Parallel World Game Developer

Chapter 57: Chapter 57: A Childhood Friend

[BONUS Chapter]

Now, they finally realized the undeniable truth.

Their kid was actually making a staggering amount of money.

Beside him, Thomas remained silent for a long time before heavily patting Ethan’s shoulder. "You’ve really grown up!"

The shoulders of the son sitting next to him had suddenly grown broader. They were strong enough to stand in front of them and block the oncoming wind and rain.

When Thomas was young, he had honestly believed that one day he would achieve something great. But the ruthless reality of the world had easily capsized those dreams.

Life was like a tiny, fragile rowboat caught in a raging storm. It swayed violently on the open sea, yet still fiercely pushed toward the safety of the harbor.

In his youth, he had heard a saying that a man’s life was divided into three distinct stages.

The first stage was shamelessly grinding to earn money.

The second stage was using that earned money to buy social respect.

The third stage was naturally generating money simply by relying on that earned respect.

It wasn’t until he grew up and got married that he realized those three stages were a lie. There was only one stage in his entire life, and it was forever trapped in the first.

He personally believed that a different version of that saying was far more appropriate for an ordinary man like himself.

The true three stages of life were accepting the absolute ordinariness of your parents, accepting the absolute ordinariness of yourself, and finally, accepting the absolute ordinariness of your children.

He had finally made peace with the idea that his son was just an ordinary person.

He assumed Ethan would earn a modest salary, marry a girl he loved, and live a

completely normal life.

So when the blinding joy of this massive, unimaginable success suddenly fell into his lap, it only made him feel completely detached from reality. The joy buried at the absolute bottom of his heart felt like bubbles rising from the deep sea.

It was frantic, rapid, and gurgling violently toward the surface.

Thomas quickly took two steps toward the window, unconsciously rubbing the moisture out of his eyes...

Martha was slightly taken aback by her husband’s reaction at first.

Then, she just offered a soft, quiet smile.

"By the way, how exactly are you going to build that hunting game?" Thomas’s voice drifted back from the window. His vocal cords sounded thick, as if they were coated in sand.

"You just admitted you’ve never hunted a day in your life, so can you actually make it authentic? Even though I don’t play video games, I know the people who do definitely want to experience a realistic environment."

"I know how to research the data, and honestly, that’s exactly why I have you!" Ethan laughed.

"Just tell me everything you remember from your old hunting trips. I promise I’ll put it directly into the code!"

"I don’t know shit!" Thomas scolded with a watery laugh. "It’s been decades, so I’ve forgotten most of it by now."

"Just tell me the basics. I’ll fill in the gaps with research!" Ethan encouraged.

"I really don’t know much anymore, so I can only give you a few pointers. You’ll have to figure the rest out yourself."

"If I get something wrong, you need to correct it immediately, because I really have forgotten almost everything," Thomas insisted. He kept claiming he had forgotten, but his eyes were shining with a brilliant, undeniable spark.

Just moments ago, he had felt as if he were walking with a much lighter, brisker step.

A heavy weight had finally lifted off his shoulders.

During the New Year holiday break, Thomas actually sat down and attempted to play one of the games Ethan had developed.

He had originally felt that all the crushing burdens of his life had vanished. He thought there was nothing in the world that could possibly anger or distress him.

But after playing those titles, he discovered that the three stages of life were actually a lie. Having a child brought endless distress.

Not long ago, his son had taken all that distress away. Yet within a single afternoon of gaming, he had dumped it all right back onto his plate.

"Is this seriously the game that you made...?" Thomas yelled. He was so blindingly furious he genuinely wanted to flip the living room table.

He had been a decent, hardworking man his entire life, and he had never committed a single crime. So how exactly did he raise a son who would design something this psychologically torturous?!

Ethan: "..."

Martha: Honestly, seeing your father play this game is making my chest hurt. Thank god the man doesn’t have a heart condition.

Ethan: ...I literally told you to stop playing it. But you insisted on trying...

Ethan felt incredibly wronged. He had explicitly warned his dad multiple times to put the controller down.

But the stubborn old man insisted on trying the game. He claimed he wanted to better understand his son’s career.

"Look me in the eye and tell me the truth. Have you ever been physically assaulted when you walk out in public?" Thomas demanded.

"The player base is actually incredibly polite in person. Whenever they recognize me on the street, they just politely ask for a group photo," Ethan smiled, maintaining his absolute professional composure.

