Hello again~ Welcome back to KWO~

It is time for a chapter... that is not actually about KWO!

I'm sorry if it feels like I'm deviating from the main plot, but people in reality have things to do besides game, so I felt this could express that.

Don't worry, it'll return back in the next chapter for those of you who don't like my transitions.

Also, to the person who reviewed as "Cake", rest assured I did not delete any of your reviews (I even know that was possible because i'm rather new to writing). If they're missing, it might just be some kind of problem with the site itself or bad connection or something.

But thank you to everyone who reads this fic~

Disclaimer: I definitely don't own a basketball manga with very shippable characters and a gigantic fujoshi-filled fandom.

Chapter 9: Forum & Daycare

April 25, 2038

The rest of Kuroko's day had been rather uneventful. He had cooked (slightly burnt food), tidied up his rather messy room, and then went to work at one of his part-time jobs at a nearby convenience store.

That night, he'd gotten home around midnight and slept soundly for the next six hours, trying to ignore the sound of Takao playing videogames through the wall.

The next morning, a Wednesday morning, was one of the two weekdays where Kuroko didn't have any classes. Unlike the other days, the bluenette had given himself the pleasure of an extra hour of sleep.

He had woken up to the sound of his alarm at 6:00 o'clock sharp, stayed lying in bed for the next ten minutes in a state between dreaming and conscious, and then made a beeline for the bathroom as per usual. Like always, a few minutes were spent in the activity of taming unruly blue cowlicks and out-of-place locks. Afterwards, he went on his morning jog, ate breakfast (yesterday's leftovers), and returned to his room.

That was when he remembered Kiseki World was having a patch.

He had forgotten about it in sleep that it would probably finish later that morning–around ten or eleven if he recalled. The VR device sat on his slightly-less-cluttered desk. A few areas of it were glowing a crimson red, the color for patches according to the manual. When the updates were done, it would return to its usual traffic-light green and therefore the game would be playable once more.

But for now, it was not.

Kuroko had wanted to get in about an hour of gaming before going out though of course that was impossible.

On Wednesdays (such as this one), he chose to help out at a kindergarten and daycare center in a neighborhood a few blocks down.

Half a year ago, when he was walking by on his way to a bookstore, he had come across the small cluster of pastel buildings and squealing five year-olds. The owners of the kindergarten, a married couple in their thirties or so, had been looking for a part-timer or two to fill in for them; the wife had been going into the later stages of pregnancy. Kuroko seeing them in their distress had offered his assistance, even going so far as to change his schedule to be free to help out more.

Surprisingly to himself, he very much enjoyed his time there. He didn't think he'd be good with children, especially because of his natural invisibility and unexpressive demeanor. It turned out to be taken in stride by the kids there. They pretty much made games out of it, like seeing who could find him first in the day or who could make him smile. At first they just wanted to see him change expressions but they'd learned quickly they didn't want him angry–or sad for that matter. In the time he was there, they'd somehow gotten rather attached to him.

Takao had joked it was because he was short and easy for them to climb.

Of course, he didn't get away without a bruised gut.

After the wife gave birth though, her family offered to look after her baby whenever she had work, so Kuroko didn't need to go as often anymore. That was one of the reasons he'd started playing Kiseki World. Too much free time and no particular hobby to spend it on.

Anyways, Kuroko considered going to the kindergarten, but often no one arrived until at least 7:30 and he wasn't actually due in until nine.

He would have read a book, but unfortunately he had none. Earlier that week he'd finished all his pocket novels and hadn't made any trips to the library since. Most people would've gotten some kind of electronic reader at this time in the future but Kuroko was the type that appreciated the feel of a nice paperback. The library he visited was empty most of the time–it only seemed to ever be populated by him, a few other old-fashioned simpletons, and the librarian.

And so, he did what any normal twenty-year old college student bored out of their mind would do:

He surfed the internet.

