In My Room, Seething

Click, click, click—I clicked through the game’s opening minutes.

The dialogue boxes slid by like they didn’t care that I was there. I didn’t care about them either.

My mouse hand moved on autopilot, and my clicker finger was faster than the dialogue box could register. It was the slice-of-life style introduction to the visual novel–life sim hybrid’s setting.

I’d done this a dozen times already. I wasn’t here for this part.

Click.

I was here for her—the beauty with only three lines but one heck of a main lady-worthy design.

Lady Elsbeth.

Her lips were a deep red, unsmiling. Her eyes, downcast but shimmering, the color of overcast skies after a storm. Her hair was dark and flowing, but streaked with silver.

She came to the barracks in a gown that was midnight blue and trailed behind her like a serpentine spirit slithering through a moonlit pond. The fabric clung to her curves at the hips and outrageous chest before falling loose—an elegant, suffocating thing, more prison than dress. Her figure was soft and womanly, clearly untouched by hardship—but not untouched by sorrow. You could see it in the little hints in her three lines of dialogue. She was making you think something was going on. She was built for silk sheets and slow dances, not visiting barracks to raise morale and thank unfortunate fools for their service.

Around her neck hung a thin, white ribbon, tied like a choker. Maybe a symbol of how she was kept, but it also had to be a symbol of her purity. I mean, a white fabric in such a dirty setting? Had to be intentional.

The name box was positioned right below her image — Lady Elsbeth, Lord’s Wife.

The Lord that called her wife—I never thought I could hate a visual novel character more. Damn developers. They got me.

The three lines were done. I clicked through. It was just more setting details.

More setting details until the second bombshell popped onto the screen—Meredi.

She appeared ahead of the flicker of a forge’s light, holding a hunk of twisted metal in one gloved hand and a heavy wrench in the other. Her posture was relaxed—but her arms were corded with muscle, tight and lean from years of lifting, swinging, and grinding steel into shape.

She wore a plain tank that hugged her chest just enough to remind you she was definitely a woman, not just the background blacksmith. Thick leather trousers were strapped at the thigh with tool loops, and her belt was weighed down with pliers, wire, and a pair of mismatched goggles that hung from one hip like a badge of honor. Her gloves were fingerless, oiled and blackened with years of use.

But her face—God, her face. The devs went so hard!

Her left eye was sharp and amber-bright, focused with the precision of someone who could measure tolerances by instinct. Her right eye was scarred shut, the lid puckered from an old burn, lashes gone, the socket miraculously still intact. It made her look like she was always narrowing her eyes on your soul, like she knew if you were worth melting iron for or not.

Her hair, in the portrait, was as radiant as gold, and straight, reaching down to her hips. It was like her hair did not follow the rules of the forge, because it was pristine.

A beauty mark sat at the corner of her lip, small and dark—a dangerous accent, that almost drew attention from everything below the chin.

And that muscular, olive-toned body. Shoulders wide. Core firm. Hips that looked like they could shatter a wall if they smacked it. And her chest? It was like the devs went and referenced a lady on the body-building circuit and then seamlessly stuck on assets that would draw the target market in.

It was so shameless, but it brought me in.

Meeting her, you’d think you’d be coming back to this workshop over and over, always greeted by this goddess as a forge as she upgraded your weapons and tools. What a delight.

The introductions and tutorial were over—

“See you next time. Punch a spawn once for me.”

I jumped at the husky voice and then chuckled. I had forgotten that this game had given Meredi a voiced line during the tutorial… Damn those developers.

I clicked through, but not too long. A few lines after leaving Meredi’s forge, the third and final knife-in-the-chest came: Ravela.

Standing under the shadow of a hanging banner, hip cocked, arms crossed beneath a chest barely contained by her high-collared leather coat. A few buttons were open—too many to be accidental. Her black corset crushed her waist, but let her full, heavy breasts rise enough to make a guy’s eyes commit sin.

Her eyes were a deep red-brown, rimmed in black liner that made her look permanently unimpressed. Her skin was sun-kissed, a shade deeper than the other two, and gleamed with that impossible kind of glow that said expensive oils and shady living. Her hair was dark auburn and asymmetrically cut—short on the right side, long on the left, with a streak of white dyed in, trailing down like the warning streak many animals had.

Her ears were pierced three times over, glittering with obsidian studs, and a tiny chain connected one lobe to the tip of her ear. Her neck bore a choker of black velvet, with a dangling ruby that swung like a pendulum whenever she smirked.

And that smirk? That was the real accessory. It outclassed all the fancy jewelry.

She flipped a coin between her fingers as she stood there, leaning against a wall, staring the player down. Her introduction made you think you’d be cutting deals to get some high-risk, high-reward items from her.

I didn’t click through this time. I had gotten to the end of what I wanted to see.

