There was something severely wrong with how I acted in that waiting room, I'm not a passive person, right now I'm thinking about how stupid it was that I didn't just attack that receptionist, how stupid it was to eat that food, how stupid it was to enter this door and how stupid it was to say yes to these terms.

I felt neutered, I wasn't right, it's sickening how this place doesn't even follow the rules of free will, I was hoping in hell id at least be able to be myself, but no, they got me, they got us. Something in the air was making me a diplomat.

I'm in a forest, midday, cold, white with snow, trees that are dark and jagged that crawl up into the sky, I can't see the top of them through the fog of the frost.

A speaker turns on, “welcome! It's time for the game to begin, the rules are simple, kill the polar bear.”

Kill the polar bear? I have nothing in my hands, absolutely nothing to fight back with, my clothes aren't built for this climate, and I have no shoes on, so my feet are already becoming a nice shade of blue.

“Do I get a weapon?”

“Just your hands, have fun.” the speaker that I couldn't even see turns off with a click, leaving my ears to listen to the wind.

Aren't polar bears literally the most dangerous animals on the planet? I've lost already, I've basically lost. I look through the snow hoping I can find anything, a stick, a rock, but there is nothing. This is a barren wasteland, and they expect me to kill a polar bear.

From my left I hear some sniffing, oddly similar to a dog, it looks up and spots me with its pure black lifeless eyes.

It’s taller than me, are bears this big? This thing seems unnaturally large for an animal. I’ve only seen black bears before, so this seems like a mammoth in comparison.

I step back a bit and take my shirt off, can I blind it by putting this over its head? Is there any plan that’ll work here? Anything?

It walks slowly towards me, still sniffing and passive, I don’t even notice it creep up to me mid thought, it’s face in front of mine.

I need to poke its eye out, right? Its breath is disgustingly distracting, my hand slowly creeps up, it seems to notice and it a swift second my hand gets ripped clean off and my chest is ripped open by its paw, slamming into me like individual meat hooks.

I fall backwards 2 meters away and feel incredibly warm, my lungs don’t work and I begin to choke on whatever’s coming out of my mouth.

Suddenly I’m standing up, perfectly fine.

“Heya! So do you give up or do you want to give it another go?”

God damn it, it’s another time loop. WITHIN a time loop with a potential dream balcony time loop thrown in the mix, “yes, retry.”

‘Body’ challenge my ass, this is just seeing how long until I break, the bear is a lot more aggressive now, it’s running straight towards me with rabid intent.

What do you do when a bear is running towards you? Black bears: you scream, brown bears: you pretend to play dead, polar bears: you start praying to every god there is.

My head falls off my shoulders from it taking a clean strike at me, “retry.”

Attempt 6.

My natural enemy is my lack of shoes, every time I try to side step this creature my body gets eviscerated. I found it’s best to go under to confuse the bear, but most of the time it just stomps on me and chews at my leg. “Retry.”

Attempt 22.

At the start of every attempt I take my shirt off and use it as a veil, it normally slashes at that rather than me so that gives me just enough time to run to the side of it.

Great! Now I’m on the side of the bear and it has the perfect position to do a drunken haymaker with paws that feel like spiked wrecking balls, cutting me in half. “Retry.”

Attempt 35.

I’m seeing how well I can climb these trees, I thought since I’m a primate or whatever I’d be better at climbing but nope, bears can climb exceptionally well and normally reach me before I step off the ground.

Attempt 60.

I’ve gone all in on the climbing tactic, if I learn enough I can get a killing blow, I usually take my shirt off, wait for it to strike, while it strikes I drop the shirt in front of its face and run to the closest tree to begin my ascent.

This gives me around 2 seconds before it can reach me, at most I can make it a meter off the ground.

Attempt 83.

Climbing is over, silly tactic, silly silly silly. I wondered how I would even knock a bear off a tree when its claws are stuck to it like ice shoes. Now I’m all in on the ultra ‘eye poking’ tactic, usually it ends in my hand being chewed off but practice makes perfect right?

Attempt 111.

I’ve started every run by rolling up a small snowball and throwing it at its stupid beady little eyes, it’s genuinely effective in disorienting it a bit, although whenever I try to get close it goes all crazy with the paws and still hits me.

Attempt 147.

