It was to the blaring of his alarm clock that Ryou was able to wake up the next morning.
With the sun just peeking over the horizon, Ryou stretched his right arm up as he held his right elbow with his free hand, the joints cracking as he did this.
He rubbed the back of his neck, looking around at the familiar sight of his room, the sound of people bustling through the streets and cars driving something that he didn't take too much notice of.
At the sight of his PC, he stopped, for the first time in a long time pausing at it.
Recalling the events that had transpired in "The World" the night before, he sighed softly to himself, holding a palm to his face, his hair pressing against his eye socket and forehead.
That was right, he thought to himself.
Everyone was coming here...
Despite his grogginess of having woken up early in the morning, he walked out of his bedroom, getting ready for the day as he was greeted by an empty apartment.
As he finally left for work, Haseo stopped at the door, leaving a note taped to the door of his apartment door, before finally leaving for the day.
Stepping out of the building, the air had a nice yet slightly cold breeze to it, the numerous lights that were still on despite the sun showing just how early it was.
With that thought in mind, Ryou walked away from the apartment, slinging his bag over his shoulder as he went to work.
It being a fair distance away, yet not so long that he'd be late if he were to walk slowly, Ryou reflected on the day before that he spent in "The World".
As Haseo, he stood with his wives as they talked about their unexpected arrangements for the day after.
"It doesn't make any sense that they'd do this type of thing out of the blue..." Pi said, crossing her arms as she leaned against the virtual boat that carried them back to the city of Mac Anu.
"It doesn't really change the fact that it's still happening though." Haseo leaned against the wooden part of the boat opposite to her, palms pushing against it, looking up at the sky.
"So we're all really going to meet in real life..." Atoli looked down slightly.
"It looks as though that can't be helped at this point. They said they'd bring you to my house by tomorrow at noon, but I'll probably still be at work at that point. So if you wouldn't mind, how about I give the address for my job and then we can meet there?"
It seemed like the best suggestion to him then, since he knew he'd probably feel bad about letting them sit in a staircase of an apartment for who knew how many hours.
It was better for him to just let them go to meet him at work.
They'd be less liable to be bored to death while waiting for him then.
"That sounds like a good idea Haseo." Shino smiled at him, "But... I don't think any of us have seen your face up until now. Would it be alright if you sent us a picture so that we know who to look for when we get there?"
Haseo visibly hesitated before responding.
"Wouldn't it only be fair? You've seen me plenty of times in real life while I was in the hospital." They were now at the docks at Mac Anu, everyone getting off then.
After that, Haseo felt as though Shino was being truthful yet somehow subconsciously forceful with her suggestion.
And he felt a bit more inclined to do as she said after that as well.
With a sigh, he said, "Fine, I'll email it to you."
In real life, Haseo, at that moment, looked down slightly as he spoke that into his microphone.
With him being a bit of a shut in when it came to anything besides school or work, he wasn't very keen on showing his picture to them.
His lacking when it came to social skills also didn't do much to help him, since he thus had no friends to speak of other than those in "The World".
Because of that, he felt as though he'd soon be exposing himself to people he wasn't sure he knew as well as he should've.
But since they'd end up coming to his house anyways, they'd probably get to know him to that extent regardless of his own feelings.
So that was the first thing that he did when he logged out minutes later.
He just took a simple picture of himself on his webcam, moving his hair so that they could see his face more clearly in the picture, as it naturally came down and covered parts of his face.
He didn't exactly fit into the category of an "emo" as most seemed to describe him, yet everyone wouldn't listen to him no matter how much he tried to tell them otherwise.
He had the feeling that his hair played a prominent role in that, and though he had told himself several times to go to get it cut, typically circumstance would get in the way, and he'd end up not having time to do it or just plain forgetting to do it.
After taking the simple picture of himself, it being of him with some of his hair back, wearing a regular white t-shirt with his arms crossed, Ryou proceeded to email the picture to all five people he'd promised to send it to.