In my heart of hearts, before I died, I wanted to go through routes with all of them. I wanted to play through all those sweet lovey-dovey moments.

But I couldn’t.

They weren’t for me.

They weren’t for anyone.

Because…

I threw my hands up into the air. “The damn developers and their bait-and-switch—I still hate it so much!”

My irritation had boiled over. Those damn developers!

Record of a Life of Pain and Triumph (the literal translation of the original title) was a game that marketed itself as a life simulator where you fought monsters, managed a town, fell in love, and achieved prosperity.

What it did not tell you was that the town you were in during the prologue was doomed. Everyone you met for the first little bit was going to die, and you, the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed squire with a dream, were going to fall into a river, lose most of your memories, and start fresh at a remote village.

It did not tell you that your love interests were going to be limited to girls who looked like they were barely sixteen—and one of them was feral.

Oh, and those three women at the start? Significantly more generic NPCs would occupy their roles.

It just didn’t make sense. Why would anyone do this? The prologue of the game made you think you would be playing something the devs thought was going to sell half a million units!

But the rest of the game looked like a budget title that would be lucky to get twenty thousand in sales.

I did find interviews before everything went to the crapper—the director-writer guy? Why he did this this? Gave those women amazing designs? And had that prologue?

Because he wanted to ‘surprise’ players.

In a just world, players would revolt. But apparently, this guy understood his target market, because all those jailbait collections of pixels made people go crazy. They were happy with the game.

Those moms deserved routes too, damn it! Why put in all the effort and make them so interesting if you were just going to kill them?

But no. They get three lines, some tragic lore in a codex entry, and then they’re gone.

I slumped in my chair.

“I know why. It’s because he wanted to get this reaction out of idiots like me.”

The alarm of my battery meter blared.

“Oh, well, there goes my hour of escapism.”

With a smile, I turned off my computer, shut off the lights around the desk, unhooked the batteries from the rest of the house, and let out a breath.

“Record of a Life of Pain and Triumph… You have such a way of making me relive my youth.”

The devs—I hated them. Cursed them with everything I had for making me care about their NPCs… but, you know, it was nice getting worked up about something so stupid. Made me forget how miserable the hellscape outside was.

I went to the window and peeked through the blinds.

“Ahh, yeah… Probably be another week until we get some good sunlight again.”

I shook my head and relinquished myself to my bed.

“And we’re supposed to be the lucky ones… What would have been lucky… would have been being born in any era but this one, where everything went to shit.”

…

…

…

I don’t remember falling asleep.

I just remembered closing my eyes, busted head sinking into the pillow, resting in the darkness.

And then—
Something felt off.

I opened my eyes to a weird, unnatural glow filling my room. It was soft, flickering… bluish? But not the warm blue of a monitor screen—something weirder… and maybe radioactive.

My eyes locked onto my desk.

The computer was on.

Except I knew I shut it off. Heck, my batteries were totally disconnected from the house. There wasn’t supposed to be power in the whole house.
My eyes focused. It wasn’t just on—it had booted up into the title screen for Record of a Life of Pain and Triumph. The music was playing, low and distant, as if it were underwater. The cursor blinked, pulsing like a heartbeat over “New Game.”

“What the hell…”

I started to sit up, but immediately felt something pressing down on my shoulder, like a weight in the air.

And then—

A voice.

“Oh! You’re awake! I’m so sorry!”

There was a girl in my room. A weird, otherworldly girl with angel wings growing from her head.

She was standing in front of my door, glowing faintly like a candle flame about to go out. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, and her eyes were wide with panic. She had the body of a young woman, but she looked like she had stopped mid-action.

I blinked hard. Tried to speak too.

“You’re too pretty to be one of the monsters from the mainland.”

“No time!” she shouted, flapping those weird head-wings. “We’re evacuating everyone we can!”

I sat up. “Evacuating? What? Is the island being attacked?”

Her eyes went past me and to the computer. “Oh! There’s already a world you resonate with! Great! We won’t have to drag you to our world!”

“What? Pardon me? A world—”

Beneath the roar of gales and a raging ocean, the wall behind the girl flew off like it was paper. My mouth dropped. Bricks, boards, wires—all of it was being ripped away piece by piece.

It flew into the air, and was sucked into the gigantic black hole that had replaced the sky. Everything—everything was being sucked into the black hole, brick by abstract brick.

“What the hell is happening?!”

The woman held her hair down as she gritted her teeth and pointed her hand at me. “That world will take you! Live happily, okay? If you have any friends or family...”

My eyes met hers, and she cracked a nervous smile.

“We’ll try to get them to safety too, okay?”

“Okay,” I stammered, tears born from fear rolling from my one good eye.

“Hold your wishes tightly,” she said.

And then the world went white, and I felt myself pulled in every direction until I went unconscious.