Chapter 19

"Cunning, isn't it." The cat meowed loudly a few times. "This damnable thing doesn't even dare drag in people with happy families, people whose lives have some savor to them. Cowardly, no?"

Liu Zhiyi realized the cat was comforting her, and squeezed out a smile.

The cat: "That's right — we mustn't give in to it."

After talking with the cat a while, Liu Zhiyi felt a good deal better.

"Thank you. You're good at comforting people."

Once she'd calmed down, she felt a little vexed with herself.

She'd braced herself, and kept telling herself to clear the game as fast as she could, yet she still broke down over this thing and that.

"Don't be too hard on yourself." As if seeing what was in her mind, the cat's head turned about in her palm.

The cat said with feeling: "You're not the only one who wavers like this — everyone comes through it the same way. This game messes with your head to begin with."

"Thank you." Liu Zhiyi said it again, very earnestly.

The cat: "It's nothing."

She straightened up, gathered her feelings, and began collecting and sorting through the clues she had.

The watch's task bar updated.

[Mama's making dinner — remember to be home before dinner.]

Liu Zhiyi thought: better not go home — dinner would be that crucian carp.

Thinking of where that crucian carp had come from, her skin crawled all over.

Cooking took time, so Liu Zhiyi wanted to use it to walk the market quickly and see whether any clue had been left behind.

There were some things she hadn't worked out.

Liu Zhiyi: "I don't quite get why 'mama' had to eat Zhi-Zhi's mama. Zhi-Zhi turning into the crucian carp I can understand a little."

The cat's head hopped up onto her shoulder.

"Let's hear it."

Liu Zhiyi said with a small smile: "Maybe it's guilt. Thinking how, all that long time, my mother gave in to me about food — so she wanted to turn into a fish and let her mother eat some too?"

The cat went "wah."

"That sounds a bit horrifying. But it could also be your guilt, twisted and warped by the dungeon. That's just how this horror game is — it always turns something lovely into something bad, and then magnifies the bad."

Liu Zhiyi: "I can feel that. Wishing for good does nothing; it's the bad that always shows up in the dungeon."

She walked to the market entrance and pushed open the iron gate that didn't sit flush against the wall.

"Mama" had been hiding here just now, eating.

Liu Zhiyi was rather afraid she'd see spilled guts and spattered gobbets of flesh, but what she found was a big patch of wet, with red scales floating on it.

Liu Zhiyi: "...Zhi-Zhi's mama turned into a fish too?"

The cat: "Meoww~"

That "meoww" of its was like the "ahh" a person gives at a sudden realization.

Liu Zhiyi: "Don't tell me — let me work it out myself."

Though all along she'd been leaning on the cat, whether she meant to or not, Liu Zhiyi knew too that the dungeon was her obsession, and in the end only she could resolve it.

Liu Zhiyi: "...Actually, from the moment Zhi-Zhi took my hand, the hints had already started, one way or another."

Zhi-Zhi's avatar on the watch was a little red fish.

"Mama," she supposed, had known this too — which was why, once she could move, she'd gone for Zhi-Zhi's mama first instead of coming after her.

Liu Zhiyi: "...Even 'mama' understands my task better than I do."

The cat: "To keep you, of course."

In a way, keeping her from finishing the task really would keep her there.

"By the way." The talk of the boss wanting to keep people led Liu Zhiyi, despite herself, to think one step further: "The people who stay in a dungeon..."

The cat: "They become part of the dungeon, and then draw more people in, until it turns into a multiplayer dungeon."

So that was where multiplayer dungeons came from?

But a dungeon was born of a person's obsession...

Liu Zhiyi: "In a multiplayer dungeon, do the obsessions of the people who come in later affect the dungeon too?"

The cat: "They do. And a multiplayer dungeon is very hard to destroy — too many people's obsessions become its cornerstones; even if you find and destroy the very first one, there are still the others."

"Has a multiplayer dungeon ever been successfully destroyed?"

Liu Zhiyi asked.

The cat: "Yes."

Liu Zhiyi felt a jolt of interest; she wanted to draw on the experience of those who'd gone before, to see if it could be of any use to her.

"But it's no use as a guide. Obsession is produced by people."

The purr peculiar to cats drained out of its voice, which in that moment turned somewhat cold.

"No people left — no obsession."

Had the market's electric fan been turned up?

A chill suddenly reached Liu Zhiyi from behind.

The cat turned the subject of its own accord: "We can talk about this sort of thing after you clear the game."

Liu Zhiyi noticed a change in the cat's manner.

Whether in what it said and left unsaid, or in how it had suddenly relaxed and talked with her at such length.

The cat seemed certain she could clear it.

Liu Zhiyi: "I get the feeling you think I'm sure to clear it."

"What makes the novice task hard is the lack of experience — you go soft when things happen and your guard breaks, and then the dead relative asks you once, says stay, and you stay." The cat rolled over once in her palm. "Get past this hurdle and, basically, your mother can't keep you anymore."

"And you." The cat looked at her. "You must have worked a few things out by now."

Indeed, she had worked a few things out.

Facing the less-than-bright parts of one's own heart is always hard.

Liu Zhiyi: "When 'mama' told me to stay, I really was heartbroken, and I came that close to agreeing — but somewhere deep down there was a little discomfort too."

Because in her relationship with her mother, it was usually her mother who gave way first.

Whether over the dishes on the table, or over where she worked.

Liu Zhiyi: "My mother wouldn't force me, and I know that if she were alive, she'd absolutely have given way."

"Despicable, isn't it — that it was by seeing through it like this that I pulled myself free of that feeling."