The speed of the train gradually increased. It was slower than Yoichi expected, yet he couldn’t stop smiling as he saw the underground station platform being left behind through the windows.

Dark walls with dim light bulbs, colorful signs, pipes, and occasional emergency exit signs followed. A sigh escaped his smile.

He looked down at Verónica on his left. She showed no emotion as usual, yet he noticed the slightly raised eyebrows and widened eyes that followed the objects moving past the train.

Something suddenly bumped into his hip on his right. A woman stood close beside him. Although she stared out the window, her eyes didn’t move.

The cart wasn’t cramped, but moving between the standing crowd without bumping into someone was difficult if unavoidable.

Yoichi didn’t want to stare at her for creepily long, so he eyed the colorful advertising posters in front of him instead.

Another touch interrupted his intentions. It lingered on his hip, helping him assume it was something she carried.

When Yoichi believed it was over, the pressure slowly moved down and forward. Was the woman reaching for the phone in his pocket?

He closed his eyes and shook his head. He couldn’t be assuming those things.

Weight fell on his shoulder. He opened his eyes and saw the woman’s head resting on it with her eyes closed. Her hand moved past his pocket and her fingers reached his inner thigh.

Yoichi’s body stiffened at her grip. He didn’t want to cause a scene and make the passengers uncomfortable for the rest of the trip. He wasn’t even sure what was going on.

His heart throbbed as her fingers crawled.

Even if he accused her, what would happen next? She could deny everything unless…

“Why is she sleeping on your shoulder?” Verónica questioned. “Do you know her?”

Yoichi jolted at her voice.

“It’s…”

The people sitting in front of them raised their heads from looking at their phones and stared at him and the woman.

That was what he wanted to avoid.

The weight lifted off his shoulder. The woman snapped her head in all directions.

“W… Where am I?” she asked. “I fell asleep and woke up controlling a man’s body. I didn’t know what to do until I fell asleep again. Now I’m back in my body. I… He didn’t do anything weird, right?”

Yoichi answered, “It’s okay, don’t worry.”

The woman smiled at him.

His chest tightened until he couldn’t breathe. A lump suffocated his throat.

The woman walked away without saying anything else. She bumped into other people until she blended into the crowd.

“Your hand’s shaking—”

Yoichi interrupted Verónica.

“It’s okay. We should focus on the stations so that we don’t miss ours.”

He said that yet couldn’t focus or think about anything else aside from taking deep breaths. Even then, he had to bear with the dizziness for the rest of the trip.

Somehow, they got off at the correct station.

In the blink of an eye, they were on the sidewalk. They kept walking until Verónica pulled him hard to an abrupt stop.

“Verónica?”

“The pedestrian light is red.”

He looked up at the traffic light beside them and confirmed what she said. He hadn’t even realized they were about to cross the road.

“You don’t want me to ask what happened on the train?”

He looked at her and took a moment.

“I’d prefer that.”

“Even after you told me I can ask you anything—?”

“Just—!”

The yell that came out of his mouth stopped him. It gave him the chance to process the awful words he was about to say to her.

He smiled. “I’m okay.”

After staring at him, she looked forward.

How was he supposed to tell her he might’ve been harassed? He didn’t know how to tell anyone, and it wasn’t worth the worry. Why was he so distressed, then?

Besides, something else wandered his mind, but that could wait until they met with Enko.

…

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Yoichi and Verónica arrived home without more incidents.

He placed his thumb on the panel beside the front door and the lock clicked instantly.

They stepped inside and walked to their rooms. As they opened the doors, Verónica’s voice took Yoichi out of the trance.

“I’ll need something to cut the strings of my guitar.”

“Will scissors do?”

“They have to be strong and sharp. Wire cutters work better.”

“I’ll give my parents a call before I start streaming; they should have something.”

She nodded. “Are you going to stream all afternoon like you said? What do you stream?”

“Games or just chatting with the viewers about anything interesting happening in the world.”

She raised an eyebrow. “People watch that?”

“That sounded more judgmental than usual. It’s kind of hard to explain…. I know. Do you like any games?”

“I haven’t tried any. All app stores require an account and I don’t want one. The Internet was too slow anyway, and I preferred to use the mobile data Dr. Herrera paid for me to learn stuff.”

“Well, remember you can use our Internet for whatever you want. If you’re curious about why people like watching other people play games, I can show you.”

After a short stare, she approached him.

He pushed the door open for her and said.

“Sit in the chair in front of the desk.”

As she stepped inside, he headed to the dining table and carried a chair back to his room. He placed it beside her in front of his computer, pressed the button on the front of the case, and sat down.

