Work Text:
➤ Walkthrough: Matt (Player Tag: MAILJ33VAS)
System: Life.exe | Difficulty: Expert | Ending Unlocked: ???
Compiled by: ??? (User Offline)
START GAME
You spawn in a room cluttered with screens.
CRT glow like a halo for the unsaved.
Ashtray full. Controller in hand.
Outside the rain glitches—pixels of water, falling without code.
You press X to start, but no one ever programmed this tutorial.
The loading screen says: “Your choices matter.”
You already know it’s a lie.
You weren’t given choices. Just actions. And consequences.
System Notification:
"Welcome back, Player 3. You are not Mello. You are not Near.
You are a third-slot save file overwritten too many times."
You nod. That’s fine. You didn’t want to be anyone else anyway.
You just wanted the damn game to stop crashing.
Level 1: Childhood (Orphan's Bootcamp)
Location: Wammy’s House
Objective: Survive Wammy’s House.
Side Quest: Learn how to vanish without leaving
Bonus Objective: Don’t cry loud enough for L to hear
Optional Boss Fight: Identity Crisis (Lvl 99)
Cutscene begins:
There’s a boy with white hair calculating God into chessboard squares.
There’s a boy with blond fire melting locks and rules.
And then there’s you.
Third in line.
Third in function.
Third in faith.
But first in knowing how to be invisible in plain sight.
You discover early that
you can’t outscore Near.
You can’t outburn Mello.
So you outwait them.
You become the static that holds a signal.
You become the silence between brilliant men.
NPCs say: “That’s Matt, right? The gamer?”
You nod.
No one ever asks what you’re playing.
It’s strategy. It’s survival. It’s distraction.
It’s not fun.
You smoke under fluorescent lights.
You memorize their routines.
You carry your loneliness like a sidearm.
Flashback (Unlocked):
You are ten. You speak fluent binary before fluent English.
Your fingertips are joystick-callused. You learn to disappear in corners.
Everyone at Wammy’s is brilliant.
Brilliance is a language of its own.
Yours comes with a joystick accent and a latency problem.
Near is a ghost wearing silence like armor.
Mello is fire bottled in bruises and chocolate bars.
You are static. Background noise in your own cutscene.
You understand your role early:
“I’ll back you up, Mello. I’ll be Player Two.”
Flashback (Unlocked):
Mello, 13: “Why do you never talk?”
You: “Because I’m listening.”
He laughs like you said something human.
You almost believe you did.
Achievement Unlocked: Best Supporting Glitch
Codex Entry: Controller as Confessional Booth
You keep old consoles like holy relics.
Each button press a prayer. Each death screen a ritual.
No one visits you unless they need something decrypted.
Your hands are faster than most lies.
Sometimes you play horror games on mute,
just to prove to yourself you don’t flinch anymore.
Level 2: Adolescence (Mission Briefing: Play the Game Backwards)
Tutorial: Light kills L. Mello kills trust. Near kills silence.
You kill time. You kill Marlboros. You kill battery life.
Your reflexes are sharp, but life plays turn-based.
Mello says: “Backup only. Don’t follow me.”
You follow anyway, like a corrupted save file chasing its original.
Game Tip: Love is not a mechanic.
Do it anyway.
Side Quest: Sync With Mello (Incomplete)
Sometimes he texts: “Need you. Now.”
You drop everything. Your thumbs twitch on impulse.
You never ask where. You just go.
He’s always half-broken and full-throttle.
You’re always half-there and fully hoping.
Inventory Update:
♥ One best friend with a bomb complex.
♥ Twenty-four stolen passwords.
♥ An SNES that never forgets.
♥ A pair of goggles that don't protect against anything.
♥ A silence you wear like Kevlar.
♥ One heart set to vibrate, never ring.
There’s a knock on your door and it’s not the police.
It’s worse. It’s Mello.
He’s wearing guilt like cologne.
He’s got a new plan, sharp as broken candy,
and your name is scribbled in the margin.
