THE CURSED GAMER

Chapter 483: A Hoax or The Real Deal?

—

Kimi sat before a piano, her fingers flying by the keys. The cosmos shone outside the window, revealing lights coming from distant worlds, civilizations, where people lived without ever knowing the song.

A small smile graced her lips, and a sweet voice left them, “City of stars… Are you shining just for me?” she sang ‘City of Stars’, hitting the high notes as she closed her eyes and smiled wider.

“A look in somebody's eyes, To light up the skies, To open the world and send it reeling, A voice that says, I'll be here, And you'll be alright, I don't care if I know, Just where I will go, 'Cause all that I need is this crazy feeling, A rat-tat-tat on my heart…”

Her tone slowed until her smile thinned as she finished with a few last lines, “City of stars, Are you shining just for me? City of stars, You never shined so brightly…”

When the play ended, her fingers stopped, and her smile had vanished entirely. She stared out the window, sighing in remembrance.

“I thought I was used to the passage of time,” she said to herself. “Looks like seeing him recently made me all the more impatient.”

She had learned to wait. She was forced to wait. So she accepted it and did just that. But her patience had reached its limit two years ago when she sent a part of herself to the future. That Kimi had seen Neji and spent four years with him in a time loop. The memories from those years were making him miss a lot more.

She hates playing this song. But she loves this song itself. It reminded her of the two years she spent with him on the Japan tour. That night after he had punished her for forcing herself on him before, he sat near the window like this and stared at the night sky while playing this same song. It had looked extremely weird to Kimi back then, as he was only a kid, the melancholy didn’t suit his face. But now she knew why. 

She had been slightly conflicted when she learned that he was a reincarnator for the first time. All of her initial guilt about him being a kid felt wrong, though of course the feeling didn’t even last for minutes. She loved him too much to care.

All that guilt came crashing back to her when she sent a part of herself to the future and she learned about his previous life in detail. For a young man to go through such a lifestyle, and just when his 2nd life was looking great, she went and ruined it for him.

It filled her with a sense of responsibility to make it right. If her love for him was ever wavering even a little – it was not – this knowledge made it return full force.

Kimi sat before the piano in silence, staring out at the stars in silence. How long passed as she was reminiscing over old memories? She didn’t know. She only returned to her senses when an alarm-type spell rang in her head.

A presence that had vanished a year ago was sending a signal again.

The Forge of Creation was a sacred space where the Will of the Omniverse resided. Even Kimi couldn’t spy on what happened there. So when ‘Prima’ went in there, she had lost track of him. But now, his presence was back to the sensible world.

“Mhm…” Kimi stood up as she walked away from the piano. She hesitated for a moment and then continued walking, walking into her room, closing the door, as she stood in front of a round crystal. 

“Show.” She said. The crystal went cloudy until it showed a starry figure. He stood in the air with the Planet Anodyne in the background, with a luminescent Anodite beside him.

Kimi’s heart skipped a beat as his head turned slowly. Red starry eyes focused on the air as he looked… back at her. Long, white hair cascaded down his shoulders, which made Kimi’s breathing stop.

Back in the Naruto world, that’s how he looked. She knew that because she was there, the part that she sent in the future had descended into the body of Yugito Nii, the two-tailed Jinchuriki. Before her canonical death, she had watched him for a while, as Neji Hyuuga, with long white hair. Here, despite lacking most physical features, this Celestialsapien looked just like him back then.

He tilted his head… and then his hair color changed as if it had never been white before. Now it was black, matching his cosmic body. Kimi blinked. Had her eyes just tricked her? No, that couldn’t be true.

No, then why would he change it suddenly? And he was clearly looking back at her through the crystal.

Also, “A celestialsapien…?” It spoke volumes that she noticed his race after she noticed his hair. Regardless, she wondered how someone from another race could evolve into a celestialsapien. She herself had tried replicating the Omnitrix a lot of times, she had quite a few prototypes, but she had never managed to copy the DNA of a celestialsapien. It just didn’t work.

“Maybe it’s just a lookalike?” He did have a weird shape in his chest that the true race of Celestialsapiens doesn’t have.

Then again, it was the Gamer System. Did it have any limits at all? She doubted it.

She frowned at the man’s featureless face as he too stared at her. When they just kept staring at each other in just silence, a line of lips formed on his face to show that he was smiling gently. Instead of a staredown of power, he seemed to find this situation… amusing? No, Kimi realized the correct term was ‘romantic’.

Kimi scowled, “I’ll kill you if you look at me like that.”

His smile widened, and features, oh so very familiar, took shape on his face. His lips moved, and comprehensive words left them for the first time. “I wouldn’t mind if it’s you. I deserve death and maybe a bit more for all I’ve made you go through, Kimi.”

“....”

Kimi stared at him in silence. Her lips opened, but she closed them. She looked to the side, staring at the wall and blinking, before she turned back to the crystal. A large part of her had expected to find his face back to featureless, proving everything she heard as a hallucination, but it didn’t happen.

His body was still starry, but his features were clear. His hair was white, his eyes blue and his smile too familiar.

“Unfortunately, I’m kind of in a pickle here, so we can’t get down to that right away,” he waved his hand at the surroundings. She hadn’t even noticed it before. 

Abstract Entities surrounded him like bees drawn to honey.

More surprisingly, the army wasn’t led by Buddha but by someone even bigger. Huh, was turning into a celestialsapien this big of a deal? She never knew.

Class Zero Entity, Entropy Embodiment stood with an army of Anti-Monitors by his command, as well as a couple of high-class Abstract Entities. The situation must be something really big if these players were gathered here in one place in this serious time of war.

“Who are you talking to?” asked Buddha, who stood right beside a titanic metal form that was Entropy. “I suggest you answer our inquiry instead of wasting time. Have you truly killed all the Celestialsapiens in the Forge of Creation?”

Kimi stared at the crystal for a few seconds. Then, she ran into the living room to fetch Godmother, as she teleported away. Her heart beat like a drum, not out of fear that she was going to a place filled with dangerous Abstract Entities, but out of sheer fucking hope. She hoped those words were not a hoax by his weird powers.

She hoped… she really, really prayed that he wasn’t a fake.

**

**

**

Read the next chapter right away, along with an entire month's worth, ahead in my Patreon.

Link: Patreon.com/Master4thWall