The train came to a sudden stop waking me up. I took my black newsboy bag up and went to the door following the people onto the train platform.
Looking at my watch I realize that the train had a slight delay, so I held onto the shoulder strap of my bag and ran down the platform all the while weaving through the people around me. Without bumping into anyone I finally reached the stairs.
I took three stairs at a time and saw my bus in the distance standing at a traffic light. In a matter of seconds I finally reached the bus stop just before the bus arrived.
Walking inside the usual bus driver, whom I called Teddy since it aggravates him proclaimed:
“Not even slightly out of breath, Lex? That kind of pisses me off!!“
„Why’s that Teddy? Don’t you go jogging every evening, Teddy?“
Before Teddy has time for his usual:
„Damn it, don’t call me Teddy“
Response, I was already walking to the back of the bus where my best friend Frederic waved at me to come already.
„Soooo .....? What do you think? It will be awesome, right? I can’t wait already!“
Frederic said in a rush.
I had trouble understanding what he had said. When I had finally made heads over tails over what he had said. I asked extremely confused:
“What are you talking about? I didn’t forget something important, right?“
Frederic looked at me for quite a long time, his expressions ranging from astonished over to confused over to a „are you kidding me“ over to a „you really don’t know-astonished“ to a smug expression. Even though he probably was laughing at me on the inside, I said nothing sitting there, looking at him while blinking very, very slowly. Frederic never was able to cope with silence, even less with such awkward silence, which I was invoking intentionally.
„Didn’t you watch any TV yesterday or looked at any news online?“
he asked me, looking at me quizzically, which I must add is reasonable.
That is since I pride myself in being an awesome gamer. Even though I am not that good in many games, such as sports games, or shooter games. I know that I am really great in puzzle, strategy and Role-Playing games. I usually play a couple of hours everyday and mostly manage an offline RPG in a week. I also play some MMORPG’s but quit after a few months since the game become to easy or monotone, since the actions one can undertake are extremely limited in my opinion. The combat is repetitive since a keyboard isn’t really able to move a body according to the player’s wishes, such as dodging blows or blocking the way the player wants, just to name a couple of things. But since I play so much, I always follow the news threads about new games and my friends know that. So when Frederic asks me if I haven’t watched the news, he specifically means the gaming news, since all my friends also know that I have quite a disinterest in normal news, such as fashion, weather, politics, economy etc..
That is why I truthfully answered, since I (almost ;D) never lie to my friends:
“Nope was celebrating my aunt’s birthday yesterday, so I didn’t have time.“
Frederic angrily said:
“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have loved to come and get free drinks, food and cake. Oh by the way tell her congrats from me.“
I secretly suspected or rather knew that Frederic had a huge crush on my only 6 years older aunt, Jenny. I know that she has an athletic body, like all of my family, and is very popular among her college friends but still .... ewwww. I simply responded:
“It was family only, sorry“.
I am very sure that I saw him pout a little but seeing that we almost arrived at our destination I ignored it and stood up walking to the door.
After the bus came to a stop and Frederic and I walked out I turned back and just as the door was closing I called:
“See you tomorrow, Teddy“.
I laughed out loud when I saw him angrily waving his arms around and shouting something, which I couldn’t hear anymore seeing that the doors had closed and I had walked a bit away from the bus already.
I turned around again and asked Frederic while walking towards the physics section, because we were studying for the bachelor in physics:
„So, what did I miss yesterday?“.
He looked at me for a moment before he realized what I was talking about and was about to reply when suddenly we were tackled from behind. I reflexively rolled to stand up on my feet again. I looked to my side where I saw Frederic lying face first on the ground and next to him on the ground laughing while clutching his stomach because of his laughter was another one of my good friends Jonathan and I once more wondered why the hell he was one of my friends. Seeing Frederic spitting out dirt I was grateful for the excessive training I have undergone.