You say: “I’m in.”
But what you mean is: I never left you.
Flashback (unskippable):
You were fourteen when you realized Mello would never need saving
because he only accepted sacrifices.
And you were good at burning quietly.
Inventory expands:
♥ Your father’s lighter (you don’t remember his face).
♥ A folder of blackmail so good it tastes like copper.
♥ Three broken headphones—none of them yours.
♥ Mello’s old notebook: page one says “beat Near.” Page two is blank.
You are a master of the side quest,
the man behind the man,
the shadow that keeps his enemies visible.
You could have left.
You could have disappeared.
But there’s something holy in watching someone self-destruct with your hand gently at their elbow.
Dialogue Memory (Corrupted Fragment):
Mello: “I trust you, you know.”
You: “That’s dangerous.”
Mello: “So is breathing.”
You both laugh. The sound glitches.
Even the air around you doesn’t buffer right.
Cutscene: Before the Final Act
You’re coding a virus to breach a mafia server.
Mello is watching from the couch, shirtless, scarred, sharp.
You don’t look up. You know what you’d see.
He says, “When this ends, let’s disappear.”
You say nothing. You just click.
He thinks that means yes.
It does.
Level 3: Final Day (Game Will Auto-Save Here)
Objective: Stall the enemy.
Timer: 3 minutes.
Location: Alleyway / Ambush Site
Gear Equipped: Hoodie. Goggles. Resignation.
You know the plan is bad.
You know you’re not coming back.
You light a cigarette anyway. You stall the enemy anyway.
That’s the whole point of a support class.
Dialogue Tree:
{} “This is stupid.”
{} “I trust you.”
{} “Let’s log off.”
{X}No input detected.
Voiceover (Memory Playback):
Mello: “Don’t be a hero.”
You: “Good. I’m not.”
Gunfire is not interactive.
There are no cheat codes in this level.
You dodge. You duck. You die.
Blood splashes like a graphic glitch.
You drop the controller.
It bounces once.
The screen reads: “Game Over.”
But it’s lying.
You were never the player, Matt.
You were the buffering screen between genius and self-destruction.
The debug log that loved quietly.
The "Continue?" option that never got pressed.
Post-Credits Scene (Only Viewable If You Wait Through the Silence)
Black screen. One sentence appears, flickering like an old arcade cabinet:
“Matt was Mello’s friend.”
You scream at the monitor.
You were more than that.
You were the only one who stayed.
You were the only one who didn’t want the throne.
You are not a martyr. You are not a hero.
You are a quiet patch in a broken multiplayer.
People forget you were there,
but the system always remembers lag.
I remember lag.
I remember you.
I wrote this because you never would have.
You would’ve said: “It’s just a game.”
But it wasn’t. It was you.
File logs reopen. Ghost cursor moves.
Someone—maybe Near—adds a line.
“Player Tag: MAILJ33VAS
Status: Loyal until game over.”
But you are not data.
You were a boy with joystick dreams and a heart
no one downloaded properly.
In another version,
you live.
You open a repair shop for dying tech.
You name it “Respawn.”
Secret Level: If Matt Had Spoken
If you had opened your mouth, you would’ve said:
“I loved him.”
“I didn’t want to be a genius, I wanted to be left alone.”
“It wasn’t about the game. It was about staying plugged in long enough to keep him breathing.”
But you didn’t say any of it.
So now I will.
I, the player who watched you bleed pixels.
I, the friend who failed you.
I, the voice in your static.
EXIT TO DASHBOARD
You press every button. Nothing works.
Continue? [Y/N]
The controller shakes.
Are you sure?
The screen fades.
Somewhere, a redhead slouches in front of a screen,
laughing at something no one else sees,
and says,
“Yeah. Why not?”
Somewhere, in a dusty console, a save file still exists.
It says:
MAILJ33VAS — Playtime: 17 years
Deaths: 1
Loyalty: Infinite
Status: Offline
Still Watching
FILE CORRUPTED
Continue? [Y/N]