With the passage of time, the last light of the setting sun sank into the clouds, and the sky began to grow dark.
Meng Wange stood silently by the floor-to-ceiling window in Su Wanli’s room, gently pressing her fingertips against the clear glass. Looking at her reflection in the pane, she let out a soft sigh.
‘Yes, that’s true. Finishing all the plot on my own while Su Wanli was asleep… it really would make someone angry, wouldn’t it?’
After all, this was a journey they had started together. Even if she had saved the chance for Su Wanli to deliver the “final blow,” it wouldn’t help.
The joy of beating a game was built upon the difficult process that preceded it. Having most of the plot skipped meant Su Wanli had been robbed of the majority of the fun the game could offer.
It was an obvious truth, yet she had subconsciously ignored it.
Come to think of it, she did not seem to have mentioned to Su Wanli that this was not her first time touching a gaming console. To be precise, it was not even her first time playing *Continent of Erozeal*.
Indeed, although her movements were a bit stiff at first, once she entered the combat interface and saw the simple character and enemy models on the screen, a distant memory quietly surfaced in Meng Wange’s mind.
It was many years ago, during her days at the Orphanage.
On the fifteenth of every month, nearby residents would donate supplies to the Orphanage. For the most part, it was leftover clothing, cluttered textbooks, and school supplies. Occasionally, small toys like yo-yos or spinning tops would appear.
But that one time was different.
It was a gaming console.
Its design was similar to the one in Su Wanli’s hands, but it was much older. It only had a few basic games on it, such as Snake, Block Puzzle, simple fighting games, and this *Continent of Erozeal*.
In those days, not many families in the entire county owned a gaming console. This machine was likely sent there by mistake by some careless parent.
And so, like some unwritten promise — even for the children who were usually the most arrogant and overbearing — no one claimed it as their own, and no one told the Teacher about it.
The gaming console was passed around between the different dorms. It would be in one dorm in the morning and moved to another in the afternoon. In this way, it became a tacit secret among the children.
Of course, Meng Wange’s social standing remained as poor as ever.
After the three others in her dorm got hold of the gaming console, they never asked her if she wanted to play.
They simply gathered together, laughing and playing. When the time was up, they immediately handed the machine over to the next dorm, never even letting her touch it.
Meng Wange did not have much interest in it anyway. While they played games, she would quietly read a book on the side, finding peace in her own leisure.
… However, those days did not last very long.
“It wasn’t us who broke it! It was Meng Wange! Yes, she did it!”
That day, the gaming console refused to turn on no matter how many times the batteries were changed. The children in the dorm huddled together, scratching their heads in a frantic panic.
When Meng Wange happened to walk by, they pointed their fingers at her in unison, as if grasping for a saving grace.
Actually, Meng Wange had seen the problem at a glance — an inconspicuous black gasket was missing from the battery box.
She had originally been hesitating over whether to help them out of their predicament, but she ended up becoming the target of their accusation instead.
She did not defend herself.
There was no follow-up to that petty slander. During her time at the Orphanage, many Teachers had grown to like Meng Wange, treating her as a role model.
The other children did not dare to lay a hand on her openly, so they could only exclude her more blatantly.
Later, she picked up the discarded gaming console from a corner.
Driven by a subtle impulse, she pressed those buttons and joysticks for the first time.
… To be honest, it was not a happy experience.
The gameplay could be interrupted at any moment. She might be caught by a Teacher or noticed by her roommates, forcing her to be constantly on edge.
As for the game itself, it was nothing more than an ordinary adventure story.
She merely played it with a vengeful mindset, finishing it from beginning to end by herself, as if completing a Task.
At the moment of completion, as she watched the CG footage play on the screen, what rose in her heart was not a sense of achievement, nor the guilt of failing her mother’s expectations.
It was a sense of absurdity.
A strange absurdity.
Companions, bonds, trust, sacrifice… and the Final Boss’s mockery of “love” before the battle began.
Meng Wange did not gain any joy from this game.
Because she realized that compared to that hot-blooded Hero who relied on the bonds of companions to ultimately win, she was more like the hideous monster that had just been defeated.
No companions walking beside her, no favor from destiny.
Just an existence wandering in vanity, unable to find salvation.
***
Returning to the present from her long memory, Meng Wange gently tapped her forehead and gave a slight smile to the gaming console on the desk.
However, this experience seemed to be quite good.
Even though her only “partner,” Su Wanli, had been “offline” from the middle of the game until the end, she had truly felt the fun of the game before that.
Watching that pixel character representing Su Wanli stride forward — entering even the most dilapidated houses to scavenge, fighting desperately for even a single gold coin —
For the first time, Meng Wange felt a sense of ease and pleasure in a game.
But…
Even though her original intention was to finish the Task Su Wanli had given her, she had indeed ruined the experience of playing together.
She wondered if Miss Su would be willing to drag her along to play games again after this.
If she was unwilling… then she would just have to beg her.
After all, that kindhearted Miss Su would surely soften her heart in the end.
*Tick—tock—*
At the same time, the page-turning clock on the desk flipped once more.
The time had reached 8:00 PM.