Chapter 151: Second Chance

Haru stood up and walked toward Chronia.

"Stop." She said, knowing exactly where his eyes were going to land before he even got close. "You want to grab my breasts."

It wasn’t a question.

They were soft beneath the white dress she wore, purity and delicacy combined in a way that seemed specifically designed to make men stupid. Haru knew it was designed that way. That didn’t stop him from looking.

He sat beside her anyway, really close, almost touching the throne, and raised his face.

He didn’t look disoriented, like he had the other times.

"Needless to say... a Goddess capable of messing with the flow of time and giving mortals a second chance... can’t exactly stop me from touching your breasts."

"..."

"So I can conclude." He said aloud. "That you can’t kill me. Even if I stood up right now and tried to hurt you, the only thing you could do would be to end the conversation. Send me back to my body."

Chronia remained neutral. "And maybe I didn’t kill you." She said slowly. "Because I don’t want to."

"What would you lose by killing me? Come up with something else."

"Maybe I find you entertaining."

Haru fell silent.

"And the other Gamers." He finally said. "Are they serving you? Or do they serve other gods? What’s their real purpose here?"

Haru continued. "You already made mine pretty clear... didn’t you? A second chance at life.... you know what? Fuck a second chance."

It was true. Haru now remembered why he had started drinking so much the night before.

<The memory came in fragments>Genius had said it, word for word. "When I died..."

"I was received by a Goddess. I can’t say her name. She forbade me from telling any other Gamer."

"..."

"She said: if you clear the game, you go back home."

"And if you don’t?" Haru had asked.

"The real Genius’s body dies on Earth. He’s in a coma, but thanks to me, he’s still alive and breathing here. I decide: play to try to wake him up. Or play to have fun one last time."

Flavius had almost cried hearing that. Sixteen years old and faced with that kind of choice.

"Why didn’t those so-called Gods just let you live?" Flavius had asked.

Genius merely shrugged. "I don’t know. I asked. They never answered."

<>

Haru opened his eyes, back in the neon void.

"It’s a battleground." He said quietly. Then louder: "This is a fucking battleground!"

He stood up.

"You’re having fun watching us kill each other to clear this shit... You’re not Gods. You’re... you’re..."

The neon void changed.

Mowed grass. A painted house, exactly as he had left it. It was Haru’s house, typical of a middle-class neighborhood... It didn’t look like anyone else lived there. Haru immediately recognized the place, without needing to wait.

"Huh!?" He ran to the door and tried to open it.

He passed straight through.

Ah... right. Haru isn’t really here. Even though he is.

Inside the house: a child. A mother he didn’t recognize came to get the child for a bath. They weren’t people he knew.

"What the hell is going on!?" He exclaimed.

Chronia, behind him, moved time backward, like turning a page. In the blink of an eye, they were in his old bedroom.

Moments later: Haru entered. Another him, the one from before, taking off his glasses and placing them on the bed, opening a sealed package.

"Time to test the device." The other Haru laughed to himself in the empty room. "Today I’m gonna test it!"

The present Haru felt his chest tighten. He recognized the day, after all... It was the day he had died.

He watched it with a strange mixture of nostalgia and sadness he couldn’t quite put a name to, seeing his former body connect to the equipment, his former face smiling without knowing what was coming.

And then: an electrical malfunction. His body locked up. The equipment burned out.

Death.

"Why are you showing me this!?" Haru asked Chronia, his voice cracking halfway through.

She advanced time in a timelapse. And Haru watched it move quickly, but clearly, every passing day like a page being turned too fast, yet with no detail blurred.

Nobody discovered the body for days.

The school noticed his absence first. Then the neighbors noticed the grass growing too much. Then the fans of Aethelgard’s mods noticed that Haru’s +18 version of the game had never been released.

And then came the smell.

Dogs barking every time they passed the street. Neighbors complaining. Until someone finally called the police.

A boy dies while experimenting with his own device. A genius undone by his own recklessness. That was the headline, summarized and forgotten within a week.

A new family bought the house afterward. Nobody had had much contact with Haru except his parents, who had already passed away before him.

