"And so, he asked me to dive inside," Kirito finished.

A silence fell.

"That's completely irresponsible, Onii-chan," Leafa said. "Surely you don't mean to go along with this?"

"People are dying," Kirito argued.

"I'm not letting you go," Asuna said. "Not alone."

"It's not an MMO," he said. "Everyone plays individually, you can't come with me."

"You mentioned streaming," Asuna said. "And communication."

"I'll be with you too, Papa," Yui said. She landed on his shoulder.

"As if I have a choice," Kirito sighed. Clearly, Asuna would not let this go. And in all honesty, he didn't mind if there was someone to give him some advice when he was in there. This wasn't the type of game he usually played.

"I wanna watch too," Leafa said.

"Yeah," Lisbeth added. "Let us watch too."

"Yeah," Silica finished.

"Hold on," Klein said. "It's useless for all of us to watch him. And we'll distract him too much."

"I agree," Kirito said. "If all of you communicate with me, it'll be hard to concentrate."

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Leafa argued. "Just sit here?"

"We don't have to," Klein said. "Are there any records of the game?"

"That's the strange thing," Kirito said. "There's no walkthrough of any kind. Kikuoka has a few videos, but he had a hard time getting them. The game seems to block recording equipment."

"Very strange. And no blog posts or anything?"

"No. And no one wants to talk about it. MMO stream tried to do an interview with a player, but they didn't find anyone who wanted to talk."

"I don't like the sound of this," Asuna said. "Do you really want to go?"

"I have to," Kirito said simply.

"Very strange," Klein said. "Shouldn't that guy know more? Why is he sending you in blind?"

"I don't know."

"We can gather more info," Sinon interjected. "You said you only need a username to watch someone play. If we try the usernames of SAO-survives and Alfheim players we might get a match. Then we can gather more info."

"Good idea." Odds are that some of them would try that game.

"I want to know more about the company that released this," Klein said.

"They are called Team Salvato," Kirito said. "All their names are pseudonyms."

"Still, we could get a clue this way," Klein said. "Surely someone must know them. I'll ask Agil about it."

"Alright."

"When are you going to dive?" Asuna asked.

"Tomorrow."

Kazuto parked his motorcycle outside the hospital. It was raining hard, but he had some cover here.

He stored away his helmet and then checked his phone. It was a bit early, but it was unlikely anyone would mind. And he was not planning to stand out here in the cold.

With resolute steps, he went inside.

"She's waiting for you," the girl at the desk said. She still recognised him from last time.

He nodded.

Kazuto took the elevator up and walked the hallway to the correct room. Room 7025.

"Good morning, Kazuto-kun," a cheerful voice said.

As expected, Nurse Aki Natsuki had been assigned to him once again.

"Morning," he said.

"You're early," she said. "Couldn't wait to see me?"

Kikuoka must have assigned her to him again on purpose.

Her hands touched his arm. "You're strong. I'd say you're even stronger than before the whole incident. But I don't know of course."

"I practise," he said dismissively.

"We'll see soon enough," she said with a smile.

"Yeah, yeah." With a sigh, he unzipped his coat and put it over the chair. His shirt quickly followed.

"Impressive," she said, staring at his bare chest.

"I have a girlfriend, you know?"

"I know," she smiled.

Right, that reminded him.

He fished out his phone from his pocket.

Kazuto texted 'ready' to Asuna. After a short hesitation, he added a little heart and pressed send.

Then, he put his phone on the chair with his clothes.

"All done?" She asked.

"Yeah." He sat down on the bed.

Aki sat down next to him and connected the electrodes. She touched him more than she really needed to, but he was used to that.

"I'll pull you out of something happens," Aki assured him. "Don't worry."

"Okay." He put on the AmuSphere. "I'll be out for a few hours I guess."

"Alright."

He laid down and took a deep breath.

"Link Start!"

Bright white light assaulted his vision.

The AmuSphere went through the usual check without trouble. When it was done, it showed him a list of programs.

He navigated to DDLC and opened the game.

The screen changed again.

