I was walking at a steady pace, while sometimes smelled a salty waft in the wind. The sea was close by after all. From afar, I could see modern looking building bud from nothing but glass and stylish frame. Higashi High School, it’s student body was over two thousand. It was a humongous school with 18 classes for the first year alone.

And just when I arrived at the school gate, that was flooded with sea blue colored blazer and stripped tie.

Skill increased: Athletics Lvl 1!

Oh, brisk walking apparently counted as athleticism, which was weird but good to know. I wanted to say all of this was on my mind but the moment this words appeared, I did notice a change this time. My steps became a little more sure, a little more swift, and I straightened my posture slightly. I wondered how much of that, if any, was psychological. Either way, it gave me some more an ease of a mind knowing this was real... probably. I just didn’t know how I should react to all of this.

The entrance ceremony was the same routine of speech, starting from honorary freshman, student council president and then the headmaster.

Status condition: Drowsy Lvl 1! (DEX -1, INT -1, CHA -1.)

Wasn’t the penalty was a little bit to harsh? Couldn’t blame it though. Just put anyone in this kind of situation and I bet they would also have the same status as me. I wondered how long this would last.

After everything was over, the freshman swiftly moving to the front of bulletin board, looking for their classroom assignment. I wondered though, shouldn’t we supposedly got the assignment by an email or something like that? It was clearly better than moving through the flood of people.

Skill unlocked: survival.

Well, somehow the crazy messages that kept popping up were like something out of a videogame, didn’t surprise me anymore. Considering, it was pretty hard to breathe in here. As a result, I accidentally eavesdropped to the kids around the board before I even took a look at it...

“There's no need for them to post the names of the kids who are gonna be in our class...I mean we'll never see them again after we graduate anyways.” Said the male student

“Oh, great!! We’re in the same class again.” Said the female student.

Skill unlocked: Main sense.

I kinda felt bad eavesdropping at theirs and it wasn't really all that exciting, so I went up to check which class I was in.

Class 1... nope... 2... nope.

I moved like a Shinkansen getting pulled by a turtle, strolling down from the most left to the most right board and found my name written on class 1-18.

Achievement: Last Place You Look!

Somehow this didn’t bother me anymore, though I wondered what was the requirement for one to receive an achievement.

Moving on to room 1-18, I found my seat was at the second row from the bottom right.

Placing my bags, other kids had already started doing some small conversation, either by asking from what middle school they from or asking for e-mail information.

Meanwhile I was closing my eyes, watching the character sheet that appeared whenever I closed them for three seconds and chanted “status screen” It was like the words I’d been seeing that flashed up into my field of view to inform me of achievements, skill unlocks, and things of that nature. No matter where I turned while my eyes were closed, the whole character sheet stayed in focus. If I rolled my eyes to the sides, it switched to mostly blank ‘pages’ with nothing more than empty panes and the occasional title like “Quest”, Friends”, “Spells Known”, and things of that nature. I did eventually find one that said “Status Condition” which had “Drowsy” and “Tittle” which had my achievement listed, but it didn’t seem like that actually did anything, or at least it didn't have anything.

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Somewhat surprisingly, there was inventory, though it was empty page with nothing but 5x5 empty table. There was also a pretty pointless page that gave me a physical description of myself. The only information of note there, was that I was level 1 which I’d already guessed.

I guessed the one on my phone also had the same design... not like I could check it though, considering mine was dead.

Anyway, what was written on my physical description was quite right. Long messy, a little bit wavy black hair, black eyes, heck it even told me that I was wearing glasses. As for my face, My sister, Tsukishi had once said that I looked like someone had chosen ‘default’ for every option in the graphical setting, which I’d tried to laugh at but cut kind of deep. I wasn’t handsome, I wasn’t ugly, none of my features were very prominent, average build, average height.

The problem, so far as I could see it, was that I didn’t understand a single thing about the character sheet. There were abilities and skills, which were familiar enough, though this seemed like a bit much. (Probably to minus one from INT... not sure if I ever understood even with my two INT though.)

There were four rows of ten, for forty skills in total. The bold one apparently was the skill that I had unlocked. Thirty-six skills were still greyed out, their names just on the other side of readable no matter how hard I squinted at them. I could more or less assumed what was some of the skills would do… but it didn’t make any sense actually. Both of mine stats and my skills.

Like could I say how utter bullshit it was that I only had a 2 in everything? I wasn’t that bad in athletic, nor in social situations (I was pretty popular with the mothers at Tsubame kindergarten... Still zero girlfriend though.) I wouldn’t call myself smart, but dammit, I had drunk knowledge from Wikipedia and Youtube Trivia like “coca cola would be green if coloring weren’t added to it.”

Still, I wouldn’t say I completely clueless about gaming... but this was to much for me.

I slowly opened my eyes and looked around the classroom, then I saw a guy at the top left corner of this room. This was what they called as asking for a help from a friend... maybe. At least I thought because he was a little round and seemed didn’t have any friend, a part of me assumed he was the right person for this.

“Yo big guy.” I said.

I could see his trench coat hanging on his chair. He had white hair that he kept in a short ponytail, black eyes and square-frame glasses. He also wore black finger-less gloves.

He turned to face me, and pushed his glasses up the bridge of her nose in a very manner that made me sure enough he spent most of his holiday playing either yu-gi-oh or pokemon card game.

“Khu, khu, khu. I was surprised someone will talk to this one.” He said in a... very grandiose manner. “So, what sort of business doth thou have with this one?”

Achievement unlocked: First Immediate Regret.

Maybe achievement was only there to remind me of the oblivious thing... or to make fun of me.

Er... right, I almost forgot why I walked to him.

I took out a piece of paper and showed it to him.

“Character sheet?” He said while fixing his glasses in a very sure manner. But as expected, this guy instantly knew what this was.

“Yeah... you see, I kinda find this old game when I was cleaning my attic and the system had been bothering me since then. I don’t have any friend or knowing anyone who knows about this kind of things and you seemed to be an....”

Skill unlocked: Deception.

Skill increased: Flattery Lvl 1!

The two trumpet sounds that accompanied the appearance of the text did make me stopped in surprise. But I would admit that the things that really surprised me the most was him.

“Friend? This one don’t need such thing called a friend.” He said then crossing his arms. He seemed happy though.

“But if thou insist, this one will happily hear thou request.” He continued... then I remembered we hadn’t introduced ourselves.

“Ah... my name Arisato Tsubasa by the way.”

“Khu, khu, khu, this one wouldn’t give you this one name that easily.” He said. “But since thou hast introduced thyself, this one name is Kengo Master - Sarutobi Momonga!!”

Momonga suddenly stood and covering half of his face with his right hand while his other hand did another pose that I could only describe as Ninja sign. His unnecessary shout managed to attract everyone attention to us. Maybe... I just befriended a very cra- unique person.