They forgot him. Just like that.

"So?" Chronia asked, her voice still gentle, but without softening the weight of it. "Did I give you a chance to live, or not? Did you see the shitty life you were living?"

The scene changed again.

A dinner table. Isabela. Yukihime. Kira. The two guards, all laughing at something Haru had said seconds earlier.

He, the Haru of now, smiling among them, food in his mouth, completely unaware that he was being watched by a version of himself.

"You had your second chance." Chronia said quietly. "Didn’t you?"

It was true.

For the first time, he was doing what he had never done before. He was more action than thought, the most fundamental difference between his two lives, summed up in a messy dinner scene.

"Look, Mizuki." Chronia said, and the two of them were back in the neon-blue light. "I’m going to answer you."

Haru remained silent, waiting.

"No. I can’t kill you directly." First point. "I’m not enjoying watching you get yourself killed by killing others." Second. "Every Gamer came with the objective of clearing the game. That was the deal to return home. With other Gods. Not with me."

"And me?" Haru asked. "Why didn’t they do that to me?"

"Did you want to go back, Haru?" She asked in return. "Do you want to go back?"

Silence.

The answer was too clear to need words. There was no one to go back to. But he also didn’t like knowing that he had to kill other Gamers to continue existing here.

"Exactly why I gave you a second chance without a requirement to kill." Chronia said. "And before you say anything about the system, I’m not responsible for it. It’s above me. Even Gods have a hierarchy."

She tilted her head.

"Notice something. You’re the only Gamer without an avatar out there. Genius confessed that his name was Marcell. But you, you’re just Haru Mizuki. Here and there. The only Gamer who sees that world as a real world."

"But how can a world be a game!?" Haru still didn’t understand.

"And what if I had always known it would be like this?" Chronia replied. "Yes. I knew. I knew you would have to fight for your life here, just like anywhere else. People fight. For you, it’s no different from the other Gamers. As long as you want to live, you’ll have to clear the game before them. Because neither you nor I know what happens afterward."

’Wait.’ Haru looked at her, something changing in his expression. ’This Goddess doesn’t know what comes next? She almost seems like she was created yesterday.’

Haru raised his head. There was no way to prove much yet. But if even Chronia, and perhaps all the Gods who governed the Gamers, only knew how to repeat "clear the game," then he would do exactly that. Except there was one detail Chronia didn’t seem to have calculated.

He was the Hacker in all of this.

And it would only be a matter of time before he hacked the ending of the game. And when that happened, Chronia, and every God who was technically outside the system, would be hacked along with it.

He walked until he was face-to-face with her. Serious. None of the mischievous smile from a few minutes ago.

Chronia had never seen him like this.

And he stood there, staring at that face, bright pupils, full lips, innocence in a way that was both attractive and clearly calculated to be that way.

"Satisfied?" She asked.

"So that’s why you called me?"

"Yes."

"You can watch what I do out there." Haru said. "Can’t you?"

"I can."

"Can I watch what the others do?"

"No." Chronia said. "Only whoever is in your Squad, and only after they die."

"Like a battleground." Haru completed, understanding. "Battle royale. You watch your team play after you’ve already been eliminated."

"Exactly."

Chronia continued. "But you can see information about the characters in the game."

"I can!?"

"Not for now." Chronia said. "Because, well... as you know, you’re completely bugged. You haven’t even received the full HUD yet. Bringing your consciousness here, with your entire body, already cost me a lot of the system."

’It’s like playing without the premium version.’ Haru thought bitterly. ’Beta. Alpha. Or worse, with ads in the middle.’

"You need to survive until Chapter One." Chronia said. "Only after that."

She reached toward his face, her hand raised, almost touching him.

Haru woke up.

The neon void disappeared before her hand could reach him.

Silence filled the space that remained, the neon void shifting in tone, blue growing deeper, almost black around the edges.

"You’ve said enough, Chronia."

The voice came from nowhere specific and from everywhere at the same time.

Chronia wasn’t startled. She simply lowered her head, out of respect, not fear.

"My son." Nyx said. "Thank you for motivating my son, Chronia."