Chapter 8: Breaking Out of the Game

Tian Yi smiled. “Then let's end this early. These people are no use anymore either.”

Before the seven people behind him could react, terror froze on their faces forever. Their bodies were sliced into neat chunks and collapsed like building blocks. Only after the pieces had scattered across the ground did the blood begin to spread.

Jiang Yun turned, saw what had happened, and instinctively screamed, but Tian Yi immediately struck the back of her neck, knocking her unconscious, and let her fall onto the sand.

Tian Yi addressed the black-robed man again. “What a thoroughly repulsive setup, Gu Wen.”

Gu Wen pulled back his black hood, revealing his fair, clean-cut face. “That makes us even.” He then dug something out of his throat, and his voice returned to normal.

“I knew you'd do something like this sooner or later. You weren't going to let it go without ‘testing’ me. Still, you've mastered the technology in the bookshop far faster than I expected,” Tian Yi said.

Gu Wen replied, “My brain is one of humanity's most precious assets. With a good enough memory and powers of comprehension, learning can be entertainment, a way to relax the mind and pass the time.”

Tian Yi said, “I understand the significance and symbolism of these twelve deaths. What I don't quite understand is that load of nonsense you told me yesterday. Were you testing my mental endurance? Seeing whether you could shake my belief in my own existence? Or testing whether I really possess absolute self-confidence?”

Gu Wen smiled. “Actually, the reason is... I'm an agnostic. I often ask myself those questions, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to hear your views.” He paused. “Looking back, that was a misstep. Showing myself gave you too many clues. You weren't shaken at all, and you used those clues to work out that this was subspace. From there, it wasn't hard to deduce that I'd planned the whole thing.”

Tian Yi said, “An obvious trick. You have a bookmark, so you can manipulate this space however you like. Appearing and disappearing are just the basic entry and exit functions. Gunsmith once spent two weeks discovering that a bookmark could divide subspace indefinitely. It seems you didn't take long either. So when I left the beach, you could create a break somewhere out of sight and cut off my connection to those people.”

Gu Wen went on, “Ah... Perhaps if I hadn't shown myself yesterday, I could have watched you interact with those people over the next few days and seen how you all reacted.”

“That sort of observation is meaningless. Circumstances change, and people's minds are hard to fathom. You think you can glimpse the future through these people?” Tian Yi said.

“Isn't that exactly what you've been doing? Hokkaido, Venice, Chicago... And all those years before. Haven't you been conducting similar experiments all along?” Gu Wen countered.

Tian Yi smiled without answering, then changed the subject. “There are certain differences between your methods and mine. Never mind... Let's get back to this test.”

Tian Yi thought for a moment, then began his account. “If you have anything to add to my analysis, feel free to speak up.

“First, thirteen people appeared on a desolate, unfamiliar island. In other words, ‘the normal social order had broken down.’ The first to step forward were the ‘outlaws.’ Whenever troubled times begin, these opportunists come crawling out, trying to profit by playing ‘the righteous defenders of order.’

“Yang Gang and Carl seemed to have the situation temporarily under control, but the ‘nobility’ and the ‘official’ thought nothing of their kind. The classes at the top of the pyramid have a deeply ingrained faith in and dependence on the established order. Unless death is staring them in the face, they'll always take their own superiority for granted.

“The ‘intellectuals, middle class, and students’ are the most indecisive group. Quite a few of them think they're very clever. In reality, this group is easily fooled by appearances and superficial propaganda, so once the outlaws played good cop, bad cop, they sided with Yang Gang.

“Then there's the ‘lower class.’ Some of them always have their heads full of unrealistic fantasies. Others scrape by in sordid misery, using lies to preserve the last of their dignity. The rest are only a hair's breadth away from being outlaws.

“The people you abducted are all very representative types. The allegory isn't hard to see through, so Jiang Yun must be royalty, the class at the very top of the pyramid. She was fairly clever. Instead of haughtily announcing her identity, she pretended to be some playwright.

“And you threw me in among them to test ‘my future,’ to see what role I'd take in the world to come.”

Gu Wen said, “That was my initial idea. If you stepped forward and became their leader, someone they could rely on, you'd be a hero. Of course, personally, I considered the probability of that zero. Not infinitely close to zero. Zero.

“If you killed them all, you'd be a fiend representing chaos and death. That wouldn't be unacceptable either. Population problems really do plague all of humanity.

“Another possibility was that you'd enslave them to satisfy your desires... of every kind, you know what I mean... In that case, you'd be sinking very low indeed, even lower than this planet's current rulers. After all, even the Empire knows to keep up appearances.

“But in the end, you did nothing. You lounged on the sidelines with such flair, looking out for yourself, completely ignoring the designer's intended gameplay and always trying to find the GM and fuck him in the ass to death. That behavior forced me to intervene and make a few things happen.”

Tian Yi picked up the thread. “So, following the natural course of troubled times, you made the degenerate, corrupt ‘official’ the first to be eliminated.”

Gu Wen chuckled. “Heh heh... Remember that badger you ate?”

Tian Yi's expression shifted slightly. “Don't tell me...”

