༺ A Study in Grey ༻
｢ Sender: KIM573 ｣
｢ Subject: To the Story Department, please read the contents of this email if you don’t want to ruin the game any further. ｣
『 This game’s illustrations, graphics, and optimization are more or less flawless. Nearly everything about the game is perfect.
Except for one thing— the story that your department is responsible for.
To be honest, with the quality of this game, as long as the story isn’t abysmally bad, it should be an absolute hit.
However, that doesn’t mean you can neglect the consistency of the narrative as you have done… well, consistently, unironically.
Let’s set aside the fact that all main characters are turned into females. We can just brush it off as a unique feature of the game. However, the fact that the majority of the characters seem to have low intelligence is something I simply cannot overlook.
To make the protagonist shine, you should’ve planned out a more well-thought-out trick. What’s the point of nerfing the intelligence of practically all the characters, except for the protagonist, in a mystery game?
And why do all the events that unfold feel like a sloppy photocopy of the Sherlock Holmes series?
A late 19th-century London with supernatural abilities. Detectives tracing bizarre incidents in this urban fantasy setting that the game world revolves around.
With such a captivating premise, I truly don’t understand why you are basically fumbling the execution itself.
There are countless characters and stories you could draw inspiration from, yet you are stubbornly fixated on the Sherlock Holmes series.
And although the game spans from the late 19th to early 20th century, does it make sense that the detectives don’t even know about fingerprints? Surely, this isn’t an attempt at being historically accurate, right? If it is then you have successfully failed.
The London Police adopted the fingerprint investigation paradigm in 1901. Even in the fundamental Sherlock Holmes series, the ones written by Arthur Conan Doyle himself, the importance of fingerprints was first mentioned not by Holmes, but by a constable instead.
For ordinary people, maybe it’s excusable, but even the professional detectives of that era not knowing the importance of fingerprints is a glaring historical error.
Of course, this isn’t the only issue present. Your story has a myriad of consistency issues and historical inaccuracies.
However, the most glaring issue, the icing on the cake of this clusterfuck, is the ultimate villain who suddenly emerges at the end to conclude everything— Professor Jane Moriarty.
To use a character as charismatic as Moriarty in a one-off manner like this, and in the worst possible way at that too, if you’re failing to be historically accurate elsewhere, why have you chosen to be so pinpoint accurate with here?
As a story consultant, I simply cannot accept this abomination of a narrative.
You should start from scratch and redo basically everything until every inconsistency in this nonsensical storyline is addressed.
Until then, I cannot possibly give my approval. I would even stake my life in preventing this game from being released.
With that said, have a good day… 』
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To summarize the passionate 2500+ characters that I had sent to the story department of the game company I work for a few days ago, it went something like this.
After a few phone calls that followed, I was eventually summoned to their meeting room.
I lost consciousness while delivering a heated speech in front of the buffoons who were seemingly unable to comprehend my words.
When I came to and regained my senses, I deeply regretted sending that official document to them.
“Alright, let’s wrap up the lesson now.”
The final boss of the game we had been developing. The pinnacle of a story with no coherence. Yet, for all its numerous flaws, the impact of Professor Jane Moriarty inside the jarring storyline was undeniably immense.
“Don’t forget to stop by my office.”
Somehow, I found myself in front of ‘her’, having declared that she would eventually fall to her death at the Reichenbach Falls in her later years.
As an added bonus, I had also grandly referenced some of her achievements that didn’t even take place yet.
‘This has to be a case of possession— one of those fantasy tropes.’
I sat silently, seemingly out of my wits, until everyone had left the classroom. Once alone, I couldn’t help but quietly think to myself.
‘Damn piece of shit company! I knew that something was off.’
I had never met the developers or the CEO in person. Not even once. Since my role in the company was a mere story consultant, I mostly worked from home.
Come to think of it, today was my first visit to the company. The expressions of the people in the meeting room when I ranted incessantly also seemed to be unusual.
I should have been more careful in accepting the job. Blinded by the high salary and stable work environment, I jumped right in, and now… I found myself in this horrific situation.
‘…I should go, shouldn’t I?’
I had already realized that this situation wasn’t a dream. I had pinched my cheek far too many times to confirm that fact already.
It seemed to me that, somehow, I had been transported into the girl detective game our company had been developing— based on the Sherlock Holmes series.
Not during the era when Professor Moriarty reigned as the Napoleon of Crime, but when she was still appointed as a professor at the academy.
It was now time for me to act to the best of my abilities in order to survive.
Honestly, considering the situation I found myself in, I wanted to sit in shock for a few days, but my life was currently in danger.
I had, after all, attracted the attention of the final boss of the game.
Honestly, I wanted to run away from this detective academy and practically everything else related to the main storyline.
However, considering Professor Moriarty’s nature, escape seemed both improbable and impossible at the same time.
In a few years, or perhaps even a few months, I would probably end up as a mere specimen that would be grandly displayed at her home as one of her collections.
Therefore, with reluctance and clear tears brimming in the corner of my eyes, I made my way to Professor Moriarty’s office.
Reciting the old saying, “If you keep your wits about you, even when entering a tiger’s den, you can survive.” on my way to said tiger’s den in this scenario.
‘…Perhaps, unexpected as it may be, everything might go smoothly.’
And thinking about it, I realized that I might just have been overly concerned about this.
