Chapter 3

‘Since Smiley is a toy too, maybe this can help heal him?’

It was a kind of insurance.

Since I was trying to fulfill the conditions for the True Ending, I couldn’t afford to let the toys develop too much hostility toward me.

“What are you doing?”

“Ah, sorry. I was tying my shoelaces for a moment.”

I hurried to catch up with Park Seonggyeon while discreetly glancing back.

“……”

The candy was still resting on Smiley’s hand.

The only thing that had changed was that the mechanical noise coming from him had stopped.

It didn’t seem to have had much effect.

After passing through a long corridor decorated with murals that simply explained the toys of Happy Smile Factory, we arrived in front of a massive plastic door.

On the walls and ceiling on both sides of the door were dozens of small levers in different colors.

“Lieutenant Park, right side.”

When Mo Haein extended her claw hand, a plastic chain shot out with a snap and grabbed a lever on the ceiling.

She quickly pulled down the colored levers on the left wall and the ceiling.

Park Seonggyeon did the same with those on the right wall and the ceiling.

Normally, it was necessary to observe the color patterns drawn on the floor in order to operate the levers correctly, but from the ease with which they acted, it was obvious they already knew the sequence by heart.

Clack.

When they pulled the final lever, cheerful music began to play and the plastic door opened.

Mo Haein and Park Seonggyeon entered without hesitation.

This was the place where players began their first shift as factory employees.

The task consisted of sorting the toys arriving on the conveyor belt, and since it was the first job, the difficulty was low.

However, unlike them, I subtly slowed my pace.

Because—

“C-Captain.”

“…The pattern changed.”

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The lights began turning on from the entrance inward, gradually revealing the dark space.

Music that should have sounded cheerful filled the area, but it only felt unsettling.

All the toys that should have been quietly moving along the conveyor belt were on the floor.

Staring directly at Mo Haein and Park Seonggyeon with their shining plastic eyes.

Ding!

A system window appeared along with a notification sound.

◆ Main Mission: Survive the killer toys.

The toys do not forgive the adult who attacked Smiley.

You believe you must survive while escaping from the enraged toys.

‘That’s what they get for hitting Smiley….’

I sighed inwardly as I slowly moved toward a safe area.

As a government organization, the Trial Response Agency enforced very strict rules inside the Trials.

The most important one was.

“No unnecessary contact with NPCs.”

The reason was to minimize the risk of infection.

The Trials brought from outer space possessed a very peculiar virus.

Those who became infected suffered physical mutations and developed intense aggression toward humans.

As an Agency soldier, Mo Haein always followed the rules to the letter.

This was probably the first time she had attacked an NPC ahead of schedule.

She had likely expected some changes in the story, but she had never imagined the situation would deviate this much.

The route she was following now was the most difficult of them all.

The Collapse Ending route.

By attacking Smiley, the first NPC in the game, every toy in the factory became the player’s absolute enemy.

Throughout every stage, the toys would constantly attack the player, and in the end, the player would escape from a factory engulfed in flames.

The final line of the Collapse Ending was especially chilling.

It has collapsed.

Smiley was torn apart and thrown into the flames, yet even so, he could not die.

Smiley will return to find the player once more, transformed into a terrible nightmare.

It was an ending I still remembered perfectly.

‘But the Collapse Ending route is also connected to the True Ending route.’

If I handled things correctly, I could maintain my role as an ignorant civilian and still obtain the True Ending of Happy Smile Factory.

As I recalled the Collapse Ending, a child’s voice began to sound along with the music.

“It’s the adult who bothered Smiley. An aduuult. A boring adult.”

Hundreds of toys stared at Mo Haein and Park Seonggyeon while swaying their bodies to the rhythm of the music, as if doing warm-up exercises.

Left. Right. Left. Left. Right….

“We want to make the adult fun.”

“But it’s already an adult. Adult. Aduuult. No good. We don’t like it. It’s boring.”

“Ah!”

The sound of cymbals rang out, followed by the cheers of children.

“We found the answer! Let’s make the adult smaller!”

“Smaller. Smaller. Smaller. Like a child. Li-like a child. Smaller. Smaller.”

“Pieces. Pieces. Pieces. Pieces. Pieces.”

Mo Haein shouted.

“Civilian!”

Park Seonggyeon, who had been moving his head from side to side just like the toys, suddenly came back to his senses.

Letting out a curse, he extended his claw hand and grabbed me around the waist.

The next instant, he placed me on the conveyor belt.

“If you don’t want to die, stay still here!”

In other words, he wasn’t going to save me no matter what happened.

“Yes!”

I answered energetically while sighing inwardly.

The conveyor belt classified the player as a toy.

It was a safe zone used to avoid attacks in Happy Smile Factory.

However, there was something neither Park Seonggyeon nor Mo Haein knew.

On the Collapse route…

The conveyor belt was useless.

“Let’s begin turning adults into children!”

Children’s laughter echoed along with the end of the announcement.

The toys that had been swaying began popping up like popcorn and launched themselves into an attack.

Mo Haein extended her toy arm toward the ceiling.

The plastic chain latched onto a pipe running across the ceiling, and she hung suspended from it.

