Chapter 1 : Yenn

Chapter 1: Yenn

Have you ever dreamed of making games into reality or did you hope that there would be a once in a lifetime chance to have a gamer get suck in to the game and play as a character or maybe even the hero of the game world? It was a ludicrous dream and a very impossible hope but here he is—still had his mind fixed on that impossibility and eagerly playing a very lonesome puzzle game.

Yenn threw out the Rubik’s cube in his hand and reach out to search for his squeezy ball. He sighed and stared at his laptop screen. He then averts his eyes to the Wi-Fi icon on the lower corner and saw a very little—one bar that flicked from red to an invisible color of the whole icon. He sighed disappointingly and close his laptop, putting it on top of his bed and searching for the bag to put it back in.

After he removed the laptop and stand up from his chair, he hit his knee on the edge of his desk and all the items—including his pencil box, notes, books and paper works fell as the leg of the desk collapsed.  All his poor things got scattered all over the floor and the pencils and pen were mercilessly flung to every corner of his bedroom. He gritted his teeth and pick up everything one by one and arrange it on the side corner of the floor.

“Fuck this unlucky life, why is everything in this house—ouch”

He felt the stinging pain on his knees and a small amount of blood dripped into the floor—no he totally mopped his bedroom floor with a huge trail of blood.

“Damn it!”

He stand-up on his knees and reach out for a cloth to tie on his wound. He sighed and sit up on the floor leaning his head on the bed.

Why is life so unfair? He tilted his head and look up seeing the flat ceiling that was already painted with molds and he knew that any moment now, it would give out and fell on him. But he doesn’t care, there’s nothing left for him anyway.

Only this dark and dingy house.

 He touched his bandaged knee and touch the cloth that was quite soaked in blood then he tried to stand up, after he felt a bit okay, he walked slowly and go out of his room to find a mop.

After cleaning his mess, he changed clothes and wear pants that are quite loose then went to the nearest convenience store which is near the train station—five meters away.

He went inside and grabbed some band aids and some snacks, spending the last bit of his spare cash for his food. He paused seeing his wallet with a few paper bills but he still grabbed a lot of snacks—he could just get that trustworthy bank card again anyway.

 He finally paid the counter guy and walked out the store in the same manner he walked in. He looked around seeing a pack of teenagers immensely tapping on their phones, not even caring about the road whereas they’ve got countless sneers from the taxi drivers. They almost got hit—many times ignorantly.

He curiously peeked into what they’ve been doing to just forget about the absolute mess that they almost make—he then saw them playing a boring RPG game. He shrugged his shoulders and walked away, he thought it was something interesting but it’s just a lame action game. Oh well, kids are like that nowadays, ignoring everything with their electronics on hand or ears. Not that he cared—

“Hey, did you get that money from the reward?”

“Yeah, I received it on my account today. Check this out”

“Whoa, fuck I’ll do that Arc too.”

He paused and paced back to the teenagers, peeking to their backs again and saw a loading screen. Meh  he’s just bluffing. He finally walked away without looking back and just ignored the talking strangers around—blabbing about this and that and finally reached his house in peace. He locked the door and headed toward his room and sit on his bed. He looked at the clock and finally reached out for the small laptop bag that was hanging on the wall. He opened it and looked at the Wi-Fi icon again seeing it in full green and finally browse the web.

He typed ‘Arc' and searched. He wasn’t genuinely curious but now, he couldn’t get his mind off to that ‘money' thing that the teenager said.

 After a second or two, he saw a game app and bunch of articles then when he scrolled down, he saw some news and finally went back up to pressed the game app and it automatically downloaded on his laptop screen directing him inside the game. He then saw a message that he would get a wrist strap right away after he pressed 'start'

Yenn was deeply intrigued and pressed the ‘start' button.

After a moment he heard a loud beep on his phone then he reached out to it annoyingly and saw a notification saying it has been rigged with a virus —which is damn bullshit. He put his phone down again and draw his attention back to his laptop which in— he was currently customizing his character.

