From A Distance

My life has been the same for almost its entirety. I felt trapped, going through the same motions over and over. They weren't even great motions by my standards, at least. Why was it that everyone else was satisfied with this? It was as if we were imprisoned in this superficial cycle. Get up, obey parents, go to school, have people patronize you and screw with you… Go home, do chores, check Tumblr until life seems distant and go to bed. Gee, what a wonderful life.

As I walked through my door, removing my shoes and placing them on the shelf alongside Mikasa's boots, I heard a few noises from the staircase. "What took you so long, Eren?" Mikasa said, standing a few meters away.

"You know, maybe if I was in advanced classes that ended two hours early, I might have been here earlier."

"You know, you probably wouldn't enjoy it even if you were…" She said. Of course not, I can't handle the people of average intelligence already. I can just imagine being surrounded by people as intelligent and talented as Mikasa, around me at all times. I made my way past her and up the stairs, she followed me to my room. I set my bag down, put my keys on my desk next to my laptop. "Eren, you should do your homework instead of going on Tumblr." She tells me as she makes my bed. It was always a disaster in my room, I didn't really have time to place my things, so Mikasa would do it whenever she was here.

"Uh.. Um, yeah. I'll do it in a few minutes, Mikasa… But I can't do my homework when you're here. You'll distract me."

She seemed as if a sudden realization hit her. "I guess I should give you more space.."

After cleaning, she left my room and closed the door behind her. I let out a sigh of relief. It's not that I don't like her but she doesn't understand how I feel. As long as we're taken care of, Mikasa will do anything our parents want us to do. I'll never be satisfied with a life of obedience. I need to find my own reality. I logged into my laptop, the password was a sort of promise to myself: "Wingsoffreedom". It was from a game I recently learned about, it was free to everyone online. It was called: "Behind the Walls." And it was becoming a lot more popular, even Armin was playing it in his spare time. Odd that Armin would even play games other than chess and puzzles. He's normally too scared to play anything else. He refuses to even touch my Xbox.

I didn't sign up for it yet, I knew based on games I've played before, that I would probably get addicted to it and spend every night on my laptop. I contemplated the pros and cons: Sure, I would be addicted but what do I have right now other than homework and chores? It would keep me busy. I guess, as soon as I do gain something worth spending my time on in life, then I can just quit. Just like that, I clicked the button "Create new account."

The character creation process came after the rules. I normally skipped through these sort of things and just accept, but I spotted a few words while skipping the wall of text that were odd… Like: Kill, regiment, government, etc... Normally there were rules of conduct like: "Don't swear" or "harassment will lead to temporary exile until your case is reviewed." This time, I read through it.

"Your character will not be decided by you, it shall be created based on a survey. This character will only have one life, once your character is killed, you will no longer be allowed to create a character. If you are caught trying to create another character after death, based on agreeing to this document, you will be charged and removed from the game. Once your character has been created, you will be able to make your own decisions for the rest of the game without interference from our staff. When you are offline, your character will still exist as if you were online, in the game for the sake of the others. But it shall not take action other than care for itself, eat and sleep. Other rules will be explained as the game progresses. By clicking bellow, you agree to follow the rules."

Were those even rules?... I clicked the box. I spent around an hour answering the questions in the survey, they asked about my personality, my strengths, my weaknesses, my beliefs, my physical characteristics and it insisted on my honesty. Finally, a small vortex appeared on my screen, everything went black and my character stood in the middle of a small wooden home. There was a box with the graphics in the middle of my screen. A small box in the top right corner for chat, bottom right box was for statistics, health, hunger…. There was a box on the bottom left box had my inventory, my equipment I was wearing and could wear… and the top left was an action box. It had options for the game, additional actions and instructions…. There was also a tab in this box, I clicked on it and all it was, was a small rounded door with a giant lock in the middle. I had no key for it. Strange…

I could move my character with the arrow keys on my keyboard. "This is easy." I left my house and ran into a small blonde character. I looked closer and realized it looked exactly like Armin. "ARMIN!" I typed.

"Eren?!" He stood surprised for a bit but suddenly a giant bubble of text appeared on top of his character. "EREN, QUICKLY! WE DON'T HAVE TIME! THE TITANS PENETRATED THE WALLS O WE NEED TO GET TO THE GATE."

"Titans? The walls? Armin, you need to explain things to me!"

"EREN, there's no time! Follow me, I'll tell you everything when we're there."

"Okay!" I followed him through the maze of houses. There were corpses everywhere. I couldn't fathom why Armin was playing this game. It was hard to navigate, the ground would shake occasionally and my character would momentarily stop walking, debris would fall from the sky and hit players. What a terrible way to die…. I mean, since they couldn't play ever again thanks to a rock. Before entering the gate, I caught a glimpse of a giant, almost human looking creature eating another player. Ugh.

We hopped onto a boat, there were people in uniforms, holding giant razor blades that guided us through the crowd to the boat. I was inspired by their bravery. I could see them in the distance on my screen. They were doing what seemed impossible. Those giants, each of them were like a boss battle and they outnumbered us. Soon enough we were too far and the scene wasn't playing on my screen anymore.

Armin started explaining everything to me. "Lastly, Eren, those giants are called titans and they are our enemies. They threaten to destroy the human race… Depending on how you play the game, you might have to face them."

"This wall thing is stupid, who would play a game just to hide? I'll fight those bastards!"

Armin sighed. "I guess you'll be part of the military, then. I guess I'll join you."

"Uh. Armin. One more thing…"

"Yeah?"

"Well, what's with the locked door in the options menu?"

"The what?" he asked, completely lost.

"Oh.. Never mind, I'll figure it out later." I said, waiting for my chance to start my adventure.