In the game world, the sun had just risen but in real life, it was still the middle of the night. I awoke in my room drenched in sweat. The clock near my bed indicated that it was two a.m. I went to take a shower. Finished, I sat on my bed, thinking. My thoughts were in total disarray. 

Too many things happened to me in a time too short.

I couldn't go back to sleep. I needed to clear my head to decide what my best course of action would be. I changed my clothes again to jogging pants and a t-shirt. I went to the gym which stairs were hidden in a closet. 

The place was filled with left-over equipment that the sports clubs didn't use. Arriving there, I went directly for the treadmill. I started running. As I pushed myself to run, I could feel my thoughts calming.

Two hours later, exhausted, I went back to my room. I took another shower and got ready to go to bed.

“Akira!”, the Plague called as he knocked on my bedroom's door. It was four in the morning, what could he want with me? I went to open the door. “I just came from a meeting with the teacher in charge of the dorm and parents. Do you have something to say?”

I racked my mind trying to find something that I could have done. Finding nothing, I just shook by head.

“Three students needed to be sent to the hospital after an invisible enemy tortured them in Forgotten Soul. They were in shock and babbling incomprehensible words. Do you have any idea who this invisible enemy could be?”

“I don't know what you're talking about. Were the three of them really tortured?”

“At first, one was physically tortured and the others were forced to stand there and watch. They could hear all of his cries. Then, they were attacked too in a gruesome way. There could be a criminal investigation into the matter. So make sure that nothing happen to you.” He gave me a pointed look but I didn't pay attention to it, I was stuck on the criminal investigation part.

“Why a criminal investigation?”

“The game is programmed so that an NPC can't torture a player. That's why we know that a player did it. Also, the artificial intelligence (A.I) couldn't detect it when it should have. The torture lasted six hours in game. From all this, only one conclusion can be reached: the game was hacked. Do you understand now?”

I hacked the game? What kind of crap had I been accused of doing now? “Yeah, I understand.” I replied distracted.

“Good. It's not like it's possible for a player to be so weak that he couldn't kill someone even after six hours of attacking constantly or that the reason why the A.I couldn't recognize the torture immediately was because said super weak player had a skill to paralyze his opponents and their health regeneration was higher than his damage.” 

“Yeah, not possible. Ha ha ha.” I awkwardly laughed it off.  

He was going to leave when he suddenly turned back and said looking at my head gear “Make sure nothing happen to you.”

This time I received the message loud and clear: Erase all the videos I had of my game play. I executed myself as soon as the door closed. I was grateful that Stephan was there to help me. I didn't want to go to jail and hacking into a VR game could lend me three years in the slammer.

I debated deleting my avatar and making a new one but in the end. With everything that happened, I seriously considered this possibility. In the end, I chose to not take a decision in the heat of the moment.   

Thanks to the StaViCon laws, it was forbidden to access someone's personal information without his permission. However, it was perfectly fine to access the game play that was registered by another application that was why I needed to delete it.  The laws were stupid but for once they were quite useful.

Finally tired, I went to sleep. I woke up a few hours later, feeling rested. I went to the kitchen where I found all my roommates. I didn't say anything to them as I made my breakfast. 

Since they moved in, it was the first time, we shared a meal together. I always waited when no one was in the kitchen to make my meals. I even took to buying snacks that I put in my room in case they were in the kitchen when I was hungry. The situation right now was quite unusual but they didn't need to stare at me that way.

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“Stop staring!”

“But you're in the same room as us!”, the Plague exclaimed like he totally forgot what happened earlier.

“Yeah and it's not the first time. Get over it.”

“But usually you ran away as soon as you see us.”

Had I been really grateful to have him here? It must have been a lapse in judgment. “I don't run away. And you, stop snickering.” They all burst out laughing. I might have run a few times when I saw them but it wasn't a habit. They were exaggerated. Totally.

I got the ingredients out of the fridge to make myself an omelet and some bacon. As it cooked, the guys were sitting straighter on their chair and all were still looking at me.

“What?”

“It looks delicious.”  the Plague said drooling. The others at the table weren't any better. They were nodding like they had been starving. I looked at what was in front of them. There was cereal and milk. It was a perfectly good breakfast in my opinion.  

“Thank you and it tastes even better.” I could play dense with the best of them. I knew they were angling for me to share and it was not going to happen.

“I didn't know that you could cook.”

“I was cooking when you moved in, remember?”

“I thought it was just an excuse to spy on us.” I didn't respond to that idiocy.

The others in the room were silent as they kept watching me cook. I knew I was being mean. I kept pulling ingredients out of the fridge and cupboards. I was going to make myself a full breakfast.

“Don't any of you know how to cook?”

They all shook their head and kept staring with expectation. Finally, when I was finished I went to sit at the table and ate, moaning deliriously about how good the food was. Their hungry looks transformed themselves into frowns. Did they actually think that I was going to cook for them?

“Enjoy your meal.” I laughed happily. They sighed dejected as they ate their cornflakes. 

“Why aren't you wearing the clothes we bought for you?”, Stephan asked out of the blue.

“I'm not going anywhere. I don't need to wear new clothes to lounge at home.”

“Don't you plan to do anything else today?”

“Nope.”

“You stayed in all week long. Can't you go out and have fun?”

“I went out. You were there, remember?”

“Today, We can go out together again.”

“No.”

“You don't even know where we'll go.”

“I don't want to go anywhere with you. You remember you broke my glasses and you didn't replace them.”

“You're way better without them and you can see just fine without them.”

“Hey! Stop nodding at everything he says.” I said to the others at the table.

“So today, we're going to-”

“I'm not going anywhere with you.”

“I'm sure I can convince you in two words.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Last. night.” I blanched. “If you don't like I have others like Cri-”

“Okay! I'm going!”, I interrupted him before he said what I thought he would say. 

The Plague smirked at me. Then, he took my plate and ate from it.

“Thanks for the meal.” 

Could it be considered an accident if his forehead met my fork? I was deep in thought pondering that question when Jacob interrupted and asked to come with us. 

Since he moved in, he was acting weird. He didn't try to hit me. He was nice to me. I felt like I missed something. When I saw him last, two years ago, his fist was in a deep relationship with my stomach. And now the guy went out of his way to be nice to me. Did he have a personality transplant?

“Where are we going?” Elliott asked. 

“You aren't coming. Aki and I have plans.  

“Where are we going?”, I asked. 

“It's a secret.” Not again.

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