Jian hesitated. His cursor paused over the buy option. He didn’t need the skin. It would be worthless in a season. He could save the money instead. He clicked his mouse.

Fanfare exploded on the screen with far more detail than actual gameplay. A fleeting sense of pleasure hit him. The game was showing him he had done the right thing. A message of confirmation told him of his purchase. His exchange came with a cold, tickling glee from the successful microtransaction.

Now that he had spent a hundred quid his character finally looks cool. He'd gotten the new dlc, despite the fact he still hadn’t finished the last season's content (or the season before that).

Doubt and regret plagued him like post nutting. When your life was shit why not dig deeper? Ain’t no way out. There was only the 996.

He wondered what he should do? Sleep only offered tomorrow. Tomorrow meant work.

He could roam around the map, do some quests he had but had no memory of starting or he could join the dungeon queue.

Apparently people make friends and join guilds. He had no idea how. Loneliness is a disease of the spirit that only affects people: he never learned social skills. Ironically no one else he knew had as well except his autistic cousin. He had learned how to make friends in order to fit in. The rest including himself had all become prisons of isolation watching themselves as prisoners desolated by their miserable histories. They had somehow been disabled by social circumstance. Inflicted by strategy and for profit what nature did to the autistic by random, cruel chance.

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The game wasn’t even that fun. It's combat was boring and weightless. The graphics look like ass compared to newly released rpgs. Low pologon counts and ugly, bland textures that popped in only when you were close enough to shit on them.

Worse still, he sucked at pvp, despite having his maxing out all his skills and equiping with endgame gear, because he wasn’t not a crafting god or investing his entire life into the game. He sucked when he was rested. Trash was the only word that described him now.

He hadn’t felt rested in…in…a long time.

He logged in. What else was he going to do? Sit and feel sorry for himself. The game at least gave him a distraction. He took in the bright visuals and hummed with the music. He did a quest that was basically farming mobs. It wasn’t fun, but he was immersed in the experience and briefly oversaturated with the sensory overload. He had escaped his labour life.

His neck tilted and his head rested on his desk. The screen’s light overlayed his face casting a blue strea of light onto his slace feature, the whinning of his pc and the noisy in game sounds comforted him into a short slumber. He slept.