The mirror stage was a six-month survival game. It made two teammates live through everything the other had lived through, so the two of them could read each other's unspoken pain, ache for each other, worry over each other, and at the same time learn each other's strengths and weaknesses.
At the end of the game, they had to kill each other.
Some couldn't bring themselves to do it. Some fell together.
And me, I had my finest hour in that game.
I killed so fast, so surely, that my other teammate couldn't believe it. "Why?"
"Why didn't you hesitate, not even for a second?"
I answered him, "I always knew. No matter what feelings the game grew in me for you, you were never going to be my teammate."
But once I cleared the stage, I found out. Arthur chose to kill himself. Elena chose to die with him.
I stood in the game lobby, staring at the two names gone gray, and said nothing for a very long time.
In the end I entered the cruelest one, the thousand-player deathmatch, to buy them two chances at revival.
And I accepted the penalty of never being able to add talent points again.
After they came back, Arthur and Elena wouldn't say a word about what had happened in the game.
They only said I was their savior, and that they'd protect me with everything they had.
Protecting me was a very convenient excuse.
So they had endless things to talk about, and called it discussing tactics.
They kept secrets I wasn't allowed in on, told me I didn't need to know, that I only had to sit tight and wait for the game to be cleared.
Always the two of them, side by side. When I asked, they both smiled with contempt. "Please. We're the ones going out to fight. Not like you, breezing through a clear without lifting a finger."
In that moment, it wasn't jealousy I felt. It was shame.
I was a game-certified player too. I'd survived a thousand-player deathmatch, which proved I was no dead weight.
How could they talk about me that way?
But I could no longer add talent points, which meant that as the game grew harder, my position grew more dangerous.
All I could do was stay silent, and let them mock me, belittle me, and, laughing all the while, strip away my chances to grow, all under the name of protecting me.
Swallowing humiliation to carry the load is a required course in a survival game too.
Right now, I wore the exact same smile.
I'd watched it too many times. I'd learned it.
Arthur said, "Leona, we're a team. Before, you were weak, so we protected you. Now that we're… shouldn't you be the one protecting us?"
He swallowed the word "weak." His pride wouldn't let him admit he'd become weak.
I nodded.
"Weaklings, get behind me."
Both their faces went dark, and in the same stride, at the same moment, they stepped back.
I rolled my eyes.
I swung my dagger, the wind whipping off my hand.
My experience points and contribution points kept climbing.
Even so, they still ended up battered down to 30 HP.
This was only the first day, and the survival mission ran seven.
Time in the stage moved fast. As their stamina dropped, they both started to feel hunger.
According to the prompt, the supplies were hidden in the cellar.
Looking at the pitch-black hole with no bottom in sight, the two of them turned to me at the same time.