Now, it's not that he particularly disliked computers–on the contrary he found them quite useful for things like research and communication. It's just that, as a child, he hadn't grown up needing it, and so wasn't as dependent on it as many others during this time were. Though of course, the boom of VR simulations had now taken hold of the internet populace–people had naturally moved on to a more advanced form of entertaining themselves.

Although the blue-haired man wasn't very enthusiastic about computers, his best friend seemed to enjoy just about any type of technology, new or old.

Against Kuroko's wishes on his last birthday, the raven-haired man had gifted him a pristine and shining new laptop. The bluenette had tried to get him to return the device but Takao had slyly told him it was an older model that was on clearance anyways, so he couldn't get it refunded. By chance, Kuroko had recently figured out it was actually one of the more advanced computer systems Japan had to offer but couldn't get it returned because warrant had gone past date.

The raven had received a week's worth of silent treatment for that one.

I wonder if I'm too mean to Takao-kun.

Kuroko entered the internet forums for KWO. Ever since yesterday when he'd been informed of what his weapon was, he'd been more than curious to find out what it could do, even if he hadn't thought of using the internet until now. He had asked Momoi, but she hadn't touched upon their information beyond names and ratios.

He typed the words "Living Weapon" into the search bar at the top of the screen. Immediately, hundreds of forums appeared in front of his eyes. He a particularly popular thread and started to scroll through them, looking for any valuable information.

UltimateXBlade:
"The creators at last week's gamer convention panel in Fukuoka said there were 613 special weapons made in the Japanese version of KWO. Out of these, 100 of them are what are called "Living Weapons". So far, there have been 48 reports of Living Weapons by players. It's still uncertain whether these weapons have a set criterion or if it is just completely luck to get one. If luck, then the chance is less than 1 in 60,000 chance to get one. Most of the people interviewed about these said they got it when they randomized items during a class change or did item quests that would usually get them a different, weaker weapon."

ThatOneDude in reply to {UltimateXBlade}:
"Whats a living weapon anyways? I keep hearing about them."

Tsuntsundere in reply to {ThatOneDude}:
"Isn't there a forum for this already?"

Jinnai in reply to {ThatOneDude}:
"A living weapon is a weapon that evolves the more you use it. They're more rare and powerful than Special Ability Items. Most Living Weapons are just those but more OP. All these types of weapons usually allow the user to have unique skills that normal players can't access."

ThatOneDude in reply to {Jinnai}:
"Oh cool thanks dude."
.

.

CarnivalCarnage:
"Lol some idot tried to trade his LW and teh stats got reset and it stop=ed lvling completely. Who the hell would gibe upsuch a rare itm?"

Lunastarr in reply to {CarnivalCarnage}:
"That sucks. One more awesome item taken out of the game completely. I heard these items don't respawn, so even if they're given back to the original owner, they're stay as normal weapons. Someone else tried this with another special weapon too, not a LW but still, the stats got reset and all. Also, don't you have spell check or something? The game age limit is 15 without special authorization, but it feels like you're some kind of 11 year-old. "

CarnivalCarnage in reply to {Lunastarr}:
"Im 16 so F*** off B**** i can typ however i want."

This was one of the reasons Kuroko didn't use the internet much. He skipped the rest of their back-and-forth to try to find any other information he could.
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.
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Banananananananana:
"There are 50 known Living Weapons now. Someone got pictures and descriptions of most of them in another forum here. I put the page in the link box."

Miyamoto in reply to {Banananananananana}:
"Goddamnit all these are so OP. Except for that one that lets the user convert ladomi to HP. Other than that, this game is so unfair."
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Before he knew it, it was already 8:37–according to the clock. It was time for him to start going to the Kindergarten if he wanted to be punctual, which he did, obviously. He was one to be places on time, though people never really noticed he was there. In high school he'd often been marked absent for this, though he usually got it cleared up by the end of class.

He grabbed his usual bag and walked out, quietly traversing the hall and going out the door. Though it was nearly nine now, both of his flat mates were probably still asleep because neither had classes until the afternoon.

He arrived at the kindergarten five minutes before nine and went to greet his coworkers. He made sure the owners weren't handling anything breakable being saying his salutations to them.

