I had come to the conclusion that I was trapped in a roleplay game, where I was merely a character. The only place where I could be safe and do anything without being monitored was when I was completely alone. If there was no one to roleplay or interact with, no one would waste their time typing inputs for characters that everyone could read.
This theory was supported by the fact that whenever I tried to tell Shiki, one of my nine students, about being stuck in a death loop, I would spontaneously burst into flames, as if dying from a gas leak. However, no matter how loudly I shouted or screamed in my room, nothing would happen. And obviously, I could change my clothes without anyone inputting things like "Thuong took off her bra..." in a group game.
With that in mind, on the dawn of my fifth morning, I took about half an hour to tear apart my bedsheet and blanket, turning them into long strips and arranging them on the floor to spell out a clear and capitalized "HELP." If anyone entered this room with even the vision of a normal human, they couldn't possibly overlook it.
Because when a character performs such an action, the person controlling that character would have knowledge of it. So, when another character entered the room, they would type out something like, "In the room, they saw the word HELP..." Or something similar. But then again, I was certain that I wasn't being monitored when I was alone. This meant that whoever was behind this agonizing experience of mine had no knowledge of it. So, what would happen if another person opened the door?
Perhaps I had been wrong from the beginning, and this was a case of being transported into a parallel world where Project Alpha and superhumans existed, similar to astral projection or quantum leaping. It was like those YouTube videos I had watched before, where teenagers wished to enter the world of Harry Potter. But then, why would I randomly burst into flames without any reason?
There were four possible scenarios that could unfold:
One, upon opening the door, I would die again for an unexplainable reason. This would mean that the person in control of me, or at least supervising my actions, had gained knowledge of everything I did in the darkness if I revealed it to them.
Two, upon opening the door, only I could see the words, while anyone else who entered would turn a blind eye. This would suggest that the perception of a character from this world and the perception of the person controlling the characters were different. This world was not solely governed by the imaginations of the players.
Three, they would see the words, and I would see them too, but I wouldn't die. This would indicate that this was just a normal case of being transported into a different universe, world, or future, and not a case of being in a roleplaying simulation or game. The combustion episodes may have been due to misfortune or had a deeper reason, like my previous four deaths from being impaled in the forehead.
Four, upon opening the door, no one, not even me, would see anything. This was the scenario I feared the most. It would mean that I was stuck in a game and controlled by the knowledge of whoever was behind it.
But this raised another question—how much control did I have over my own will? I could think and move on my own. I had my own plans. But were these movements and thoughts truly mine, or was someone inputting them? They felt so natural to me that I didn't even suspect a single thing. It was like breathing—so natural that maybe someone was controlling me to do it in the first place.
While organizing my thoughts, my body began to walk downstairs on its own toward thestudents' room, and I knocked on the door. Soon enough, I was greeted by a familiar face—a young woman in her early twenties with short white hair and a pair of wireless headphones. I recognized her as Freund, the one Kai had called upon to revive Adam multiple times.
"Hello! What do you need, miss?" Freund bowed with a genuine smile, removing both of her headphones and glancing toward the South building. "The other girls have already gone for breakfast if you need them, but I'm glad to be of any help."
"Hello, I see." With a pleasant smile, I waved slightly at her. "Thank you for that. I'm just wondering if you can help me find my glasses. They're somewhere in my room upstairs."
"Of course, miss! You're a teacher, right? Oh, my name is Freund. I'm a buffer," she added, and I immediately recognized the term—a role that provides useful buffs during battles. It sounded much more innocent than the other abilities I had witnessed. It was strange to hear this kind of unnecessary information spoken out loud, as if in a roleplay input, but it momentarily weirded me out.
"I'm Thuong. I teach civics and help with group bonding," I replied and began leading Freund toward the stairs. As we walked, I noticed dark circles forming under the girl's eyes. Perhaps she was a night owl of sorts. "Freund, did I pronounce that right?" I paused at the door to my room, just one door away from the truth, and turned to face her.
"Yes, you did, miss! Almost perfect even."
Freund seemed not to notice my peculiar behavior and stood there, anticipating the moment I would open the door. Instead, I turned to stare at her and moved to the side.
"Could I ask you a big favor? Could you open the door and tell me what you see first?"
{"Um... Sure."
She hesitated, looking at the teacher, then opened the door and saw a pair of glasses on the table, taking them out for Thuong.}
[No, silly. You can't do it like that. Instead, just open the door and end the input there. Then the head admin will describe the room for you.]
[Oh! Thanks so much. Sorry, I'm still nervous.] The new player controlling Freund quickly corrected the message and typed again, this time ending with the character simply opening the door.
