In game

It was like another form of suffocation. If the previous twenty years had been drowning underwater, unable to breathe, now it was like being buried in earth. When most of a person's body is buried in soil with only the head left above ground, what they can do is clear. Using only the eyes and mouth—the one part still able to move—they can cry out to be saved, or else simply watch what is happening around them. If even the mouth is covered by earth, they can only look on with their eyes. Trembling in terror at the soil piling up little by little around them. The eyes sting, but what can be done. What would it mean to close them now. Even though it makes no difference whether the eyes are open or shut, still they had opened them. Yes. The eyes had to be closed. Tears flow from eyes packed full of sand. Only then, facing the fact that all hope is ended, do they close their eyes.

It is only a matter of timing—for some, the strength to make a sound still remains; for others, the voice can no longer be raised, and a moment comes when even keeping the eyes open is too much to bear. So they close their eyes and merely wish for one last hope. Wishing someone would pull them out. Pull me out.

The bustling noises, the shouting, the droning hum of machines scrape at the nerves. Now what is there to do? For one whose hands and feet are all bound, who can do nothing but conserve what little breath remains and listen to the sounds. What difference does it make whether one keeps a grip on one's sanity at a time like this? Or is it better to breathe in the soil quickly and die in agony? Or should one summon the last of one's strength even now and attempt escape? Or should one use what may be the final breath to cry out, "Please save me"?

Probably none of these can be called the right answer. To begin with, this is not a situation in which sound judgment is possible, and does anyone who would rescue me even exist? When in all this time spent being buried in earth, not a single soul has come to save me? It is a laughable thing. Because they are all wretched souls thrashing in hell. Each too occupied to sleep, struggling ceaselessly just to keep from being sucked into their own pits of mud and the depths of their own lakes. The truly fortunate ones have somehow climbed aboard a small boat, but even they are in no position to reach out and haul someone else up. The little boat already holds his whole family, and the moment he extends a hand, that small craft might capsize and plunge the entire family into the water.

It is a desperate gamble, then. Either you struggle with all your might until you can struggle no more, your neck barely free, or you must escape this sinking, cursed land.

What drove people to despair was this: when they had finally, painfully escaped the lake, the land that had looked like hope was itself a swamp where the feet sank deep with every step. They had thought things were a little better, but now they had arrived at a bog that only pulls you in deeper the harder you strain to free your feet. They must have realized their mistake too late. They had thought that just getting out of the lake would make things better, yet a greater danger lay waiting. The only hope was to use, as a lever, the sparse and scattered tree trunks one could grab to keep from sinking. If only they could climb up onto a single healthy tree and escape the mud pit, then they might have the leisure to rest and brush off the filth and soil clinging to their bodies. But the healthy tree root before them could never be reached no matter how far the hand stretched, so some challengers, resolved to die, made for the tree, accepting that they would sink deeper. Just one step. Just two steps. With the desperate resolve to push a little further.

And they died. With one or two steps they sank into the swamp and died, and no matter how they flailed within the bog pit, there was nothing to serve as a foothold. What did they dream of as they died? Was it the days of the lake, when at least they could breathe if they swam? Or was it regret over their own decision to take those one or two steps? Or was it a curse upon their own fate, flung into this accursed mire?

In truth, none of it could be any consolation. Their story will be conveyed to no one anyway, and they will simply be devoured by the swamp, becoming food for the creatures that dwell there. From the rotting corpses a foul stench seethes. Was the hope they wished for something grand? What was it they did wrong? The sin of trying to defy fate? Fate had commanded them to become Sisyphus. These people, born without any fault, must roll the stone from the moment they live until they die—and is the desire to be free of that stone a wrong thing?

Ironically, those who became rotting corpses became the freest of all. No responsibility of rolling any stone remains for them, no suffering, no agony of having to thrash in a garbage-strewn mire. A curse for the sake of what? Those who came here without knowing why often ask. A curse for the sake of what. But God does not answer.

Now only one conclusion remains. This game ends only when that god is killed. In a place where the rules of the game, the reasons, the purpose are all unknown, the game ends only when the designer of this place is killed. A simple conclusion. A conclusion that admits no compromise.