I’ve perfected the throw, I roll snow up and get it directly into its face every time, it freaks out and I can actually get behind it now, to do what? I have no clue.

I’ve tried just punching it before it slashes at me, but it’s 7 inch thick fur really stops that dream becoming reality, maybe if I was a professional boxer.

Attempt 181.

Snowball direct hit, into taking my shirt off and dropping it onto its face, hoping the wind will carry it, I then make my way behind my polar nemesis and climb a tree just barely, I jump off and land on its back.

Now, one or two things is about to happen, it either tries to roll in the snow and crushes me, or, gives me barely half a second before rolling in the snow and crushing me.

I use my time to try and grab the shirt from its face, every attempt at this has resulted in my hand leaving my wrist.

This time was different, I push it down onto its face and use my thumbs to push into the bears eyeballs.

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It rolls and crushes me… “retry.”

Attempt 246.

Snowball, shirt, run behind, climb, drop, pants off, wrap around neck.

Okay so far so good, this thing always rolls but now with my pants around its neck I can just barely control where it rolls, directly into the tree.

Slam, I jump off, the creature barely damaged, I’m hoping it’s dazed enough to let me

take its eyes out, it wasn’t and bites my fingers off and slices my neck.

“Are you kidding me? Okay do I try to blind it first and hope to get lucky or do I just focus on trying to give it a concussion through the tree slamming?”

I speak to no one, every time I die time freezes and I can see my dead body, I walk around to see if there’s any key locations.

This area has an invisible wall after 50 meters so running isn’t an option, the trees have no limit and there is nothing on the ground besides snow.

“Retry.”

Attempt 300.

At a certain point dying just becomes a slap on the wrist and someone telling you ‘NO.’ It lost all its flavour, the only reason I can keep going is because I assume they weren’t lying about wiping our memories after we leave. I’m doing this for future Alice.

I’ve switched up tactics yet again, I’m back to climbing, I’ve learnt each crack and ridge of this one tree and I’m getting faster and more efficient in my movements.

It’ll be incredibly difficult to knock the bear off and have it fall to death, but I wonder if it’ll try to jump towards me if I jump.

Here’s a little science lesson, you drop a rat from a building, let’s say a 20 story building, it lands and somehow it’s completely fine, like undamaged, you drop a cat, it gets hurt but is also fine, you drop a bigger cat, like a lion, suddenly you have a dead creature on the ground.

The size of the animal controls the size of damage when it lands, I’m considerably smaller than this bear, at most I could survive a fall from 30 meters if I land on the snow, breaking my legs.

The bear would not, it would probably instantly die.

Could I make the bear fall? Probably not. Is it incredibly enticing to focus on a one hit kill solution? Yes.

Attempt 489.

This time loop is objectively better than the year I spent on the balcony, I can’t even keep track of time, and I have an active goal.

I throw the snowball, it goes crazy, I take my shirt off and cover its face without being slashed to death, I then begin to climb.

I am an incredible climber nowadays, I know everything about this tree, me and this tree go way back.

I can make it up to about 17 meters before icy bear catches up, it’s fairly impressive. But every time I jump off it just climbs down slowly while I’m injured.

Attempt 556.

I can make it 30 meters high fairly easy now, and I have a gambit that might work. I use my pants and wrap it around its neck as I fall, landing on its back.

Great! That’ll work right? No, it is incredibly difficult, this bear can slash above its body so most of the time when I fall I just get slammed by a paw, not good.

I’ll just keep trying.

Attempt 571.

Snowball, shirt on head, pants in hand, jump, climb, there’s a perfect hold I can pull up on the right side on the back of the tree, pull.

Making it above 17 meters is when the bear catches up, it is annoyingly fast for its size. I just have to keep making it attack my dangling feet to save time.

I make it to 26 meters up on the tree, dodging literally death killing blows from the creature, I decide it’s the perfect time to jump. I let go while pushing off the tree, the bear attacks obviously but I found a certain turn that’ll make it try to attack one of my arms rather than my body.

It slices my arm causing significant bleeding, but now I’m holding out the pants while falling and positioning it below its neck.

Perfect. Now I yank, I pull while pushing my feet on the bears back, hoping to destabilise it, doesn’t work but it also can’t roll because that would mean falling.

I pull each leg of the pant in a cross shape to have it hopefully choke the bear, it probably won’t but what’s the point of not trying. I yank again, squeezing the fabric as tightly as I can.

