Me, the Player: Pay Up

[Infinite Flow] [Unhinged] [No Romance] [Brotherhood]

When a madman becomes the measure of the rules, what will the rules become?

Song Zhu looks most human when he's peeling an apple.

His fingers dance as the peel curls into a spiral snake. Beneath his gentle brows gleams a scalpel's cold light. His butterfly knife pins a robber's throat bone, while a hostage trembles in the corner. He hums a lullaby from his night shifts at the psychiatric hospital.

It was the only thing he'd learned to do that felt like "living" after leaving the Cocoon organization.

He thought this dull life would last until he finally succeeded in killing himself, but he never expected to be chosen as a player in a game.

Blood-Red Variety Show

In the Death Livestream instance, he straps a heart-rate monitor onto a vengeful ghost. "The audience loves suspense. You need to learn to control your blood pressure." As the livestream comments rain down rewards, Song Zhu's butterfly knife is already buried in the ghost's chest.

"What a shame. I thought you might live a little longer."

Back to the Psychiatric Hospital

Returning to the psychiatric hospital in the real world, he uses the warden's skull to strike a bronze bell. "Thank you, fellow patients. Your mutterings... were actually translated instructions from a higher civilization."

Yet while all the players beg him for a conquest guide and treat him as their one and only savior, Song Zhu is carving the key to victory into an apple and feeding it to a vengeful ghost.

His butterfly knife is lodged in the rift between reality and illusion. He raises three fingers to the stars.

"Guess what I'm counting?

One, two...

The third answer is hidden in your fear."