Evening Game

“Again, damn you.”

A figure sat on the floor drinking health potions from a bottle.

“You’ve said it… what? Four times already? That’s the number of death, you know.”

“Also the term for lucky so…”

“I’m not sure you’re in a position to say that now.”

The figure had his cloak off, revealing the face underneath. The handsome features of a young man in his seventeens with short, rather messy yellow hair. He was Ethan’s middle school friend, Kennard Alvaranto.

“Where have you been, man?”

“I should be asking you that.”

“Sorry, busy with high school stuff.”

Ethan felt envious of the fact that Kennard could say that with a smile. He was about to voice his thoughts when he remembered Chione standing behind him. She had been silent ever since Kennard entered the fray.

“Still, to think my thoughts were correct.”

The two had played together before. One day, Kennard suddenly said that he was busy with high school and invited Ethan on one last game, an all-out battle in the tower with hopes of reaching the top.

Feeling betrayed, Ethan rejected the offer and the two didn’t speak ever since. For the first time in a month, Kennard joined the game, and upon seeing his name appeared in the online list, for some reason, Ethan believed him to be here, where they last met, where he broke the news and offered him one last game.

It wasn’t the only reason he had chosen this red zone as his quest location, but he did factor in that possibility.

“I was thinking of the same thing. Didn’t expect you to have a friend by the time I came back.”

Kennard said teasingly. Players could change their gender freely in the game, hence ‘friend’, but from Kennard’s grin, Ethan understood the point. He reached for Kennard’s neck and violently pulled him.

“Woah!”

He yelped, surprised.

“It’s not safe here, let’s go somewhere else.”

He pulled his friend out of the room, his sword at the ready, in case someone ambushed them on the way back.

“Whoa, Ethan! You’ve gotten violent!”

Ethan stopped the second he heard the mention of his name. His brain went into overdrive, searching for an excuse to say. He let Kennard go and pushed his body forward, realizing that acting like usual would actually be the best choice. He wasn’t the only person that had the name Ethan, so Chione shouldn’t assume it was him. If he continued acting normally, differently from the real Ethan, she shouldn’t notice. She would probably start doubting herself at this point, since he didn’t try to correct it or act strangely. It was his name, this stranger’s name. He distanced himself from the two, at a speed fast enough to get far, but not too fast to the point it looked obvious. He took a deep breath, calming himself down.

If he wanted to throw away any suspicion, he needed to act normally, like FireRock. FireRock wouldn’t be bothered by this situation. FireRock had nothing to do with Chione, Ethan had nothing to do with Chione. As long as he didn’t let anything else slip, as long as he acted the way he always acted-

“So, how has Tangreng High been treating you?”

Ethan felt his entire world crashing down on him. He stopped dead in his tracks.

“Ethan?”

Kennard approached him and shook his shoulders. He slowly turned around, his eyes stopping not on Kennard, but on the girl behind him. Her expression flat, her red eyes glittering in the darkness, broken lamps shone a limited amount of light on her. Her lips then twist into a tense smile.

“So, you’re friends with Ethan?”

Kennard hadn’t introduced himself, and those words were the first Chione uttered ever since Kennard came into the room.

It was also the first time she addressed him with his real name in the game. Ethan could feel the FireRock mask shattering right before him, his true self bare in front of her, waiting for her judgment. Kennard seemed to notice that he messed up and only nodded, turning around for the exit.

The three went back to the city in silence. Chione still stopped in Hatasdei West Dungeon to complete her quests, but neither of the three said anything. Ethan himself had completed his quest, thanks to the stuff the player they killed dropped and one other thing he found in the control room. The three went to the players’ guild and submitted their requests, before wordlessly parting ways.

“So… see you tomorrow?”

Kennard asked as he stood on the sidewalk, Ethan’s back facing toward him. He needed to return the car, after all. Ethan turned back toward him, the sun shining brightly above them.

“... Yeah. See you.”

“I’m sorry that happened. I messed up.”

Ethan shook his head.

“I’ll deal with it, somehow.”

Kennard let out a thin smile and waved before turning around, and Ethan continued his steps toward the car. He entered the driver’s seat, which was occupied by Chione just a few minutes ago. He put his hand on the steering wheel, feeling its texture. Chione didn’t say a thing on the way back, no one called up to her either. She did ask for Kennard’s contact for some reason, but he couldn’t ask her about it.

He felt ashamed of himself. It felt like he was lying. He argued that FireRock, his virtual avatar, was as real as himself. It was simply another side of him, one that represented him in this world. That side of him wasn’t any less real.

He wasn’t lying.

Yet it felt all wrong the same. What if she decided to tell Calista and Mason about it? Would his school life have changed? He didn’t want to think about it, he didn’t want to think about anything. He felt a weird sense of fatigue overlaps him, pressing down on him. He hunched forward, putting his face on the top of the steering wheel. He closed his eyes, his breathing heavy.

Why was he here in the first place? He originally agreed to only help her for a while, and it had become clear to him that she was skilled enough to go around alone. She no longer needed him. But for the first time, despite telling himself multiple times before that this relationship between FireRock and Chione wouldn’t last, that it would end the next day, he felt sad anyway. The times he saw her leaning back on the guild walls, waiting for him to come, only now he realized that he had taken all those things for granted. Just because she did it a couple of times, he assumed it would always happen.

He tried to cheer himself up, telling himself that things would soon return to normal. The normal that he lived through ever since Kennard left him. In the end, nothing changed. He should be grateful that he had this experience in the first place.

Nothing changed… So why did it feel so heavy? He felt virtual tears go down his cheeks. He wiped them off,

But they refused to stop.

It took a large amount of willpower to return to the car and get back to his hotel. Unfortunately, those were simply things he needed to do before he could exit the game. He looked up at the gray ceilings of his real-world home. It felt dull, and he wished that it could just collapse right on top of him. He felt too tired to do anything else and simply closed his eyes.