I have had training in several different martial arts since I was young. I started with Judo when I was seven and managed to get a black belt when I was ten. While my family staid in South-east Asia I underwent 2 more years of training in Aikido and Thai Kick-boxing. After that I had one and a half years of practice in Savate in France. When I was 15, I went to a specialized military training school in the USA, where I learned how to shoot with and handle all kinds of guns and I also learned how to handle knives, with throwing knives being my favorite. I finished school with 16 and since then I picked up archery and Kung Fu as a hobby. After having had all these experiences in martial arts I have been training every day for a couple of hours to keep myself fit and to get better and stronger. So it isn’t as if I am one of your stereotypical gamers or nerds even though I love reading and am even reading and studying while doing my exercises, Even though I love to game during my free time, having spent many nights gaming and sometimes forgetting or not caring enough to go to sleep.
I took hold of Frederic’s arm and easily pulled him to his feet. On the other hand I left Jonathan, who also wanted a hand up, on the ground. While Frederic was still spitting out dirt, I started to pull him to walk on. Jonathan stood up and hurried after us still laughing. Frederic screamed at him:
„What the hell was that for Jonathan?“.
Jonathan simply replied:
“Hmm I had to jump on you. If I were to jump on Lex, he’d pin me on the ground instead of falling down“.
Frederic was at a loss for words, while seething from anger:
„Aargh. I’m speaking to an idiot.“
He just proclaimed throwing his arms up.
Meanwhile we had walked on and I saw Jonathan standing and dusting himself off before running to catch up to us.
Upon reaching us he asked:
“Soooo …. Which assignments did we have to finish for today?”
“Not much. We had to finish the course work in mathematics for physicists II for today just like we had to every single Monday for the last few weeks.”
I replied for what seemed like the thousands time.
“Hmmm did we already finish it?”
“Yes, Jonathan we finished it last Thursday just like always!”
Frederic told him, while still being angry with him, which could be seen from his evidently angry face. I almost laughed seeing the frown on his face since Frederic usually is an obnoxiously joyful person and thus his angry expression just seemed ridiculous to me.
Apparently Jonathan agreed with my opinion since he unsuccessfully tried to suppress his laughter upon seeing Frederic’s face. But instead of asking him why he was laughing, Frederic chose to ignore Jonathan.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
We had finally reached the doors to the physics department and went inside, where gratefully the air was much warmer than the outside due to all of the heaters being on.
After having spotted the rest of our friends discussing loudly at one of the tables in the main hall we steered towards them.
“Good morning there ladies and to you too Daniel.”
Frederic greeted them, while giving a mock bow to them.
We exchanged a couple of good mornings and handshakes and then sat down.
“So what is it you are discussing? Is it about the oh so great news of yesterday?”
I asked still slightly irritated that something important obviously came up in the news yesterday.
Frederic excitedly pointed out that I have no idea whatsoever of what was said in yesterday’s news. To which all my friends looked at me with shocked and even doubtful expressions.
Let me introduce you to my friends first of all. You already know of Frederic, who has a very, very annoyingly happy attitude and is currently the oldest of our group with his 20 years of age. Him and Daniel a very lax and lazy guy have been my friends since tenth grade in school.
I met Jonathan, who is even more annoying then Frederic but makes up for it with his friendly character to an extent that no one really hates him and his pranks, when I first visited Daniel’s home since they actually are identical twin brothers. They look 100% the same with their brown curly shoulder length hair have the same facial features and have the same slightly plumpish physique, but to this day I have never understood how their personalities could have been so different to one another. For why Jonathan was still outside in the cold and not already sitting here with his brother was probably because he is a glutton and got himself something to eat.
We met Eliza, whom we all call Liz, and Sabrina at the beginning of our college time almost a year ago, when no one really had a clue what to do next since we all were new to college life. Both Liz and Sabrina have very long light brown hair, whereas Sabrina usually has her hair tied in a ponytail down her back and Liz leaves her wavy hair open. Both of them are seasoned veteran gamers and mostly play shooter games. They too know each other and have been friends since their school days and are, in my opinion at least, the hugest fans of the Call of Duty series, having even played the antiques such as Modern Warfare 2. While on the one hand Sabrina is very shy, Liz on the other hand is very open, friendly and more times than what is good for her tells her honest opinion straight into someone’s face.