“This chair is… unnecessarily big and colorful,” she said.

“I was hoping you’d say cool. I got it as part of a sponsorship. Isn’t it comfy?”

She moved around on it. “It is. By sponsorship you mean someone gave it to you for playing and talking?”

“It sounds simple when said like that, but yes. A company pays me and gives me stuff for showing their brand on my stream.”

The three monitors displayed the desktop.

He pointed at an icon on the taskbar. “Open this program.”

She glanced at him and then at the mouse before grabbing it. She dragged it across the desk-wide mouse pad to aim the cursor at the program shortcut and clicked it.

The window opened and dozens of game covers appeared from top to bottom. The vertical scrollbar button kept getting smaller as more loaded out of sight.

“Choose any that catches your eye,” he said.

Her eyes wouldn’t stop moving from left to right as she scrolled down the grid.

Being his job, he owned more than three thousand games. It took a minute for him to realize he had given her a task that was already difficult for him.

He asked, “Is there a genre you’re interested in?”

“Grimdark fantasy.”

Although he didn’t recognize the specific term, the word ‘fantasy’ made a game appear in his head just as fast as she answered.

“Click the search bar at the top,” he said.

She complied and he used the keyboard to type in it. Covers disappeared one after another as he typed until three remained.

“Click the last one.”

She read out loud, “Starworld Reversion?”

“It’s my favorite fantasy RPG and the best-selling of the genre.”

She stared at it for a moment and then clicked it.

Another window opened. A few logos and a legal disclaimer later, the female character Yoichi had created faded into the screen. She stood in the middle of a purple grass field, wearing bulky armor without a helmet.

He grabbed the controller on the desk and handed it to Verónica.

“Use the left stick to walk toward that mist,” he said.

She looked down at the controller and pushed the left stick in all directions with her thumb. She raised her head to see the character moving in the same direction. She pushed the right stick as the character walked, making the camera move.

Meanwhile, he lifted his headsets from the desk and placed them on her head, leaving her left ear uncovered so she could hear him.

“Stop,” he said when the character stood before the mist.

She stopped pushing the left stick forward.

“I’m not going to spoil what’s about to happen, but you should at least know what the buttons do.” He pointed down at them as he explained. “Jump. Roll. Light attack: weak but fast and doesn’t consume stamina. Heavy attack: powerful but slow and consumes stamina. Lightning spell and shield spell: both consume mana.”

Her eyebrows furrowed as she stared down at the buttons and hovered her fingers over them. She then looked back up at the monitor in the middle and walked into the mist.

A minotaur-looking monster emerged within, five times larger than the character Verónica controlled and holding a hammer as big as it.

It prepared its initial attack by swinging the hammer backward. Using the momentum, it swung it forward.

Verónica jolted and pressed the roll button, but it was slightly late. The hammer crushed her character, taking three-quarters of her health.

As soon as the minotaur lifted its hammer, she pressed the jump button frantically and pushed the left stick in all directions to make the character stand up. She didn’t have to do anything, yet Yoichi wouldn’t overwhelm her with too much information at once.

She began walking in circles around the minotaur. Taking into account that Yoichi had prepared the character for melee combat, waiting for an opening was a decent strategy. It could’ve been improved by casting lightning spells while doing so, but she was too focused on not dying.

The minotaur swung his hammer sideways with much less time to react, but it missed because Verónica kept moving.

As soon as the minotaur stopped moving, she got close to it and began smashing the heavy attack button. The punches hit it once every ten presses because they were slow, yet she took half its health… of its first phase out of four.

However, she abused the vulnerability for too long and gave enough time to the minotaur to recover. She jolted in the chair when it snatched her character. It crushed her with one hand, taking her remaining health and killing her.

The character dropped to the ground. The screen faded to black, displaying the choices to retry from the last checkpoint or return to the main menu.

Yoichi smiled. “You did great for your first time playing a game. Did you like it?”

“I need to memorize what each button does. You only explained what half of them do, but the rest also do things, don’t they? They might help me defeat it. Tell me what they do and I’ll retry.”

He chuckled. “Sorry, but I should really get ready to stream. We’ll continue after dinner, okay?”

She nodded. “Are you going to play this game on stream? I could learn by watching.”

It was a seven-year-old game he had already beaten on stream once, so it didn’t make sense for him to stream it again.

“I am,” he answered.

He closed the game, opened the browser, and headed to his streaming profile.

“This is the website,” he said while pointing at the search bar at the top, “and this is my username.”

She left the controller on the desk and stood up.

“I’ll go write them down.”

“Sure. I’ll call my parents now to ask them for something to cut the strings.”