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PLAYER/USERNAME

Xia/Genevieve

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October, 2044

Sunday had arrived and since the day before Xia had stayed up late to complete a quest and finally reach the eighth level, she hadn't set an alarm on her phone and she found herself opening her eyes late in the morning. It was almost noon. A week had passed since they met AlexFae and there had been no sign of her anymore.

Fine to her, she certainly didn't need a babysitter. Right?

Xia reached out to grab the smartphone that she had abandoned on the floor, when she felt the cold metal against her fingertips Xia tightened her grip and raised it, she turned, laying on her stomach with her hair scattered on the pillow and brought the phone a foot away from her face. Ever since Xia had that tragic accident and moved to Halifax she cut all ties with her old friends and ever since then her phone became sadly silent, except for a few notifications from content creators on ZigZag and YouPipe.

There was a missed call.

Xia sat down with her back against the wall and pulled the blanket to keep at least part of her body warm for a little longer. She unlocked the screen and after pressing the missed call notification, she pressed 'call back'. It rang three times before a deep, masculine voice answered the call.

"Hello?"

“Hi dad,” Xia said, rubbing her eye with her free hand, “sorry, I was asleep and left the phone on silent.”

“Don’t worry, I had nothing urgent to tell you. I just wanted to know how things are going in the wild east!”

His voice sounded cheerful, positive, in reality Xia knew that the separation between him and her mother had hurt him and that he was trying not to show it, "they're going... they say that the ocean humidity is a panacea for bones that have healed after a fracture!”, Xia said with a hint of sarcasm, “and you? How are you?"

"What can I say? We need to keep the lights on in the house!” He chuckled, “how's the college going? Made any friends?”

Xia huffed, “no, I don't see the point in making friends. In my opinion, having friends is overrated.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“You're not trying to isolate yourself on purpose, are you?”

“At college I work hard, at home I have food to eat and at least a couple of hobbies that make me happy… what use I could have for friends? Could I carry them around when I go shopping so they can hold me up while I change since my legs can't hold me up on their own?” Xia felt the frustration building inside her, so she did the only thing she knew how to hide it: she pretendeded the issue simply made her apathetic.

“I see, I see,” he replied, giving Xia the impression that he had managed to see beyond her fake apathy. “Xia, you need to stop sabotaging yourself.”

“I'm not doing it.”

Xia heard her father sigh, “do you think Natalie would be happy to see you pushing everyone out of your life? You were lucky enough to survive and yet you're acting like you'd rather be dead.”

Xia gritted her teeth, “I already have a psychologist, dad.”

There was a long silence in which neither Xia nor her father spoke, as if the line had gone dead and neither of them had realized it. She hated being partially paralyzed, and she hated even more that she survived the accident; her aunt and her cousin had not emerged from the wreckage, perhaps with some permanent damage but still alive, what right did she have to enjoy life when they could no longer do so? Xia was keeping her promise to commit to college and in exchange she could pretend to be someone else for a few hours almost every evening, that was enough for her.

"You know that I love you?"

“Yes…” Xia whispered in response.

“Shall we talk again in a few days?” Xia's dad asked her.

"Yes…"

“Xia?”

“Yes, dad?”

“Remember that on the day you lost an aunt and a cousin, I lost a sister and a niece”, those words were registered in her mind with the same level of emotions as a punch in the stomach, Xia knew he was right and that she was behaving badly in acting as if that tragedy had only affected her, but Xia couldn't do otherwise, she couldn't control herself on that. “I will always be there when you want to talk to me, I promise.”

“Don't promise things you don't know if you can keep”, Xia was shaken by a shiver, “see you soon dad, and thank you for checking on me…”

“You're welcome, you're my little girl.”

Xia lowered the phone and placed it on her lap. She didn't want to, but her mind refused to obey her: Xia saw herself and Natalie again when they were children, they promised to each others to remain friends forever, that nothing and no one would have ever separated them, and even though by that point Xia had already lost consciousness, her mind had decided to imagine her best friend's body as a piece of charred flesh and bones from the fire that broke out shortly after the rescuers pulled her out of the wreckage of her aunt's car.

Xia's stomach squeezed at the images her brain had decided to show her, she felt the acids in the stomach boiling and trying to climb up the esophagus. Xia put her legs on the floor and tried to run to the bathroom, only she wasn't in LotA, she was in the real world, so her legs refused to obey her and she collapsed to her knees only about half a step away from the bed.

Xia brought her hands to her mouth and tried to keep it closed, but soon Xia found herself dirtying the floor and feeling even more miserable than before.

Xia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then bursted into tears while sitting alone on the floor; her mother and grandmother must not have been home or they hadn't heard her, and she felt lucky for that.

Everything was fine, everything was so fucking fine.

“I just need to study, study and then log into Legacy of the Ancestors and stay alone for some time on a mountain contemplating the view…” a false, virtual view, but at least as long as Xia was looking at that artificial landscape she would have been able to escape reality.