this together, Maria!"
Rohan rolled his eyes. Suppressing the urge to tell him to pull his head out of his arse, I turned back to watch our visitor slowly climbing the steps. As Rohan had said, she seemed to be an old woman, wrapped against the sun in a brown cloak, and she was obviously struggling, so I quickly rushed down the steps to help her. She leaned on me gratefully, and together we made it back into the house.
"Thank you, thank you. I'm sorry for intruding. It's nearly the hour for prayer and the city is still a little ways off..." She drank the cool water we gave her. I even found a plate of fruit that I could offer. "May I pray here?"
Rohan watched suspiciously, not assisting in the slightest. Red sat nearby eagerly, keen to hear what this NPC had to say.
So this wasn't Pretty Princess Peach either. Not that I thought she was.
She looked at us keenly, dark eyes in a wrinkly little face. "Siblings?"
I really wondered how we appeared to NPCs. "Uh, yes, that's right."
"You have been very kind to me. I will give you a present once I have prayed."
"That's okay, we only did what needed to be done," I said automatically. Rohan scoffed.
Red, too, looked exasperated. "Maria, an NPC is offering something. Don't say that!"
"It is not a big gift," Setareh said, drinking more water and sighing. "Only a story. But stories are good currency, as you know."
Red was practically perched on my shoulder at this point, but the old lady produced a beaten old prayer mat, and proceeded to request where the prayer room was, so I shooed him and Rohan away to find prayer mats in the house.
The prayer room was a small and otherwise empty space off to one side in this mansion. Mats acquired, we surreptitiously copied the old lady, first standing on the mats with our heads bowed, hands folded, then mouthing the words that she spoke at a rapid rate under her breath. As I did so, a dialogue box popped up.
I didn't really have to think. I selected N and bowed along with the others. I knew little about Islam, aside from the occasional references in news reports, and knew better to than to trust those. I didn't know a huge amount about Christianity either, but it was certainly more, and with my experience playing as a Christian priest in pretty much every game I got my hands on, I was happy to stay with what I knew.
As we bowed to the ground, I silently prayed to the God I had chosen in my head. It felt a bit silly, given I had never believed in a god in my life, but it had obviously worked before so...
This fucking game.
We repeated the whole process again, ending seated on the mats. Rohan looked thoroughly fed up. Red was starting to look fidgety and bored. It was a relief, then, when the old lady finally rose, and we all returned back to our seats to eat the fruit, and some other sweet snacks I had found. I assumed that the rules of etiquette about feeding guests, even unexpected ones, where the same as the ones I had known and learnt.
She looked around at our expectant faces and smiled. "I am glad that the young ones still wish to hear stories. Well, listen carefully, children. This is the story of the Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Golden Water."