While I knew what Moriarty would become, which made me frightened out of my wits, the current her was not the lord of the underworld. She was merely a professor at a prestigious academy.
Who could tell? Even if Moriarty was born for a life of crime, perhaps in her early twenties, she might have still had a somewhat kind heart.
And even if she intended to do something to me, at least within these sacred grounds of the detective training institute, she wouldn’t be able to touch me.
“Hmm…”
I comforted myself with that thought, but as her office door came into view, I naturally began to feel tense once more.
As the story consultant, I was familiar with most of the characters in the game. However, Jane Moriarty, who suddenly appeared at the ending of all times, was still a great mystery to me.
Therefore, I couldn’t predict what would happen once I opened that door.
“…Whew.”
– Knock, knock, knock…!
After hesitating outside the door for a while, I finally took a deep breath and knocked several times.
– Come in.
Hearing Professor Moriarty’s voice, I braced myself and entered the room.
“Huh.”
Before I could fully take in the room’s surroundings, what I came face to face with was…
– Drip, drip…
On the sofa opposite of the chair Professor Moriarty was currently sitting on, was the academy’s dean, bleeding from a hole in his head.
‘Damn, that man was one of the mid-level bosses.’
My mind went blank for a moment, but my strong survival instincts made me instinctively step back toward the door.
“Ah, it’s you.”
But as I did so, the professor, with a welcoming expression on her charming face, flicked her finger.
– Clang…!
Before I knew it, the door had been locked tightly.
“I thought you were smart. Did I perhaps misjudge you?”
Immediately after, while wiping the bright red blood splattered on her beautiful face with a towel, she smiled at me and spoke.
“It’s not a particularly good habit to fidget with the mana accumulator hidden in the pocket of your school uniform now, is it?”
Her words were true.
Just as Holmes had felt threatened by the sudden appearance of Moriarty, I too had secretly prepared a means of self-defense in anticipation of a dangerous situation like this.
If my life was threatened, I intended to use the mana accumulator, a tool possessed by the original owner of the body I had taken over, as a weapon.
“If you’re not careful, the mana could flow in reverse and become dangerous for you instead. Isn’t that right, student?”
However, just like how it was in the original work— Moriarty, who had easily seen through my actions, was staring piercingly at me while pointing to her desk.
– Click…
Trying my best to remain calm, I placed the mana accumulator on the desk, precisely, on the location where she was pointing with her finger.
“You won’t die alone. That’s a commendable stance.”
She spoke, my hand never leaving the mana accumulator that I had placed on the desk.
‘This isn’t looking good.’
I was barely able to maintain a stand-off with Moriarty with the suggestion that I might self-destruct if pushed to a corner. But the situation I was in was very unfavorable for me.
Seeing the blood continuously flowing from the corpse of the elderly man behind me, it seemed that she had just committed a murder.
Yet, she deliberately let me in under such dire circumstances.
I couldn’t fathom why she had done something like that, but judging by the sharp look in her eyes, masked by that characteristic cold smile of hers, it seemed to me that she was testing me.
The real question was what she was testing me on.
‘Calm down, just calm the fuck down.’
The fear of potentially losing my life at any moment… The nausea from seeing a dead body for the first time… The anxiety of not even knowing how to use the mana accumulator in the first place…
Despite everything that was working against me, I mustered all the strength I had to remain composed.
I had the intuition that if I showed even a hint of weakness or panic right now, my life would instantly be at risk.
“What do you want?”
But I couldn’t keep up this charade forever.
Since any external intervention was blocked in this scenario, as time went by, the situation became increasingly unfavorable for me.
“On the contrary, what do you want from me?”
I tried to ask her with as calm a voice as I could manage, but what came back was a counter-question from Professor Moriarty.
“You managed to escape from my grasp perfectly. But instead of accusing me, you chose to accept my invitation and come to my office…”
As I blankly listened to those incomprehensible words of hers, Professor Moriarty shifted her gaze to the mana accumulator and added,
“Moreover, you’re now trying to threaten me in return.”
And then, a chilling silence ensued between us.
“I’m dying of curiosity to know what someone like you wants from me.”
Breaking the silence, Moriarty began to tilt her head like a lizard, looking at me with eyes filled with endless curiosity.
“Won’t you give me an answer?”
Once again, a palpable silence enveloped the office. Within that quiet and eerie atmosphere, I began to forcibly rack my bleached brain as hard as possible.
Judging from her reaction, Moriarty seemed quite interested in me. But the issue was, I had a rough idea of how this interest might conclude.
What response would prevent her from killing me right here and now?
How should I reply to turn her fickle interest into a favorable one?
What did Moriarty like in the original work? What could possibly make me endearing to the professor?
“Why the silence, student?”
I was already out of time.
For better or worse, it was the moment that I had to say something, anything to her…
“I want to be a graduate student…”
With eyes tightly shut, I blurted out the first idea that popped into my head.
“Specifically, under your guidance.”
To survive, I decided to sacrifice my dignity. That was the conclusion I had reached after my accelerated thinking.
“What do you think?”
Hoping desperately that the young Moriarty held a strong sense of identity as a professor, I began waiting for her response.
.
.
.
.
.
– Ding!
That was the moment.
With a cheerful tone, unidentified messages began to pop up in front of my eyes.
“…Huh?”
What the hell was this now? Damn it!
