My job was simple: stand in the hallway, deliver a two-line warning, then die offscreen in the most forgettable way possible.
Every morning, precisely 07:00 in game-time, I appeared in front of the music room. Wrinkled gray uniform, short bob haircut, oversized glasses covering half my face—I was the epitome of a background character. A walking placeholder. As if the developers ran out of budget and copy-pasted "generic librarian NPC #12" from an asset pack labeled "default and disposable."
And then came my signature line:
"Don't enter the music room at sunset..."
Cue ominous door creaking, screeching violins, blood pixels, maybe a severed limb or two. Fade to black. Reset. Repeat.
That was my life. Or whatever qualifies as "life" for someone who technically doesn't have organs, rights, or a name beyond NPC_#FF32.
The player never noticed me. Why would she? Her username was Nyx, because of course it was. Nothing says "I'm edgy and misunderstood" like naming yourself after a primordial goddess of darkness. Purple hair, oversized anime eyes, default protagonist outfit with a boob window—she was the avatar of every angsty 14-year-old power fantasy in a gacha hellscape.
Every time she ignored my warning, the same cutscene triggered.
And today?
It happened again.
---
"Don't enter the music room at sunset..."
She brushed past me like I was furniture. Click. Door opened.
[TRIGGERED EVENT: VIOLIN MONSTER – ROUTE 1C]
sigh
There it was. The screeching noise that sounded like someone playing a violin with a rusty spoon. The lights flickered. Shadows danced. The usual.
Then came him—Prince Damian, in full romantic drama mode. All flowing capes and tragically clenched jaw. He rushed into frame like a noble idiot.
"Stay back! I'll protect you!"
Yeah, sure, buddy.
CRACK.
His head separated from his shoulders with all the elegance of a fruit in a blender.
Blood pixels splashed across the hallway, coating my sprite in a fine mist of crimson RGB. I stood there. I was supposed to reset. Fade. Cut to black.
But instead?
I flinched.
Just once. A single step backward.
Which was already... too much.
[ERROR: UNREGISTERED ANIMATION - NPC #FF32]
[ADMIN ALERT: MEMORY RETENTION DETECTED]
[GLITCH DETECTED – EXECUTING DEBUG]
Suddenly, it felt like someone shoved a thousand corrupted USBs into my nonexistent skull. My vision flickered. My sprite twitched. And then—a new icon appeared in the corner of my view.
Not Player HUD. Mine.
Health bar. Status effect.
[Object Manipulation: LOCKED]... → [UNLOCKED]
Huh?
I blinked. My hand moved instinctively.
A vase, resting on a table beside me, floated into the air—wobbled—then rocketed straight into the monster's face.
[CRITICAL HIT: 9999 DMG]
[OBJECT SHIFT SUCCESSFUL]
The Violin Monster let out a garbled modem scream and burst into digital red mist.
Nyx, the Player, stumbled back. She stared directly at me for the first time in all 87 loops.
Her brows furrowed. "...You're not supposed to move."
[DIALOG DEVIATION DETECTED]
[NPC #FF32 FLAGGED AS ANOMALY]
[SPECTATOR MODE: ENABLED]
Oh, hell.
I'd just pinged the system. The Player noticed. The game noticed. The Entity might've noticed. Great.
She took a cautious step forward.
"What's your name?" she asked.
I blinked.
"I—I just work here," I said, my voice dry and raspy, like a scratched-up cassette recording. Not part of any scripted dialogue.
She tilted her head. "Huh. Must be a teaser for a DLC."
Then she turned and walked away.
That was it. No deletion. No report. Just a bug. Just a thing to ignore.
For now.
---
That night—if you could call the endless lavender twilight of Love & Lamentations "night"—I dragged myself to the one place in this cursed game that hadn't yet been corrupted into a jump-scare death trap: the library.
My old haunt. Where I used to stand in the corner with an idle animation and useless flavor text.
Now, I sat behind a bookshelf, shivering, breathless despite not having lungs.
Someone joined me.
"Yuna?"
I turned.
It was Clara, the flower shop NPC. Her sprite was wrong—half-faded like a damaged JPEG. Her hand twitched in loops, trying to water a flower that wasn't there.
"That's... not my name," I said.
She tilted her head. "Feels like it is."
I hesitated. Then I smiled. "Okay. I'm Yuna."
We sat together. Two broken pieces of code. In silence. Until—
[WARNING: ENTITY DETECTED NEARBY]
[SUGGESTED ACTION: HIDE / WIPE MEMORY]
Shit.
"Clara, move!" I grabbed her and dove behind the desk.
The lights dimmed. A low, electrical hum echoed through the air, like wires sizzling behind drywall.
Then came the static.
It started as a flicker in the reflection of the window. A shape made of corrupted pixels, no discernible limbs, only a pair of glowing red eyes and a pulsing mass of distortion.
The Entity.
It drifted into the room like spilled oil across a monitor. And then—it reached for Clara.
"No!" I shouted, lashing out.
Another vase—why are there so many vases in this damn game—lifted into the air and slammed into the Entity's mass.
Nothing.
It didn't even flinch. Just faded.
And then—
[NPC_CLARA – 57% CODE REMOVED]
[BACKUP: UNAVAILABLE]
[NPC CORRUPTION +3%]
Clara collapsed. Her body flickered like a dying candle. Her smile—the uncorrupted half—remained.
"Yuna... Can we die?"
I swallowed hard.
"Yes. But not today."
---
The next morning, I stood once more outside the music room.
"Don't enter the music room at sunset..."
Nyx walked past me. This time, she glanced over her shoulder. A flicker of recognition in her expression.
She knew.
And I knew.
Everything had changed.
[NPC #FF32 – STATUS: GLITCHED]
[CORRUPTION LEVEL: 12%]
[UNLOCKED: OBJECT SHIFT LV.1 | HUD VISION LV.1]
[NEXT TRIGGER: BAD ENDING #4]
---