Of all the things I expected to come across in this fantasy death game, a working laptop was certainly not one of them.

I beheld my father's personal laptop, powered on and functioning.

"That's strange," Saber said. "I don't remember seeing my computer in my house."

But rather than the usual login screen, I was greeted with a welcome message, the kind you see when you turn on a new computer for the first time.

The computer prompted me to set up an account.

"Seems like it was hit by a factory reset or something," I said.

After rushing through a quick setup, I managed to log into a freshly-created account. The default wallpaper greeted me. No files or installations could be found.

"Is this what your computer is usually like?" Saber asked me.

"It's not mine," I explained. "It's my dad's."

Wait. Neither Saber nor I found our own laptops here. But somehow, we found my dad's? What was the logic in that?

Saber frowned, deep in thought. “Do you think this place can replicate physical objects, like our houses, but not data?"

“I have a theory," I said. "Maybe Alice has access to our memories, and based things here off them. I don't know what's on my dad's laptop, so she just decided to make it a fresh installation."

The computer showed a weak Wi-Fi signal. I tried connecting to Google. However, after a long wait, the page failed to load. Saber and I tried several more popular websites, but none worked.

"I'd be really surprised if we could actually connect to the internet," I said.

Still though, I wondered whether the laptop could prove useful, despite not having internet access. At the very least, it had a text editor, so we could record information. But that hardly seemed any better than just writing things down on paper.

"You have phone chargers here, right?" Saber asked.

I did. I took her to my room, and there we found a charger. I plugged it into the wall and began charging my phone. After a few minutes' wait, the screen lit up.

"It's working," I said.

"Yeah." Saber took her phone out, eager.

It'd be a while, though, before my phone battery would go up to any decent percentage.

"Anything you want to do in the meantime?" I asked her.

"I'm…actually kind of tired. I was thinking of getting a little rest."

"Yeah, of course."

I nodded, feeling the exhaustion hit me like a wave. It hadn't been long since I woke up. But all I wanted right now was to sleep. A deep, dark tiredness seeped through my bones. I felt weary, spaced out, and numb all at once.

We settled down in separate rooms, I in mine and Saber in my parents'. I crawled into bed, but there was no sleep to be found.

I could still hear the screams echoing across the decimated Combat Institute. Voices of friends and strangers, all fading into the night. Pleading for mercy. Pleading for an answer. Why had it all turned out like this? Where did it all go wrong? And, really, whose fault was it?

I still remembered the time Hei first called my name.

Sophia, Sophia.

I still remember the first day I spent with Hei. We went to the mountains at the edge of our city. At night, he took me to his home to play Final Fantasy 7. Our party’s mage-girl died, I got upset and cried.

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"Let's play something else!" I sobbed. Or, at least that was what I tried to say with my then-broken English. Hei, naturally, didn't understand me. He got worried at my breakdown and his parents sent me home that night.

It wasn't until much later, in middle school, that the two of us finally finished the game.

"Well, that was kinda crappy," I said as the credits rolled. I knew everyone would sing praises about Final Fantasy 7, but I wasn't sure I enjoyed it all that much. This was the game that had semi-traumatized me since childhood, and frankly the final victory didn't make up for all the suffering it put me through.

"Games are supposed to…" I stammered, searching for words. "When you play a game, your decisions are supposed to matter. What's the point if the mage girl stays dead no matter what you do? It's like Cloud said, she'll no longer talk, or laugh, or cry, or get angry. What's the point of playing if we can't even change anything?"

Hei thought for a moment. "We got to see the ending, I suppose."

In the present, I stared out into the blank fog outside my window. I felt cold.

"Hei," I whispered, "if you could hear me, can you let me know you're still there? That you're still out there, somewhere?"

I waited for a sign, half-expecting something to happen. But nothing did.

I wondered what it'd be like to leave this house behind. To walk away into the fog, as far as the road would take me. I wondered what I'd come across, if anything. I wondered how lost I'd get, and how alone. But in a way the idea thrilled me – to throw all reservations and fear to the winds, to finally cast off all the worries plaguing me ever since I set foot in this world. To entirely disregard my survival, my future. Without a care as to what would happen next.

But no.

I couldn't leave Saber behind.

Restless, I rose out of bed. I walked softly to my parents' room, where Saber lay in bed, still wearing her plate armor.

"Hey," she said, still awake apparently.

"Couldn't sleep?" I asked.

"Seems not. I think this place is bad for my sleep cycle. It's always bright outside. Or, more like, semi-bright."

I sat down in bed, near her legs.

"I don't wanna be alone," I admitted.

"You're not," Saber said. "I'm here. I got you."

In that moment, when I felt like giving up, when I had already lost myself, when I no longer knew what to expect from the world, her voice was truly beautiful. I allowed myself to breathe and exist there.

Minutes passed. Perhaps two, or five, or ten. Eventually, we heard a series of knocks on the front door. It startled me.

"Should we go check it out?" I asked an equally alarmed Saber.

"Alright. Don't open the door until we get a clear sighting."

I put on my coat and Magus Battlehat, and I picked up my crossbow. And I reminded myself that I had been one of the most talented mages in Silver.

We made our way downstairs. From the peephole of the front door, I saw a trio of strangers outside. One man in plain t-shirt and shorts, alongside two armored women – one clad in steel, and the other leather.

"Hello?" I asked, loudly so my voice would make it through the closed door.

"Hi!" came an enthusiastic, female voice. "Are you new here? We saw a beam of light a while ago in this direction, so we've been checking houses all around this neighborhood."

"She means the light beams that come down from the sky," a male voice said. "We get those whenever someone arrives from Silver."

"They know," the female voice chided.

"How would they?" the man responded. "They just got here."

Were these other players? Were they in charge of finding newcomers and introducing them to Gold?

"Excuse me," I said. "Who are you?"

"Oh, how rude of me," came the guy's voice. "You can call me Brandon. These are Sylvia and Reina. We met in Silver and have been hanging out together since."

"What business do you have with us?" Saber asked, her voice stern. "Just here to say hello? Is anyone else with you?"

"Not really," came the female voice. "It's probably a surprise if you just came from Silvercreek, but there's, like, no one here. Really, there's like barely any people. And, well, that's because someone discovered a loophole a while ago."

I furrowed my brows. "...What?"

"Yeah," the female voice said, "basically there's this exploit that lets you beat the game. Kinda. And everyone's abused the heck out of it already, so they aren't here anymore."

"What are you talking about?" Saber interrogated. "No one has mentioned anything like it."

"Well, yeah, of course not in Silver. The exploit only works in PvP matches."

"PvP stands for player-versus-player," the male voice explained. "It's something that you can't do until you reach Gold, since you can only fight robots before."

I tightened the grip on my crossbow.

"Shut up Brandon," the female voice chided again. "They know what PvP is."

"Sheesh, chill," Brandon said.

"Anyways," the female voice began again. "The trick is to get into a PvP match. And then the solution is so obvious, it's actually kinda lame how long it took people to figure it out."

"Get to the point," Saber said. "What's the exploit?"

"It's the simplest thing ever," the female voice replied. "You see, the only winning move is not to play."