He then heard another beep on his phone, this time it was a message regarding about a package to receive. He crossed it out and angrily set his phone in a silent mode, notifications blocked and just bluntly turned it off. After that series of massive virus spamming and notifications ringing, he finally felt the peace and satisfaction he wanted. He casually tapped on his laptop—naming his character and continuing his customization.  

 He had a hobby of playing computer games more than the mobile ones since he’s more versed in keyboard controls than joystick and the very reason of him focusing on his awesome laptop rather than his shitty phone was that he hated phones.

Like seriously, and he really don’t need it since he only used it for receiving calls and texting people—which is Mr. No one and nobody in his contacts—except for his own number and that helpless emergency number of the police station. Well, he had nothing to report and he definitely not up in the idea of pranking his own number with a call or getting spam with endless notifs and untrusty messages— or viruses warnings and pretty much the blah blah blah part of it—and that exact explanation was why he hated phones.

“They really sucks.”

 He went back to what he was doing and continued. The game is called “Arcs of SHION” an overrated RPG game that unceremoniously downloaded itself to his laptop screen. He was a newbie of course, he start reading the rules then some few instructions in the settings of the game and just boringly skipped everything else.

“A player who passed the easy modes is categorized as “Newp” a player who passed normal modes are called “Pro” and the player who passed Hard Modes are called “Lord of the Games” and those players who belonged to Top 500 are called “Top Rankers” and those who are in Top 10 are the Top Tier players.” At least that was what he need to remember and since he could just learn new things on the way and it’s not entirely his thing: reading rules.

He clicked his <Profile> then browse the store, his inventory was totally empty except for the tradable ticket pass. He tapped his fingers on the keyboard and casually clicked on his wireless mouse to try the moving function of the game. When he already felt accustom to it, he moved his character forward and it stopped in front of a large school that was blatantly showing the placard name of the school in his screen.

“Wellington Academy”

He chuckled when he remembered something hilarious in his head, the only hilarious moment that happened in his life—entering the Fuccin-Shiz University in his high school days and it was the same manner of showing their names.

It was a good laugh until he realized something that made him frown deeply after that moment. He shook his head and glanced at the map on the top right corner of his screen then he leaned back on his chair thinking about what to do next.

‘Bad memories shouldn’t exist'

He browsed his map and locate the student council president, after pinpointing his current location he moved his character towards that direction.

What he saw next is a scene of slaughter, a student was bullying another student with a cutter pointing to the student’s throat. He stopped and walk toward them. The other students saw him and blocked his way through, saying “Mind your own business, scram!” then they threw a lot of things at his character.

 He shrugged and decided to just ignore the scene.

After a moment, the screen was suddenly filled with confetti and a system message popped: “Congratulations! Blah blah blah”  he clicked his screen aiming to clear the confetti but it filled the screen more so he annoyingly raised his hands and waited for the goddamn confetti to disappear.

“Fuck it, I knew it, RPG games sucks”

After that, he aimlessly led his  character at the corridor then he bumped into an another player. He saw the chat button flickering with gold light signaling him to touch it. He just clicked it and choose one dialogue button, he don’t know what to say to a stranger but strangely enough the game let him have choices. “Now it feels like an Otome game haha” he chuckled and continue chatting with that player.  

Shang Huanyi, the other player chatting with Yenn was quite surprised since he was a new player who just started the game but randomly got picked to play a hard mode Arc. It was unbelievable and she knew coincidence like this were literally impossible so she tried to confirm his stats and he was totally saying the truth. She reached out for her phone to the side and took a pic of their convo since screenshot were restricted in the game it doesn’t mean the other device won’t work. She grinned and continue to chat with Yenn, unknowing his background or whatever— that she totally don’t care at all. It was just a game anyway and she just happened to be another player interacting with the other in the same manner as everyone else does.

After a few chats they both exchange information about the game although she didn’t know who Yenn was, she still leaked a few information about the Arcs and important rules hoping that the player a.k.a. Yenn will continue playing the game even if he hate RPGs.

You never know, maybe she would meet him later and…..