The prose version of a NEVER Stop Smiling solo playthrough. Read Part 1 and Part 2.
Entry 8: Laughter With Wrong Echoes
Silver Throat shone with the artificial brilliance of a dream realized, or perhaps a nightmare cloaked in gilded light. As we walked its gleaming streets, the weight of our task hung heavily behind us. The laughter that filled the air, bright, almost too bright, was the sound of a city reborn, or so it seemed. The buildings, once broken and dark, now shimmered with vibrant hues as if the city itself had been repainted by unseen hands. The walls were alive with color, a feverish carnival of radiant reds and blues that almost burned to look at.
Music bloomed from open windows, the sound of flutes and strings weaving together into a chorus that joined the humming pulse of a city resurrected. The connections to the rest of The Happy Place had been restored, and with them, the pulse of joy that defined this fragile, feverish paradise.
The people lined the streets, their eyes alight with something almost manic, their voices singing praises to us as though we were miracles incarnate. “Bless the Deacons!” one woman shouted, hands clasped in prayer-like reverence. “The First Oracle’s miracle lives on through you!” Their cheers were loud and effusive, their smiles wide enough to crack their faces in two. The worship was almost sickening in its fervor, like the city itself was drunk on its own revival.
I should have felt pride. I should have felt relief. The task we were sent to complete had been accomplished. The promise had held true. We had restored joy. Death had been unraveled, and Reine had returned. She was whole again, alive, her smile gleaming like the sun that bathed the streets of Silver Throat.
Yet, when I looked at her, standing beside us, smiling with the rest of us, I wondered.
Is she really her?
We nodded and smiled, our faces painted in the same veneer of joy, though I could feel the tremors under my skin. Isaiah’s voice rang out, warm but too steady. “The joy is eternal.”
“All is well now,” I echoed, the words spilling from my mouth with the practiced ease of a mantra. “And it will be forever.”
The crowd’s cheers followed us like a blessing, or a curse, as we boarded the tram back to the heart of The Happy Place. But as the bright voices faded into the distance, a shiver curled its way down my spine. The weight of what we had endured lingered, just beneath the surface. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could outrun. It was a shadow, always in the periphery, always waiting for you to look away.
I should feel reassured. I should feel… something. The truth had been proven, after all. Death is a fleeting illusion for those who follow the law, for those who believe. We had saved Reine. We had defeated Death herself, and now Reine stood beside us, smiling like the rest of us, shining like a doll in a showcase. But still… my face aches. The smile feels like a foreign skin strapped to my skull. My soul trembles, shivering in some place deep beneath the flesh, where the surface joys cannot reach.
When Isaiah and Reine ask me about my past, I lie. Not because I mean to deceive, but because the past feels so far away, like a dream I can’t quite touch. I tell them easy lies about tinkering with toys, about little things, the kind of shallow memories that don’t demand too much thought. But it doesn’t feel like my past anymore. It feels like something, someone, else’s. A life I have abandoned, or perhaps a life that has abandoned me.
Is this how it happens? Does it always happen here? Does the Happy Place take you, reshape you to fit the mold it has made? Why is memory so… fluid here? Maybe, for me, it’s a mold that fits the Deacon’s role, the one where there is no room for anything but joy.
The tram slows as we near our stop. I can feel the weight of the citizens around us, eyes on us, too many of them, too intent. Are they watching because we are Deacons? Or because they see the cracks in me, the hollow that I have become? I can feel their eyes crawling over my skin, pressing in on the parts of me that are too soft, too broken, that I cannot hide.
I want to run. To escape. To find somewhere where I don’t have to smile, somewhere where the weight of it all can fall away. But there is no place like that here. Not in The Happy Place. Not for someone like me.
I can feel my heart clenching, a tightness in my chest that refuses to release. But no tears come. There are no tears in a place like this. Not for Deacons. Not for those who serve the First Oracle’s eternal promise.
When we finally reach the Counselor’s office, I can feel the gaze of the city still on us, even though the cheers are long past. They linger, heavier now, like something they want to keep hidden, but can’t quite grasp. What do they see in us, the ones who return from the deep places? Do they see a gleam in our eyes, or do they hear the whispers beneath our smiles?
Reine stands beside me, still smiling, still perfect. But as she looks at me, as I look at her, I wonder… Is she still Reine?
And I wonder… Though joy is to be eternal, how long can we keep the mask from slipping?
Entry 9: The Hollow Beneath the Smile
The Counselor’s chambers were a vacuum, an emptiness so profound that it seemed to swallow all color and sound. The walls stretched endlessly in all directions, their smooth white surface gleaming with a sterile coldness that suggested no reality could truly settle here. The air hummed with the quiet, omnipresent buzz of unseen machinery, as though the room itself was some kind of living system. It felt as thought it were alive in a way that we, the people of The Happy Place, could never be. And yet, it was not quite alive. It was the kind of sterile precision that only machinery and gods could afford.