Soon after, he got one reply message.
It being from Tabby, Ryou read it, her voice sounding in his ear as he did so.
"I was right! The person who visited Shino everyday was you!"
He blinked.
"How do you know that I visited her everyday?" Was the response he gave to her.
"I visited Shino in the hospital too, and I thought it was you when I saw a high school guy who was visiting her everyday, but I didn't say anything."
As he read those words, Haseo stared at the screen, eyes a bit wide, him feeling an emotion he didn't know how to describe.
Who would've thought...
Thinking back on this, Ryou looked down at himself, subconsciously trying to imagine what he'd look like to people who knew him but had never seen him before in real life.
He was overall pretty tall and lanky, his shoulders a bit broad, mixed with his typical indifferent look.
Add his hair and he came to one conclusion.
He just looked like a bland guy who was in high school.
His clothes didn't exactly reveal what social class he was a part of, it being rather high despite him only living in an apartment.
He often tried to take steps to make it so that people wouldn't easily realize his wealth, or rather, his parents' wealth, as subtle as those steps would be.
Ryou realized then that that was the real reason he never cut his hair.
Even with it being so long that it would be anyone's understatement to tell him he needed to cut it or get it cut, that was one way of giving people the wrong idea about him.
He wouldn't go as far as to make himself look like he was in the social class that was drastically lower than what he really was, but he didn't groom himself too much either.
He only made himself... presentable to others, if he had to put it in one word.
Ryou wasn't very keen on letting people realize his wealth either.
He had tried that when he had awoken from his coma seven years ago, and it didn't end very well at all.
The "friends" he had all were just pressured by their parents to play with him, so they could have a chance of getting closer to his father.
As soon as that pressure stopped, all the friends Ryou had suddenly made started to drop in number, as he rarely ever saw them anymore.
Until he ended up all alone.
Because of their work his parents never even bothered that much with him.
And so Ryou spent the next seven years of his life living in what people could call luxury.
He could get whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it, even if he barely ever asked for anything.
He didn't have to worry about his parents ever getting pissed off at him for his grades whenever they dropped.
All he had to do was just live his life, all by himself, without anyone or anything to worry about other than him.
He could only guess that was what a life of luxury was to everyone, anyways.
Though he often wondered if luxury was really worth the price it had on someone.
All that, all you have to do is be wary of absolutely everyone around you, even the people you try to help out when they just happen to not have any money for lunch.
You just had to try to take the feeling that started to well up inside you when you just started to notice that your parents stopped acting as though you were their only child and replacing that treatment to someone who was just a nuisance to them, then wiping it under the carpet and pretending it wasn't there, repeating the process every once in a while when you actually saw them again after every several months or so.
But hey, at least because of that he had met everyone in "The World", all his friends and allies.
He couldn't help that that just made everything he went through... actually worth it all.
Ryou smiled to himself.
All his friends were important to him, and he probably should've been happy to have them with him.
They'd never do something so shallow to him like the friends he had before.
Suddenly the smile dropped back down to a small frown.
Oh who the hell was he kidding?
He sighed to himself.
Even if they were friends with him now, he wondered how different things would be if all his friends were to meet him in person, and they knew about how his financial situation actually was.
Would they have been the same way towards him as they were now?
Or would they be just like everyone else?
That question was the biggest thing that actually scared him.
Even if they had their own personalities, all his friends were only people he knew online.
Offline on the other hand...
Well, that was the type of thing that cyber dating was infamous for.
And the fact that forces that were outside of his control were the things that really made his life the way it was then was something he couldn't stand either.
That was why he'd become so obsessed with power and finding Tri-Edge after Shino became a Lost One.
For the first time in seven long years, be it online or in real life, he felt that he had a purpose, a type of meaning that left him having actual power over his life.
And... friends.
Shino, and everyone else in the Twilight Brigade, Tabby especially, had become his first friends.
