Around the room lay games, food and several other junk. I wonder why I only imagined cleaning it all up, yet I never do. Life sure could be easier if it could all be solved by imagination.
Welcome to my world, by the way, my name's Lofh. People get confused with how to pronounce my name, so I'll just say here and now that it's pronounced loaf, like a loaf of bread.
Enough about bread for now, my problem at hand is that I don't have anything to eat. I've been living on instant noodles for about an entire week already, and my stock is running low. It's not fun going outside once you leave, since the sun starts burning your ass off and it sounds like you're fucking Dracula. Not in that way.
Well, I'd rather go outside and suffer than die, so I put on a pair of shorts I found on the floor and a plain white t-shirt. Could be a good exercise after a couple days of staying indoors.
Making sure I locked my door properly, I finally left my house. I'll never forget the day that I forgot to lock it and someone got in and stole my precious laptop. He was never found, but I swear that we'll cross paths someday. I'm just being optimistic, though.
Walking down the streets of my neighbourhood, I wonder why I never noticed why cicadas were so annoying. I mean it's summer, but still, do you have to chirp every two seconds? Seriously, if you want to do that go join a choir.
This heat is really getting to my head, as I'm getting really mad over even the slighest things, such as a piece a grass being too tall. I better hurry up, better I lose my mind in this weather.
About five minutes later of painful torture through the sun, I finally manage to reach the market and enter it.
Whew, the air conditioning is realy refreshing in here! I better not dwell too long here though, I have to meet up with my online friends tonight and fight a massive boss.
Heading over to the foods section, I grab a couple packs of instant noodles and quickly leave, but only after taking a look at the games section.
It turns out that there's a huge fuss about a new virtual reality device where they'll be giving out free copies. Rernius Online, huh? I should sign up, this seems interesting.
I walk up to the board, and look down towards the clipboard. It has quite a bit of names here, I guess I'm not the only one who wants to try this out.
As I wrote my name down, I turned around and bumped into someone behind me. We both fell down, but I immediately got to my feet and held their hands to help them out.
“Ah.. Sorry about that, I wasn't looking.”
Looking closer at the person, it turns out that she was a girl in her early university years, like me. She's quite cute, I'll admit that.
“T-Thank you!.”
She bowed her head back and forth, clearly apologetic. I laughed a bit, since she was overreacting and shouldn't have been the one apologizing. Some people are really polite though, unlike some other people I know.
I picked up my stuff and proceeded to the cashier. In the end, I hd to waste about an entire thirty dollars worthof instant noodles. While walking around, other people looked at me weirdly, as if buying a ton of noodles wasn't healthy.
Well, it's not, but still. What else is as cheap as it is and still tastes good? Probably a ton of other things, but that doesn't support my argument, so I'll keep quiet for now.
I head back to my house, once again suffering through the intense heat of the sun. After enduring past a tedious journey of a five minute walk, I enter my house, locked the door, put the food on the table and jumped on the bed.
Over the past week, I seem to have gotten a habit, which is to sleep. A lot. I'm not lying, These past seven days were me sleeping through four of them. Some may say that it's not productive, but that's because they're jealous and can't afford to sleep due to work.
Before going to sleep I decide to check my computer for any news. It's always important to know when a game is on sale or not.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
I hop on the forums and see nothing but news for the Rernius Online game. What's so special about it, anyways? Anyways, I clicked on one of the threads and found that the results for the winners of the game were announced. Esctatic, I quickly found a link that showed the list of winners.
It turns out that there were a lor of winners, but that wouldn't stop the powers of CTRL-F! Using that, I searched up my name and I wasn't there.
Well, I expected that but it's a bit dissapointing. I kept looking through a list of names, and one looked very familiar. It was mine! It turns out that I just entered my name wrong.
While celebrating internally with glee, I went to sleep.
Not too long later, the doorbell rang. If it's those church people, didn't I kindly tell them to 'fuck off' a week ago?
I staggered towards the door and opened it. There was a man with a huge cardboard box.
“Hello, is this Lofn?”
“Yes. My name is actually Lofh though, it turns out that I spelled the h a bit short.”
“Is that so? Well, here's your device. Would you like any help with setting it up?”
I wondered about it, but once I remembered that my place was a mess, I made up my mind.
“Thank you, but no thanks. I think can handle this.”
“Well... Alright. There's an instruction manual inside, so you can use it as a guide. I'll be on my leave then!”
“Okay, thank you!”
I brought the box inside and immediately made room or it. I set the box down and took out all the parts. Then, I read the instruction manual for an entire hour, making sure that I wouldn't mess up.
After another hour of trying to solve this overly complicated piece of technology, it was finished and ready to go. A cool feature of this was that while you were playing, your real body would be put to sleep, making it so that you could play all night.
I entered the machine, and my vision immediately turned black. Now, I was inside a white field, and there was a voice inside my head.
[What is your name?]
“Lofh.”
[Would you like any customizations?]
Taking a look in front of me, I could see myself in a 3-D form. Honestly, for being a lazy person that stayed inside all day, I actually look fit. There were even several people at my university that thought I worked out. I had black hair, glasses and brown eyes. I looked like your everyday person.
Comtemplating whether to make myself look better or not, I decided against it and chose to keep my actual form.
“No thanks.”
[Alright. Name: Lofh. Gender: Male. No customizations. Is that right?]
It seems they can scan your body or something.
“Yes.”
[Preperations complete. Please choose a place on the map.]
A map spawned in front of me and there were several points that I could choose. Each one was some sort of kingdom, and I decided to choose the one closest to a forest.
[Welvend. Is that where you want to go?]
“Yes.”
I slowly dissapeared from the room and before me now was a town surrounded by trees. It seemed like it was one of those middle ages fantasy villages that you'd see in books or movies.
The first thing I did was move around. The response was actually really good, it felt like I was moving in reality.
I saw some other players spawning in as well, and they were all running around, probably itching to get a special class or something.
After looking around a bit, I found a hammock that was conveniently placed in front of me, so naturally I slept in it. I could sleep in the game and in real life, how great was that?!
A couple minutes later, I fell asleep as the shouts and steps of the players excitedly running around surrounded me. This background music is also really catchy as well.