'This game is not suitable for children or those easily disturbed'. The disturbing message was projected with white letters for a moment, and then it faded away.

'Team Salvato' showed with a simple cube logo. Then, the main menu loaded with generic background music. It was projected onto a flat plane.

It was a traditional main menu for VN's. In the corner were five options:

New game

Load game

Settings

Help

Quit

These were written in a rather silly looking font. The color was bright pink, obviously. Above that, a heart proclaimed: Doki Doki Literature Club.

Next to this, what he presumed were the four main heroines showed. He could already sense their types.

The first girl was probably the childhood friend. Her big smile was a dead giveaway. Behind her was a girl with long purple-black hair that was ninety percent certain the composed Ojousama. Next to her was a small girl with pink hair that was probably the cute junior who was 'over thirteen, we swear'.

Which left only one girl at the very front. He had a hard time placing her. It was a girl with a big white ribbon in her hair.

He had played a few datings sims in the past and this all looked very familiar.

But there was something off.

He operated the menu of the AmuSphere to summon Yui.

The little pixie girl appeared.

"Hey Papa," she said.

"Hey. Do you happen to know which program was used for this game?"

"Hold on." She closed her eyes for a second. "Ren'Py."

"You can run that on an AmuSphere?"

"It's the 3D-version," Yui said.

"Strange."

Anyway, he should probably start.

Kazuto walked to the screen and pressed 'new game'.

A pink prompt popped up.

'Please enter your name'

Kazuto used the virtual keyboard to type 'Kirito' and pressed 'ok'.

The trigger warning showed again.

Seriously, what was up with this game?

His surroundings came into view.

He was standing in a street in what seemed to be a normal suburb.

"Heeeeeeeyyy!" A female voice yelled.

Kirito wheeled around. He saw a girl running towards him. It was the girl from the cover. The childhood friend type with her yellowish-orange hair and red ribbon.

She was waving her hands around, uncaring of the attention she drew to herself.

Kirito looked around. There were other people on the street looking at them. They all had pretty generic designs.

Testing the waters, he walked across the street.

No one looked at him. They kept staring at the girl who had reached his position and now froze in place. She literally froze. Before, she was running, and now her feet were floating in the air, uncaring about gravity.

A little grey note floated in the lower right corner of his vision.

'Game paused'

A helpful pink arrow pointed to the girl.

His initial guess had been correct it seemed.

A little bell sounded.

'Communication request: Asuna. Accept?'

He pressed 'yes'.

[Kirito? Can you hear me?]

"Loud and clear," he said.

[Good. I was worried this wouldn't work.]

A second request came. He accepted as well.

[Papa? I couldn't follow you inside. I was worried.]

"Don't worry. I'm fine," he assured them. "This is a normal game."

[It doesn't look like it,] Asuna said.

"What do you see?"

[Your vision is projected on my TV. We see through your eyes.]

"Oh, okay." He should make sure he didn't make too many sudden movements or she would get motion sick.

[I see a girl. But she's not moving. This is weird, Kirito-kun.]

"You don't see the text?"

[What text?]

"There's text on my view. The game is paused because I walked away. If I walk back to her, it will continue."

[Oh.]

"Which I was just planning to do."

[Alright.]

Luckily Asuna hadn't seen the trigger warning at the start of the game.

He walked back to the frozen girl.

When he was within two steps, she unfroze.

"I overslept again," the girl proclaimed. "But I caught you."

A pink window floated in front of him, very similar to the communication request. There was only one option to pick from.

'Only because I waited for you.'

Hm.

"Good morning," Kirito tried.

She didn't react. Her face remained frozen in her flustered expression.

So this was how his dialogue was done?

Kirito pressed the only choice he had.

"You're so mean," she said immediately (her lips weren't perfectly in sync with the words). "You were thinking about ignoring me."

She puffed up her cheeks.

More text appeared on his view.

'Sayori is my childhood friend. We used to walk together to school every day, but then she started oversleeping.'

The text displayed for a moment and then made way for another dialogue choice.