I waited anxiously as Freund agreed and opened the door. She stood there, scanning the room in silence for a while, which only increased my tension and nervousness. Eventually, she turned back to me.
"Well, let's head inside, miss. I'll do my best to help you search for it!"
Her words sounded calm, and when I stepped inside, there was indeed nothing unusual. It was just a normal, tidy room with an unmade bed in the far corner, devoid of any messages I may have left.
This terrified me.
A torrent of thoughts flooded my mind like a roaring waterfall, drowning out any screams trying to escape. It was a chilling realization—I had arrived at the answer: Four.
I could do anything in the privacy of my room without any consequences. But the moment I tried to involve others, the room would change from their perspective, simply because they couldn't know what I had done when I was alone. This confirmed that I was indeed trapped inside a roleplaying game, as a character. Was I meant to exploit this fact? I wondered, feeling apprehensive about being manipulated like a puppet, my fate twisted by a mere string of empty words that could be written to make me do absurd things like "bark loudly in the middle of the yard for two hours straight at midnight."
"Oh... Miss? Your glasses were in the drawers here!" Freund snapped me back to reality with a warm, genuine smile, holding my glasses in her hands. I returned her smile and reached out to pat her on the head, emulating the supportive teacher I had always aspired to be but never quite knew how.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
"Thank you, Freund," I replied, glancing over at the table clock. Then, for dramatic effect, I held her hands and began counting down in my head.
"Um, I'm glad I could help..." Freund said, uncertain if she could leave yet. She looked at me for ten seconds or more, maintaining eye contact, before finally speaking up. "Miss Thuong?"
"I'm glad to have gotten to know you, Freund."
Immediately after uttering those words, the clock struck seven, ringing loudly and startling her before Kai's voice could be heard. I hurriedly pushed Freund out of the room, instructing her to go downstairs while I attended to something else.
"Keng."
{Suddenly, from one of their swords, a piece of iron broke off during a clash and flew towards the women's dormitory building. It pierced through all the layers of walls and found its mark behind the building. The metal hit a young teacher who had been hiding there, killing her instantly, bypassing the body condition threshold for revival.}
...
This was now my sixth morning, and I couldn't help but miss the feeling of coldness, the sunset, or the comfort of lying on my sheets again. I went downstairs early and introduced myself to Shiki, who obviously didn't remember me. The frustration of having to go through this every morning, dying over and over again, almost brought me to tears once more. I lived for only the same hour, forever repeating.
Sure, now I knew I was probably in a game, being monitored and controlled, having a will of my own. But what next? Should I train my body to overcome any physical death, train my mind to send me back to 2022? Ha, maybe after 20 deaths or so, I would be crazy enough to actually attempt it. For now, I found myself in the equipment room of the North building.
To put it simply, the school had four sections or directions: North, the main building with classrooms and libraries; East and West, the dormitories; and South, the cafeteria, pool, gym, and other physical activities.
Standing inside the equipmentroom, surrounded by swords, spears, pistols, rifles, gloves, and uniforms, left me completely astounded. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I had seen these items in movies and shows, but having the chance to freely touch and explore them made me forget all about my prior professionalism. My eyes lit up with curiosity as I tried everything I could see, from pulling the pin of a real pistol to slashing the air with a cool sword and striking poses as if firing two-handed guns.
If a gun instructor, a swordsman, or anyone with even an hour of experience saw me, they would scream at me for breaking a million safety rules.
"Miss Thuong, I want to hear your opinion on a topic," Shiki said, interrupting my little game. She had been standing there, observing me the entire time, seemingly uninterested in joining in.
"My bad," I said, struggling to put the magazine back into a rifle and sweating with tension as I left Shiki waiting. Finally, I figured out that you were supposed to put the front in first, something my consciousness was not accustomed to. "What is it that you want to know?" I asked, placing the gun back onto the shelf.
"Who do you think is the weakest among the students?" Shiki quickly asked, assuming that I had already looked through the profiles of the nine students in the facility. I may have hinted to Shiki that I knew her and Freund before even meeting them this morning.
The question shook me, and I scratched my head awkwardly. "I don't know, Shiki," I answered, looking at her as she made her way toward the section with the swords. "The extent of your abilities is limitless."
With a great certainty, I added, moving closer to her and inspecting the swords, knowing that one of them would eventually be the cause of my death. "For example..."
I paused, realizing that I didn't yet know Shiki's power well enough to give an example. It was probably too late to ask now. So I chose someone else.
"Adam's time ability. If he doesn't already, he will soon be able to manipulate time, accelerating it for himself without aging and vice versa, I suppose."
