Ryu was alone again.

After Shizuka’s convenient introduction she quickly shared her contact info before running off. Of course, as Ryu had expected, she did have somewhere she needed to be.

So now he was standing in the middle of a footpath wondering where to go. The arcade didn’t seem as attractive now, but he didn’t want to head home yet. He could think now, and there were things he wanted he wanted to check.

He started by focusing on a young woman walking down the sidewalk. The fact she was wearing a tight skirt played no part in his selection.

He looked at a sign written in some Asian language he didn’t understand.

Ryu smiled, which quickly grew into a grin as more and more information flowed through. He knew what it was, he’d known all along. It was his bot, and it was working perfectly.

“Excuse me,” said Ryu, to another woman passing by. As usual, the woman’s clothing played no part in his decision. None at all.

“Yes?” said the woman.

He needed to ask her for something he didn’t know, something that it couldn’t possibly know.

“Are you having a nice day?” said Ryu, a little flustered.

The woman crossed her arms, a little taken aback.

“How old are you?”

Ryu realised he probably should’ve thought things through a bit more, but he’d become caught in the moment. And hormones.

“I’m sixteen.”

The woman sighed. “You seem like a nice kid, but you really shouldn’t be hitting on women on the sidewalk.”

Ryu looked down, a little embarrassed his introduction had come off in such a way, but also giving himself time to think.

“Sorry, but can I at least get your name?”

Ryu knew he wasn’t cute, but he could be pathetic. And sometimes pity was just as useful. A hand landed on his shoulder, and he looked up to find the woman smiling.

“Hey.” She lightly shook his shoulder. “My name’s Alana.”

Ryu’s expression instantly inverted.

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“Wow.”

To Alana it looked as if Ryu had just reached some sort of climax.

“Err… I’ll be going now,” said Alana, taking her hand off Ryu’s shoulder.

Behind him he heard her mumble. “... I should’ve known he was a creep…”

Ryu didn’t let the comment get to him, after all, he had something far more attractive to entertain him, and now he’d confirmed the most important aspect of them all.

***

Back at home, Ryu shut himself in his room and hopped on his computer.

It was time to exercise his google-fu.

He always made sure there was a fallback, something he could switch to in the event someone walked in. Gmail and Reddit generally fit this role, though he had to make sure to logout of his special interest accounts.

With those tabs ready in the background, and his thumb ready to hit the ‘retreat’ button he’d set up on his mouse, he began.

[brain reprogram]

All he got was crappy news articles, with every variation of the terms being about the same.

He had to go deeper.

Out came Atom and a quick script to crawl the deepest recesses of the clearnet, including every chan known to man. But all he found were spicy memes.

In his head Ryu shouted “Deeper!” like a nympho riding a hotdog in those doujinshi he liked to read for the plot, and so he decided he had to check the only place he hadn’t.

Ryu didn’t go to the darknet often, not because he was a normie but because there really wasn’t a whole lot to do. The movies always got it wrong. But if he wanted to be certain there was nothing on his case he had to check.

He couldn’t crawl the darknet, it’d take too long, but there was only one place he needed to check. Though, five minute later he still hadn’t found anything so called it a day.

“Well that was anticlimactic,” said Ryu, quiet enough that only someone laying sneakily on his bed would hear.

“What was?” said none other than his sister.

Alarms went off in Ryu’s head and he slammed the retreat key, immediately closing and clearing any evidence of what he’d been doing. Looking behind him, he found Ruri laying on his bed.

“What are you doing here?” said Ryu, nonchalantly.

“Nothing.”

“Well?”

“I wanna play.”

It took Ryu a second to remember he was the only one with a VR headset in his family, so it wasn’t uncommon for Ruri to use his headset. He totally hadn’t thought of something else at first.

“Ah, right.”

Ryu grabbed his headset and held it out, before suddenly retracting his arm.

“Actually, not right now.”

Ruri gut up and rushed towards Ryu, who put his hand up to stop her.

“Wait! It’s faulty.”

Ruri stopped, just short of Ryu’s hand, and squinted. “You better not be lying.”

“When have I ever lied to you?”

Ryu looked at his hand, still between him and Ruri, though of interest to him was how she’d stopped a centimeter from placing her chest within his grasp. If he extended his hand just a little bit more… he would definitely die.

“How long will it take to fix?” said Ruri, backing off and taking a seat on Ryu’s bed.

“I don’t know.”

“I thought you were good with computers?”

“This is like telling someone who can drive to build a car.”

Ruri got up and prepared to leave. “Whatever, just hurry up and get it fixed.”

Once Ruri left Ryu slumped back into his seat and stared into his headsets visor. He wasn’t lying when he said it was faulty, at least not fully. But he didn’t want to risk Ruri getting hurt.

“I’ll have to buy a new one…” mumbled Ryu.

It’d taken him almost a year to save for his headset, and he wasn’t exactly swimming in cash. Yet, despite all this, he smiled.

He needed a new job anyway.