Saturdays were always odd.

Sometimes the old lady next door would ask Ryu to help her outside, mostly for company he’d figured out, other times his mother would stay home and pester him about how he needed to get off his computer. That one was annoying, and also getting more common for some reason.

Today Ryu woke at roughly 11 am, not an unusual occurrence and it did carry some meaning. The old lady would’ve asked for him by now if she was going to come, so that only left…

“Ryu!” Caragh pulled up the blinds and opened Ryu’s window. “Wake up it’s 11 am.”

“Why does everyone have to shout?” mumbled Ryu, as he shielded himself from the light.

“And were you playing games all night again?”

“No-”

“Well your computer was still on and you know we can’t waste-”

“Was?!”

Caragh looked at her son, hands on her hips.

“Sorry,” said Ryu, rushing over to his computer.

It was as he’d feared. Off.

“Don’t just turn it off,” said Ryu, hitting the button to switch on his computer.

“You should have a shower and eat breakfast first Ryu.”

And so he did.

***

Caragh was a good mother, that is, when she was there.

Most of Ryu’s childhood, as well as Ruri’s, was spent alone since she was often working. Perhaps that was the cause of him learning to create his own fun, and also why most people considered him to be a loner.

He couldn’t even remember the number of times he’d picked up random hobbies from the internet. At some point he’d even spent his time writing low quality lewd wish fulfillment stories, but those days had mostly passed. Nowadays he just watched anime.

“Finally,” said Ryu, as he took a seat before his computer.

It was just past 2 pm, meaning he’d spent three hours ticking all the boxes on Caragh’s list of ‘things Ryu should do before he can use his computer’. He was pretty sure there was more, but only an idiot would ask.

When he took a look at his computer though, his eyebrows scrunched together.

“She put it to sleep?”

Once Ryu unlocked his computer his suspicions were confirmed. Everything from yesterday was still open, as for his bot…

[Connection lost.]

[Attempting to reconnect...]

Of course, part of being a programmer was accounting for all the stupid shit people could do, and 'internet disconnecting’ wasn’t even close to the top of the list.

“C’mon…” Ryu’s back hunched over as he leaned forward.

[... complete]

[Logging in...]

Ryu leaned back, closing his eyes and letting out a breath as he went.

Beep Beep

Ryu stopped and looked at his headset. It’d never beeped twice before.

[Server terminated connection with: “Already logged in”]

“What? That’s bull-” Ryu stopped himself before anyone heard. “I gotta stop talking to myself,” mumbled Ryu, almost inaudible.

Ryu’s fingers reached for his keyboard, and in a moment a tense but not at all exciting scene of him typing the occasional command into his computer with no success went on. There were several moments of exclamation such as “Dammit” and “Fuck this shit” until he decided to try the oldest trick in the book. Turning it off and on again.

His computer didn’t take long to reboot, and soon enough he was back on his desktop.

Beep

[User not detected]

Ryu always left his most frequently used applications on autostart, so immediately he heard that sound he was so fond of. Ignoring it, he started his program again. If the problem was on his end restarting would’ve hopefully fixed it. Well, at least until something else broke.

The prompt to attempt a link with his headset popped up, which was encouraging, and he naturally choose yes.

Beep Beep

Ryu shut his eyes and screamed with his mouth shut while shaking his head, allowing himself to let out his pent up frustration.

“Whatever, I’m done.”

He decided to throw in the towel, for today his problems would become tomorrow's. And probably the day after that too.

Always preferring to lean on the side of caution Ryu rebooted his computer again. At this point he simply wanted to game, but putting on his headset after he’d just injected a bunch of crap into its memory didn’t seem like the best idea. A quick reboot would do the job.

As soon as he was back on his desktop he put on his headset.

“Good afternoon Ryu,” said a synthesized female voice - Sylfy being what the designers named her. ”You were last seen at two twenty-three pm.”

