《The Orient Express welcomes you.》
It was then that I suddenly regained the memories of my past life.
I, who had just turned thirty not long ago, died in vain.
My girlfriend of five years had called me while I was driving home. I just wanted to hear Lucia’s comforting voice after a long and tiring day at the office, so I kept one hand on the steering wheel while I tried to retrieve my phone from my bag.
‘Come on, where is it? Tch, didn’t I put it inside the pocket…ah, yes, got it!’
A horn suddenly blared beside me, and I jumped. My phone inadvertently fell out of my grip and clattered onto the floorboard.
‘What the hell?’
In a fit of anger, I snapped my neck to see who was the idiot that honked at me. There was a car tailing behind me on the adjacent lane, and for some odd reason, the driver was flashing his headlights at me.
‘What is wrong with that—’
I saw the ‘LANE CLOSED’ sign ahead of me too late.
…
Goddamn road works, the bane of every driver’s existence.
At the very least, I don’t recall my death being painful. Losing control of my car and crashing headfirst into a backhoe must have killed me almost instantaneously.
‘But still, what a shitty way to die.’
“…Mademoiselle?”
A gentle voice jolted me back to my senses. I blinked in surprise, and stared at the brown-uniformed man standing behind the ticket counter.
“Sorry?”
I completely forgot what I had been doing and where I was. And who in the world is he calling ‘Mademoiselle’? Heck, who the hell am I??
“This is your ticket, Mademoiselle Guinevere,” he said, handing me a slip of paper embossed with delicate gold lettering. “Please kindly proceed to Platform 1 for boarding.”
Oh.
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I remember my current identity now. My name is「Violet Guinevere」, and I am what this world considers the greatest detective of all time.
Yes, I apparently possessed the body of a famous detective after I died.
But I don’t remember solving any cases or doing any sort of detective work that would earn me such a reputation…
Wait a minute.
I’ve heard of this name in my past life. Where did I see it before?
Ah, right. Violet Guinevere isn’t just an ordinary famous detective—she is the protagonist of a certain murder mystery video game I had played before in my past life…
‘…no way, why do I have to be reincarnated in this stupid ridiculous game out of everything?!’
The title of the game was『End of the Express』, also known as ‘EotE’.
It was a birthday gift from Lucia, who apparently bought it along with a bunch of discounted indie games that were being offered on sale. She didn’t want to play it, so she gave it to me.
Even after knowing that I was not a fan of mystery games too…
Anyway, I decided that I would at least give it a try before selling it away, so I popped the game disc into my console and hooked up my controller. I didn’t bother to read the game description thoroughly, but from the opening cutscene, it appeared to be a whodunit game set on a luxury train known as the「Orient Express」, quite obviously inspired by a famous book of the same genre.
The protagonist, the famous detective Violet Guinevere, was invited to attend a ceremony held in the city of Constantinople as the guest-of-honour, and the invitation she received included an all-expense-paid trip on board the Orient Express from Paris. During the journey, a passenger was murdered, and Violet Guinevere naturally agreed to solve the case while the train was stopped by a blockade.
That was roughly how the start of the main story played out. There were three levels: from Paris to Strasbourg, the so-called tutorial level where the characters are introduced; from Strasbourg to Vienna, where the murder would occur and the train gets stopped in its tracks; and lastly from Vienna to Budapest, where the detective solves the case and hands over the criminal to the police. A bonus level where the game progressed all the way to Constantinople was also said to be unlocked after completing all the in-game achievements, but as far as I could find, there was no official confirmation from the game devs.
Incidentally, in the tutorial stage, the dialogue that would first appear on the screen was the exact same sentence that the trainmaster spoke to me when I gave him my ticket for inspection:
“The Orient Express welcomes you.”
In any case, the game was anything but a commercial success, because it had an annoying bug when it first launched. Once the cutscene of the train arriving in『Strasbourg』played, the game would crash and restart the player’s progress, effectively preventing anyone from progressing past the first level. Perhaps that was the reason it got sold so cheaply in the first place.
Supposedly the bug was patched in a DLC, but I had already quit the game by then, so I never got around to downloading it before I died.
Ugh, if I knew I’d end up like this, I would have played the entire game…
As they say, hindsight always wins.
“Mademoiselle? Is something the matter?”
I realised that I was still standing in front of the counter holding my ticket, and the trainmaster was giving me a worried look.
“Oh, pardon me, I was just distracted…”
My voice trailed off as an announcement echoed in the distance.
「The Orient Express, with stops in Strasbourg, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, and Constantinople, leaves in 15 minutes!」