I suddenly remembered what the boy had said to the shrimp.
The woman had killed her husband's mistress, then fled their old home and moved into an apartment.
So was tomorrow, the day of the dinosaur exhibition, when she would make her move?
The shrimp had no choice but to agree.
The woman wanted him to lure the other woman to the dinosaur exhibition's emergency exit. She seemed to have already surveyed the place and studied its layout.
An ordinary child probably wouldn't have been able to do that, but this was a game.
The shrimp memorized the crude map and the woman's plan.
He lay down on the bed, and a new day arrived.
The woman sent the shrimp out of the house, and they set off separately.
The shrimp waited at a library not far from home until Xiaomeng's father showed up. The man drove over with a young woman in the passenger seat—his mistress.
The two NPCs chatted, without needing the shrimp to say anything.
That atmosphere only made the shrimp feel more uneasy. He kept debating whether he should tell them about the woman's plan.
The story had clearly presented him with a choice: side with the NPC who was his mother, or the father NPC he'd just met.
From a game design perspective, either choice could lead to death. The game's creators could easily have made the father a sacrificial character who was doomed to die no matter what. If the shrimp sided with him, the mother would surely kill him.
This wasn't reality. He couldn't change his fate with his own cleverness. All a player could do was make choices within the framework written by the creators and head toward different endings.
The shrimp was troubled.
This line of thought confirmed beyond doubt that