With her human hand, she sliced through the air.

An obsidian guandao appeared out of nowhere.

It was Mo Haein’s item, the Black Moon Blade.

The Trial Response Agency recommended clearing each Trial using only the items obtained within that same Trial.

Using items acquired from other Trials greatly increased the likelihood of generating unexpected variables.

But since this was an emergency, it seemed she had decided to bring out the Black Moon Blade.

‘Woah….!’

Even in the middle of that critical situation, I couldn’t help but be amazed.

I was seeing Mo Haein’s Black Moon Blade with my own eyes.

And from this close.

I watched her fight as though I were hypnotized.

Park Seonggyeon pushed away the toys with his claw hand while holding a flashlight in his human hand to shine its light on them.

The toys caught in the flashlight’s beam froze for an instant.

Mo Haein did not waste that opportunity and cut them down with the Black Moon Blade.

The toys split apart by the long blade let out screams resembling those of small children while spilling multicolored blood in rainbow hues.

I would have liked to keep watching, but unfortunately I didn’t have time.

With great effort, I tore my gaze away from Mo Haein.

Then I ran across the conveyor belt, dodging the toys that lunged at me.

I didn’t have any items equipped, but avoiding their attacks wasn’t difficult.

Because I knew their attack patterns.

The movements the toys made while swaying when the music started were clues to those patterns.

Since I had seen every ending in HasFac, I knew every pattern by heart.

As I sprinted along the conveyor belt, I quickly inspected the toys thrashing around everywhere.

New toys kept coming out of the production pipes, turning the place into complete chaos.

However, finding what I was looking for wasn’t difficult.

A mass-produced 15-centimeter Smiley doll.

Black Edition.

Among all the brightly colored and fluorescent toys, that completely black doll barely stood out.

But it was an indispensable item for obtaining the True Ending.

I stretched my arm into the crowd of toys.

“Ugh…!”

A burning sensation grazed my arm.

A pony doll wearing an apron had slashed my forearm with the plastic knife it was holding.

Even so, I managed to grab the black Smiley.

Smiley Black Edition: The only Sad Smiley that exists in the entire world.

I ran along the conveyor belt again and arrived in front of some packing boxes stacked behind the production machines.

Among them was one that was especially large.

It was the box where the NPC Smiley was originally supposed to be stored.

Now it was empty because of the attack Mo Haein had launched against him.

Since it had been designed to contain a one-meter-tall doll, an adult could easily fit inside.

I climbed into the box and curled up inside it.

It was a rather pathetic sight.

When it was pixel art, it didn’t seem that strange, but doing it in real life was somewhat embarrassing.

In any case, once I had settled inside the box, I watched Mo Haein and Park Seonggyeon through the transparent plastic.

By then, they had almost finished off all the toys.

If I took any longer, obtaining the True Ending might become impossible.

I quickly examined the Smiley doll.

Every second was valuable, but I froze.

‘Is it smiling?’

The Sad Smiley doll was smiling.

Just as its name indicated, Sad Smiley should have had a sad expression.

But I couldn’t have picked up the wrong doll either.

In the entire colorful toy factory, Sad Smiley was the only toy without colors.

As I stared at it, I realized it was stained with my blood.

When my arm was cut, a few drops had splashed onto the doll, but because it was black, I hadn’t noticed.

I quickly wiped away the blood.

Even so, Sad Smiley continued smiling.

It was a suspicious situation, but I didn’t have time to think.

I firmly pressed Sad Smiley’s belly.

A recorded child’s voice sounded from inside.

“Please make Sad Smiley happy.”

In the original game, two choices would appear.

— Ignore it.

— Ask how to make him happy.

But there were no dialogue options here, so I had to speak directly.

“What do I have to do to make you happy?”

In the game, Sad Smiley was supposed to give a clue related to the hidden secret of the toy factory.

“Please become Sad Smiley’s owner.”

Did it just tell me directly…?

“Let’s stay together forever. Being together is fun. If it’s fun, it’s happy. Forever. Foreeeeever. Forever. Forever. Forever. Foreveeeer….”

Crack!

The Sad Smiley in my hand split in half.

Black blood splattered across my face.

“I told you to stay still, civilian.”

Mo Haein was staring directly at me while holding the Black Moon Blade stained with rainbow-colored remains.

Holding half of the Sad Smiley, I climbed out of the box.

The transparent plastic of the box where I had been hiding had also been sliced in half, so getting out was easy.

Everything around me was stained with rainbow colors.

“I told you not to move on your own!”

Park Seonggyeon frowned and shouted at me.

I was still stunned by Sad Smiley’s strange behavior, so I reacted a little late.

“Sorry. I was on the conveyor belt like you told me, but the toys attacked me, so I had to dodge them….”

“They attacked you even though you were on the belt?”

Mo Haein’s and Park Seonggyeon’s expressions instantly turned serious.

While they briefly discussed it between themselves, I found the other half of Sad Smiley that had been sent flying away.

I placed it next to the half I was holding and set a Nut Candy on top.

I stared fixedly at Sad Smiley’s smiling face.

Wow, this was a completely unexpected situation.

My heart was pounding with excitement…!