[STR | 1] ; [VIT | 1] ; [AGI | 1] ; [ARC | 1] ; [DEX | 1] ; [SEN | 1] >

Kila closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was the fourth time she summoned the interface and it displayed the same thing again and again.

She got up from her bed, it was old and there was a crater in the shape of her body in it. She stretched lightly to lessen a bit of pain the bed had caused her, and then she exited the room.

The hallway was unfamiliar, yet still she explored the house she was in. Turned out the house was not as large as she imagined, as she quickly stumbled upon a kitchen which also served as a dining room, and found two people inside.

One was a woman in the mid of her thirties, and the other was a man in her late fifty. Both were eating on an old wooden table that couldn't be called long nor wide.

Without hesitation she stepped in, and made the people turned their head at her.

"You finally wake up. Sit, and eat. We've got a long day ahead." The man said while smiling at her.

Kila silently accepted the invitation and got herself seated. There was a plate with two sunny-side fried eggs and four thin slices of meat, she mistaken it for a bacon at first, but it was not, she doesn't know what meat it was.

Feeling hungry from just waking up, she dug in.

"Arum, mind your manners. Thank the forest first." The woman at her side scolded her.

Kila stopped chewing, and confused about what she should say next, "Hmmm, thank you forest?" she tried her best.

The man chuckled, and the woman sighed, "Darling, please reprimand her properly." she begged the man across the table.

"That was a good one, Kid. I suppose you inherit my sense of humor. Well, how does the saying goes again? Like father like daughter?" The man ruffled her messy morning hair, ignoring her wife plea.

Kila didn't comment, and re-focused on finishing her meal. Once that was done, she decided to play ball and fish for information.

"...Dad," she started, hesitating a bit to call a man she didn't know as her father, "Can you tell me about grand dad?" She shot her shot. Asking the two who they were would just be too weird, because by the looks of things, she supposed to be their daughter. So she would asked them about their own parents, which were also her grandparents. From then, she hoped that she would know a little bit of the two people in front of her.

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The man, her father, turned his head at her, "What's this, so suddenly..." he said, confused.

Kila shrugged her shoulders, "Just trying to kill time while waiting my meal to settle down properly in my stomach."

Her mother raised one brow at her, "I see that you keep talking funny. Where exactly you pick that habit?"

"Dad taught me." Kila pointed her finger at the man besides her.

" I did?"

"Darling," Her mother threw a deadly gaze at him, which he responded by lifting up both of his hand to the air and frantically shaking his head.

The woman sighed, and turned her head to Kila, "What's gotten to you, Arum my honey?" she asked so patiently.

"Nothing." Kila put up a poker face. "...Is our relationship with grand dad that bad?" She tried to guess.

Both of her parents looked at each other, "It is not like that, honey." Her mother denied her assumption.

"Yeah, we are just confused, you are acting strange." Her father supplied.

Kila shrugged, "Maybe it was all because of the bed. I felt like laying on bricks."

At her remark, both of her parents smiled uncomfortably. "...We will try to get you a new one, honey." Her mother tried to comfort.

Seeing the troubled face of her in-game parents, Kila, or should she refer herself as Arum from now on, could guess the source of their uneasiness.

It's about money isn't it? She thought to herself.

Looking around, she now could recognize how old all the furniture were, or rather, how near-broken was the house as a whole.

She refocused her attention back to her parents, who were still looking troubled to further the topic.

"Don't worry, Mom." She said while dismissively waving one hand, "I'll try to fix it myself." She winked, which seemed to caught her parents out of guard, and successful in diminishing their worry.

"I see..." Her mother nodded slowly.

Knowing that she had made the atmosphere in kitchen-slash-dining room awkward, Arum got up from her chair and walked to the exit, "Welp, better get ready for the day. Come and get me in my room when you finished your meal, Dad."

Whatever that means

Arum said and retraced her track back to her room. When she got there, she immediately tried to find a bathroom, which then she found that she didn't have one. She knew one should exist in the house, but she decided to give up getting a bath, and opened her closet then grabbed out random clothes. She changed into them and waited a minute or two for her dad to come and pick her up.

Not long after, her father knocked the door, he opened it and took a peek inside, "Are you ready? Let's go then." He said and immediately went outside.

"Remind me again what's we gonna do today." Arum asked as she caught up to her father who was walking towards the forest not far from their home. In fact, she could see the outskirt.

Raising one brow, her father turned his head to her, "I am gonna take you on a tour to the forest, you forget?"

Giving up the pretense that there was nothing wrong with herself, she shrugged her shoulders and replied, "Yes. Why we do that again?"

At this point, her father thought her forgetfulness and weirdness for sarcasm, he and his wife thought she acted bitter and discontented because truthfully, today was supposed to be her special day. "I am sorry, Arum. We couldn't afford to celebrate your coming of age yesterday. And today, the day after, we are giving you heavy responsibility instead of presents."

Catching her father's misunderstanding, Arum didn't try to correct it, but exploited instead. "Yeah, it's okay. Please put up with me if I am acting weird today... or tomorrow. I am sorry, Dad. But please just go along with it until I stop."

"Alright, I understand. Don't be angry for too long though, your mother would feel really bad. Even today she was determined to cook you favorite meal for dinner."

"... Is that so," Arum replied, not sure how should she react. After all, she wasn't angry at them and only making use of her father's misunderstanding.

They went quiet, and continued walking towards the forest. Along the way, Arum could see several other houses that was located very sparsely with each other. Sometimes she saw the occupants got out of the house and went to god's knows where doing god's knows what.

If the setting is a remote village up in the mountain like I thought, then they probably tending their small field and little animals.

The familiar interface that she had summoned four times since she opened her eyes this morning indicated that this... world is taking place at the same realm with the video game she knew. She would save the nudging curiosity about the mystery of how she ended up here for later. Now, she should focus on figuring out who was the NPC she role-played as, and where was she currently at.

So far, she had failed to recognize the landscape, even though Enigmatic Eclipse 's graphic was quite realistic. She also had failed to recognize the NPCs around her, namely the body she was currently in, her father, and her mother. She could've sworn she never saw or hear them in the game.

Just as her inner thought grew messier, her father's voice put a stop to it and swiftly brought her back to the reality, "We are here." He said and stopped just few feet away from the outer-most treeline of the forest.