"So, one of us has a time-related power," Shiki remarked, surprised by this information since she didn't have access to the student list herself.
"Why do you need to know, by the way?" I asked.
"I don't want to work with someone who can't pull their weight, miss."
Her response sent a shiver down my spine, and my heart started pounding faster. Why? Did that question pierce through my heart because it was aimed at me? Yet Shiki's attitude didn't imply that, as she casually sifted through a couple of blades.
She wasn't wrong. In combat scenarios, they would face obstacles created by the game moderators that reflected the abilities of the entire team. One less person meant less difficulty, and having an incompetent member increased the chances of failure.
"We should help the weaker ones catch up instead of cutting them off," I said.
"You're not in charge of that, Cpt. Kai is," Shiki replied. "But I'll take your words into consideration, Miss Thuong."
She placed the sword back among the 50 others and crossed her arms behind her back, wearing a slight smile and relaxed eyes behind her square glasses.
"I believe it's already 6:55. Shouldn't you be getting ready for our first roll call?"
Shiki tilted her head slightly and looked down. It was then that I realized I had been wearing my casual clothes—soft trousers and a simple short-sleeved top—which felt awkward in a professional, military school-like setting. I didn't mind, since no one would remember anyway, but under the slight pressure from Shiki, I awkwardly smiled and went back to my room to change while she headed towards the yard.
"Hello class," I said, standing next to Kai and randomly noticing that he was two heads taller than me. "My name is Thuong. I will be your civics teacher and group bonding leader. I hope we get along."
As I anticipated and counted in my head, exactly:
One.
Two.
"Hi miss Th- Ouch!"
[As Adam appeared out of thin air, using his time manipulation ability, Thuong instinctively elbowed backwards over her shoulder, straight into his nose, as if she had already anticipated his presence. However, the damage dealt was insufficient.]
"I saved your life, young man," I said, while on my other side, I held onto Kai's hand as he was reaching for a pistol at his waist.
"Remember, your actions will have consequences."
I smiled, feeling a brief moment of badassery, but soon death would come. I had indeed asked Kai if it was possible to stop the brawl, but it seemed he didn't have control over that. Adam frustratingly covered his nose and returned to the line, while Kai prepared his next speech.
"You are brought onto the field for the first day. Everyone will have ten minutes to find a partner to spar with using a longsword. This is mandatory to test the extent of your physical limitations. Powers are allowed."
This moment started again, and I observed as the class of ten slowly separated into five pairs. I hadn't planned out what the world's government did to infuse powers into these characters, but besides granting them magical abilities, Project Alpha also greatly increased their three main combat stats: Endurance, Physical, and Agility. And by greatly increasing, I mean they could endure swallowing a normal grenade, punch through layers of walls, and run faster than my eyes could comprehend. But for now, they would only encounter strangers, so power creeping wouldn't be an issue in the short term.
The first duel was between Adam and another student named Gilbert, who had black hair. With no knowledge of each other's abilities, this could turn sour quickly, yet the two fought with equal skill. The only noticeable thing was that Adam's speed and movements seemed a bit off, unnatural and surprising at times.
"Two," I whispered, counting down the minutes, because by the third minute, my fate would be sealed.
Something clicked in my mind, recalling the experiment I had done with Freund that morning. If the Four theory was correct, meaning I was being monitored by another party and couldn't do anything to expose the fact that my consciousness was imprisoned in a deadly war simulation, then there should be someone watching my every move through a screen, probably via text, and possibly typing out everything I was doing right now.
So, what if I did something so out of character that no one with common sense would type out in a group setting without a reason?
It was two minutes and forty-one seconds into their battle when I looked down at my uncomfortable work outfit and decided to take off my blazer, hanging it on my shoulder. I continued unbuttoning my shirt, taking it off, and standing completely topless in the middle of the field. I left only my bra to cover what needed to be covered, exposing my skin from front to back down to my hips. Admittedly, it was embarrassing to be stared at and judged by a handful of other people, with my subconscious worries about belly fat. But this would confirm to me that my actions were not limited, that maybe I wasn't being controlled by someone typing out my every move.
"Miss Thuong..." Kai spoke up, his tone serious, as he held onto my clothes, trying to give them back to me. "I believe you have a reason for this improper action?"
It was three minutes and six seconds into the battlethat I glanced over to see Adam and Gilbert clash, their swords making contact. But to my surprise, nothing happened. Their clash had no effect, and they continued exchanging slashes as if nothing had changed.
The cycle was broken for the first time, while I stood half-naked in front of a dozen young adults and students. I couldn't help but feel a mix of confusion, relief, and curiosity. What had just occurred defied the patterns of my previous deaths.