Losing that feeling of being in a place where he belonged, where his relatives never affected him, was actually something that nearly drove him over the edge.
Shino was the one person that kept him from reaching that point.
Then when Tri-Edge took her away from him, that was the moment he snapped.
He just became so desperate to bring her back, he couldn't help but go crazy over it.
He didn't care about anything else.
That was the reason he treated Tabby so badly after everything fell apart.
She, like everyone else, everyone except him, had abandoned Shino.
He couldn't help feeling angry at her because of that.
But looking back on it now...
Ryou really had been a self-centered little bastard of a person, hadn't he?
So deep in his thoughts, Ryou almost passed right by his job, or rather, right at the mall where he worked.
Going inside the open store, he walked along with his bag on his back, finally coming to work when he stepped in front of the small store, pulling a set of keys out and unlocking the cage like lock at the bottom of the store entrance, pushing it up and letting it do its job for itself.
Him working the morning shift, he walked inside, the motion sensors bringing light into the room, finally setting his bag down, unzipping it and pulling a type of apron out of it, sliding it over his head and tying it around the back of his waist, eyes closed.
Oh how would Atoli react if she saw him like this...
She had been right in saying that he was a store clerk.
The only difference between what it'd been like in "The World" and now was mainly his greeting to everyone who was his customer.
In real life, he was just a regular clerk.
The one who would smile at you, treat you like you were someone he wanted to help, and who personally tried their best to make it so that you'd feel fine in coming back to the store again at one point in your life.
In "The World" however, it didn't occur to him until it was too late that he didn't have to be very grand about being someone's clerk for that moment in time.
So because of that, his typical friendly, "Welcome," was replaced with a bright, happy, care-free and cheerful, "WELCOME~!"
It was even complete with a pose!
When he realized that he never had to be that way to begin with, Ryou physically hit himself in real life, mentally cursing.
Looking back on it actually brought a smile to his face in all irony.
He felt like such an idiot back then...
"You seem to be in a good mood today Misaki." A girl's voice dragged into his ear from the store entrance.
Glancing at her, he gained a very familiar sight of a girl around his age with dark brown eyes and long black hair that came down to the middle of her back.
"Hey there senpai." Ryou responded, giving his "clerk smile" back to hers.
The girl was someone he'd never learned the real name of who also went to his school, or at least that's what he assumed when he saw her coming in on an almost daily basis with the same school uniform he had while also considering the fact that she seemed a bit older than him.
As she was in her third and last year in high school however, she qualified to be Ryou's senpai, thus reflecting in his name for her.
She walked into the store, standing next to him, "What's with the sudden smile? You looked pretty happy for a second there."
"I was just looking back on the past." Ryou gained a faraway look for a moment, then returned from his brief departure from reality, turning to her, "So, what can I do for you today?"
As though on cue, his cell phone rumbled in his pocket, with his ringtone blaring out loudly.
He pulled it out of his pocket, seeing the caller ID on it, and upon seeing who it was, Haseo glanced at the girl next to him, "I have to take this. Do you mind?"
"No, not at all." She smiled in response.
Ryou returned the smile, then turned away, pulling the phone to his ear, "Hello?"
"Hello Haseo. I just got to your apartment, and I saw your note..."
"Just try to follow the directions to get here Shino, it isn't too far away from where you are now." Ryou brought a hand to his hip.
"Also, should I leave the note here for when everyone else gets here?"
"It'd probably be for the best if you did that."
"Alright, I'll see you soon."
"See you then." Ryou responded, then closed the phone as Shino hung the phone up.
"Who would that be, might I ask?" His senpai said behind him, and Ryou turned around to face her again.
"She was a... companion of mine. Her name's Shino." He added the last part as he could see it in her face that she wanted to know that.
"You two seem pretty close."
"Whatever gives you that idea?"
"You called her by her first name."
