Flag Game Chapter 21

The twenty first chapter of the Darwin's Game ~Flag Game~ novel.

## Summary

Two years ago on a summer day, Rein saw a dream where she was continually sinking into a dark sea, her body unmoving. This was the first time she saw that dream. A typhoon had passed through before dawn, and because of that the sky was clear and the cicadas were loud. Since summer break had started the week before, Rein retreated into her own air conditioned room to avoid the sun and to set up the workstation that had arrived the day before. She had spent a lot on memory and graphics, the computer itself costing nearly 1,000,000 yen, which she paid for using the mountainous allowance her extremely busy parents gave her. Her parents were both university researchers who spent more time on their research rather than being at home, causing Rein to wonder why they got married in the first place.

Leaving the box for the time being, Rein moved the computer tower next to her desk and began setting it up. She was smaller than others her age, and therefore lacked strength and stamina, which made stuff like moving heavy computers a pain for her. Turning on the computer, she was impressed at how much faster newer computers were, and upon running a benchmark program she learned it was five times faster than her previous computer. She thought about programming something as part of the test run, deciding on writing a shader mod for a crafting game that was popular across the world. Although she wasn't that interested in the game, a mod would be a good choice for a light project, and it'd appeal to her friends.

Just as she was about to use her favorite editor, an email notification popped up, causing her to wonder who it was from since there weren't that many people that would send her an email. Checking the email, she saw that it was from her father, who informed her that he'd been headhunted by a laboratory in the United States, and as such he'd be moving there from a university in Tokyo in three months. On top of that, he would be taking the opportunity to divorce his wife, and asked Rein to choose which parent to stay with. Rein noticed that a similar email explaining the situation arrived from her mother a few minutes later.

Rein weighed her options. If she went with her father, she'd be living in the United States, and while she was good at English, she thought that she'd be bullied because of her small body. On the other hand, if she stayed with her mother, things would be the same aside from the fact that her allowance would be cut in half. Rein herself didn't care either way and sighed before she fell down onto her bed. The next thing she knew, she found herself peacefully sinking in an ocean, though she didn't feel any discomfort or cold. Nevertheless, she never reached the bottom despite sinking for a while, making her realize that she'd died, as that would explain why she couldn't move and why she didn't feel anything. She wondered who'd clean up her body since there wasn't anything else except her in that ocean, but stopped thinking because she considered that a job for living people.

At that moment, line shone down into the ocean, and a group of fish swam past her. She noted that the fish that swam past her should've been extinct during the Cambrian period, and upon looking around she noticed that there was prehistoric life all around her. Rein gently landed on the soft seabed and noticed that she could move her body. She felt like she was suffocating, causing her to breath in, and air filled her body, which she wondered was a sign that she had to think, worry about things, and suffer again. Kicking off from the seabed, Rein headed toward the surface.