"Good morning, Yamada-san, Kanagawa-san."

Although they knew when to expect him, it was still hard not to jump when he just suddenly appeared next to them. By now, they were getting better at it though, showing only slight twitches as a reaction.

"Oh, hello Kuroko-kun! How are you today?", asked Yamada, the husband.

"I'm fine, thank you."

"Would you mind rounding up the children in the courtyard?", Kanagawa, the wife, asked. "Try to get them to simmer down a bit. We'll be in the classrooms setting up."

"Hai."

The couple went on their business, and Kuroko donned a dark blue apron and exited the small building into the kindergarten's backyard. Many of the children were on the play-ground, up and running energetically even at this time in the morning.

In total, thirty-four kids attended the kindergarten–either because their parents wanted them to start learning early or because they needed someone to watch them. Because the amount of children was larger they'd expected, the owners split them up into two different groups.

There was the "Sunflower Class" and the "Hydrangea Class". Both were headed by a teacher (the owners) and at least one assistant. Besides Kuroko, there were four other people who came to help out regularly, two of which were friends of the owners. The other two were another college student and a man who, besides this, had work as a handyman. The bluenette thought they were all rather nice people.

"Ew! Get away from us!", a small brunette girl shrieked as she and her friends tried to avoid a boy holding a particularly long, freshly dug-up earthworm.

The boy did his imitation of a villain's laugh, showing off one of his missing front teeth. "Muhahahaha! You can't escape the mighty dirt monster!", he shouted, chasing them with the wriggling creature.

You could imagine his surprise when he was suddenly lifted into the air–he even dropped his worm.

"Masato-kun. You shouldn't playlike that."

"Kuro-sensei!?"

"Your hands will get dirty and you might hurt Mr. Worm", he articulated as he put the child down and picked up said worm. "You should apologize to the girls for scaring them. The worm too. "

"It's just a worm and I ain't gonna say sorry to no girls."

Kuroko placed the worm in a plot of dirt nearby. "How would you like it if someone used you to scare people, or if someone chased you around with something you dislike?"

Masato's thought at the first sentence was "that'd be pretty cool". At the second, images of giant running vegetables came to mind.

"Urgh", he stuck his tongue out as if he were actually gagging. Turning around with crossed arms, he mumbled softly, "Sorry for chasing you."

"Ha! Masa-kun got scolded by Kuro-chan!", one of the girls jeered.

Kuroko turned to her with his blank expression. "Shiharu-chan. That's not very nice. He apologized nicely."

It was now her turn to pout. She puffed up her cheeks and said a quick sorry as well.

Usually, the bluenette would get the children to handshake but he didn't think Shiharu would want to touch the other's slightly slime-covered fingers.

He called out across the yard, "it's time to go in, everybody". Because of the excitement over the worm, he had already gotten the children's attention. Most of the time it took longer than that, at least three or four tries before he could get them to to go into their respective classrooms. He ushered them to the water fountains to wash their hands before entering.

The college student counted around twenty of the children as they filed into their rooms. It was the usual amount in the morning since this kindergarten also functioned as a daycare. The rest of the children would usually come somewhere in the next two hours. The facility closed around five or six when the last of the kids would be picked up by one of their family members.

For the next hour-and-a-half, Kuroko and another assistant helped Yamada with supervising the children as they doodled with their little twelve-packs of crayons. One little girl proudly showed him her drawing of herself riding a giant cat while what looked like fish rained from the sky. There was a smiling sun at the side and M-shaped birds in the background.

He praised her with just the slightest inkling of a smile and pat on the head. "It is very pretty."

The girl looked at him with shining eyes, "really?"

"Yes. It looks just like you."

The girl giggled happily as she ran off to start another drawing. "Kuro-tan said I was pretty!"

Not exactly what he meant, but as long as it made her happy, he supposed it was alright.

After drawing time, both the classes were let out for a thirty-minute recess, which was especially when they needed to be watched. After being indoors for so long, they were wound-up coils of pure energy ready to spring out at the first chance.

