The last thing Jin expected on a sweltering afternoon in Shibuya was to watch his best friend collapse, screaming, after tapping a mysterious snake emblem on his phone. But when Jin opens the same app in desperation, he awakens into a world that looks like Shibuya—yet is utterly empty. No people. No sound. And on his wrist, a snake biting its own tail, impossible to remove.
A status screen appears before his eyes: *Player Name: Kanzaki Jin. Ranking: 1,847th. Ability: Delay Collector.* A power s
Darwin's Game: Beyond the Game Over - Snake's Email — The Awakening of Delayed Collection
"Hey, you know... if anything ever happens, I'll protect you. No matter what."
It was on the way home from our middle school graduation ceremony. Along the riverbank where the cherry blossoms were still tight, hard buds, Shinozuka suddenly said that. I was caught off guard and stopped dead in my tracks.
"Huh? What's with that, all of a sudden?"
Shinozuka scratched the tip of his nose, looking embarrassed. He was tall and always smiling. He had a good five centimeters on me, but he slouched so much you'd never guess it. He let his bangs grow out long, always on the verge of hiding his eyes—a little cheeky, honestly.
"It's just... I get this feeling you're gonna end up in danger someday. No real reason."
"Isn't it the other way around? You're the one who's always tripping over his own feet."
I shot back with a laugh. But honestly, those words made me happy. My family was just me and my mom—she worked as a nurse and pulled a lot of night shifts, so she was out of the house more often than not. That might have been the first time anyone had ever said they'd protect me.
"Well, if something does happen, I'll be counting on you then."
I rubbed the base of my right thumb with my other hand. There's a small star-shaped scar there, matching the one Shinozuka has—we carved them into each other with a compass needle back in elementary school. It hurt, but back then, that was enough.
Two years had passed since then. I was in my second year of high school now.
My short black hair still had a mind of its own, and every morning I ended up wrestling with the bathroom mirror. My dark brown eyes apparently had a habit of narrowing when I was deep in thought, and Shinozuka used to tease me about my "scheming face." I stood at 171 centimeters—slim, but I'd put on a bit of muscle over the past six months. I wore my navy school uniform sloppily, and a black leather band was wrapped around my left wrist. That was a habit from middle school. There was nothing to hide. At least, not until that day.
August in Shibuya was blisteringly hot.
Pushed along by the sea of people at the scramble crossing, I chased after Shinozuka's back. We were still in our school uniforms on a day off, purely because neither of us could be bothered to change. Shinozuka had the same excuse—a white short-sleeved shirt and black pants, whatever was lying around.
"Jin, that shop over there just got a limited-edition gacha in stock. Let's go."
Shinozuka pointed across the crowd. His profile hadn't changed at all since middle school. He'd grown past 180 centimeters and his voice had dropped, but that look he got when his eyes lit up—that was exactly the same.
"You blew a ton of money on that last time and got nothing. Do you even have cash?"
"Today's the day. I can see it—the one pull that changes everything."
Fate, huh. Looking back now, those words were the beginning of everything.
A lukewarm wind blew in from the Dogenzaka direction. Summer in Shibuya—the heat radiating off the asphalt and the crush of bodies drained your stamina just from standing there. And yet, I loved this city. Noisy, filthy, and yet brimming with the sense that something was about to happen.
On the big screen at the entrance to Center Gai, something I'd never seen before was playing. A pitch-black image of a snake coiled in a spiral. It caught my eye for just a moment, then vanished.
"...Huh?"
I stopped and looked up at the screen. But it was already showing an ordinary advertisement. Must have been my imagination.
"Jin, what's wrong?"
Shinozuka turned around, and his phone buzzed in his pocket. Not the notification sound of a messaging app. Something heavier, something that resonated in your gut. Shinozuka tilted his head and pulled out his phone.
What appeared on the screen was a snake emblem.
Green scales reflected the light, and it looked for all the world like a real snake writhing inside the display. Beneath it, a single line of text.
—Welcome to Darwin's Game.
"What the hell is this... spam?"
Shinozuka's finger tapped the screen without thinking. And in that instant—
Shinozuka's body arched back violently, as if pinned by something invisible. The phone slipped from his hand and bounced off the asphalt. He clutched his head with both hands and screamed.
"Aaaaaaah!! Ngh—aaah!!"
His voice was small enough to be swallowed by the noise of Shibuya. But it reached my ears clearly.
"Shinozuka!? Hey, what's wrong!?"
I grabbed his shoulders. His body was trembling in small spasms. His eyes were wide open, pupils scattered unnaturally. His lips had turned purple, his breathing shallow. Something was clearly, horribly wrong.
"Somebody! Call an ambulance! Someone!"
I shouted at the people around us. There were hundreds of them at the scramble crossing. And yet, not a single one looked our way.
No—they couldn't see us.
Even as I tried to lift Shinozuka and move him to the edge of the street, the pedestrians just walked around us with blank faces. As if we'd turned invisible.
"Hey, can you hear me!? Someone's collapsed here!"
I grabbed the arm of a nearby man in a business suit. But he shook me off irritably and walked away. Our eyes had met—and yet he hadn't seen a thing.
I pulled out my own phone. With trembling fingers, I dialed 119. But even when I hit the call button, not even a dial tone came through. The screen read "No Service." Impossible. In the dead center of Shibuya, there was no signal?
"Why... why the hell..."
The strength was draining from Shinozuka's body. His eyes closed, his breathing growing shallower. At this rate, he was going to die.
I picked up Shinozuka's phone from where it had fallen. The snake emblem was still floating on the screen.
