Chapter 2: The loser learns his worth

Everything was gray. Gray, as far as his eye could reach. The streets were gone, the road was gone. The people, too.
"... Where the heck am I?"
He was no longer lying on the floor, but rather standing, somewhere. An empty, colorless space filled with pure, thick mist, past which he couldn't spot a thing.
Haruto brought his hands to the top of his head, feeling his disheveled hair as though not expecting it to be there. Then, he moved downwards, feeling up his arms, torso, legs.
"I'm... still whole...?"
Everything was still there, unscathed, somehow.
Even though...
He looked down. He was still wearing his cheap-looking school uniform from Saitama. Some flimsy slacks, a white shirt with a tie and a likewise flimsy-looking blazer sitting over it, and the disturbingly durable loafers he always took to school everyday. Seriously, those things had even been run over by a train once and come out totally fine, not even a scratch on them.
After taking a long stare at his clothes, which hadn't suffered a single change, he took his glance back up and looked around some more. There really wasn't anything there. It looked like some kind of void or something.
There wasn't a proper floor below him, yet somehow he found himself standing up. His feet where pressed down against the gray mist, inexplicably.
"Also, why aren't I injured... Or dying anymore...? Could it be...?"
Had he made it? Had he really made it from being run over?
If he was still there, standing, breathing, then there was no way he could possibly be dead, could he?
No sooner did he have such a thought, something odd suddenly popped in front of him.
A translucent, almost glass-like surface. It had no weight or depth to it, however. It simply floated still right in front of his face. It was as wide as an A4 piece of paper, turned horizontally, and right at the center of its surface, a short sentence had been written in huge, white letters.
'You are dead, grasshoper.' it read.
Below it, there were two more sentences.
'I accept.' was written near the the left end of the surface, placed inside a grayish textbox. On the opposite end, there was 'I am a poor sucker in denial.'
The odd sight puzzled him. Was he allucinating this? Was it all some kind of dream?
He reached out with his left hand, touching the surface with his index finger right above the first line of text. It certainly did feel like glass.

"What the...?"
It looked like the menu window for some kind of videogame. One of those cheap, pay-to-win ones you'd find on mobile stores, to be more precise.
Unsure of what to do, he gave his surroundings another stare, as if hoping to catch something he'd missed the first time. But there was nothing.
Chances were, he'd be stuck here forever if he just waited, so Haruto resigned himself to touching the 'I accept' option.
Immediately, the window vanished into thin air, and another the exact same size appeared in its place. This one, however, was turned vertically.
The first thing the boy saw out of this window was a very large '0'.
The smaller word 'level' was written to its left, with a small, black bar under it.
"Level 0... So... A budget RPG, then?"
There were several other pieces of information below it.
'Vehicle Inventory: Not available'
'Servant Inventory: Not available'
Heck, if he knew what any of that meant. There was more further down:
'Achievements: Not available'
'Rank: Grasshopper'
'Support Gear Inventory: Not available'
'Acquired Skill: On-site crafting'
Then, the boy noticed, right at the top of the window, another five large words, written white and in bold.
'This is what you are'.
And as he read those odd stats in front of him, Haruto felt a shiver go down his spine.
"Oh, no... I know where this is going... I definitely know where this is all going..."
Those stat descriptions... Those terms, those words... His instincts cried out at him, telling him he wasn't in good hands at all. That something terrible was coming for him. Something truly terrible.
At the top right corner of the window, there was an 'x' shaped box, as if to mimic an internet browser's exit option.
He didn't want to click it. He just knew what was going to happen when he did. What he would have to face.
But there was nothing to do now.
Haruto Maekawa steeled himself.
This was who he was. He had likely brought himself here due to his actions while still alive, or so he believed.
He had to face the bed he'd made himself.
He closed the status window, and turned around, lured in by a glint caught in the corner of his eye.
A small opening had appeared in the mist, and quickly started to expand until all the in the particular direction before him was gone, revealing a long strip of paved road ahead.
And, sending another shiver down his spine, his eyes spotted a wide, yellow-ish form parked still, right in the middle of the path's width.
"Another car... Kill me again..."
There wasn't even the proper time for it to dawn on him that Yes, he was indeed dead, for him to even properly process that information, before a small window suddenly popped in front of him.
'Now, drive, grasshopper'.
He closed the window, exhaling with dread. Haruto looked back on what options he still had. If he could just stand back here for a little while longer and not have anything to do with that thing, then...
Another small window popped up.