“Ha! I'm joking. How could I disguise a corpse as an animal? I just chopped him up and threw him into the sea. Same with the next three victims.” The look on Tian Yi's face made Gu Wen's twisted little joke all the more satisfying.

Tian Yi shrugged and continued, “Noguchi died, but instead of interacting with those people as you intended, I stuck to my goal of finding the game designer. So I found a way to make everyone suspicious of each other and deliberately made myself their common target.” He paused. “Speaking of which, there was one rather irritating unforeseen complication. That idiot Gavin spared no effort in going after me.”

Gu Wen spread his hands and said in a thoroughly affected voice, “I'm a highly educated intellectual! Why won't that gorgeous woman even look at me? What's she doing flirting all the time with some pretty boy who runs a bookshop?” His usual expression returned. “Something along those lines, I'd imagine.”

Tian Yi gave a dismissive smile and continued, “Then you finally lost patience and showed yourself. You made those ambiguous statements to try to stop me doing whatever I pleased and get me back into the game. I have to admit, for a very short time, your method did work.”

Gu Wen didn't consider it much of a success. He merely sighed. “Once the ‘nobility’ and the ‘outlaws’ were finished, the remaining people should have descended into chaos. Things would have become complicated and interesting. Unfortunately, you went far too far with that atmosphere of terror you created yesterday and redirected all the conflict toward yourself.

“Ah... I wanted to watch a little longer just now, but I didn't expect you to spell out the entire order of deaths. Then I knew you'd already worked out that this was subspace, and that all of it was my test.”

Tian Yi said, “Are you satisfied now?”

“Satisfied?” Gu Wen's expression turned cold and grim. “This was a very successful, very frightening test. My conclusion is that there is no conclusion. Whenever someone tries to gauge your capabilities, you immediately see through them instead. You're impossible to fathom, let alone control. If I join someone like you, even my own future will slip out of my control.”

Tian Yi sneered. “I could say every word of that right back to you. If your intelligence amounted to nothing more than doing someone else's bidding, I wouldn't have sought to work with you.”

“Seeking out and using a power you know you can't control is the behavior of a madman,” Gu Wen replied.

“Hahahahaha! Are you supposed to be normal?” Tian Yi laughed wildly. “The last date I remember is April twenty-first. I assume you drugged my lunch that day, put me in subspace, and set up this whole affair.

“Even allowing for a slight difference between the time here and outside, today is probably the twenty-third or twenty-fourth. Even with a generous estimate, it's only been seven or eight days since you first met Mirror Face.

“Yet here you are already, standing in front of me in a black robe that blocks my ability.

“Which means there are two possibilities...

“First, you stole this technology from Mirror Face and produced a finished item in just one week. Second, you've been researching ways to deal with me since the day we first met.”

Gu Wen laughed loudly too. He didn't say which possibility was correct, only, “Good. Then the final test is... Right now, I'm blocking your ability. You can't sense my sin, so you can't make me choke to death on my own spit or break my neck in a fall while walking.” He raised his hand as though about to attack Tian Yi.

Tian Yi smiled. “You want to test my strength?”

Gu Wen said, “No need. Only an idiot would believe you're Paper rank.” He snapped the fingers of his raised hand, and a bookmark appeared in it. “I just want to know what would happen if someone else gained control of the bookshop. Someone slightly less intelligent than me, say, but still clever enough to operate certain devices in this place. If you were then imprisoned in this subspace without a bookmark, how would you escape?”

Tian Yi said, “It's very simple.”

“Oh? Let's hear it.”

“All I have to do is die.”

“Ha... Hahaha... What did you say?” Gu Wen asked. The answer certainly sounded like a joke.

“You can try it right now. Cut my head off and you'll see,” Tian Yi said calmly.

Before he'd finished speaking, the Thread of Truth had tightened around his neck. Gu Wen replied evenly, “Since you think I'm not quite normal either, why shouldn't I kill someone over a joke?”

“Did I say it was a joke?” Tian Yi still seemed utterly untroubled. “Jiang Yun is still useful. Take her out. I'll see you in the bookshop. Oh, don't forget to cut my head off.”

Once he'd said that, his head really did fall off. Gu Wen hadn't hesitated. He had actually killed Tian Yi.

“Madman.” Gu Wen sighed. He'd never believed in gods or ghosts. Dead was dead. How could they possibly meet again?

Gu Wen hoisted Jiang Yun off the ground and onto his shoulder, then used the bookmark to leave subspace. Just two seconds later, he appeared in the bookshop.

There was no one behind the familiar large desk. The days of that thin, disheveled man sitting in his armchair drinking coffee were over.

Suddenly, the sound of a toilet flushing came through the door behind the desk. A few seconds later, footsteps approached from the toilet cubicle in Tian Yi's bedroom.

Tian Yi shuffled out of his filthy, cluttered den. He was still in a black shirt and black suit, his hair a mess, looking as though he'd just woken up. He actually sat back down in his armchair as if nothing had happened. “Put the woman in my room. Hurry up. I've got more to tell you when you come out.”