Time is irrelevant in Aincrad. You don't have to get up and go to school, there's no one to tell you when to go to bed. Survival becomes a tangible, constant worry. Like a hare, you are consumed with thoughts of predators.
As time goes on, the predators grow. At first it's only the computer-generated monsters and traps left for you by the sadistic creator, but then you start to hear whispers. Stories of murderous guilds reach you and you lie awake at night, every creak in the shabby inn on the fifteenth floor you call home alerting you to not-so imagined danger.
You've experienced the fear of diminished HP in the past, and don't want to revisit the experience. Watching a line of colored life becomes as habitual as breathing. Checking for enemies comes easier to you than blinking. But then, you remind yourself, you're nothing but binary coding in a virtual world. No one need breathe here.
Sometimes you think of your body out there somewhere, atrophying into oblivion, guarded periodically by loved ones who cannot save you from the real danger. You picture them angry, at first. Angry at you for playing "that damned game." Angry at the man who trapped their baby in a death game. Angry at the governments of the world, for not being able to find a way to save you, to get you out.
Eventually, the outside world begins to fade. You forget the faces of your siblings; your mothers laugh. The way your dad would ruffle your hair when he got home from a long day of work at a thankless job. You forget the way you felt getting up for morning class. Wishing you could spend just a few more minutes on the computer. Wishing with all your hear that you wouldn't have to face another day of school. You begin to understand the weight of a wish.
Your birthday passes and you barely notice it. At the end of the day it occurs to you for a moment before you're pulled back into your new reality by the sound of someone's dying scream. They're close. You have to move.
You forget you had a dog.
Then a day comes that things seem to settle like a pool after the crushing rush of people have gone home. People start buying homes, meeting people, marrying, starting businesses. There's a lightness of every-day life that permeates everywhere but the front lines, where you know there are people fighting for your freedom, for your life; but you start to wonder what exactly that was.
You meet a warrior with beautiful black hair. They came from the front lines to your new home on floor forty seven for a break and some sight-seeing. You slay monsters in the Forest of Giant Flowers together and you show him all your favorite shops in town. They extend their stay.
One morning you wake up and home is the Warrior with the beautiful black hair and mischief in their eyes. What was you mother's name?
It's around that time you learn you and Warrior are from opposite sides of the world, when you broached the subject of "Outside," which is generally taboo. You start to think about learning another language.
Three weeks later, or so you think, time is hard to keep track of here, you and the Warrior get married, sharing everything you've ever gotten and kept through the many bandit attacks in this god-forsaken game that has become your entire life.
The warrior retires from the front line, confessing that they had nothing to live for before, and therefore nothing to lose. They hold you close and whisper dreams of Someday. You close your eyes and bury the sick feeling of wrongness in their warm embrace. You know that you are two individuals lying, vegetative in hospitals thousands and thousands of miles apart. You know that, if it weren't for the universal communicative software of the game, that you probably wouldn't be able to communicate even at a basic level.
You and the Warrior open a weapon shop in the quiet village you met in and prosper. You are vaguely aware in your new life of sharpening blades, cooking for two, and the increasing love, that you are barely of age.
This makes you wonder: how old is the Warrior whom you've given your love to? You don't remember speaking of age in your talks about Outside.
Slowly you begin to notice the vastness of the home upstairs from your shop. The derelict bedroom gapes at you and you think of the rumors you've heard of the first floor orphanage. You talk to the Warrior about abundance and your wish to ease the suffering of a child in this beautiful hell.
His name is Timmy. He's from your side of the world and he doesn't talk for a long time. The woman watching those who were too young to cope with a terminal video game recommended him to you. She told you about his first few months and how he doesn't get along with the others and you don't need to hear any more.
The Warrior looks at you with a smile in their laughing eyes. Eyes you've grown to marvel at for their humor, when you know the horror they've seen. You realize the Warrior would flourish as a "parent." You've long been able to take care of yourself, but the Warrior has been a dormant hero.
Timmy begins to dance with you to the sound of the Warriors flute in the mornings before the shop opens. You teach him how to hold a sword and think briefly how this would be grounds for Child Protective Services . . . somewhere, you're sure there was such a thing. But here he needs the skill to survive, so you teach him, and he becomes very good with a bow.
The Warrior and Timmy are your world when it shatters. You watch them fly into a million specks of light, and feel your body reflect their microscopic dance. You feel like a tornado of dust motes floating in the air of a sunny room.
But the room doesn't have any walls,
and you float away.
You swim through the murky waters of conscious to find yourself lying prone in a room with a bird screeching horribly. But it's not any kind of bird you've ever heard, it's too regular. You reach for the sword you keep by your bed at all times, only to find that you can't. The sword isn't there, but you couldn't have gotten to it, any way. Your arm is heavier than anything you can remember lifting, and tethered by a cold, slick cord to something that makes a skittering sound as you pull on it. It drags painfully at the inside of your elbow and you decide you've probably been taken by the Laughing Coffin and will shortly be executed, likely after a few rounds of torture for information you both know you don't have.
You slowly open your eyes to a blindingly white room. You haven't seen light like this since. . . since. . . and you realize what's happened. You're home.
Home. . .
The word rings a false happiness in your mind and you whisper the information the Warrior made you memorize when you were married. Information of Outside and your eyes moisten and tears fall in gratitude for the Warrior. Then you cry for Timmy. You know he's better off with his real family, but you were his real family, too.
With maddening slowness, you sit up and manage to pull the NerveGear helmet, your tether to that world, from your head. You feel the greasy length of hair glide across your shoulders as you lean forward to stand and grab the pole of your I.V., leaning on it like a cane as you inch forward.