The True Endgame

"We"re letting ourselves in," Ca.s.sandra says, pushing two shopping bags into his arms and then walking through the doorway past him.

Serra holds up a peace sign and follows Ca.s.sandra.

Ryouta investigates the first bag and sees a few bottles of pop, some iced tea, and some hard lemonades. The second bag holds a bunch of different snacks in it ranging from chips to gummy candies.

"What"s – uhh, hey, and what"s going on?" Ryouta asks, closing the door and looking at the girls already starting to pick up on the latest messes that he has made since they were last here.

"Movie night, but first we"re cleaning this place up. We don"t want to watch movies in your place if you"ve got junk sitting around. Right, Serra?" Ca.s.sandra asks.

When she doesn"t get a response, she turns around and sees Serra with a bag in Ryouta"s kitchen putting some empty bottles into it. Serra looks at Ca.s.sandra"s confused face and tilts her head.

"Ri-right," Ca.s.sandra mumbles before getting back to work.

"How"d you forget that she"s deaf already?" Ryouta asks. "Didn"t you come over here with her?"

Ca.s.sandra hangs her head low and doesn"t say anything.

"You… you were talking to yourself a lot on the way over, weren"t you?"

Ca.s.sandra"s head hangs even lower.

"What were you doing? Just endlessly ranting and a.s.suming she was listening the whole—"

Ca.s.sandra throws an empty bag of chips at Ryouta"s face! Unfortunately for her, it ends up just sort of drifting down to the floor almost immediately after throwing it.

Ryouta decides that it would be best to drop it going by her red face and embarra.s.sed eyes.

"What are we going to watch?" he asks.

"Don"t know. Serra said in-game that she knew the perfect movie to watch, and it apparently only came out recently, so she said there"s no way we"ve seen it – probably," Ca.s.sandra explains.

Ryouta joins Serra in the kitchen and signs to her, asking what they are going to watch.

Rather than sign back to him, Serra shakes her head and flashes a very suspicious smile with just a hint of dark sadism in her eyes.

Ryouta shivers and rubs his arms. He has never seen this side of Serra, and now he is worried.

He looks at Ca.s.sandra.

If he"s worried, she would probably be really worried.

He looks back at Serra and gives her a thumbs-up. Whatever her plan is, he consents.

After cleaning, and then giving each of the girls a shoulder ma.s.sage to the best of his capabilities as thanks for cleaning up after his messes, the three settle down next to each other on the couch with their mult.i.tude of snacks and drinks displayed on the table in front of them. This time around, Ca.s.sandra is the one sitting on the middle of the couch with a spot open on her right side for Serra with Ryouta on her left side.

Serra stands in front of the TV, strikes a dramatic pose with one hand on her hip, and pulls out the movie from her pocket! In her hand is a small card with a code on it that can be scanned by most modern televisions. When she holds the card in front of his television"s scanner, the TV comes to life, goes into movie mode, and then text displays on the screen just as Serra plops down onto the couch next to Ca.s.sandra.

Virtual Horror Reality

When the game doesn"t let you leave,

and when you"re not playing the game you thought you were.

Inspired by true events.

Rental Time Remaining: 24 hours

Ryouta already feels nervous. He has never been good with scary movies, and every time he has tried watching one or a horror anime, he"s had to go and marathon some cute slice-of-life anime full of moeblobs in order to sleep those nights.

He regrets consenting to Serra"s plan.

Looking over at Serra – no, he looks at Ca.s.sandra.

Her entire body is stiff to the point where it would be only natural to a.s.sume that she is actually a statue and not a living person.

He no longer regrets Serra"s plan. Just knowing that somebody else here is far more afraid than he is, before the movie even starts, is enough for him to feel better. Now, rather than look forward to being scared, he"s looking forward to seeing Ca.s.sandra get scared.

"Penguin, turn subt.i.tles on," Ryouta says.

Subt.i.tles pop up on the bottom of the screen that read, "Subt.i.tles have been turned on."

"Penguin, play movie," Ryouta orders.

The t.i.tle screen fades away as the opening scene starts.

Ryouta feels Ca.s.sandra flinch as soon the movie"s t.i.tle comes back up, its text grey and blue before getting glitched out and distorted.

When he looks at Serra, he sees her sitting there seemingly unphased by everything as she digs a hand into a bag of chips.

It clicks for him. Part of the reason why she probably likes horror is because she can"t hear it! That means she doesn"t have to listen to any horrifying sound effects, can"t hear the suspenseful music, nor anything else. Instead, she just gets to probably find it amusing while everybody else around her is scared.