Ryu didn’t even listen, having long since learnt to filter out the welcoming message. It’d impressed him at first, but it quickly got stale. He got up and laid on his bed, staring at the ceiling before flicking down the visor on his headset.

There was no physical display or controls built in, everything was done through thought. The only exception being the visor which signalled the headset to begin its connection.

“Please remember to play responsibly and have fun,” said Sylfy.

Connecting was generally unsettling, especially for first timers. It involved Sylfy making her legally obliged health warning followed by a sudden sense of disconnection. By now Ryu had gotten over the initial discomfort, and to him it was peaceful, tranquil if he had to pick a word. But it only lasted a fraction of a moment, after which the system would connect him with his other self.

And the moment it did-

Duhrttttbrrrdrzzzz

Sharp noises, like fingernails on a chalkboard mixed with static, pierced into Ryu’s mind, making him cry out to no one but himself. His vision was black, head still stuck in between as the noises kept coming.

“What the fuck!”

His thoughts made no sound, but his silent cries helped. The sound burrowed into him, saturating his mind until he couldn’t remember to cry. And then it stopped, finished, leaving his mind blank as his headset finally connected.

His senses returned slowly. First came the cold sting of the wind against his skin as his eyes crept open. White. The clouds, the rain and everything else. Blinking, he raised his right arm towards the sky.

“... snow?” His throat felt coarse, as if he was speaking through sandpaper.

The cold woke him quicker, and in seconds Ryu had pushed himself up off the ground to stand on his feet. The snow was fairly deep, up to his ankles.

Spinning around a few times, Ryu’s expression only grew more confused.

“Where am I?” said Ryu, out loud. He was pretty certain that no one was nearby to hear him.

Coming to his senses, Ryu remembered this was all a game. A game that leaned towards realism at its own discretion. In virtual reality minimaps had been trialed, and immediately rejected. People didn’t like having a map in the corner of their vision, and the vast majority simply considered it overpowered.

Virtual reality was just that, a virtual reality. People wanted to feel like the world around them was real, and a bunch of floating boxes in their vision wasn’t at all conducive to that.

On the bright side, there was an inventory system. Remarkably, it turned out people disliked having to carry things, so with balance in mind it was kept, but equipped items did retain their weight.

“Where’s my map…?”

Scrolling through his inventory, Ryu scratched the side of head.

“Uhh… where’s my stuff?”

He kept scrolling, reaching the bottom after only a few swipes.

“Where’d my stuff go?!”

Ryu did a search, which was as simple as thinking about what he wanted to retrieve.

[No results for “map”]

He dismissed his inventory and looked around again. There were trees, tall, with pinecones, and a mountain in the distance. He needed something he could recognise.

The first thing that came to his mind was how he should’ve learnt magic so that he could at least teleport, but that was a high-level skill, and he was only level…

“Twenty nine? Wait… the bot worke-” Ryu shut his mouth, suddenly worried he might be heard. “That’s three fucking levels! In one night!”

Ryu immediately opened every menu and stat window, inspecting them line by line. How far had his bot gone? How had it done it? Even though he was freezing he couldn’t help but smile as the pieces came together.

“It sold everything and bought a shortsword,” said Ryu, looking at his waist where the weapon in question was sheathed.

The purchase appeared to be from an NPC store - a terrible deal since Ryu’s current balance was effectively zero, not that he was wealthy to begin with. Why had it done something so inefficient though?

“It was doing what I told it to do, taking the most efficient route to fulfil its objective.”

No armor, only plain cloth and a shortsword. Speed and agility. A bot wasn’t limited by mental fatigue or any of the other constraints that humans bear. It has no problem evading attacks while attacking, so it had no need for anything else but speed and agility.

Ryu immediately became curious about what the bot would’ve done if he’d coded it to make money. What was the most efficient route to getting rich?

Leaving that behind, Ryu still had no idea where he was. The bot obviously didn’t need a map since it couldn’t forget anything, so Ryu stroked his chin in thought.

“I could kill myself.”