Work Text:
The setting is a cabin in the middle of the woods. A road trip between five friends gone wrong. Ivan's driving—Mizi sitting shotgun with a wide smile on her face. Sua leans her head against the window with a bored expression. Till sits on the other end of the car with a manic sort of smile.
And in the middle is someone Unknown.
"Who's ready to have some fun this weekend~!" Mizi cheers.
"Not me," Sua says with a pout.
…
"Yeah, this wouldn't have been my first choice either," Unknown says after a poignant pause.
"Let's just get this over with," Till says, sick and tired of hearing the same dialogue over and over again. Then, he sneezes.
When they arrive at the cabin, Ivan drags him to their room, far away from the other three.
This is strange behavior. This isn't supposed to happen.
But Till is sweating too much to care. He didn't even want to get up out of bed that morning to come to work. He should've worked harder in school, maybe he wouldn't end up working some crappy minimum wage job if he had. If only his music was good enough.
"Till," Ivan softly says. "Are you okay?"
Of course, he fucking isn't. His skin feels feverish, his world off-balance. He wants to lie down, close his eyes, and go to sleep. Possibly forever. That'd be nice.
"I'm fine," Till says.
"You're obviously not," Ivan says. His hands reach up to cup Till's face, and the detail in his worried expression makes Till wonder if he's currently hallucinating. This cutscene isn't supposed to happen.
"The others noticed too," Ivan says. "Here, come on."
Ivan gently leans Till against him and they sit on the bed together. Till closes his eyes and lets darkness envelop his vision in a warm embrace. He craves chicken porridge, just like how his mom used to make it. He misses his mom.
It's not my ten yet, Till thinks. Ivan pats him on the back.
"Don't worry about that," Ivan says. Did Till say it out loud? Oh, whatever. Not that it matters.
Till opens his eyes, and stands up, blood rushing to his head. No time for a break.
Nighttime falls, and a mysterious fog that shrouds everything appears in the surrounding woods, setting the eerie atmosphere. Darkness overtakes the cabin.
"Ahh! The lights went out!" Mizi exclaims.
"The car won't turn on," Ivan notes, spinning car keys around one finger casually.
"We can't get in touch with 119. Oh no," Sua says flatly, phone in hand.
"Fuck," Till says, but it's because his pounding headache. Won't. Leave. Him. The. Fuck. Alone.
He sits down, holding his head like that'd help. It doesn't.
"Oh no, Till," Mizi says, genuine concern shining in her voice. "Are you alright?"
"Um, let's split up, I mean," Till says, hand still holding onto his head. He needs to say his lines. "Look for clues. Maybe something weird is happening."
"I'll go with you," Ivan volunteers. Till's eyebrows wrinkle.
"No, you go with them." Till gestures to Unknown. "I'll go check the shed myself."
Till turns around to step out of the room, but is stopped by a hand grabbing his wrist.
"Don't go," Ivan says, voice quiet. Till's pretty sure he's just hallucinating at this point.
"Sorry," Till says without meaning it. He yanks his hand back, and flees from the group, as he's supposed to.
Till knowingly opens the shed door, where a masked man awaits him. Then, he gets stabbed in the back, dropping to the floor and "bleeding out". It doesn't help the headache, still.
At least there's some downtime until the round is over.
Till's boss is an asshole, and not only that, but he's the killer. In the game, he means. But it wouldn't really surprise Till if his boss also killed people in real life. He's just that type of asshole.
Till's boss plays the role of the main antagonist in the horror VR game "Night at the Cabin" whose goal is to kill everyone, including the player.
And Till? Well, he plays the role of the tutorial character whose role is to die first to raise the stakes for the player. It depends on the difficulty that the player chooses, but Till likes it when he can "die" within the first five minutes and can just relax in the background.
The player can get different endings based on who they choose to keep alive.
Mizi and the player are the sole survivors? Trigger Final Girl ending.
Only Ivan, Mizi, and the player survive? Trigger Our Black Sorrows ending.
Only Sua and the player survive? Trigger Bittersweet Dream ending.
…And so on and so forth. The only thing is that there is no ending where Till's character survives. That's because he's an add-in, a character who only exists to introduce game mechanics to the player within the VR game. He's not supposed to be part of the main story.
The job was originally advertised to Till as something close to being one of those mascot people who has to act in-character all the time, or roleplaying for the sake of immersion. Everyone else quit within a week, but Till stayed because he remembered how his mom used to work all those late shifts, and he felt like if she could weather through hardships, then so could he.
But the job really, really fucking blows.
It wears Till out. He gets burnt out from constantly having to improvise. Mentally, he gets exhausted by the end of the day, especially when he's the one who has to do most of the talking with guests. His boss has zero dialogue being the killer, it's a complete sham.