'I don't want people to think we're a couple or something.'

Kirito tested whether he could walk away.

He confirmed this was possible. The dialogue screen remained in place where he had stood.

When he was too far away the 'game paused' notice showed up with an arrow pointing to where his dialogue screen was floating.

He wondered whether he should investigate.

It was pretty clear this world did not respond to anything he did. But if he just kept walking away, what would happen?

Presumably the game would stop at some point. They couldn't have implemented an infinite world.

He tried going to the house he was standing in front of.

The door opened without any trouble.

Kirito walked upstairs.

He opened one of the four doors.

Wow.

There was only darkness behind that door.

He held out his hand.

[Kirito,] Asuna warned him.

"My real body is lying in a hospital," Kirito said confidently. "Nothing can happen to me."

He touched the darkness and pushed. It didn't bulge under his touch. This was a solid barrier.

A notice showed in grey.

'Area not implemented'.

So this is what happened if he reached the end of the map?

[Shouldn't you be playing the game, Papa?] Yui suggested. [That girl is waiting for you.]

"She's not a girl," Kirito said. "She's not even an AI. She's a sprite who rattles of the pre-recorded lines. If I would wait a few hours, she would still speak the exact same lines."

[What are you hoping to find, Kirito?] Asuna asked.

"A clue." He tried the other rooms.

The bathroom worked as well.

He tried turning on the tap, but no water came out.

Not surprising.

There was one more room which wasn't darkness.

This had to be the player's room.

He took a random book of the bookshelf. There was no title or cover, just a solid red hardcover. When he opened it, he found all the pages were blank.

Next, he tried the remote of the tv, but the screen didn't respond.

The bed did feel like a real bed. The sensation was very similar to SAO or Alfheim Online. They had probably implemented fulldive surroundings on limited settings.

It didn't look like he would find many clues here.

He moved his fingers to summon the menu.

His left hand didn't work, but his right one did. This was the SAO way.

The menu was very limited. A save button, a load button, an options button and a quit button. All were pink, obviously.

He pressed 'save game'.

A menu showed up. He picked an empty frame and his game was saved there.

He could see the date and name of his character. His current view of the room showed as well.

[Kirito? Are you still there? The screen froze.]

"I'm saving my game," he said. Looked like Asuna couldn't see any of the menus.

He checked out the options screen but there were only generic things like volume of sound effects and such. There was also an option to adapt the speed of the text that played.

Kirito closed it again.

There was nothing suspicious about this game. It was a bit strange someone had gone through the trouble to put it into the AmuSphere since this had very little added value to the game itself. But from everything he had seen so far, this was a normal dating simulator.

The only thing left to do was go back and play it through to see what happened.

But something kept nagging at him.

If this was a normal game, what was up with that trigger warning?

If he didn't know Kikuoka had no sense of humor, he would think this was all a joke. Suicides? Over this? What a joke. This was just a silly dating simulator.

Sure, he could understand people got attached to the characters. The voice acting was solid and the artwork was quite good. Klein would certainly enjoy himself in this world. But suicide? No, this made no sense.

There had to be something more going on here.

"Yui? Can you get into the directory?" He asked.

[Already on it, Papa. There is a folder with four character files, but it has a weird extension, I can't open any of them. There's also a script, but it seems to be coded. The only things I can open is the copyright notice and the help file. And some of the music loads as well.]

So no clues there. He should have known it wouldn't be that simple.

"Is there a log?"

[The help function mentions you can open the log by swiping upwards. The opposite of the main menu.]

He put his fingers together and made an upwards motion.

Text filled his view.

He saw the lines the girl, Sayori, had spoken. The dialogue 'choices' of his character Kirito also showed as well as the remarks in between about how this was his childhood friend.

He dismissed the screen.

Kirito got up from the bed. He wouldn't get anywhere like this. He needed more information.

The only thing he could do was actually play the game the way it was supposed to be played.

He walked back outside.

Sayori was still waiting for him to make the only dialogue choice he had.

Kirito took a deep breath.

Here goes nothing.