𝐅𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬

7. the player and the protagonist are suffering from depression

These past few days, Chen Miao had been acting strange. There was an air of lethargy about him as his back rested against the headboard, his blanket covering his lower body as he glanced at the window. No matter what you did, the man insisted on not leaving the bed. You even had to resort to pick him up and bath him instead, causing him to finally had a shy reaction on his look.

Yet that didn't solve this strange behaviour of his. Sometimes, he would have insomnia that you had to keep him company at night out of pity, either by one-sidedly playing chess or reading him a book. Other times he would sleep far too long for your liking that you had to check whether he's breathing or not.

Eventually, it had gotten worse as he wouldn't even eat whatever you cook, and even if you forced feed him, he would just vomit everything out.

He then seldom talk, and his reaction speed also became slow. You noticed that even if choices popped up above his head, there was no light, indicating that the player wasn't online to pick one.

You also noticed that Chen Miao started to become clingier with you though he try not to make it too obvious like that one time where you would go out to buy grocery only to see him sighing in relief upon seeing you entering his bedroom.

"I thought you had gotten tired of me."

It was the first time you heard his voice after a long while. A part of you felt frustration that you can't help Chen Miao although you knew his condition had something to do with the player, while another part of you felt satisfaction that you finally had the opportunity to protect him 24/7.

"Ah Miao, I will bring you to the hospital, alright?"

Although you doubted that place would cure whatever sickness he had, what other choices do you have? But the protagonist refused, and when you tried to force him, he almost bite his tongue off at your persistence so you never mentioned it again.

After a week of his strange sickness, naturally, the teachers would get worry, especially if the person in question was the honor student of the school. Your classroom teacher had came uninvinted while you were out to pick a few of your clothes at your house. When you came back, the sight that greeted you was the teacher anxiously calling the ambulance while Chen Miao was lying on the bed with slitted wrist.

Your blood immediately ran cold and you quickly went to stop the blood from continuously pouring out from his wound. Afterwards, you couldn't remember what happened because the next thing you knew, you were already in the hospital with the teacher and doctor questioning you.

Since they couldn't contact his mother, the doctor told the teacher that he was suffering from depression. In turns, the teacher asked you if you had broken up with him or something. After you denied it, they can only conclude that his depression stemmed from his mother's sudden disappearance.

From the outside of his hospital room, you peeked at Chen Miao who was lying passively on the bed. His eyes were wide open, and you found yourself unable to read him as the teacher went inside to comfort him.

In another world...

"ーplease, I'm just trying to help you." The female teacher pleaded as she looked at her now unrecognizable student in tears.

What once used to be a healthy student of hers was now nothing but a malnutritious boy lying weakly on the bed. He ignored his teacher who had found and saved him from the brink of death, choosing to stare at the screen of his phone instead.

He recalled the first time he played this game, before he was made aware of what consequence this game would bring him; at that time, while he was wandering around the street at evening, there was an event in the game where Chen Miao was also walking down the street and was approached by a man in black.

The boy hadn't feel intimidated at that time because the art for this game was pixel, so he didn't have that much sense of realism when he played.

All of a sudden, there were options popping up on the screen of his phone.

「A strange man came to ask you for a direction to the nearest cyber cafe around here. Coincidentally, there are two of that cafes around here. Which cyber cafe should you tell him?」

•「The one across the street.」

•「The one hidden in the alley.」

The player didn't know why but the second option sound shady so he picked the first option. All of a sudden, from the corner of his eyes, he saw a man in a black hoodie was about to cross the street in front of him only to be hit by a car two seconds later.

He stood there in shock as the people around him shrieked at the sight. Subsconsciously, he glanced at his phone to see that the strange man in the game also got into an accident.

That's when reality hit him.

He knew that his mother is probably dead somewhere, after all, that's what this game really is about; in exchange for an easy way to live a life, one must be prepared to sacrifice, but he didn't expect that it would involve other people too.

All I wanted was not to be bullied. He was reminded of his school life before he played that game. No matter how much he study, he would always get the last place, while his mother pretended that she doesn't care, he knew how much hardship she had to face just because she was a single mother.

Then he happened to stumble upon a conversation regarding a mysterious game that can change one's life, so he went to check out of curiosityーtruly proved how stupid he was.

"I regretted it," he wept, burying his face in his hands as the teacher tried her best to comfort him despite not knowing what he regretted.

At this moment, these two people didn't know that they were watched by thousands of people that were typing on their keyboards as they expressed their feelings towards this scene.

『o(TヘTo) husband don't cry. your mother is alive and kicking at home!』

『I'm laughing and crying right now. our idol truly cherished his mother. his mother must have been proud of him at home.』

『ugh the scriptwriter is too much! Why does our husband needed to have his memory wipe out? This is his first time in this kind of tv show. Cut him some slack.』

『hey do any of you know why that female npc stopped killing all the actors that took the role of the "player"?』

『huh? was she supposed to kill him???』

『in the previous seasons of this same script, the counterpart of the female npc took the role of the villain, killing the "player" each time "chen miao" died, but in this season, I don't see her. did something happen? I quite like that woman although she wasn't famous.』

『you fool, wdym she's not famous??? go google her and you will know she's the one who made this show happened. also, she's the girlfriend of the person who developed this virtual world, and she then wrote a script and turned this into a tv series for us to watch.』

『∑(O_O;)』

『oh to be a winner in life _(┐「ε:)_』