[Before reading: 1. I accept all criticism, and I hope everyone will refrain from arguing in the comments. 2. Paragraph comments contain spoilers, so click with caution if that bothers you. 3. There is a lot of foreshadowing, so the characters' personalities may seem inexplicable at first. 4. The two leads have met a few times before. 5. I'm a new author. If you dislike the top's or bottom's personality, blame my poor writing rather than insulting the fictional characters. 6. There's no need to announce that you're dropping the novel. Perhaps we'll meet again someday. Thank you for your support (//∇//)]
A bus traveled along a winding mountain road that stretched beyond sight. Gray smoke shrouded everything around it, and only its dim headlights illuminated a small patch of road ahead.
Seven people sat on the bus. As it jolted along, they slowly opened their eyes.
"Where the fuck is this?" The first to speak was a fierce-looking man in his thirties. His hair was cropped to half an inch, and everything about him warned people not to mess with him.
"A bus? Why am I on a bus?"
"Where are we? I was at home. Who are all of you?"
The bus instantly erupted into a clamor. None of them could stay calm after finding themselves on an unfamiliar bus in the blink of an eye.
"Quiet," said a young man in a hoodie sitting near the door. "I think I hear something."
"What fucking sound? I don't hear-" the fierce-looking man swore.
Before he could finish, his expression froze. He had heard it!
He wasn't the only one. A voice reached everyone's ears, a mechanical female voice like the announcements on an ordinary bus.
[Ding-dong-Bus 444 will arrive at its destination in half an hour. Welcome to the game, players.]
"A game?" The young man in the hoodie looked up and scanned the bus, but found no speakers or similar equipment.
"Cheap tricks." The fierce-looking man sneered and rose from his seat, storming toward the driver's seat. "Stop the bus right now. I don't have time to play these games with you."
Determined to teach this suspected kidnapper of a driver a lesson, the fierce-looking man rolled up his sleeves and approached the driver's seat, ready to unleash a torrent of abuse.
But the driver's seat was empty.
"Hey, what's wrong?" the young man in the hoodie asked when he saw him standing motionless.
The fierce-looking man turned and walked back, looking even grimmer. "This fucking bus drives itself. The steering wheel's locked, and there aren't any brakes. Why haven't the traffic cops done anything about it?"
"What the hell is going on?"
"Then how do we stop it?"
"So once the traffic cops spot this illegal bus, we'll be saved?"
"No, something's wrong."
The speaker was a young woman in a loose white T-shirt. She wore glasses, and years of staying indoors had left her skin an unhealthy shade of pale.
"What do you mean?" asked the young man in the hoodie.
"Look outside. That isn't fog. It looks more like..." The girl with glasses frowned, spending a long moment searching for the right words. "Like the ashes left after burning paper."
A middle-aged man sitting by the window leaned against it to look outside, then suddenly let out a terrified scream.
"What? See a ghost?" The fierce-looking man snorted. He looked old enough. How was he more cowardly than these youngsters?
The middle-aged man pointed out the window, trembling. "Outside... there are monsters outside."
The fierce-looking man sneered. "What monsters? You must be hallucinating."
Then he leaned against the window just as the middle-aged man had-and found himself face-to-face with a zombie clinging to the other side.
The bus wasn't moving fast. The zombie kept pace at a jog, its two arms, rotted down to the bone, gripping the window tightly. Its mouth gaped in an enraged howl, and the eyes glaring at him were clouded and bloodshot. Maggots crawled in and out of its blue-green face.
It looked like an office drone late for work who couldn't catch the bus.
The fierce-looking man's expression changed, and he abruptly stumbled two steps backward.
"You saw it too, didn't you?" the middle-aged man asked urgently. "That monster-isn't it one of those zombies from TV?"
They could almost smell the rotten stench through the window. Large patches of lividity covered the thing's face. No matter how they looked at it, it didn't resemble a living person.
"Yeah, I saw it. It's nothing special." The fierce-looking man's face was stiff, but he feigned composure to salvage some dignity. "Only moderately scary."
"It looks like this bus won't stop until we reach our destination." The girl with glasses turned her gaze away from the window, her expression equally grim. After a moment's thought, she added, "We can't break a window and escape, either. Not with monsters outside that could kill us at any moment."
The fierce-looking man stopped clamoring to get off the bus. What he had just seen had been far too visually overwhelming.
Gray smoke enveloped the world beyond the windows, just as the girl with glasses had suspected: everyone could see yellow joss paper fluttering through the air.
A horde of marathon-running zombies kept pace beside the bus. Missing arms and legs, the monsters chased their vehicle like fans mobbing an idol at the airport.
When he had leaned against the window earlier, he had caught a zombie opening its mouth wide to yell at him. Apparently finding its dangling intestines inconvenient, it had simply flung that length of gut over its shoulder.
A grotesque, twisted joke.
The fierce-looking man's expression darkened. Being treated like a dish on the zombies' menu felt awful.
"Young lady, what do you make of our situation?" From her earlier remarks, the middle-aged man had sensed that she knew more about this sort of thing than they did.
The girl with glasses considered it, then said, "Unless I'm mistaken, it may be just as that female voice said. We've been placed inside some kind of game."
"Like an infinite-flow scenario or an escape game?" The young man in the hoodie had read webnovels too. He had simply never expected to experience one himself.
The middle-aged man gave an embarrassed smile. "I don't really understand that stuff."
The couple, who had remained silent until now, exchanged a glance and offered, "Like an escape room?"
The girl with glasses nodded. "The only difference is that losing might cost you your life."
Everyone shuddered. For a while, the bus fell silent, each of them occupied with their own thoughts.
The young man in the hoodie looked outside again. The fierce-looking man frowned. "Kid, keep looking and you'll wet the bed tonight."
The young man in the hoodie gave him a helpless look, then sighed. "I never imagined something this extraordinary would happen in my otherwise ordinary eighteenth year."
The players: ...
What was there to be proud of?!
[Ding-dong-Checking player count: seven.] [Checking game location: Uninhabited Village.] [Checking game format: players must discover it themselves.] [Players detected as first-time participants. Distributing game panels and game identities.] [Enjoy the game!] [We look forward to your successful completion!]
"Uninhabited Village?" the middle-aged man murmured. The name alone sounded chilling.
"Did you all hear that just now?" asked the young man in the hoodie.
"No shit. I'm not deaf," the fierce-looking man swore. "This lousy game won't even tell us the rules. How are we supposed to play?"
"Is that really the point?!" The girl with glasses's expression shifted. "That voice just said there were seven players."
The fierce-looking man, the middle-aged man, the young man in the hoodie, the girl with glasses, and a couple.
Where had the seventh player come from?