"I guess you could say that we are close."
"How close exactly?"
Well, besides the fact that they were married via the internet... "I've tried pretty hard to help her in the past when she was in a tight spot. So very close." Ryou's eyes had strayed a bit away from her face, only for him to look at her again, "But why do you ask?"
"I'm a bit curious. After all, you're always by yourself at school. Even when people were trying to get to know you you seemed to be pretty uninterested in them. So... do you understand where I'm coming from?"
Ryou pushed the palm of his hand against his forehead, mentally sighing.
It wasn't bad enough that Pi and Yata had enough information on him that any obsessed stalker would kill to have their resources but even people in different grades were keeping tabs on him?
"Yeah... I guess I do."
"Ah, sorry, did I creep you out with that?" She must've read his mind, "I didn't mean to, honest, you just seemed like you were isolated from everyone else. Then those rumors started spreading about you being a mass murderer who was obsessed with getting details on your next target before going in for the kill..."
Ryou stared at her.
"Oh don't look at me like that! That's what everyone thought about you, not my own opinion! I think you're pretty nice!" She said hurriedly, holding up her hands defensively.
"You just told me that people thought I killed and targeted them. How do you expect me to react to something like that?" Ryou scowled.
"Ah, s-sorry." She scratched her head, laughing nervously.
He saw her look, and he sighed again, "Forget it. I was just looking up something online that I thought could help my friend."
He referred to Shino by simply calling her "his friend" since he felt she had no real business in that matter.
"Was it that same girl that you were talking about?"
"...yeah." He responded, looking away again.
"You seem pretty dedicated to her Misaki. Take good care of her."
The feeling of blood rushing to his cheeks was something he tried to hide by turning slightly away from her, the arm that was on the side closest to her reaching up and scratching the back of his head, lowering his head slightly so that his forearm hid his face from her sight.
"I've done my best trying to do that before, and I already know that I'm going to keep doing the same thing for her." Ryou said despite his blushing face.
He could feel her smiling at him still.
"Anyways," Ryou lowered his arm, turning fully away from her, "What is it that you need for today?"
Behind him, she looked around the store, "I think I'll get some flowers for someone who just got out of the hospital."
"Really? Why were they in the hospital?" Ryou turned to her again in curiosity.
"I'm not sure. It's just that there was some college girl who just got out of a half year long coma that I wanted to support by sending her some flowers."
Ryou felt himself stiffen slightly.
She couldn't be talking about...?
"Really? A half a year is a pretty long time for someone to be in a coma." He decided to pretend to not think of the possibility.
"Yeah... but the only reason why I actually know about it is because I was playing this RPG and there was this series called "Online Jack" on there. There were a lot of people who wanted to do the same thing as me, as there was a girl who was supposedly a former victim to the Doll Syndrome but recovered."
"What was that person's name, if you don't mind me asking?"
"I think it was Nanao, Shino... wait, isn't that the same name as the person you just talked to?"
Ryou felt slight surprise at the steadily growing revelation that came over him.
"That RPG... it wouldn't be called "The World", would it?"
"Oh, do you play it too?"
"Yeah, I've been playing for several months now."
"Oh, that's so cool! What's your PC's name? We could try playing together sometime."
"My player's name is Haseo." He said, before turning away again, walking away after a moment.
She stared at the back of his head for a moment.
"Are you being serious right now?"
He nodded without turning to face her.
"...heh... That's kind of ironic..."
He turned to face her as she laughed, "What's so funny?"
"If what you're saying is true, then that means you beat my team in the arena in the Sage Palace."
"You were part of the PK tournament?"
"No, not that tournament. My team couldn't participate even though we trained so hard to beat your team."
"So... you were part of the Sweepstakers?"
"Yeah. That was my team. I'm surprised that you were able to beat us, though considering that you never lost a single battle in the arena, that probably should've been expected."
He didn't know how to respond to that.
