• -2158 AD-

    Staring blankly at the box in front of him, 13 year old Hiragi Kaito couldn’t help but wonder just what his mother was trying to hint to him with this present.

    “A PC game. You gave a person who has broke every single computer he tried to use a PC game?” He asked disbelievingly as hands automatically reached up to ruffle his own hair in frustration as he tried to figure out an appropriate response. “Mother, what exactly are you trying to do? Giving me such an item?”

    Turning to the back of the box, Kaito’s eyes couldn’t help but be drawn towards the words printed in bold at the corner of the gift.

    “A limited edition closed beta server for Reality- First World? Mother—”

    “Why don’t you just give it a shot? You have to overcome that handicap of yours sometime you know…” Kaito’s mother looked at her youngest son pleadingly.

    “But mother, wouldn’t brother be a much better recipient for this gift? Surely you could not be thinking of giving this—”He gestured towards the box now left untouched on the table, “—to a computer idiot like me!”

    Pursing her lips, his mother, Sumeko was trying her best not to allow her exasperation towards her youngest show on her face, “No buts, young man. I went through a lot of trouble just to get my hands on this game. I heard that it is currently the most anticipated game in the market right now.”

    “And there is your reason to give it to brother and not me!”

    “That brother of yours is already glued to the computer 24/7 because of those other games of his without me having to give him this. Anymore and I’m afraid he’ll start to breathe those digital particles he was talking about in his game the other day!”

    A frustrated sigh. “And that hasn’t warned you off giving me these games yet? With such a brother as an example…”

    Kaito growled softly, “I thought that parents were supposed to discourage their kids from playing these games, not adamantly pushing them into gaming and getting hooked to these stuff!”

    “You and your brother are two distinctly different people, with totally opposite personalities! It’s just my luck that my eldest is a computer gaming addict while the other absolutely refuses to go within the 10 feet radius of a computer!” Sumeko was rubbing the bridge of her nose, hard. Trying valiantly to relieve herself of the headache she gets whenever she tries to broach this subject with Kaito.

    “And please keep in mind that I said nothing about getting hooked or addicted to this game Hiragi Kaito. I’m just getting worried about your lack of experience regarding anything to do with a computer!”

    His mother then stood up, pushing the chair backwards even as she pressed that box into his hands. “This is no longer the 21st century, where people were still able to survive without the help of computers. You do well to remember that Hiragi Kaito!”

    She then took her purse as she walked out of the door, intent on getting some headache relievers from her apartment.

    Kaito watched as his mother slammed the door shut, totally disregarding the electronic mechanism that would automatically shut the door after she has stepped out.

    “That woman…” Kaito hissed, partly in anger and frustration.

    “Blasted meddling mothers who don’t know their own limits…”

    He stomped all the way to his kitchen, all the while cursing loudly, not worried that anyone might overhear his words as he currently lives by himself in the topmost floor of the apartment building he is in.

    His father is a great fan of ‘personal space’. So much as that even as a married man, he took the definition of ‘privacy’ to the extremes. Such as buying an entire apartment block, before allocating the top 4 floors to his family, while renting the other 20 out to others. The top is of course given to the youngest, with the next three given to his brother, mother and himself respectively.

    Walking out of the kitchen with a glass of grape juice in his hands, Kaito glared childishly at the game that his mother bought; knowing that somehow, his mother would figure out some way to force him into playing this, even if it meant pushing him into bed and ‘guiding’ him step by step.

    It is hard to figure out which is worse, his father’s obsession with privacy, or his mother’s stubbornness at getting her way.

    ‘Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. What kind of choices are those?!’

    Glancing at the box again, Kaito cursed, loudly. “Aw ******** it! Fine! I’ll play by her rules. And lets see who regrets it at the end of the day.”

    Snatching the box off the table top, Kaito moved into a room he has not touched since the beginning of last year.

    Ripping the box open, he allowed the items within to splay messily all over the floor grabbing only the instruction booklet before opening a translucent terminal at his chest level, linking him to cyber space.

    “Now let’s see… All I have to do is to follow the instructions, it should be easy… After all, this is made for kids.” He muttered to himself as he fiddled with the controls, conveniently forgetting that he is a kid himself.

    Turns out all you have to do is to insert a chip into the terminal, and the program would run by itself. But even then, it took Kaito over an hour just to get that right.

    “Goddamned computers with their stupid hard-to-find chip insertion point!”

    It definitely didn’t stop him from out-cursing the poor thing as the game downloads itself into the terminal. Not that a terminal could curse back…

    “Now where’s the visor…” He murmured to himself as he brushed away stray wires and Styrofoam. Finally spotting it lying beneath the chair, Kaito smirked before plugging it in properly into the terminal.

    “Guess now all I have to do is to put this…thing on.”

    With great reluctance, Kaito arranged himself comfortably on an armchair standing beside the door before giving a command to the AI in the apartment to not allow anyone into it without his permission.

    Carefully placing the visor over his eyes, Kaito then brushed the stray hairs out of his face and attached the two realism points to his temples before making sure that the headset located on the visor is firmly over his ears.

    Pressing the ‘Start’ button on the floating terminal, Kaito was totally unprepared for the sudden shift into virtual reality.

    Falling to his knees, Kaito looked around seeing only statues of different… Well, the most fitting word would be versions of him.

    System Log-In: Registration Number 022

    Pending…

    Logged In

    Display Name: _

    “There’s only less than a thousand world-wide playing in this closed beta?” Kaito whispered in shock. As usually, a closed beta would consist of at least a thousand, maybe even as many as ten thousand players if the game is to be sold world-wide.

    But this game is said to be the most highly anticipated game of the year, worldwide. Why is there only less than a thousand playing this? And more importantly, how in the world did mother get her hands on one of this?!

    “Ah, forget it! Who cares how that woman got her hands on this.” He slapped himself over the head, “My job is just to play this damned thing.”

    “Now…For the display name…” Biting his lips, Kaito’s brows furrowed together as he started to think.

    Display Name: _

    Display Name: Sai Hyou

    System Registration…

    Pending…

    Name Registered

    Name: Sai Hyou

    Race: _

    “Race?” He asked.

    The different statues of himself then started slowly circling around him, each showing him as a different race.

    “Well, I guess if that’s the case…” He started to look closely at the Angel version of himself, carefully noting the stats and elemental advantage. He then turned around and was about to look at the Elf when his elbow brushed against one of the Angel’s wings.

    Race: Angel

    Confirmed

    “s**t!” He looked around for some sort of re-set button when he found that there was no such thing, the selection for the race was, apparently, permanent.

    “Darn it!”

    Glaring at nothing in particular, he sighed loudly in frustration before deciding that there was no use stopping here indefinitely for just this one error.

    He took special care not to brush against anything, when he started choosing the color and hair length. It appears that your basic features stayed the same within the game and that the only thing that you could change was the color of your hair and its length.

    Deciding upon a light blue color, together with shoulder length hair, he confirmed the changes for his appearance.

    Status: Sai Hyou- Active

    Level: 1

    Job: Unknown

    Appearance: Confirmed

    Entrance Into The Game: Pending…

    Approved

    Entering…

    This time, Kaito, or Sai as he chose to be known in the game, had at least some warning before they warped him into the game.

    But even that was not enough to prevent him from falling flat on him butt as he appeared right in the middle of Town Square.


    TBC…