Episode 5: This Ain't Some Cursed App!

Even though Kiryu-san smugly told me, “We’re getting out of this game’s framework,” I still didn’t quite get what he was on about.

Apparently, our objective had changed… slightly.
But our general direction seemed to be the same.
In any case, we continued to backtrack through the game’s stages.

In "DeCon 3," enemies would steadily gather if you stood still, but as long as you kept moving, most of them wouldn’t even appear.
After gathering some medicinal herbs and chemicals—recovery items—we headed back to where I'd dropped my smartphone.

“Yes, there it is~!”

It was a moving reunion with my beloved Andr█id.
The cloudy sky overhead seemed fitting for a city on the brink of annihilation by a zombie panic. I rushed over to my phone, lying on the street.

“Hm… This door, the one that should lead to the room you were in? It won’t open anymore. It definitely opened earlier, though.”

While I was checking if my phone worked, Kiryu-san was examining the door that should have led to the Linen Room (?).

…His suit pockets were stuffed tight with the medicine bottles and herbs, the recovery items we’d just picked up.

“I've never seen a suit look like that. You can really cram a lot in there if you try, huh?”

“My pockets are practically flowerpots now. But it can’t be helped; we don’t have a game-style Item Box.”
Kiryu-san sighed and kicked the door a few times in frustration.

…Incidentally, an Item Box is that mysterious dimension in games where you store items you pick up. It’s super convenient because the protagonist can basically go around empty-handed. Just a little FYI.

“It’s a bit of a problem, you know? My dress has absolutely no pockets, so for now, everything we find has to go into Kiryu-san’s pockets…”

(If his pockets are such magnificent flowerpots, it’s definitely got to be hard to move.
I feel bad making Kiryu-san carry all the burden.
I wish we had an Item Box. I wonder if we could substitute something for it…)

As I was lost in thought, a loud CLANG echoed.

“—No good. Even the crowbar won’t pry this door open.”
Kiryu-san swung the crowbar with a whoosh, grinding his teeth in frustration.

“That weird room full of cloth… it might have been erased right after we left.
…By the way, is your phone okay?”

“Oh, yes. It doesn’t seem to connect to anything, and there’s an app on it I don’t recognize, but otherwise it’s working fine.”

“An app you don’t recognize, huh~?”
Kiryu-san turned around, a look of distaste on his face.
I showed him my phone’s menu screen.
Kiryu-san narrowed his eyes and pointed to one app on the screen. “This one?”

…He probably knew ‘this was it’ right away because that one app had such an eerie vibe.

“…‘Untitled’?”

“That seems to be the app’s name.”

“The icon is some crappy, deteriorated-looking image.”

“I can’t see the creator’s intent at all… Why would they choose this image…?”

“An app with such a careless, ugly name and icon… where did it come from? Did you click on something weird on some website?”

“I did not! How rude! I only ever look at proper websites!”

“Lies. I don’t believe you. Ordinary people always say that while they’re browsing the most outrageous sites…”
Kiryu-san’s face soured.
But I couldn’t help making a grim face myself.
After all, I hadn’t really used my phone much recently.
If I didn’t remember doing it, then I didn’t do it.

(…Something weird, huh…)

I tilted my head, thinking, then shot upright as I remembered something.

“—That’s right! I didn’t click on anything weird, but something weird did happen to it!”

“…Something weird?”

“Right before I came to this world, my phone screen suddenly went black, and then it just started typing characters all by itself! It seems like something got installed on its own then.”

“…”

“I even saw it inputting a password! So it has to be, right? This weird app is probably some super-dangerous thing that got installed then, bypassing the app store!”

“… … …”
Kiryu-san just clutched his head, silent.
It was probably something technically impossible.

“…Is it really that impossible…?”

“Hmm… Impossible. If you say impossible, then yes, it’s impossible, but… Well, we’re already caught up in something even more impossible, aren’t we? Andr█id has apps that can write shell scripts, right? And if it’s a jailbroken device, an operation like that might… just might… be possible, but…”
Kiryu-san admitted with extreme reluctance.
Had I really said something that unbelievable?