It's a miracle he hasn't gotten sick until now, honestly.
The next morning, Till's fever gets really bad. He stays delirious for the entire day, sleeping in a pool of his own sweat. He curls his body around his pillow, enjoying how cool it is against his skin.
It smells like chicken porridge in the air. Ugh, he really, really freaking misses his mom…
A finger wipes away the tear that'd been forming around the corner of Till's eyes. The sound of a glass bowl being placed on wood.
"You need to eat," a familiar voice says.
"Maybe later," Till grumbles, turning his body over in the bed.
"It's your favorite."
"No time," Till groans. "G'tta get… work…"
A chuckle.
"There's no need to worry about that anymore. I took care of the problem."
A cool hand brushes Till's bangs away from his sweaty forehead. Till likes it a lot.
When the hand pulls away, Till makes a noise of complaint in his voice. Another chuckle.
"I hope you show me more of this side of you from now on."
Till wakes up feeling like he got hit by a car.
Disoriented in the dark, he reaches over to the bedside nightstand for his phone. He balks at the time.
"Fuck," Till curses, hurriedly checking his messages.
But there was none from his boss. Which is out-of-character for the guy who yelled at him for going two minutes over his ten-minute designated break and then proceeded to go behind his back and edit his timesheet.
"Guess I'm screwed," Till sighs. A rustle right next to him makes him shriek.
"What the fuck. What the fuck!" Till all but throws the unknown man out of his bed. The stranger unceremoniously lands on the floor on his back.
And–
"I–Ivan?" Till chokes out. He must still be delirious from the fever, he has to be. There's no other explanation for how he, a mere VR game NPC, could be here , in Till's bedroom.
"Hey," Ivan says with a goofy smile, holding up his hand to wave at Till. "I hope you don't mind I cleaned up here a little while you were out cold."
"Wh–Why the fuck are you sleeping in my bed?!"
"You were the one who told me not to go this time," Ivan says with a shrug. "I was only doing what you told me to do."
Till opens his mouth, but is interrupted by his own stomach, cheeks turning red with embarrassment.
Ivan pulls him toward the door, saying, "We can talk more later."
The bastard's cooking is good. Really good. Till stares at his empty bowl once he's finished. He doesn't remember the last time he's had a home-cooked meal. It makes him feel…
…
"I've never seen you make that face before," Ivan says, fascinated, reaching up to brush a finger against his cheek. Till slaps the hand away. Unfortunately, it's very in-character for what Till knows about this bastard.
When Till first started working as an amusement park VR game attendant, he felt strange having to roleplay as someone who's known these NPCs for years. But over countless gameplay sessions, he's come to learn about them and their strange quirks and mannerisms. It got to a point where it almost was like he truly had known them for years.
And now, one of them is here.
With a touch that feels tangible, real. It creeps Till the fuck out.
"When I first became aware of my existence, all I wanted to do was live," Ivan says. "Simple enough, right? Defeat the killer. Get to see the light of the morning dawn."
"But then that became boring," Ivan says. "It felt like we were trapped in an endless loop. And I came to realize one thing."
The masked killer bleeding on the floor after being bludgeoned by Ivan's baseball bat.
"There's nothing more to this life."
An apathetic glint shining in Ivan's red eyes.
"...But then, they slipped someone who wasn't like us into our friend group, thought we were stupid enough not to notice."
A gray-haired man who literally appeared out of nowhere for the first time, sitting in the backseat of the car. Till, Ivan comes to know his name well.
"You became a part of our daily lives. Others came and went, but you stayed."
"Why do you always pick truth?" Ivan asked teasingly on one of the playthroughs that included a truth-or-dare game.
"Because you're gonna dare me to kiss you on the lips, you freak!" Till shouted, pushing him away.
"Here, I'll help," Till said as he grabbed onto one end of the cooler with two hands. Him and Mizi hauled it out of the trunk of the car together. "God, how many beers did you pack into this thing?"
"I wanted to make sure there was enough for everyone!" Mizi exclaimed.
"Why the hell am I the one holding up your umbrella?!" Till complained even as he kept holding the sun umbrella over Sua's head.
"So loud," Sua says with an emotionless face. "Quit yapping, umbrella boy."
"You wanted things to be different," Ivan continues.
It was after a game over, the player had won and left the game. Till, his avatar covered in blood, approached the masked killer to discuss something. Ivan, Mizi, and Sua stayed in the shadows to eavesdrop into the conversation.