—Welcome to Darwin's Game.
Below it was a small button that read "Open."
I didn't hesitate.
Shinozuka had opened it, and this was the result. So if I opened it too, maybe I'd understand something. Maybe I'd find a way to save him.
My finger touched the screen.
The world went dark.
My consciousness fell away with a sound. Into a dark, deep, bottomless hole. Someone was laughing in the distance. A snake, coiled in a spiral, was watching me.
And then I woke up.
—I was in Shibuya.
But something was different from the Shibuya I knew.
The sky was white. Not a cloudless blue, but a white like someone had slathered it on with paint—unnaturally bright. The sun was visible, but its light wasn't warm. The wind was blowing, but there was no sound.
And above all, there were no people.
In the scramble crossing that had been so overflowing with humanity, I stood completely alone. Every window in every building was shut, and the traffic lights cycled meaninglessly through red and green. It was like the world had forgotten to be switched on.
"What the hell is this..."
My own voice echoed unnaturally loud.
My left wrist was hot.
I looked down at it instinctively. Light was leaking from beneath the black leather band. I peeled it off cautiously, and there—a snake emblem was carved into my skin.
A green-scaled snake biting its own tail, forming a ring. It looked like it had been drawn directly onto my skin—no, like my skin itself had changed color to form the pattern. No matter how I rubbed or scrubbed, it wouldn't come off.
"This is the same thing that was on Shinozuka's phone."
I stared at the emblem. And then, suddenly, translucent text appeared in my vision.
—Player Name: Kanzaki Jin
—Ranking: 1,847th
—Points Held: 10
—Ability: Delay Collector
—Status: Active
I blinked over and over. The text didn't disappear. It was displayed clearly in the space before my eyes. Like a status screen in a game.
"Delay Collector...? What is this?"
As I muttered, the emblem grew hot again, and new information flowed in.
—Delay Collector: Delays the time of a touched object by approximately 2 seconds. No point cost to activate. Cannot be used on multiple targets simultaneously.
In other words, an ability that delays the movement of whatever I touch by two seconds. That was it.
"That's way too plain..."
Honestly, I was disappointed. If I was going to get dragged into a game, I wanted something flashier. Shooting fire, flying through the sky. But reality was this. Just delaying touched objects by two seconds. What good was that?
Then, my mother's words surfaced in my mind.
—Don't stop it—shift it. That way, you can always make up for the delay, right?
She'd said that to me back in elementary school, when I came in last at the sports day footrace. Even if you're slow off the start, as long as you don't panic and stop, you'll always catch up. I think she was trying to tell me life works the same way.
You shift things so you can take them back.
I checked my ability once more. Delay Collector. Delays the time of touched objects. It couldn't directly block an attack. But it could shift the timing of an attack.
"...Maybe I can make this work."
I stood up. My knees were shaking. I was scared. I still had no idea what was happening. But to save Shinozuka, I had no choice but to push forward through this game.
When I focused on the emblem, different information appeared.
—Darwin's Game Basic Rules:
1. Players steal points from one another.
2. A player whose points fall below zero is "transferred."
3. Leaving the game is not permitted.
Transferred. I understood what that meant immediately. Something like a tutorial video for the game streamed directly into my head. The moment a player's points dropped below zero, their body would dissolve into particles of light and vanish. Never to return.
In other words, death.
"You've gotta be kidding me..."
I looked down at my left wrist. The snake emblem pulsed faintly in time with my heartbeat. This wasn't going away. Until I cleared the game, I'd be living with this snake for the rest of my life.
I pulled Shinozuka's phone from my pocket. It wouldn't turn on. The screen stayed pitch black. But my own phone had powered on, for some reason.
The signal, however, was still dead.
"Shinozuka... where the hell are you..."
In that moment, Shinozuka must have been forced into the game the same way. But he wasn't here now. Had he been transferred somewhere while unconscious? Or was he still lying in the real Shibuya?
I didn't know. There was so much I didn't know.
But one thing was certain.
I couldn't escape this game. And to save Shinozuka, I had no choice but to fight my way through it.
Night fell.
Night came to the game's Shibuya. But the darkness was far thicker than in reality, and the streetlights reached only a narrow radius. As if the dark itself were alive, devouring the light.
I was walking through the back alleys of Center Gai. The path that led from the scramble crossing toward Udagawacho. I couldn't just stand at that intersection forever. First, I needed to learn about this world.
The street was lined with clothing stores and restaurants, just like the real Shibuya. But every shop had its shutters down. No sign of anyone inside. Only the neon signs flickered with a buzzing crackle.
"Is there really nobody here...?"
Then I heard footsteps behind me.
Before I could turn, my body was sent flying sideways. A heavy impact on my shoulder. I rolled across the asphalt, my vision swimming.
"Yo, newbie. My bad—I'm taking your points first."
I looked up to see a man in a black hoodie standing over me. A metal bat in his hand. Around twenty years old, maybe. A thin smile on his lips as he looked down at me.
"W-what the hell, who are you...!"
I tried to stand, but my shoulder hurt too much to move properly. The man shouldered his bat and approached slowly.
"I'm a solo player, see. No clan, and my points are running low. A newbie like you makes perfect prey."
The man had a snake emblem on his left wrist too. It was discolored, a dark red-black.
The man raised his bat.
The motion seemed strangely slow. No—it wasn't actually slow. My brain was just running faster than usual. Fear was accel
Novelia is an AI-powered platform to read original light novels and fan fiction, create your own in just a few taps, and chat with the characters. New, illustrated episodes arrive daily — free to start.