The room held no warmth, no personal touch, only the vast, looming desk at its center, a physical and symbolic barrier between us and the Counselor. Behind it, the figure sat motionless, a creature so still it might have been carved from stone. The Counselors always felt like something other, something that had transcended normality, grown too far removed from humanity to be fully understood. Their robes shimmered in the light, bright and immaculate, covered in gold-threaded patterns that seemed to shift when they were not being looked at directly, an optical illusion, or perhaps something stranger, like the ripples of reality itself folding and bending at their command.
Their smile, perfect and unwavering, filled the space like a blade held at the ready. There was no warmth there. Only the cold precision of absolute control.
“Sit,” they commanded, the word not a request but an inevitability that resonated with an unspoken weight. The air thickened as the syllables settled around us, suffocating in their finality.
We obeyed, our bodies stiff, our movements clumsy in the presence of something so alien, so far removed from what we knew. The smile stretched on our faces, as artificial and forced as it had ever been. I could already feel the ache in my jaw from holding it.
The Counselor’s voice, smooth as velvet yet sharp enough to cut glass, began its ritual. “Describe the resolution in Silver Throat.”
Isaiah, ever the composed figure, spoke first, his words flowing smoothly, his tone as measured and rehearsed as the finest of orators. He recounted the mission with the precision of a man reading from a script, each detail perfectly in line with what the Counselor wanted to hear.
Reine followed next. Her words were halting, her voice a little thinner, but still steady, the practiced sheen of a survivor not yet fully tempered by this life. Her account was clean, composed… far too composed, given the chaos we had faced.
When it was my turn, I offered a concise and sanitized report, stripping away anything that might have disturbed the sanctity of the narrative we were building. I left out the screams, the ones that rattled our bones long after the noise had stopped. I left out the transformations, the creeping horror of that unfathomable machine, its pulsing, organic mechanics leaking dread into the air like a poison that we had swallowed without truly realizing it. I kept my words pure, as they were supposed to be. The image of victory. The triumph of joy.
The Counselor’s gaze, unwavering and cold, swept over us like a scalpel. “Did you uphold the joy of The Happy Place throughout?”
“Yes,” we answered in perfect unison, as though the response had been programmed into our very cells. Our smiles were flawless, even as our minds betrayed us.
The Counselor’s gaze sharpened, dissecting the smallest of movements. Their next question came with an edge. “And what of doubt? Did you feel any?”
Isaiah, without hesitation, answered first. “None.” His voice rang with certainty, his conviction so solid it might have shattered the very room around us.
I hesitated, just for a heartbeat too long. The words caught in my throat as the pressure of the Counselor’s stare bore into me. “None,” I forced out, my voice a little too stiff, a little too rehearsed.
Reine faltered. Her lips parted, but no sound emerged. It was an unspoken confession in its own right, a silence louder than any words could have been. Her hesitation hung in the air, thick with something unnameable. The Counselor’s eyes glinted with an almost imperceptible flash of something like satisfaction, before the smile returned to its perfect, unwavering state.
The Counselor leaned forward, just a fraction, their presence swelling to fill the entire space. It was as if the room itself bowed to them, as if the very walls bent and shifted under the weight of their being. Their voice dropped, soft but somehow more insistent, each word like a nail driven deep into the silence. “Doubt is a sickness. But it can be cured.”
Their smile stretched then, something unnatural behind it, something chilling. It was not comforting. It was not kind. It was the smile of something beyond us, something far older, far colder than we had been prepared to face.
“You have done well,” they continued, their tone shifting to one of almost parental warmth, a veneer so thin I could almost see the predator beneath. “The work of a Deacon is demanding. The body and mind must align with the joy of the city to function properly. I sense… tension in you.”
I wanted to speak, to protest, to claim that I was fine, that I was joyful, that everything was as it should be. But the words turned to ash in my mouth. The smile on my face became a hollow thing, a lie too tired to keep up the pretense. Reine stirred beside me, a brief murmur of dissent escaping her lips before the Counselor’s gaze fell on her like a weight that cracked her resolve.
“This is not a flaw,” the Counselor murmured, their voice taking on the clinical precision of someone diagnosing a malfunction. “It is an opportunity for growth. I am recommending therapeutic recovery before your next mission. The First Oracle’s joy is endless, but you must allow yourself the grace to reconnect with it fully.”
Their words, though laced with the promise of care, felt hollow. This was not the warm embrace of a leader tending to their people. It was the impersonal touch of a technician calibrating a machine. Their care was a function, a cold, methodical solution to an unwanted anomaly.
“Thank you,” I said, bowing my head, my smile now rigid and unyielding. I dared not let it slip.
The Counselor’s gaze shifted away from us, their attention already moving to whatever was next in the sterile procession of their duties. “Continue to bring joy to The Happy Place. You are dismissed.”
