I've always been the type to believe in karma. What goes around comes around, y'know? Well, I have no idea who exactly I wronged so terribly to be put into this situation, but I hope they're satisfied with literally the deadliest problem I've ever been faced with in my 22 years of life. To be able to truly explain my current predicament, I suppose we'll have to go back. Back to when I found the catalyst for my troubles. Back to that night a week ago when I found this stupid game.

It had been a Saturday night, the kind that's in the middle of summer break and hellish hot but you have nothing else to do but lounge about in your underwear and lay in bed with your phone or laptop because doing anything else would risk you getting heatstroke. I was on my laptop, scrolling through the forums of my favorite visual novel site to find something new to play. I had been into visual novels ever since middle school and now that I was in college, they were the only thing that was keeping me sane inside and outside of school. Although I love all kinds of visual novels, I have a particular love for those of the horror genre. It's kind of strange because I cannot take any other form of horror. Movies and t.v. shows were a big no. So were regular video games. Haunted houses too. I would cry and shriek at any other form of horror but with visual novels, I could actually enjoy them and be scared. Well, both scared and not scared. It's hard to explain and also currently not the point.

I had been scrolling through the recommendations section of the forms when I stumbled upon a thread that caught my attention. All posts in the recommendations section had to be titled with the name of the visual novel, so it was easy to find multiple threads for recommendations of the same game. However, this thread had been the only mention I had ever found of this game despite it being in the horror genre.

[Spiral Of Obsession] had been the name of the thread and visual novel. The plot of the game sounded simple enough. 'Fujisaki Akari, a psychology major, was in love with her best friend and roommate, Setsuna. On the night she finally builds up the courage to confess to Setsuna, Akari ends up coming across three of her classmates which somehow creates a strange phenomenon in which Akari can return to the morning of the day she tries to confess to Setsuna which she has called Reset. At first, she uses it to retry her confession to Setsuna as many times as she wants but soon finds herself having to use it for a different reason. Saving Setsuna's life from her insane secret admirers. However, with each Reset Akari does, the past only seems to keep repeating.'

Essentially, it could be described as a yandere survival horror maybe, but it wasn't your life at stake. It sounded really interesting and when I actually found the game it was on sale for cheap. So there wasn't really a reason for me to not at least try it. The reviews for it on the thread were pretty good too. So, I bought it, downloaded it, opened up the game, and started my first playthrough.

I then spent the next week stuck in my room and beyond obsessed with it, going through hours of content with an attitude that would've been really helpful when I had to cram for my exams but I guess that's not important enough to warrant this amount of focus and dedication. Anyway, to say that I began to obsess over this visual novel is a bit of an understatement. The characters, the storyline, the art, all of them were just great to me. When though the content was pretty dark, the small moments of comedy actually fit in and helped ease the tension. Then your soul would be snatched right out of your body.

Rather than just being a plot device, Setsuna was actually a lovable and interesting character. The player was able to easily see why Akari would fall in love with her. Which made it all the more gut-wrenching when even when you as Akari and the player had to see her die over, and over, and over again no matter what you did. Whoever made this game always had to do it in the most sadistic way possible too. They'd lure you into a false sense of security after you passed a death event, everything would be all fine and dandy and you'd be thinking "Finally, finally she's actually safe.". Then the kill comes and you can't even fathom it for a while. You're just stuck staring at the screen, rereading the text, and looking in pure astonishment at the newest CG of Setsuna's lifeless corpse. Then you'd have to Reset again while mentally screeching at the top of your lungs.

The best thing about [Spiral Of Obsession], in my opinion, was the use of Reset as a storytelling device and for character development. Because not only did Akari remember everything from every Reset, she remembered everything from each Ending for all the routes too. This meant that after every playthrough of the game when you started another save file, Akari would remember literally from your last playthrough and any before that. It did take a lot of extra coding and writing, but dear God did it pay off. It was basically the 'Spiral' part of [Spiral Of Obsession]. Akari would just continually lose her fucking mind over the course of each playthrough. Which was why it was the perfect set up for the game's True End which would only unlock after you completed each route and all of its endings. It was tedious, mind-boggling, and basically drove me up the wall but when I finally got to the beginning of the True End I got so excited.

Excited enough to the point that I forgot that I was running purely off of caffeine and passed out before I could officially begin the True End for the entire game. Which brings me to my current situation. I had woken up, ready to actually play the route when I realized I wasn't in my room.

Or my bed.

Or my body.

At first, I thought it was a dream. A side effect of the sleep deprivation I had for so long. Eager to wake up, I decided to try the classic pinch yourself method. Except it hurt. Hurt even more the second time. Definitely not a normal symptom of being in a dream. I began to grow more and more concerned as I gazed around the bedroom I was now resting in. A familiar aesthetic I had seen only in the form of a background image for various scenes in a game. The bedroom background for a very, very important character. One that was literally the most important character of a certain game. So, with threads of denial still willfully sewn into my heart, I stood form the bed and went up to a full-body mirror that rested across the room. I had expected to scream or sob or some other dramatic form of expression of my woes but only a sigh came out harshly through my nose as I inspected myself in the mirror. A familiar yet unfamiliar reflection looked back at me.

It was official. Somehow, most possibly in the form of a highly imaginative author's sick twisted idea for a story, I had become someone I couldn't even be paid to live as.

I, Marianna, had possessed the body of Setsuna. The death-prone main character of [Spiral Of Obsession].

Fuck. Me.