Her name was Miho. For a little while, it had been BT.
Less and less over the years did she look back on her time in the virtual realm. She wouldn't forget. Couldn't. Not when she'd seen with her own eyes the very root of Pluto's second kiss and understood that the chaos reaped on this world had begun in the other.
A game that wasn't a game.
Miho thumbed the install key, a little drive no bigger than a child's fingernail. She wondered why she'd bought it. An impulse. A spur of the moment. Oh, how nostalgia preyed on human sentiment.
And what would she find there, in the World she abandoned? Grown bored with. Had never really invested all that much in to begin with. What would she find, but a handful of stray memories.
Closure.
She folded her fingers around the install key. Briefly, the thought crossed her mind that she could toss it to some middle schooler brat. Although, if things got dangerous again, she might feel slightly guilty if the poor sap got himself knocked into a coma. Now if she dropped it on the sidewalk, she could hardly be blamed if the kid snatched it up for his own...
She stepped up to the door of her home complex, keying in with her fingerprint.
A gusty sigh slipped through her nose. When had she allowed herself to grow a conscience?
The elevator was empty, the ride uneventful, and her apartment opened uninviting and cold. She'd let herself get lonely again, invested too much of herself, and came out emptier than before.
That man. She'd let the last one get too close, and he'd taken a piece of her with him as well. Careless. Miho closed the door on the memory of his face, his gentle hands, his quiet smile. His naive broken heart.
Miho had other memories to visit. Something she'd left hanging. There were no regrets. How many other players ended up like Tsukasa? Well, Miho wasn't one of them, because BT left of her own will.
She plugged the key into her palm computer, double checking to make sure her keyboard synched. All was well. The game loaded up only seconds later.
BT returned to the World.