We rose, stiff and mechanical, our smiles as fixed as the world around us. As we left the room, the door slid shut behind us with an unsettling hiss, sealing us back into the vibrant corridors of The Happy Place.
But out there, where the streets still pulsed with life, the light seemed to lose its warmth, as though the radiance of the city itself had dimmed. The air felt thicker now, like something had shifted, and the illusion of joy, so carefully constructed, was beginning to strain under the pressure of whatever lay beneath it.
And as we walked away, I couldn’t help but wonder: How far had the Counselor transcended, and what of the Cardinals they served, those whispered shadows of even stranger evolution? How far had the Oracles stretched their existence beyond human comprehension? And how long could we, the last vestiges of humankind, keep up the pretense of joy and humanity before it shattered completely?
Entry 10: Eternal Smile of the Forgotten Self
Back in my quarters, I stood before the mirror, where the silence wrapped around me like a shroud, fragile and thin as a breath. The reflection staring back felt familiar, but distant… an echo, a fragment of someone I thought I knew. My smile stretched across my face, immaculate, flawless, but it was hollow. The city’s smile, not mine.
The eyes in the mirror gleamed unnaturally, their brightness cold, as though the warmth had long been stripped away, replaced by something that glimmered without ever shining. I reached up to my face, tracing the curve of my mouth, pressing into my cheeks. Flesh that felt soft, pliable, alien and unyielding all at once. I wondered, for a fleeting moment, if I could feel anything beneath this smile. It would not waver. It refused.
I thought of Reine. Her return, what should have been a miracle, a testament to the First Oracle’s joy, to our mastery over death. Yet the memories of her transformation clung to me like something sharp, something jagged. The way her body had contorted, twisted and unfurled, bones cracking like dry branches, only to rethread into something too perfect, too smooth. It wasn’t Reine who had risen from that quivering cocoon of flesh, it had been something else, wearing her face, too wide, too still.
I tried to push it away, but it stayed. The machine. The heart of Silver Throat’s sickness. The pulse that was not life but an imitation of it. Its surface writhed, veins glowing with a heatless fire, a song not heard, but felt, a vibration that burrowed beneath my skin, deep into my thoughts. When it stopped, there was no sound, only an all-consuming silence, as though the world paused to ask: What have you done?
The city had cheered our return. The streets had swarmed with citizens, their faces radiant, voices a hymn of gratitude, as if they had been waiting for salvation. Their smiles stretched wide, laughter breaking through the air, infectious. I had smiled back, laughed with them. I had felt the joy. A tide that swept everything else away. For those brief moments, I had believed. I had believed in the miracle. I had believed that I was whole, complete.
But here, alone, that tide receded. And what remained beneath it? The gaps. The fractures in my mask, widening with every passing breath. I had nearly frowned, just for a flicker, long enough to feel the cold hand of mortality slipping around my ribs, squeezing, pulling at the strings of my fragile human form.
I willed the smile wider. It hurt. My teeth ached with the strain. My cheeks throbbed, as if the flesh was too thin to hold all the joy that was meant to be there. But still, it held. It was perfect. The reflection in the mirror smiled back, an endless, unchanging echo of the joy that was supposed to define us all.
Never stop smiling. The First Oracle’s joy is eternal. NEVER stop smiling. NEVER.
This is what I tell myself. This is what I must believe.
I thought of the Counselor’s words. Their voice had been soft, soothing, like a lullaby… or maybe like a whisper through static, their smile so perfect, their eyes too deep. “This is not a flaw. It is an opportunity,” they had said. Opportunity. They had said it with such certainty, such clinical precision. No room for doubt. And there had been no kindness in their words, just a cool efficiency. I wasn’t a person to them. I was a part, a cog, a vital part of The Happy Place’s great machine, a malfunction to be fixed, a gear to be calibrated.
My reflection flickered, warping, the edges of my vision swimming like oil. The image in the mirror shifted, twisted. My face stretched, my smile grew impossibly wide. The teeth inside it gleamed like rows of needles, sharp and wrong. My eyes… hollowed. The spark, the light… it vanished. What was left was just an abyss. I blinked. And then, it was gone. Just me. Just the smile. Always the smile. Forever the smile.
I tried to remember. To recall anything of myself before this. My favorite toy, a little thing I had made. I remember giving it to someone. Who was it? Who had I given it to? The memory is… gone. There’s nothing. Just a blank space where a moment should be. It slips further away, like sand through my fingers. A forgotten gift. A forgotten me.
I want to believe. I want to believe the Counselor, to believe in the citizens’ joy, in the songs rising from the walls, in the promise of eternal happiness. I want to believe I am whole again, that the wounds in my mind and soul aren’t flaws, but opportunities to be perfected.
But beneath the surface, beneath all the smiling, something is unraveling.
How long? How long can I keep smiling? How long before the smile begins to fade, like everything else?
I cling to it. I have to. The alternative is unthinkable. I cannot let go.
Never stop smiling.