She sees him looking at her and smiles.

Serra is far more devious than he originally gave her credit for.

"I swear if there are any jump scares then I"m not letting you kiss me for a month, Serra," Ca.s.sandra threatens, but her threat falls on deaf ears. Literally.

The movie starts off relatively normal. There is a group of twenty-something actors playing the roles of teenagers in high school, and none of them can stop talking about the latest video game to come out that has been making worldwide news. Supposedly, the game"s files were emailed to everybody in the world all at once. n.o.body knows who made the game, nor does anybody know why it"s been sent to the entire world for free, but everybody is playing it.

Ryouta has a feeling that the only "true events" the movie is "inspired by" are the facts that video games exist and are sometimes super popular.

He also has the physical feeling of Ca.s.sandra subconsciously scooting closer to him and wrapping her arms around his arm closest to her, resulting in his arm being hugged right against her chest.

Ryouta loves horror movies now.
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The game in the movie starts off as a generic fantasy world that is the most realistic game thus far. Only, after a few hours of playing the game, the main characters start to realize that something is wrong. The sky starts glitching, sometimes rooms lit by torches will turn pitch black despite the torches" fires not going out, and they randomly hear the sound effects of monsters dying despite no monsters around them being killed.

"Must be glitchy code," one of the men in the film says.

"Ummm, what"s glitchy mean?" the airheaded blonde with large b.r.e.a.s.t.s, whom has supposedly never played a game before that one, asks.

Ryouta bets that she"s going to either be the last one to get killed or the only survivor. Her jock boyfriend is probably going to be the first one to get killed. Oh, and naturally, her jock of a boyfriend is playing a large, handsome tanky character who looks like an ideal football player.

After a short time, the jock and his girlfriend realize that they can have s.e.x in the game, so they sneak off for some kinky, fantasy alone time. Only, halfway through taking it from the back with all of her nude parts being conveniently covered by random props in the way of the camera, she hears something thud against the floor. Looking down at it, she sees her boyfriend"s head.

Ryouta"s arm starts falling asleep from how tightly Ca.s.sandra is squeezing it now. As cute as she is, if it falls asleep, he won"t get to feel her chest anymore.

After the girl in the movie somehow escaped the monster who chopped off her boyfriend"s head and then tried to pick up where he left off with her, she regroups with the rest of her friends only to see that half of them are glitched. One of their heads is pixelated with only dozens of eyes being visible through the pixels, another has blood constantly dripping from a gash in his throat despite him seemingly not even realizing that he"s injured, and the only other girl there randomly has her tone of voice changed while speaking. Sometimes she sounds like a normal girl, other times she sounds like a garbled radio signal, and sometimes she"ll sound like a demonic old woman whom has spent her whole life smoking.

It turns out that they are all unable to log out of the game no matter how desperately they try to, some mysterious, cloaked character tells them that if they die in-game then they"ll die in real life as well, and then they all get picked off one by one. The movie ends on a dramatic, borderline-cheesy scene of the only girl left alive—the stereotypical bimbo, of course—looking into the camera recording her and breaking the fourth wall by speaking directly to the audience about how the viewers aren"t in the reality that they think they"re in. Then the screen glitches out and shows the movie"s t.i.tle with some music that sounds upbeat but is actually about everybody dying when one listens to the lyrics.

"Eh," Ryouta says. "Wasn"t that bad. Tons of plot holes, though."

He figures that Ca.s.sandra wasn"t that scared either as she never made any of her squeaks nor jumped, but when he tries standing up, he finds her glued to his arm and unable to raise her head.

"You"re not leaving," Ca.s.sandra says. With the way she"s looking at the ground and the threatening tone of voice she"s using, she"s scarier than the movie was.

She doesn"t even react when Serra pokes her in the side!

"You can"t hold onto me forever. You have to go home eventually," Ryouta says.

"I"m not leaving," Ca.s.sandra explains.

"Then where are you sleeping?"

"With you."

"What? You – you"re going to sleep here? I guess that"s alright. I"ll just have to change my sheets for you, and I"ll stay on the couch."

"No. You are not allowed to leave my side. You are going to sleep with me on your bed as punishment for making me watch that."

If this is her idea of punishment, he really wants to know what her idea of a reward is.

"Are – are you sure?" he asks.

She looks up at him with teary eyes and red cheeks. "Please?" she asks.

There"s no way he can say no to that.