"I don't think it'll be very necessary to send Shino any flowers..." He responded at long last.
"That seems like a fairly ironic thing for you to say Haseo." He looked up at the sound of Shino's voice, her walking into the store.
He recognized her instantly, what with the countless visits to the hospital that he had.
But it felt a bit weird to actually see her moving instead of being in a hospital bed.
Taking in the full sight of her face, Haseo found himself studying it without realizing it.
She had dark brown hair that came to the bottom of her neck, her eyes a dark navy blue, face fine for the most part besides it being slightly gaunt, most likely from being in a coma for so long before finally waking up and being able to eat in a regular way.
"What makes you say that? I only sent you the flower card in "The World"."
"Doesn't that still technically count as having given me flowers?" She was still walking to him, smiling the whole time.
"If you want to see it that way, I guess you could say that." Ryou watched her come closer, until finally she stood in front of him.
"But you weren't very aware that my room was already filled with flowers anyways, so I guess that you have an excuse."
"Again, if you want to see it like that, then that's fine." Ryou said, before smiling back at her, hand reaching for his hip, "How does it feel to be moving around now?"
"It felt a bit weird to be moving out of my bed at first, but then I got used to moving around in the real world again after a little bit of time." Shino smiled up at him, "But I have you to thank for that." Then she hugged him, pulling him tightly into her, "So thanks Haseo."
Ryou blinked in slight surprise, then smiled again, hugging her back, curling his fingers around the top of her neck, pulling her head into his chest, "I couldn't just let one of the first few friends I'd ever made in my life just be victim to something that had nothing to do with them to begin with."
"Misaki... are you also Haseo, "The Terror of Death"...?" His senpai spoke to him, and he looked at her.
"Well... yeah... I used to be the Terror of Death at least."
"Does that mean Shino was your girlfriend before you got that title?"
He looked at her with surprise, "No... what gave you that idea?"
"Well... I'm also part of this guild in "The World" that's called Trifle..."
"Isn't that a guild that's for gossip?" Ryou stepped a bit away from Shino, them both looking at her.
"I guess you could call it that... and there was this rumor that someone named Shino was the "Terror of Death's" girlfriend..."
"No, we weren't involved like that back then." Shino said before Ryou could respond, her wrapping her arms around his a second later in spite of her words, "But now we are."
And as though to prove her point, Shino grasped Ryou's chin, leaning in close to his face before pressing her lips lightly against his, closing her eyes when this had been done.
The second their lips met, Ryou had the strange sensation that he somehow couldn't breathe, and though his eyes had widened, they relaxed a moment after that, and finally, he closed his eyes, pushing back against her lips, Shino turning fully to him, grasping his shoulders lightly, Ryou wrapping his arms around her middle back, pulling her closer to him.
Shino gripped her fingers against his shoulders a bit more tightly, before finally pulling away from him, pressing her forehead against his, eyes still closed.
"I'm not sure how to react to that..." The girl was looking red in the face when Ryou looked up at her.
"That's fine." Shino hugged Ryou again, resting her head on his chest, looking at her, "Now you know that the rumor is only partially true."
"Partially?"
"That's right. We're not just boyfriend and girlfriend. We're spouses." Shino smiled, holding Ryou's hand, intertwining their fingers.
"Really?" She looked at Ryou for confirmation, and he too nodded after seeing this.
The sound of someone clearing their throat a bit too loudly than was probably normal caught Ryou's attention seconds later, and when he looked at the source, he paled as he stared into the face of his boss.
"I don't mind you bringing people you're involved with to work Ryou, just make sure the work gets done first." He said, before proceeding to walk away, going into the back of the shop.
Ryou blinked, then he stepped slightly away from Shino, disentangling their hands, "I... I have to..."
"Go ahead Haseo, I'll wait for you outside." Shino held the edge of her right palm with her left hand's fingers behind her back, walking out of the store, leaving Ryou to do his work.