“…Oh, right! I don’t know if this will help your investigation, Kiryu-san, but I always use my date of birth for my phone’s password.”

“Huh?”

“And when I need a long password, I usually just use a simple combination of my real name and birthday. So, if—and this is a big if, okay?—if some really bad enemy was targeting me, I think they could’ve easily broken the lock.”

“…”

“What’s with that disgusted look? It’s totally normal! Nothing dangerous has ever happened. At most, my friends would unlock my phone and spam me with stickers as a prank.”

“…Listen here, modern kid. You might not get it, but this thing can handle money, you know?”
Kiryu-san continued, gesturing as if trying to ward off a headache.

“That’s just way too reckless. You need to be more careful.”

“Yes, I understand. I’ll be more careful from now o—Whoa!”
Kiryu-san wall-slammed me!
Against this unsanitary wall that a zombie might have just nuzzled its cheek against, for all I knew…!

“…When I told you earlier that ‘you only have one life,’ I think you looked a bit more serious. But your expression now… it lacks that seriousness. Be. More. Careful!”

“…No…”

“Huh?”

“It’s too much trouble… so no…”
Still pinned against the wall, I averted my gaze from Kiryu-san.
I knew it was a pathetic reason, even by my own standards. But… It was too much trouble. Absolutely not.

“Too much trouble? Then do it right now. Here’s your phone. Change your passcode immediately. Making your passcode guessable is really dangerous, you know. Really not good. You never know when someone with malicious intent will mess up your life. I can’t just let this go.”

“No, well… I understand what you’re saying, Kiryu-san, but… let’s not do it today. Let’s do it tomorrow.”

“Why are you being so rebellious?”

“Ah! Zombies! Zombies are here! I need to kill them as quickly as humanly possible!!”
With that, I abruptly dodged away from Kiryu-san, raised my machine gun, and instantly BLAM-ed the zombies coming from the alleyway.
Kiryu-san hastily grabbed the scruff of my neck and pulled me back.

“Hey, hold it! It’s bad if your level gets too high, remember? Don’t kill too many! It’s just changing a passcode, why are you so against it!”

“Because I’m busy with work!”

“Huh?”

“With work! I’m an exhausted! Laborer!!”

“Uh, well, yeah… I know that, but…”
Overwhelmed by my fierceness, Kiryu-san recoiled slightly.

“I’m so exhausted from work, I don’t have any energy left for my beloved games or fashion! And despite that… to change six whole digits of a passcode when it’s not even work… and to remember six whole digits when it’s not even work… Ugh, I can’t! It’s impossible for me! And I absolutely will not do it!!!!”

“Good grief… To think I’d face such pathetic resistance over a mere six digits… Work really is bad for your head and body. You’re starting to look quite pitiful… No, ダメだ, I still can’t let a situation like this stand! Come on, it’s fine, just ta…tap ‘Settings,’ right?! Hey, don’t run away! Why are you using all your strength for something like this!”

“Nooo! Leave me alone! I’m a respectable adult, you know!!”

“I’m telling you, that’s not the kind of passcode a respectable adult sets!”

…I resisted fiercely, but Kiryu-san quickly pinned me down in a mounted position. Then he began the dexterous feat of trying to make me operate my phone with one hand while blasting away approaching zombies with the other.
Amazing, he can actually repel zombies with just one hand. Also, I’m pretty weird, but this guy’s definitely a bit weird too.

“Guh!”
Still, it seemed to be tough with just one hand. Kiryu-san stood up, shaking his head irritably.

“…We really can’t talk calmly around here…”

“Exactly! Changing passcodes can wait! Later! Later!” I said, scrambling up and away from Kiryu-san as if my life depended on it.
“There’s no point lingering here. Let’s hurry to our destination.”

