The Face Drowned in Ink

I never even opened it. I never even saw it.

Presepe's face went slack with disbelief. Again and again she demanded that the Book of Memories be shown to her, and every time the result was the same.

Where was I supposed to have opened it? How? Has something gone wrong with this, too?

For the moment, she needed to look at the other functions first. She let out a sigh, steadied her voice, and parted her lips once more.

"Show me the Incident Log."

Her expression turned grave, and she sank into thought.

Since the shift into Secret Mode, the only people she had met were Dietrich Atelloia and Atar Hanan. Dietrich's manner had changed, if only subtly, but the one who truly snagged at her mind was Atar. Even now she could see it as if it hung before her eyes: the moment she had chosen that choice which barely deserved the name, and Atar's affection window collapsing into a string of question marks.

"Atar Hanan."

"......"

"It's coming up properly this time..."

But it was nothing she did not already know. Nothing in it was wrong.

...Then was that strange affection window just an error?

And yet—

No sooner had she begun to relax than a window she could not understand rose before her.

"...Huh?"

After that, the window ran wild with question marks and typos so mangled they might as well have been some alien tongue.

"What... is this...?"

Flustered, Presepe opened Atar's Incident Log once more, but not a single character had changed. The completion notice had appeared properly, which meant the fault lay in Atar's log itself. If the system were broken, that notice would have come out just as garbled.

"I've never... heard of anything like this. Never seen it..."

She murmured it to the empty air, her face blank.

A long while passed before she managed, with effort, to seize hold of her fraying thoughts. Then she opened her mouth again.

"Review past memories. Atar Hanan."

With a soft rustle, the album that had rested beside the Incident Log fell open.

Every one of them was a scene she had already seen in Normal Mode.

Dietrich's celebration. Presepe, with no one she knew and no one she could easily keep company with, walking the flower garden alone—and Atar, approaching with perfect courtesy to offer a kind greeting.

A banquet on a day when, by rights, Dietrich would never have allowed her to attend at all—until Atar had wheedled and insisted, and in the end they had all sat down to dine together.

The face that had smiled so tenderly as he presented books brought from the Thein Empire, because he had heard she loved to read.

The night outing—the first event that appeared once Atar's affection rose past a certain point. And the moment he had promised that he would take her to the Thein Empire, no matter what. His large hand, closed firmly around her small one.

And after that, the Atar who returned with her to the Thein Empire and, little by little, let his true nature show.

And the last of them.

All the way to the ending, where he smiled a dark, secret smile at Presepe, shackled head to toe and writhing in pain.

She knew every one of them.

Even so, she clapped a hand over her mouth and sank where she stood.

"His... his face..."

Sprawled on the cold floor, the chill seeping up through her, she stammered.

"Why..."

Her own face remained in the illustrations, untouched. Atar's did not. As if someone had upended a bottle of black ink over him at random, his face had been painted solid black.

"...Noah."

The sound that slipped from her slack lips was closer to a groan.

"Noah Debern's Incident Log— no. Review past memories."

What about the others? What if the whole thing is broken?

In any case, the illustrations were something she could check at a glance.

A moment later, the illustrations of Noah she remembered from Normal Mode spread open in a fan.

"These are... exactly the same..."

Everything was intact. Nothing like Atar.

"......"

Her gaze snagged, all at once, on the illustration at the very end. The ending illustration.

Noah's ending was—

After the confinement, the Noah who had toyed with her found a new plaything before long. What followed was obvious. He forgot Presepe existed, forgot her so completely the memory might have been scorched black—just as he forgot the taxidermied animals he had once doted on, then shoved into a storeroom any which way once his interest cooled. Left without so much as food, worn down to skin and bone in the most literal sense, she had hanged herself, spent by loneliness, hunger, and pain. And until that final moment, Noah had not so much as shown his shadow.

Wedged in among the stuffed beasts, she looked at the illustration of herself with a thick, coarse rope around her neck, and her trembling hand closed into a fist.

"...Show me the other characters, in order."

Dietrich was unchanged. So was Ivan. So was Siegfried.

It did not take her long to understand. The only one who had gone wrong was Atar.

"...Enough. Close it now."

The brief notice vanished, and the screen that had held the notebook and the album vanished after it.

A heavy stillness settled over the narrow, cold tower.

...Something has gone badly wrong.

"It's... because of that choice..."

There was only one thing she could guess.

Was this what came of choosing it? Was that why Atar looked like that?

"So that really was a bug..."

Then what happens to Atar now?

What if he disappears from the game entirely?

Would that reach me, too?

White to the lips, Presepe bit at her nails. No matter how many times she turned it over, there was nothing she could learn. A bug like this had never appeared before in the first place. And that strange choice had shown itself when she spoke with Dietrich as well, which meant this might keep happening from here on.

"F-for now... I have to avoid that choice. That one, at least."

Saves no longer worked. She could not begin to guess how a thing like this might touch her. In the end, all she could do was take care that nothing else she did not understand was allowed to happen.

Right. That ought to be enough.

She drew her own shoulders tight, as if she might soothe herself that way, but the unease showed no sign of leaving. And she still could not understand why the Book of Memories would not so much as appear. It was the most useful function she had, and if the trouble were only the password, surely there would have been some explanation.

She worried through the night. Nowhere was there a way to reach an answer.

...And the very next day, the game's first event began.

Dietrich's accession banquet.

The one at which every character gathered, save Archmage Ivan.

Dietrich's celebration was held late at night.

From sometime in the afternoon, Presepe was kept wretchedly busy, subjected to being dressed and adorned. She had endured the same ordeal in Normal Mode, so it was not especially hard. Watching herself laid under a treatment mask so the cosmetics would take, practically pickled in oils that breathed every fragrance at once, she only thought, Please let this nonsense be the last time.

The thought did not last.

The story had already shifted in subtle ways, and at the celebration she would meet every character except Archmage Ivan. She had no idea what might happen, or where. She had to keep her head clear. Atar would be there as well. She wanted as little to do with him as possible under the circumstances, but it might still be worth seeing whether anything about him had changed.

I have to find the True Male Lead, too. He might be in attendance.

There was much she had to do, and much she had to watch for.

While she sat lost in her own thoughts, the hour of the celebration had drawn close before she noticed. Adornments finished, she took a carriage and arrived before the banquet hall. The grounds nearby were already thick with people who had come ahead of her.

"......"

She swept a quick look over the figures coming and going, but there was no one whose affection window she could see.