Then there is Benjamin, who has been the boyfriend of Liz for a couple of years already. He is the only one of our little group that isn’t studying physics, but instead chose to study Computer Science. He is a very shy and nice guy with average looks so I have no idea how he became part of our little group of misfits, as I like to see us.
Last but not least is Krystin, who is the girlfriend of Sabrina. Due to them both being girls and very shy ones at that, they didn’t tell us of their relationship until only quite recently. But we easily accepted them since we had known or at least suspected them to be in an intimate relationship and had wondered why they wouldn’t tell us, since we all had been friends since at least the beginning of college.
“No way! How come YOU don’t know of it? It is what you have been dreaming of since like forever.”
Liz proclaimed, having been the first one to recover from their shock at hearing something so unbelievable as me not being online for a day. Shocking, I know!
Frederic had a smug expression on his face for being the one to tell them something so unexpected and the only thing I wanted to do at that moment is wipe that expression from his face.
“Ok so now please tell me already what this thing is. I don’t understand how it can affect you all like that!!”
Sabrina piped in saying:
“Yesterday they announced a new game in half a year’s time. It is called Royal Road and will be the first of it’s kind.”
“It will be the first VRMMORPG ever, Lex!! And Unicorn Corp. also announced that it will be Virtual Reality at an amazing 99% realism.”
Jonathan added with a huge grin on his face.
Meanwhile I had an astonished look on my face, my mouth hanging open and my eyes wide open after hearing that. A Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game with 99% realism, By Unicorn Corp., the leading game corporation worldwide. I couldn’t believe that finally one of my few dreams would come true. Since I was old enough to read my favorite kind of book genre “Fantasy-books”, I had been dreaming of a game where I could be fully immersed in such a world. Become the main protagonist of the story and fight monsters, meet different races like elves and dwarves. Have an adventure the likes only the imagination would produce in our 22nd century world. I knew that it would become a Fantasy and medieval times orientated game, since Unicorn corp. only produced games of that genre. A full-blown grin soon appeared on my face and I don’t think any news has ever made me that happy before in my life. I was so absorbed in my daydreaming that I didn’t even notice that my friends had started talking again and making fun of how my face looked like. But suddenly reality came crashing down again. They had said that the game would be on the market in half a year. Such a long time it seemed to me. But I wasn’t really depressed since half a year actually flies by in no time if you are looking forward to something and now I finally had something to really look forward to for the first time in my life.
“Earth to Alex. Helloooo are you still here with us.”
Frederic suddenly asked me waving his right hand in front of my face and shaking me with his left hand. I was suddenly ripped out of my daydreaming by his shaking me. I saw how Liz, Sabrina and Krystin hid their giggling behind their hands.
“Huh? What’s wrong?”
I stupidly asked.
“Oh nothing you just have been daydreaming for the last 10 minutes or so totally ignoring us talking to and about you!”
Jonathan exclaimed.
“And now we have to hurry since the lecture has started already.”
Sabrina said and true to her word I saw that they all had packed up their things already and were standing. All except for Daniel who seemed to just have started picking up his things from the table and apparently was in no hurry.
Since I had nothing to pack up I just took up my bag and stood up walking to the lecture hall with the others, leaving Daniel behind since he probably would take his time once again and maybe even stop to buy a snack from one of the vending machines.
In the lecture hall we found ourselves a couple of seats and listened intently to what the professor was saying and took some notes.
After the lecture we found ourselves a different table outside in the main hall once again and began to work on the new assignments we now had. All the while we all were immersed in our assignments and learning, since all we wanted was to finish them as quickly and efficiently as possible. Two hours later we bid ourselves farewell and went our separate ways.