As he stood there surrounded by his sister’s arms he slowly calmed down. Then he noticed she was shivering. He carefully turned his head and looked into her face. What he saw shocked him even more.
It was fear.
She was afraid. And that fear was directed towards him. His own sister was afraid of him.
“…” He opened his mouth to say something, to let her know he wasn’t scary, but nothing came out. After all it wasn't weird for her to feel that way. He never got angry, he hated violence, yet he had an outburst like that... So he just slowly turned back his head so he wouldn’t startle her and raised his hands so he could see them over her shoulder.
She stiffened up slightly as he moved, making him bite his lips. At that moment something inside him broke. He thought he even heard it break.
And the next moment like a vacuum, all his emotions seemed to vanish, leaving only expressionless calmness.
He stared at the closed fists his hands were still making. They were bloody and his skin had peeled off in many places. Blood was still oozing out, colouring his whole hand in a dark crimson.
He slowly forced his fist open, which was quite hard since his nails had firmly dug themselves into his palm.
Then he relaxed the rest of his body, his shoulders, arms and legs and finally managed to say
“It’s fine now.” His voice sounded odd even in his ears. Emotionless, almost cold.
His words made his sister jump, like a jolt of electricity had hit her and she hurriedly let go of him. He noticed how she quickly fixed her own expression before backing off and looking him over.
“A-are you sure?” She couldn’t hide the small stutter she always had when she was nervous.
“Yea…” He didn’t want to keep troubling her. She was forcing herself to act like the eldest sister should but that was not something he liked. He didn’t want to trouble her more than he did already. She would get hurt because she tried to help him too much.
He nodded, his face looking slightly down. His blond hair was really messy as he hadn’t bothered to even look into the mirror today and successfully hid his eyes from view. They were weird eyes, they always reflected his emotions. If he was happy they’d be a bright brown, almost yellow colour but if he was depressed they would almost turn black, like now.
He looked horrible. He had dark rings under his eyes and his face was swollen from the tears he had shed.
Honestly, his sister didn’t look any better; her makeup had long since been smeared all over her face, making her look like some kind of ghost, especially since she had paled considerably.
It was the same for Ivy who stood on the side watching us worriedly.
We all looked completely worn out, and no wonder considering what had happened the last few days.
(flashback)
After the incident he had been taken to the hospital like all the others. They had called his parents and performed a routine check up on him to confirm if he had received any injuries but except for a few scratches they hadn’t found anything.
He had been quite confused and disoriented, only slowly able to recall what happened. But instead of answering the stream of questions of both the police and his family then the only thing he asked when he remembered everything was
“Where are grandpa and grandma?”
At that question his mother had started crying and had to be guided out by his dad.
A bad feeling had started to spread within his gut at that point.
“Wait, don’t leave, where are they? Why are you crying? Hey!!” His own voice kept echoing in his head as he shouted after his parents.
Why weren’t they there?
That was when his thoughts blanked out.
(flashback end)
He forcefully stopped his mind in its tracks again, cutting off the memory he had recalled and turned around, away from his sisters.
He was staring at their house, not the now so familiar old wooden house of his grandparents but the normal house he had grown up in and muttered
“I’m going back.”
Without confirming if they followed him he went back inside and up to the second floor past the living room where his parents were still quietly discussing amongst themselves. They didn’t know what to do with him now. He ignored them and went on. Just when he stretched out his hands to open the door to his room the throbbing pain in his hands reminded him that he couldn’t enter like this. Therefore he went to the bathroom and cleaned out his wounds from the blood. Then he got out the first aid kit from above the mirror and disinfected and bandaged his hands.
He cleaned up after himself and went up to his room, he needed to do something to occupy his mind before he went crazy so he started puzzling.
The next day his parents took him to a psychologist. This was something that they had been asked to do by the hospital as a condition for discharging him. After all an incident like that left deep scars with someone. The doctor had asked them to let him come alone so after he reassured them he’d be alright they agreed to wait at the restaurant next door.
He got called in by the nurse who asked him to complete some questionnaires first. Half an hour later he got called in to the office.
“Welcome to my office.” A tall gentle looking man in his mid -30s greeted Green as he walked into the room. Green nodded, he didn’t seem to recognize him.
“Nice to meet you again, my name is Professor Kain.”
“Nice to meet you…” Green was a little confused since he was sure he hadn’t met this man before but he still shook his hand. Of course the bandages on it didn’t escape the psychologist’s notice. He could guess what had happened to them.
“Well then, Green. Is it alright to call you Green?” He asked with raised eyebrows.
Green simply nodded. He didn’t really care.
