When Asagami Fujino woke again, she found herself out in the wilderness.
The familiar weight she'd long been used to on her chest felt strangely lighter now.
It seemed to be related to the class she had chosen when she was summoned into this unfamiliar game.
Her Strength and Constitution had been enhanced—yet in exchange, she would feel hunger more easily than usual.
She'd heard that when people are hungry to the extreme, it can even turn into pain.
So what, exactly, did hunger feel like?
The purple-haired girl slowly stood and surveyed her surroundings.
Ever since she could remember, she'd lived in a state without pain—deprived of so many ordinary sensations. Beneath the polished façade of a "proper young lady" was an emptiness.
Asagami Fujino had no real sense of her own existence.
That was why, when the unknown voice appeared in her mind and asked whether she wanted to join a game, she almost without hesitation chose "Yes."
She hadn't held any real caution toward the danger of it.
For Fujino, it was simply obedience—following a stiff, blunt command the moment it arrived.
Of course… perhaps there had also been a trace of expectation.
An expectation that this strange experience might bring some kind of change to her current life.
What kind of change?
She didn't know herself.
She was nothing more than someone drifting wherever fate pushed her.
Perhaps one day, if someone tried to do something indecent to her, after a token struggle she would still accept it all in the end—
Because none of it would matter that much, would it?
The ability she obtained upon entering the game—"Painless Third Party"—was probably the system's summary of that trait.
She could watch changes in her own body from a completely detached, observer's viewpoint.
She lacked the normal protective mechanisms of the human body. Until her HP dropped below zero—until true death arrived—even if her body was riddled with holes, she would still be able to act for quite a while.
[Welcome to Dungeon Floor 1642. This is a small part of "Dungeon World." Players may explore the surrounding area and seek treasures of their own.]
[Quest: Eliminate the Giant Bee Hive entrenched in the mountain.]
[If both players die, the game ends.]
[To encourage active participation:]
[If the Giant Bee Hive is cleared, the player may take one item out of the game upon departure.]
As she looked around, those lines of text appeared in front of her.
Fujino could clearly see a tall mountain range not far away.
Above the ridge floated a huge arrow, pointing toward a specific direction.
It seemed the Giant Bee Hive they needed to defeat was somewhere that way.
But at that moment, Fujino didn't particularly care about any of it.
She closed the panel and focused her attention instead on the other player nearby.
In Fujino's eyes, he was a handsome young man.
A white shirt on top, blue jeans below. A small pouch at his waist. A massive hammer strapped across his back.
—A working man from a construction site.
That was Fujino's first impression of Arato Sora.
What captured her attention most, though, was that from the moment he appeared, he'd been staring intently at the rocks around them.
Fujino was drawn to people who had clear goals.
Because she herself had none—no plans for her life, no direction of her own.
Everything about her was carried out according to other people's arrangements.
And perhaps the boy's serious gaze was simply too absorbing.
So Fujino stood beside him and quietly watched him work.
Overhead, luminescent mushrooms cast a faint glow.
In the dungeon, a wind from nowhere brushed her cheek. Three or four minutes passed like that.
Finally, Arato—who had been half-testing Fujino while also thinking through their next move—pulled his attention away from the stones.
He turned and met Fujino's eyes.
He hadn't expected anyone else to join the game.
Still… it wasn't necessarily bad news.
In something like a dungeon run, having an extra person helping would be far easier than going alone.
"I'm Arato Sora. You can call me that," he introduced himself.
"Asagami Fujino. I attend Reien Girls' Academy. I'll be playing together with you from here on, Mr. Arato—please treat me well."
As she spoke, the girl bowed with impeccably standard, high-society Japanese etiquette.
Arato Sora: "…"
She was just… giving her real identity up front?
Her guard was far too low.
After thinking for a moment, Arato said to the refined, Yamato-nadeshiko-like girl:
"I don't know how Miss Asagami entered this game world, but I think the best approach is for both of us not to probe into each other's real identities. It'll eliminate a lot of potential trouble."
Fujino paused, then nodded.
"No problem. Mr. Arato's suggestion is very reasonable."
She had no reason to refuse, so she agreed immediately.
And as they spoke, Arato could more or less tell Fujino was the type of girl with very little will of her own.
A sheltered young lady from a deep estate?
The thought surfaced—then he dismissed it almost immediately.
He had no intention of investigating who she really was.
Compared to the "young lady" in front of him, what drew Arato's attention more was this strange world itself.
This place the Dream Game System called "Dungeon World"—
Was it an illusion, or a truly existing world?
The answer was easy to find.
He looked at the rocks, the soil, the plants in the distance, already forming a plan in his mind.
Nothing in the world exists in isolation.
If you observe the relationships between things—the way they connect and affect each other—you can judge whether the entire world is a system that truly runs.
If everything is interconnected and mutually influential, then it's a real, functioning world.
If everything is isolated, then it's nothing more than a hallucination.
No—
Arato shook his head.
Now wasn't the time to research that.
The first priority was completing the quest the system had assigned.
"As for clearing the Giant Bee Hive—do you have any thoughts, Miss Asagami?"
"Before we came in, the game's…" Fujino hesitated, as though searching for the right term to describe the existence that had brought them into this situation.
"The game system," Arato supplied.
"Yes. The game system said we can't die inside the game. So we can just keep trying over and over… In fact, we can try right now."
The purple-haired girl said something astonishingly casual.
Since they'd only just met and didn't understand each other yet, Arato couldn't immediately refute her.
Perhaps this girl named Asagami Fujino had some special talent Arato didn't know about.
With Arato's tacit consent, Fujino walked toward the direction indicated by the system—the location of the Giant Bee Hive.
And then…
Right before Arato's eyes—
The girl named Asagami Fujino was pierced through the heart by countless bee stingers, and died.
Dense yellow needles shot into her body from every direction, and in the blink of an eye she became something like a human pincushion.
Arato Sora: "…"
She really had no defensive means at all?
When he entered this game instance, he'd tested it.
Pain here felt exactly the same as in reality.
That kind of "a thousand needles" experience hurt just to watch—let alone to endure firsthand.
Would she… collapse from it?
As Arato watched with a trace of worry, on the far ridge—
With Fujino's character's death, a ghostlike figure appeared beside Arato's character.
A purple-haired ghost drifted over and hovered at his side.
"I think I died by accident. The system says I need to wait an hour before I can revive. I'm very sorry—this will put you out, Mr. Arato."
Even as a ghost, her voice remained soft and gentle, still carrying that same Yamato-nadeshiko flavor.
But that "as usual" was exactly what made it the most abnormal thing of all.
Was this what Touko Aozaki meant by mystery attracting mystery?
On his very first use of his "cheat," he'd encountered a girl whose mind seemed detached from ordinary life.
No matter how you looked at it, something was off.
Perhaps because their bodies were in chibi form, the game's emotions were displayed more directly—like a comic.
The Asagami Fujino who had just been turned into a pincushion and killed now stared at Arato as a ghost, her face showing confusion… and a faint thread of expectation.
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