It´s been almost a year now.
Those were the words that passed through my mind as a quietly forked more food into my mouth. Almost a year since we became trapped in this game. Almost a year since I last saw my family. Almost a year since I first met Kesuta.
I look up across the table at him. He´s eagerly eating his food, the fork a blur between his plate and his mouth. A small smile comes to my lips as I watch him, but the smile quickly fades again.
I remember when it started, when the news was broken to us. We were trapped inside that game, and the only way to escape was if someone beat the final boss on the 100th floor.
The catch – if you died in the game, you were dead in real life. That´s it. Game over.
So far, at least a third of us are dead. And we´ve only made it to the 50th floor. 1,000 people dead, never coming back. Ever.
Everyone went berserk after the announcement was finished. I just couldn´t believe it. But at leats I took it better than some people. I made my way to a bench in a trance and tried to let the information soak in, but I just couldn´t. How could this be happening?
That was when I met Kesuta. He was determined to beat the game for everyone, and be the hero. He was a bit overconfident, but he had a will of steel. I saw him running past me through the alleyway where I was sitting and caught him by the elbow. He looked back at me in surprise, and I finally found my voice.
"Where are you going? You can´t just rush out there like that! You´ll get yourself killed! Haven´t you heard? If you die now, you´re gone! Forever!"
He stared at me for a bit. I stared back at him, every bit confused as he was. But he suddenly gave me the dorkiest thumbs-up I had ever seen and smiled at me. He told me not to worry, that he would win the game for everyone.
At that, I gaped at him open-mouthed, like a fish. Was this guy crazy? I had absolutely no idea. But I wasn´t about to let someone just rush out into the open.
I looked down at my plate again. I knew the real reason I hadn´t let him go dashing off. There were two real reasons. One was that… he reminded me of my brother. The one that I thought I had no chance of ever seeing again. But the other one I decided to keep a secret from him.
I was one of the Beta Testers.
I knew the dangers of this game, but I also knew that if I revealed to people who I really was, they would all be furious with me. No one welcomed Beta Testers in any game, because they know all the tricks and cheats and everything there is to know about the game. But how was I supposed to convince people that it wasn´t true? The Beta Testers had never even made it past the 1st boss. There was no way that they had any advantage over other people.
I convinced Kesuta that he would need help, but I didn´t mean that I would be his partner. I guess he didn´t realize that, because he grabbed me by the arm and said, "Well, we better get started then!"
We made it by the first boss with a team and pure luck. Too many people died.
It was then that I told him that I was a Beta Tester. I didn´t tell anyone else. But he seemed to be trustworthy, and I guess I assumed that I would be stuck with him for the rest of the game. I normally prefer to play alone, as a solo player, but I couldn´t risk it this time. He didn´t believe me at first, jokingly saying that I didn´t have the skills of one. But after I explained to him, he was quiet.
He said that he was a Beta Tester, too. So there we were, two Beta Testers in a big game. And luck was not on our side.
I was brought back from my thoughts by something sharp prodding me in the arm. I looked up to see Kesuta, staring at me with big brown eyes, smiling. He poked me with his fork again.
"Hey, anybody in there?"
I noticed that his plate was completely bare and couldn´t help but smile. He returned the favor and gave me a big grin. "Hey, the food is great! …Can I have some more?"
I laughed. "Of course you can. I made plenty." I grabbed his plate and started off towards the kitchen. But he stopped me before I could disappear.
"Hey, you´ve barely eaten anything. Is something up?"
I leaned against the doorway and looked back at him. He met my eyes with a confused glance and looked down at my plate again. "You´re normally not so quiet, Asami."
"I´ve just been thinking. We haven´t been into the dungeons lately, you know, and I thought that we should take up our swords again and start training once more. We´ve been getting distracted, Kesuta. We can´t be stuck here. It´s been almost a year now."
Those words again.
"Asami, you know that it hasn´t been so long. It´s good to take a break every once in a while. Now can we please just not talk about this? You know I don´t like to talk about the game. You invited me up to your flat to have a nice dinner, remember? Let´s not argue about this."
But I didn´t want to drop it. "How can you not want to talk about the game? We´re IN this game, Kesuta! We need to help people and beat this as fast as possible!" I was starting to sound as reckless and overconfident as Kesuta used to be.
This didn´t make him happy. He rose his voice. "Asami, you should know this by now! We can´t go charging into every dungeon to save people! Why don't we just take a break from all this dungeon fighting and relax?"
I was taken aback. I stopped leaning against the doorframe and stood up straight. It sounded like he didn´t care about the game anymore, like he was…
"You´re giving up, aren´t you? Kesuta, we can´t give up!"
"No, you won´t give up! You´re always telling me that we have to beat this game, for the sake of the other people! You have to start thinking about yourself for once!"
I yelled at him now, my eyes welling up with tears. "I do think about myself! But I don´t want to be stuck inside this game forever! I want to see my family again! I want my real life back! Stop giving up, Kesuta!"
He stood up from his chair so fast that it fell over behind him and was in front of me in a flash. Yelling angrily, he took me by the shoulders and said, "I won´t let you go into those dungeons again, Asami! I don´t want you to get hurt!"
I stepped back from him and twisted out of his grip, taken aback. With tears streaming down my face now, I yelled:
"I don´t want you getting hurt, either! It´s not like I don´t care about you too!"
Kesuta took a step back. He tried to hide his shock at what I just said but couldn´t, with his mouth opening and closing but no sounds coming back. So I just let myself pour all my feelings out to him, as more tears streamed freely down my face.
"Kesuta, I´ve cared about you ever since day 1! I was always looking out for you, and you would always look out for me! We were more than a team, and I found that I liked you more than a friend! I couldn´t stop worrying if you went out to a dungeon by yourself, and you have no idea how relieved I would be when you came back! Kesuta, I don't know if you feel the same way about me, but… Kesuta, I love you!"
And that was that. He finally knew. But… it was also heartbreaking.
Knowing this game, sooner or later one of us was going to die.