To Live Again, For the First Time!

"Ahh! How is this even a game? It's more like a specially modified torturing device!" Kayden let out a big sigh, throwing his phone to the side and sitting up on his bed which he had been previously laying on while playing.

Tinges of red were creeping on the edges of his eyes. He clearly hadn't had any shut-eye all night. Instead, he was spending his time playing this stupid game and he didn't really get a good rest the last night either, due to the incident with Theodore.

He had lost count of the number of deaths he had experienced after the count had passed 30 a long time ago and so he didn't know just how many times he had died, but he knew that it was already over 9 hours' worth of deaths. 

If he had to estimate, it might have been over 200, but he could say for sure it felt more like 2000. He was on the verge of rage quitting, but it was already too late for that.

The time Kayden spend before one 'game over' varied from under a minute, to over 30 minutes, just thinking about what he should do next. Many of those times, he died in the first stage, which had from 10 to 15 choice-making instances. In other words, 10 to 15 chances of falling into a death trap of words.

It was unlikely to die in the first couple of choices as they would be used to determine the following questions, but they could lead you to much more dire straits.

"It was that 'devil in disguise' that caught me this time," Kayden informed Theodore, allowing Theodore to add one more datum to his table. 

He was trying to figure out a pattern based on the questions asked, how they were responded to, and when death fell upon the player in order to figure out why.

Theodore's situation was not much different, but because he was already used to pulling all-nighters, his body wasn't complaining as much, it had already adapted to the circumstances of the body's owner.

As for the 'devil in disguise' that Kayden had mentioned, he was talking about one of the Love Interests [1] in the game, Khalid Vanhell, third son of Marquess Vanhell, the current head of the Vanhell household, a family well known for being a loyal sword to the King, a symbol for the epitome of justice. 

And of course, someone taught by such a family absolutely could not tolerate anything that went against the King's will. 

In such a family of pristine knights, women were looked down on, like nothing else mattered less, after all, they couldn't even hold a sword, but then again, even if they could, no one would know because they were never allowed near one since they are so 'weak'.

So how could the righteous Khalid possibly allow for someone like the heroine (the player) to go running around staining the reputation of the kingdom by staying in this school.

Khalid was a character of dark skin and blue hair. The blue hair was a signature characteristic to recognize a member of the Vanhell family. Meanwhile, the dark skin was inherited from his mother, a noble from another country who was sent to the kingdom where the game took place to become the Marquess's second concubine. 

Even so, none of this affected the dignified aura of a perfect knight that he inherently possessed. 

And at the same time, no one would have thought that such a man of justice would be responsible for over half of Kayden's repeated deaths in-game.

He was seriously going to cry soon. (⋟﹏⋞)

"How did you die this time?" Theodore asked, in order to collect more data. Yes, that was definitely the only reason he asked. ( ͡• ͜ʖ ͡• )

[Theodore: Author-nim, even if you are going to use the emoticon, can you not pick one that looks better??]

[Author-nim: (currently offline, leave a voice message and wait 24 working hours to get your message not responded to. Thank you for using the BRACKET services, please come again.)]

[Theodore: How come you are willing to read and respond to all of your reader's messages and comments but not mine?]

[Author-nim: (currently offline, leave a voice message and wait 24 working hours to get your message not responded to. Thank you for using the BRACKET services, please come again.)]

"Gah! It was in the second stage, the 4th crossroad [2], the question about the room allocation. I clearly chose to move to a separate room, and it worked the last 3 times, but this time the Devil (knight Khalid, who also attended this school) must have been in a bad mood or something!" Kayden casually remarked.

At this point, he had already come to terms with the fact that this was a death game. Other than death, the only other choice was more death! 

And this death seemed to be specially reserved for the players.

"Mm, this is your 215th death. Congrats, you've already surpassed me!" Theodore jokingly, or maybe not so jokingly replied.

"Did you notice anything?" Kayden asked, starting another round on the phone that he had tossed out.

"Not really. It seems like the right answers don't depend solely on what you had chosen previously. There must another factor that I'm missing, but I just can't tell." 

Theodore didn't know, but Kayden could now recognize his 'seriously contemplating, thinking to myself and pretty much just speaking out loud, but not necessarily to you even though we are having a conversation. I'm lost in my thoughts' face. One that could probably make all females and bent males swoon a little.

"It can't be that Master Sungcha would make this a luck-based game, and he only gave us one week, which is clearly not enough to map out all the options." He continued without pause.

Theodore was typing on his computer as he talked while simultaneously playing the otome game on his phone.

"It isn't the formatting of the questions or choices, I've made sure. All the questions are written in the exact same words, in the same order, and with identical punctuation. The same is true for the options we have in the crossroads." Theodore explained some of his thoughts.

At first, they had only been playing normally, but when they had finally come to terms with the difficulty level of this game, they both agreed to start taking things seriously and to work on it together for now.

They had started collecting data, and Theodore had started processing it after their first hour of playing, and though it may sound boring, to just play this same game over and over and to subsequently die over and over, they actually both rather enjoyed it.

They had a real challenge in hand now.

They had also learned a lot more about each other in this process. 

Though Kayden may seem somewhat mellow and playful, he was able to provide some great insight on some of the questions Theodore brought up previously, proving that it was by no means luck that he had been accepted to this school.

He also had some crazy amount of endurance. When he started something, he wouldn't stop until he got to the end of it, even if that end was inevitable doom, over and over. 

Kayden had already made an internal vow to himself that he was going to beat this game no matter how many times he had to die because of it.

Though his mouth voiced his frustrations, he was far from giving up.

He thought about rage quitting, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to do it anymore, he was just stubborn like that.

As for what Kayden learned about Theodore, he learned that Theodore was insane. 

It wasn't just one or two things about Theodore that made Kayden suspect that he wasn't really a human. 

It was ok to first put aside Theodore's unreal willpower, not at all losing to Kayden's stubbornness. Kayden had thought that if he claimed to be second, no one would dare claim to be more stubborn than him, but it seemed like he had now met his match.

They both acted like playing this game for 9 hours straight was nothing, even though their complexions said otherwise.

Just Theodore's ability to multitask was already stunning enough. In the beginning, Kayden still took some time to watch as Theodore read and responded to the game options, analyzed the possible patterns, while typing them up and jotting them down, inserting them in a table, and doing research on other similar games on a side tab. 

He soon got used to it, and after that, the realization that came to him was simply depressing.

Now there was only one question left to ask.

Why the fuck was this guy majoring in acting/ performing arts?

Isn't this a bit too much?

[1]- Love Interest is the same as the capture target that you, the heroine, will have to raise your affection with. At the end of the game, you end up with that character, if you succeed. There are many possible LI.

[2] Crossroads is what Kayden calls the moments where a choice has to be made in-game. He just started using it and so it caught on.