Because he remembered being the player. End of story file.

The LittleMan’s movement stuttered. A pop-up window appeared: Warning: Shadow_Distortion.dll missing. Substitute: Regret. Leo clicked through. The door opened into a hallway that didn't exist in the original game. Endless. Carpet the color of a bruise. At the far end, something sat in a rocking chair. It wasn’t a rabbit. It wore a rabbit’s head, but the ears hung limp, and the suit was patchwork from every beta version of the game: 0.12a’s glitched textures, 0.23c’s broken lighting, 0.41.2’s “removed crying mechanic.”

He clicked .

The world loaded. He was the LittleMan: two feet tall, pixel-sharp in a high-def world. The room was a child’s bedroom. A bed the size of a battleship. A wardrobe like a cathedral.