Everyone just furiously vented their rage on their keyboards. No one was actually going to throw a punch in real life.

"How about we try a different game? The other ones in the catalog really aren’t this uncomfortable..." Ethan offered.

"Even though it pisses me off, I think the real issue is just that I don’t understand gaming online," Thomas said, shaking his head. "Millions of people clearly love your games, so there has to be a legitimate reason why they enjoy them."

It was a classic reality of getting older. He genuinely wanted to blend in and understand the culture, but there was a massive, undeniable generation gap separating the two.

"I am just relieved that you’ve built a successful, promising future for yourself. Especially when I compare you to Yor... it makes me incredibly grateful," Thomas sighed heavily.

"Yor?" Ethan paused, completely taken aback.

His brain immediately began frantically rummaging through the deeply buried memories of both his previous life and the original owner of this body. The brain automatically started searching for the corresponding content.

"Hmm... Do you still remember her? The little girl you used to play with when you were a kid?" Martha’s voice drifted out from the kitchen, punctuated by a heavy sigh and the rhythmic chopping of vegetables.

"A terrible fire burned almost half her body. She barely survived, but a massive portion of her skin and face were permanently destroyed."

When Ethan was young, his parents had packed up and moved away from the rural village where they had grown up. They relocated the family to this small county town in hopes of building a better life.

But in reality, they had simply moved from one crushing, dead-end mountain town to another.

"Last year, her family’s house caught fire, so they had to travel to the central city hospital for specialized burn treatment," Martha explained from the kitchen.

"Renting an apartment in the city was way too expensive for them. Since the primary skin grafts are mostly finished, they just rented a cheap apartment back here in our county."

"I actually bumped into her when I was walking to the market a few days ago... Alas..." Martha sighed sadly.

Ethan’s thoughts immediately drifted. He suddenly remembered that in his previous life on Earth, there had been a girl with the exact same tragic background.

Back then, when he had just graduated and was struggling to survive the brutal corporate crunch, his parents likely hadn’t wanted to burden him with the depressing news.

By the time he finally learned she had moved back into his neighborhood, the girl had already suffered a complete psychological collapse.

The only update he ever received was the sudden, tragic news of her death.

She had been his closest childhood friend. Yet in a single night, he had felt a profound, horrifying emptiness swallow everything.

Perhaps young people possessed a kind of blinding arrogance. They believed they could conquer the heavens and the earth, and that everything in the world existed purely to follow in their wake.

In his previous life, the exact moment the news of her death reached him, he felt like he had been violently shaken awake from a long, foolish dream.

When they were kids, the two of them used to hold hands, standing as tall as they could. They would proudly declare, ’We are going to be best friends forever.’

"Dad, I’m going to go see her," Ethan said, raising his head firmly.

"You absolutely should. Go try and enlighten the poor girl," Martha sighed, wiping her hands on a towel.

"I haven’t seen her go outside in half a year. She’s living right upstairs in Apartment 403."

"Anyone who suffered through that kind of trauma would completely collapse inward."

Ethan quickly ran down to the local market to buy a premium basket of New Year’s fruit. He then walked back up the stairwell and knocked gently on the door of Apartment 403.

"Hello? Is anyone home?"

It was currently two o’clock in the afternoon. However, the hallway remained completely silent, with absolutely no response from inside the apartment.

Ethan knocked on the heavy wooden door a second time. His mother had explicitly mentioned that the girl hadn’t left the apartment in half a year.

Ethan stood alone in the quiet hallway, holding the heavy fruit basket in one hand.

Perhaps because he already knew the tragic trajectory of the future, standing directly outside his childhood friend’s door left him feeling incredibly lost and confused.

He knew exactly why she was going to die. She was entirely consumed by severe depression and total social withdrawal.

If there was genuinely a single thing in this world capable of piercing through the walls of a deeply isolated, broken heart, Ethan firmly believed that video games were the key.

He suddenly remembered a very specific masterpiece from his previous life. Celeste.

There were no massive, overarching narrative missions in that game. There was absolutely no need to save the world.

The entire story was simply about an incredibly ordinary person. They were just desperately trying to overcome a seemingly ordinary, personal challenge.

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Almost a hundred stones... Not bad, not bad. But, it could be better, fellas!~

... If we achieve 200+ power stones, I will drop another bonus Chapter.

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