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'Drive now, you piece of --'
"Alright, alright! I'm going. Sheesh..." he closed that one too.
He walked up to the vehicle ahead.
He had thought it to be some old family car at first glance, from the general style and form he would guess it to be from somewhere around the 80's or 90's, clearly a foreign design, since the wheel and driver's seat seemed to be placed on the left side of the vehicle. However, as he soon came to realize, calling it a car would be way, waaay too kind. It was more like a washed out, dilapidated piece of metal brought out from the world's dirtiest scrap heap, just barely holding itself together by sheer force of will.
The crusty yellow finish, while only slightly scraped around the trunk area, became less and less prominent until it was almost completely gone by the hood. Around the vehicle's front end, the heavily dented surface was almost done into a dusty white mush, and would be threatening to be blown away by the wind now, if there were any wind around here to begin with.
Each detail Haruto uncovered about the car terrified him more and more. The tires were almost completely bald, the windows dusty enough he could barely see inside, the front doors produced an absurdly high creak just by opening them, and were clearly rusted at the hinges. The roof of the vehicle was so low he could barely even fit himself inside. He had a feeling it shouldn't originally have been so low, but some unknown force had pounded it down.
"W-What is it that I'm supposed to drive again...?"
He looked inside the vehicle. To his shock, it wasn't nearly in as bad a state as its bodywork. There were a few more dents here and there. The passenger's seat barely held itself together, and many other surfaces seemed shabby and stank of mold, which Haruto also didn't take too long to spot, taking a closer look.
The car's dashboard, however, looked at the very least somewhat functional, and the steering wheel moved quite nicely. Well, maybe a bit too nice...
After a few seconds of spinning it to one side and then the other, Haruto felt a loud ringing in his ears, and another textbox appeared.
'Mustard Roller '88 Limited Edition, Slightly Used, successfully acquired. For more information, check your vehicle inventory.'
"Mustard Ro...? I don't even want to know..."
He closed the floating window and took another look at the inside of the car, wondering if it would even be safe to try and drive that piece of scrap.
"Why...?" he cried to no one in particular. "Why did it have to be a friggin' car...? Is this hell? Is that what this is? Was I really that bad a person to end up here!?"
To answer his complaint, there was only the empty sound of wind echoing about, even though there was no wind, and everything aside from him and the dilapidated car he now owned, as well as the small strip of road he was now standing in, was covered in gray mist.
Then, as it had been with the Mustard Roller, another blinding glint quickly came to meet his eye, reflecting rays of light that weren't even quite there. It came from the right, piercing through the smog and the dust on the Roller's windows, and Haruto immediately lifted his head from inside the vehicle, looking again into the distance, past the road's railing.
The gray curtain was phasing out from that area as well, revealing another paved lane, separated by twin guardrails and running paralel to each other.
And in the middle of it he spotted another car, similar to his own, but in an entirely gray color, instead.
Similarly, it had its front door open, and there was someone standing right next to it as well.
Short, chubby man, dressed all in black and blue, his sleeveless arms were covered in tattoos and his eyes hidden away by a large pair of sunglasses. He didn't look particularly young. Seemed to be somewhere in his thirties or so.
He was turned in Haruto's direction, staring at him from far.
After a few seconds, the man suddenly snapped at him.
"What're ya lookin' at, you wimp? You wanna fight? Is that it!?"
"... W... What...? No! I just arrived here, I was just..."
"Where you the one who did this!?"
"..."
"You're the one who brought me here, weren't you!? You piece of..."
"No, no, you've got it wrong! When I woke up, I was also here all of a sudden! I don't know why we are here or who did it, but --"
"Then who the hell was it!? I don't see anyone else here! Stop lying to me!!"
The man had started screaming at Haruto at the top of his lungs, and without hesitation, started running in his direction.
"Bring me back! Bring me back or I'll kill you!! You hear!?"
The fat man was halfway towards the railing ready, most certainly planning to jump over it and attack Haruto.
The boy was no good at fighting at all, so he desperately tried to think of some way to defuse the situation at hand.
However, before he could think of what to do, the ringing noise from before returned, this time echoing loudly throughout the whole area, startling both him and the tatooed guy on the other side of the railing, who stopped in place, looking for the source of the ringing. As for that, there was none. It came from everywhere, and yet from nowhere. And it went on for a whole minute.
Right then, it vanished, as an echoing, ghastly voice came to replace it. It had no owner, and spread around in much the same way the ringing had.
"Attention, grasshoppers. Your introductory match is about to start. Please, get in position and start your engines. Whoever wins shall be rewarded. Whoever loses, shall lose their soul."
The man looked back at Haruto right away, understanding washing over his expression.
He grinned at him.
"So... You're like me. You also just arrived here?"
"Yeah...?"
"Well, too bad for you! I ain't plannin' on losing my soul any time soon, shrimp!"
With that, the chubby guy started running back to his car, entering it with a dive and closing the door with a loud bang.
Haruto stopped for a moment as he noticed, with stunned silence, a decreasing counter in the upper left corner of his field of vision, as if the numbers themselves had stuck to his eye.
"What the..."
... 8, 7, 6, 5, 3...
The count was going down fast.
What was that thing?? It decreased by the second, almost like some arcade game. What was it counting, even? The seconds before the start of a...
"... a race?"
It was a countdown for a race, between him and the guy on the right.
But why!? What was happening? What had he just gotten himself into? Losing his soul!?
Haruto rushed inside his own car, slamming the door behind him, and stared at the dashboard in front of him.
Another shiver ran over him then, as he came to another realization: he had never driven once in his life. He had no idea how to even 'start an engine'.
And meanwhile, the countdown was still going.
... 3, 2, 1...
"No, no, no!! How do you drive this thing!?"

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