“You may not remember but we have in fact met and talked before in the hospital. I looked at the results of the questionnaires and other tests we did the last time we met and I’ve come to a decision.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
That was why, Green didn’t really remember most of what happened in the hospital since he had been too focused on recalling all the events of the incident.
“I see” he replied, waiting for Professor Kain to continue.
“Green, have you ever heard of Parallebrium?”
“Huh?”
“No? Well, the news didn’t really reach the coast yet, I suppose.” The professor coughed and instead of explaining asked another question.
“How about virtual reality? Full immersion technology?”
“Yea… I heard.” He really didn’t know what that had to do with the situation…
Virtual reality and full immersion technology had successfully been developed a year ago.
Full Immersion technology made use of magnetic and electric waves to stimulate the brain directly, placing the user in a dreamlike state. In this state the technology was capable of controlling what the user perceived with his senses, meaning it was possible to successfully place someone into an artificial or virtual reality.
A virtual reality refers to a reality that is mostly based on some software and various programmes. If done well enough it felt completely real. Some people had even started to use Virtual reality (VR for short) as a substitute for travelling. They could visit the pyramids or the sea and with the right programme it was detailed to perfection and felt completely like the real deal.
If he recalled correctly recently VR took a hold of the business sector as well. You could hold meetings there instead of traveling long distances if you connected to the internet and visualizing and presenting things got way easier using recent technology.
“Since you already know about those that makes it easier. Now, let me explain about Parallebrium.”
Green nodded, signalling he was listening. ‘No way around it anyhow.’ He signed inwardly.
“Parallebrium is essentially a game. It makes use of the Full Immersion technology and takes the user to a virtual reality. The special thing about it is that it’s a multilayer game. A so-called MMORPG to be precise. Just for the record this stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Many others will be playing in the same world at the same time together and its possible to form alliances and small groups to help one another out in this new world. The developers have asked everyone to look at is as a parallel world rather than a game. The support characters in the game that are controlled by the main programme will react depending on the situation and will come to conclusions independently, the system will only have minimal control over their actions.
Now as for the game itself it takes place in a historical fantasy setting. They don’t have modern technology yet and only make use of crude weapons such as swords and magic.
As to why they need them, this is because magical creatures or monsters have started appearing and attacking innocent citizens at random. Basically animals that have been in contact with magic too strong for them to handle turn into monsters and lose all reason, attacking people at random.
In a world like this the users will start living a new life.
They can choose to help and fight against these monsters or just live a normal live as farmers or similar in Parallebrium.”
The professor finished his basic explanation and looked at Green expectantly.
But Green just had an expressionless look on his face, seemingly disinterested.
The professor sighed loudly.
“Let’s get to the point, shall we. The game comes out next week. I have ordered the hardware and a copy of the game for you. My prescription is this:
Play Parallebrium and get another view on things!”
“Wait, what?” A undefinable emotion now showed on Green’s face.
“You’re seriously prescribing me to play a game?”
“Precisely.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Huh?”
“I said I don’t want to.”
“Unfortunately your parents have already agreed and everything has been ordered, so I’m afraid you don’t have a choice in the matter.”
“…say what?” Green’s ecpression darkened and anger slowly welled up inside him. What the hell kind of doctor was this!?
Professor Kain sighed.
“Alright, here is the deal. 3 months. Play the game seriously for 3 months and if I don’t see any change with your problem or you really hate the place we wont force you to go on after that. But you have to seriously play the game during that time.”
“…”
There was only silence for a few minutes.
Then Green finally burst out in an angry voice.
“Fine!” ‘Dammit, my grandparents just died and here I am at a psychologist getting forced to play a stupid game.’
(flashback)
Right… in that incident… they had been killed. They hadn’t made it through like the rest of them. That’s what the police officer told them as well.
He knew it well, he had seen it after all, he had been there, but he hadn’t wanted to believe it. Not until the police had confirmed it, until they had let him see them one last time. That was when his mind broke. After all… he could have prevented it. He wasn’t a masochist and blamed himself for what happened. But the truth was that there had been signs. Signs that should have warned him.
(flashback end)
Shaking off this way of thinking once more he stared at the psychologist before him angrily.
If you could kill someone with your eyes Professor Kain was sure he’d be dead 10 times over by now. But he felt this was necessary for the boy. He needed to gain some space, to get away from everything and look at things in a different manner entirely. Or his anger and frustration would eventually consume him.
Thus, Green left the office and met up with his parents, his face a mask of expressionlessness.
-----------------
[A/N]: Hey dere and goood afternoon! :hi:
hope you enjoyed the continuation of chapter 1 and please let me know if the time jumps this time were as confusing! Any other comments, suggestions, remarks or just thoughts are very welcome as well [th_084_.gif]