“Haa… I guess we have no choice. …By the way, Sera, what are those swarms of zombies and those two huge things coming from down the road?”
Following Kiryu-san’s disgusted gaze towards the end of the alley, I looked in the same direction.

“You can tell they’re ridiculously huge even from this distance, you know?”

“Eh? …Whoa! That’s a Minotaur and a Zombie Tank. For them to show up when we have hardly any preparations… talk about bad luck.”

“Minotaur? Tank? Eh, is this that kind of thing? Some fantasy game where you defeat mythical beasts and armies from the demon world…?”
Kiryu-san looked bewildered.

“How rude! DeCon is a perfectly legitimate zombie game, you know. Though, it does have enemies that deviate a bit from the world-building every now and then…”

“Can you really call that ‘a bit’…?”
As he said that, Kiryu-san cast a suspicious gaze at the two imposing figures.
A bipedal bull-man about the size of a small building,
and a tank with tentacles wriggling out from its entrance…
…Indeed, these two monsters made calling it a "zombie game" a bit of a stretch.

“Um, the Zombie Tank… I think the lore was something like a military tank was taken over by zombie-type monsters, crew and all, and it defected to the zombie side.”

“Defected? Do zombies have the intelligence to defect?”

“Doesn’t seem like it, but if they say it exists in the game world, then it exists. Can’t be helped, right? And the Minotaur… I think its backstory was that it’s the pitiful end-state of a cow that escaped from a pharmaceutical company… or something like that. Both are ‘pretty strong’ enemies. They’re so-called punishment characters that rarely appear for players who get carried away and level up too quickly… Man, what a nostalgic bunch.”

“Is this really the time for nostalgia? If we don’t go in their direction, we can’t reach our destination… No, I guess we just have to do it.”
Kiryu-san sighed and re-adjusted his grip on the crowbar. Honestly, he was quite reassuring.
He’d been reluctantly culling zombies for a while now, just enough to keep my level from getting too high.

“No, Kiryu-san, please don’t move. I’ll do it. Normally, you’d need something like a grenade launcher to take them down, but… I don’t have anything like that on hand. So, what should I do…”
I couldn’t help but make a grim face.
After all, we had to proceed ‘towards the early-game area.’ We wouldn’t be getting any strong weapons for a while. If we advanced, we’d inevitably have to defeat enemies, and if we defeated them, our levels would inevitably go up. And yet, we couldn’t get any decent weapons in this situation…

(This is bad.
It’s my first time backtracking through stages from the beginning, so my rhythm is all off…)

My only option was a big ‘gamble.’ It was dangerous, but I couldn’t think of any other good ideas.

“…Hmm. There’s a dense pack of enemies behind the Zombie Tank, so maybe I can manage somehow…” I muttered.

“Sera, what have you been muttering about all this time?”

“Kiryu-san, it’s a bit dangerous, so please stay as far back as possible.”

“Huh? Wait, what can I do?”

“…I’d love your help, believe me, but those guys are too strong for us to beat right now. So, my only choice is to act as a decoy—since I understand their movement patterns—and aim for friendly fire.”
As I spoke with a bitter expression, Kiryu-san’s face also filled with worry.

“You, acting as a decoy… isn’t that way too dangerous?”

“There’s no other way. If the friendly fire works and the tank starts smoking, please provide support. Until then, stay back.”

“…Damn it. Even though this world is so game-like, things keep happening that wouldn’t be in a strategy guide, so I have no idea what the right move is… …But, I understand. Leave the support to me. If it looks impossible, come back immediately, okay?”

“Roger that. Let’s do this. …We have no choice!”
With Kiryu-san’s voice at my back, I charged towards the horde of enemies down the alley.

【Character Introduction That Is Utterly Useless for Understanding the Main Story】

■ Sera’s Smartphone
An Andr█id, a rarity these days. It’s old but works fine. Apparently, it holds links to Ins████m and Twi████r (now X), social games she downloaded but never played, and even a blog she used to run back in the day.
Sera is tech-illiterate, so all her passcodes and passwords are super, super lax.