Eventually it tries to slash at me behind its back and I yank a final time, causing it to fall.

I lands directly on me and kills me instantly.

“Retry…”

Attempt 661.

I had the bear drop from 30 meters onto its back, it’s currently incapacitated, not dead. My legs are broken so I have to slither through the snow like a mutated snake.

I make my way towards the bear, it’s still breathing but its eyes are closed. I yank its mouth open and grab its tongue, pulling it out.

Here goes nothing, I bite down on the tongue hard, like a primate, completely lacking any human emotion. It’s gross and tastes of raw steak, I have to rotate my entire body to yank the tongue out.

Now it’s bleeding, I put the tongue back in its mouth and watch as the blood fills it. I hold its nose closed so it had no way to get air. The breathing from the mouth just barely pushes the pooling blood in its mouth so I tilt its head upwards making sure it begins to drown.

After 3 terrifying minutes I hear a sound, “congratulations.”

I feel my body flung out of a door, into the cafeteria room, a calm feeling fills my lungs yet again. I turn my head and see zee drinking water at a table, “can you help?” I point at my legs

He stares at me for around 20 seconds before getting up, grabbing my wrist and dragging me across the floor, I don't know what he went through, but it seems to have made him completely nonverbal.

My reward should make my legs heal faster, but currently it doesn't seem to do anything, I swear if it was just a 20% boost, I will be pissed. I pass him the tokens as I climb onto a chair, he pays for some dashi tamago, some weird omelette that's sweet and savory, soy sauce?

We share a half each, “so... are you okay zee?”

He doesn't reply, staring at some random point behind me, completely dissociated. A tear falls and he begins to cry, the tears falling onto our food, he rubs his snotty nose on his palm.

I don't know what to do, I'm not very capable of human emotion right now, whether it's the fact I was tortured for a year, or that I had killed a real human person, or that I died hundreds of times trying to kill a polar bear, I do not have the toolset to help a crying child. My legs move, it's incredibly hard but I just barely make my way around the table, using my arms as supports.

“Come here...” I hug him, he cries all over me like a genuine child, acting his age. I hold him for as long as I can before that calming feeling hits him, making him neutral.

That receptionist, that receptionist planned this didn't she? This was another trick. I get up, leaving zee to sulk alone, I walk to the waiting room, my legs almost completely healed.

I open the door and see her typing at the computer, “what the fuck was that?”

“Did you enjoy the game room?”

“No, I didn't, you knew I wouldn't, you knew he wouldn't.”

She swivels and looks at me, “well it isn't called the ‘fun room.’ It's meant as a way to keep things interesting for those who find problems with the building, now.” She snaps her fingers and I'm sitting in front of her, her looking down.

“You signed the contract, tell me how you got here, if you lie you die.” She takes out a notebook despite having a computer to write everything down.

“I was in a ‘trap room.’ The walls were closing in, me and zee managed to make an opening to the squishy void thing, and the walls crushed us into it, now we are here.”

I didn't lie, technically.

“Those walls are indestructible, how did you break them?”

Annoying.

“I uh... got zee to make an opening...”

“How?”

“I dunno.”

I really didn't know, I have no clue how his power works. I hear the door slam open, and zee walks in, making the receptionist jump, he looks pissed.

“Go, home, now. Alice, Zee.” He says clearly, not really trying with the sentence structure.

She just stares at him for a moment, “okay, well press that button on the wall and you'll be sent safely to the real floor 293. Your memories will be wiped and all will be okay.” She points at a green button on the wall, above it is text saying, ‘exit waiting room.’

I stand up, trying to reach for her, my hand stops at an invisible wall, “what are you?”

“An information gatherer?” She says, obviously egging me on, knowing I can't hurt her. “I'm human like you, I promise.” A small smile plays across her lips.

Zee holds out a finger gun directly at her, she looks confused, “you can't hurt me, I have an indestructible wall in front of m-”

“Bang.”

Blood splats all over the reception desk, stopping at the invisible wall making the view tinted red. I stare at it unemotionally, I really should be more affected by this.

“Okay... lets go back Zee.”

We both walk to the button, I still feel that passive calmness, I feel like I can trust everything she said, this button could just kill us, couldn't it?

I sigh and press it with him.