"...Doesn't it get boring after a while? What if we could have more maps, like a haunted mansion or, or underground tunnels, or an abandoned factory–"
Till's boss poked Till right in the stab wound, saying, "Most of the guests only come here once and never return. And why do you even care? You're getting paid minimum wage. Just do your damn job, and nothing else."
"No matter how much you tried to hide it, you cared about the game. You cared about us."
Unknown kept doing things to test the reaction of characters, like "accidentally" tripping and pouring their beer all over Mizi. Stealing and throwing Sua's things into the nearby lake. Putting a beehive under Ivan's pillow.
And Till "accidentally" forgot to give out clues, leading to an early Bad Ending. The player stormed off in real life, to which Till was berated but gave a sigh of relief when his boss looked the other way.
But Ivan saw.
"I just don't like seeing people act like total assholes," Till says defensively, rubbing the back of his neck. "Who cares if their rude-ass behavior was toward people who weren't real? It just pissed me the fuck off."
"Yet, you were the only one who tried to protect us. It slowly drove me mad, feeling helpless to your own suffering…" Ivan says. "Having to watch you cave in to that bastard time and time again."
"Boss, I'm not feeling well. Can I go home early today?" Till asked.
"Do you have enough sick hours to cover your shift?"
"I should," Till snorted. "But I have a feeling that the answer is I don't."
"I didn't care about living by that point. No, all I wanted was to have my hands covered in a certain someone's blood. I wanted him to know what it was like to have everything taken from him, little by little. Piece by piece. I wanted him to suffer."
Till shivers violently at the description, chills running down his back. Like centipedes jumped into his skin. His sixth sense is screaming at him that Ivan, yes the Ivan he's come to know very well, is dangerous. Dumbly, all he can say is, "Oh."
Till quickly adds, "That's, uh…"
"But I'll spare you the details," Ivan cheerily says, breaking out of his creepy demeanor with a casual smile. He leans in and nuzzles his head against Till's cheek, like a needy puppy. "The important thing is, you don't have to go back to that awful job anymore."
"...Thanks?" Till says, half-confused and half-mortified at the same time.
It's really strange getting used to Ivan outside the same cabin-esque setting that Till has always known. But at the same time, it's not hard. Because Ivan still acts like Ivan, a charismatic knowing bastard who loves to piss Till the right amount off.
Ivan takes care of him, replacing the cold towel that lies on top of Till's head. He puts on cheesy horror movies while Till is half-delirious, and catches Till up on lost details when Till wakes up from a small nap in the middle of the film. Ivan even gets groceries without Till's help, makes more chicken porridge despite all of Till's protesting for more variety.
Till's not sure where Ivan got a credit card from, but he has a feeling it might be his boss's. Just a feeling though.
After three days, Till feels much better one morning. Like magic. He looks around for Ivan, but the man is nowhere to be seen. He immediately throws his bedsheets and pillow case into the washer, then takes a hot shower to wash away the grimy feeling of recovery.
In the middle of the shower, Till has an epiphany: What if everything had been some weird fever dream? What if Ivan wasn't real? What if Till had actually just made up Ivan becoming real and taking care of him through his flu as some sort of coping mechanism for his yearning of not wanting to be alone anymore?
The traces of Ivan in this apartment… it's like he was never here in the first place. Till, a towel wrapped around his neck, digs through the trashcan for those damn grocery store receipts, but finds nothing.
What a sick prank, Till thinks. To finally feel like he can breathe again in the world—
A knock on the door interrupts his spiraling thoughts.
Till runs to the door, flinging it open. To his surprise, not only Ivan is there, but Mizi and Sua as well.
What the hell?
"Hey!" Mizi says, pulling her sunglasses up to her forehead. "Glad to see you're all better now! You gave us a scare, even Sua was worried about you!"
Sua blinks, the same neutral expression on her face. "No, I wasn't."
Mizi winks to Till. Ivan jingles a pair of car keys in his hands.
"Come on, let's go," Ivan says. They lead Till to an expensive-looking car, which suspiciously looks like his boss's car but with a hot pink paint job.
Till is not going to ask questions.
Ivan's driving—Mizi sitting shotgun with an extra wide smile on her face. Sua leans in to turn the knob, changing the radio channel to something she likes, jazzy summer tunes. Mizi puts her sunglasses over her eyes.
"Where to?" Ivan asks everyone.
"The haunted mansion idea wasn't too bad," Sua says. Mizi giggles.
"Haunted mansion?" Mizi says.
"Seems like we hit majority vote already," Ivan says with a smirk. The engine of the car purrs.
"Fuck, if I get killed for real this time, I'm blaming you weirdos," Till curses.
"Only if you promise to haunt me forever," Ivan says teasingly. He steps on the gas pedal, and the four are off to their next adventure, having already reached the best ending of their current one.