I found myself hesitating outside the door to Anna's room. I was nervous, really nervous. Multiple reasons for this were floating around in my head but the one that was the loudest was 'what if she doesn't like me?' I smelled okay, my teeth were fine and as far as I could tell my dress was okay. I wished there was a mirror in the hallway so I could check and see if I hadn't accidentally messed up my makeup. Maybe this was a bad idea. I mean she did kill a bunch of people after all. No, I had to go in. To know that she was so close but I lacked the willpower to see her would drive me insane. Yes, I needed to open the door, but on the other hand it couldn't hurt to check over everything first.
"Are you just going to stand out there like a forlorn beggar or are you going to come in," a voice asked me from the otherside of the door.
My choice had been made for me, I nervously swallowed and opened the door.
There are very few words to describe the woman I saw sitting at the table in front of me. No, there are no words to describe the overwhelming radiance of this woman. She was not beautiful, that word was not big enough. She was not ethereal, that word implied an insubstantial quality, like she was seconds away from disappearing, the woman before me made the things around her more real simply by existing. She was not pretty, that took away from the fact that she was also handsome.
I felt my brain fail to comprehend her. Every adjective I tried to assign to her failed to capture her depth. She was not beautiful, ethereal, pretty, or handsome. She was simply Anna. To describe her as anything else was impossible with the English language.
It was like the first night I saw her all over again, somehow deeper yet hopeless all the same. I was unsure if my legs would hold out, I almost instinctively fell to my knees.
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you in person. Feels like forever since we had our last little chat," she said.
I hadn't considered her voice, the original game was unvoiced after all, once again I abruptly fell in love. Every word was somehow a symphony in its own right when spoken by her. In the simple word "forever" you could almost hear the melodic notes of a flute over the low reverberations of a violin. Even better were the words "you" and "we" which felt like a performance from the world's best orchestra exclusively for me.
Words failed me, all I could do was stare at her in wonder.
"Please do sit down, I'd be a bad host if I made my guest stand the whole time."
I did as she said wordlessly.
"So then, I believe introductions are in order, although it's more like a reintroduction in my case. My name is Anna Rostova. It is a pleasure to meet you."
I tried to collect my wits and say something coherent. It took me a moment but Anna didn't seem to mind. I cleared my throat and tried my best not to stutter while saying,"my name is Kitty Bezuheva. I've been looking forward to meeting you as well."
Anna narrowed her eyes at this,"I know very well whose shell you're occupying. I want your name though, the person in there who's inhabiting the shell."
"I don't remember. I don't remember a lot of things about myself actually and for some reason trying to think about it is impossible," I confessed.
She furrowed her eyebrows a bit at this revelation,"I see. Disappointing. I was hoping for a pseudonym at the very least. Nonetheless, you must still be very confused so feel free to ask me any questions you wish. Do save the big picture questions for later. There's quite a bit I cannot tell you at this stage."
I was unsure of where to start. Even ignoring the big picture questions I still had so, so many questions to ask and from the look in her eyes I was only getting so many shots at this.
"Why me? You clearly gained some level of sentience a while ago. Why pick me?"
"You're teetering on the edge of a big question there, Princess. I will answer this question but not fully. I saw many young women play through my story, none of them matched her quite as much as you. Personality wise the two of you are almost a perfect match. As for who she is, well I hope you understand that that's considered a big picture question."
"What is this world, I don't understand why a visual novel character gained sentience."
"Hmm, this one is a bit harder to explain. Say you flipped a coin and it landed on heads, then you went back in time and flipped the coin again, it would land on heads again. This world is based on a very similar principle. If time is rewound over and over, barring any outside influence, things will play out exactly the same over and over again. This is how so many people could view and "play" this world over and over again with no discrepancies. Since there is no user input everyone would experience the same sequence of coin flips. Since everything is predetermined, what would happen if we removed the person flipping the coins? With no one to flip the coin it would forever lay just where it is, sometimes the coin was already on heads, in which case nothing changes. But what if the coin was already on tails? Would we finally have broken out of a predetermined fate?"
I gave a bit of thought to what she was proposing. It was nihilistic to view human behavior as a coin flip but she was the one who lived through this, I trusted her deduction. I still had a question," so in this metaphor what is the equivalent of removing the person who flips the coin?"
"It is not a perfect analogy, if it was that simple I would have ended this farce a long, long time ago. However, I think if you're the one to do it, it can be done."
"So how do I do this?"
"Well that's easy, you just need to dispatch the three male leads. Andrei, Leo, and Nikolai. You've met them all already I presume. The first will be Nikolai, it shouldn't be difficult. Just make sure to do it before the wedding. As a little bonus I'll even become your lover, how does that sound," when she finished answering this unanswerable question she rested her elbows on the table and placed her chin on her intertwined fingers.
It was like a shock to the system. I was already willing to do so much for her with no strings attached. What could I possibly not do if the reward was her? A nagging little voice in my head told me that murder was possibly the one thing I couldn't do but I shoved it aside.
I stood up from my chair, hands still on the table, and declared,"of course I'll do it. Anything for you."
Anna didn't say anything in response, instead she just gave me her usual radiant smile.