Kuroko helped to make sure they didn't do anything dangerous, like last week when one boy was dared to jump off the top of the jungle gym.

Or the week before that when a group of them thought it'd be fun to go out the front gate and explore the neighborhood.

Or that one time a little boy discovered a small bee hive forming. Thankfully he had told one of the head teachers before anyone else. The children were quite naturally curious, after all.

Once a timer bell sounded, he and the other adults did a head count of the children and, assured that they were all there, they went inside for the second time that day.

Today's schedule told them it was time for sing-a-long and music time, followed by lunch time, and then a group game–today it was shiritori. Now that it was nearly thirty minutes past twelve, the children got to have their nap time. After all that they did in the day, most of them were pretty tired by now.

The blue-haired man walked around until he heard small sniffles.

He followed the sound towards a lump hidden under a blanket, and removed it to find a cowering little boy and girl. The two were siblings, he recalled, though he could see the resemblance between the two easily.

They both squealed a little when exposed to the light.

A "shhhh" came their way by some of the other kids.

"Why are you two crying?", Kuroko asked them.

The girl, Asako, had snot dribbling out of her nose as she tried to speak quietly, "Kuwo-sensei, Mi-tan told us a scawy stowy and we can't-hic- go nap nap."

"He… He said a monster would eat us in our sleep!", the boy, Fumihiro, exclaimed.

Another round of hushes was sent their way.

Luckily, the bluenette had something special saved for the situation of crying children.

The two kids looked towards him as he waved a hand in front of them. When he got their attention, he seemingly pulled a handkerchief out of air and placed it flat onto his hand. The siblings then watched, no longer sniffling as much as they were now entranced as the thin cloth was lifted to reveal two small paper cranes.

"Uwaah! That's amazing Kuwo-sensei!"

"It's magic!"

"These cranes will chase away all the dream monsters", the bluenette said as he handed one to each of them. "But just in case, sensei will stay here to protect you, okay?"

He supposed it was okay since a lot of the other children were already asleep and there were two other people supervising.

"Yes please", the two whispered in unison, cradling the paper crafts in their small hands.

Kuroko re-covered them with the blanket and watched as they shifted to comfortable positions. With their fears alleviated, they fell asleep one after the other in a matter of minutes.

Now that they weren't watching, he stuffed the handkerchief back into his sleeve.

The rest of the day went like it usual did in the child haven. After nap time, the children did their wake-up exercises to some old nursery rhymes, had a lesson on the alphabet (with focus on letters W through Z), and then had snack time. The kids then got to have another recess, followed by another game that they suggested this time–duck, duck, goose.

The morning had now turned into the sunny afternoon. Around 3:00, the kindergarten's written closing time, about half of the kids were being picked up by their guardians. Kuroko helped check their names off the role-call sheet.

Though he was okay to leave now, he would probably stay for another hour or two to keep the children who were picked up later company. The other assistants usually had to leave on Wednesdays, so the managing couple was especially grateful to him at times like this; one of them had to go home early to take their baby off of their family's hands. He watched over the children well, making sure no one got into trouble and was good at entertaining them.

Finally, around five o'clock when the last child was taken home, he bid Yamada farewell (Kanagawa had gone home earlier) and walked back to the apartment.

He slipped off his sloppily shoes in the doorway and made his way to his room. Throwing his bag to the side, his hands then picked up the VR gear and did all the necessary procedure.

After the eye scan, he had closed his eyes. When he reopened them, all he saw were images swirling around him, bit-by-bit filling into their correct place in this world.

Once more, he was back in the game.

Kiseki World Online: Pain Gauge

Probably should've reiterated this better. I wrote the pain rate is 20%, but that's for blows on the skin. Anything that happens to impale a person or something similar will have a lesser ratio of pain. Also, players in the game don't have organs or anything that can be hit. Further more, if a person is hit above the shoulders, the item hitting them won't stay embedded for a few seconds like it does on any other part, it simply disappears as it goes through. Those areas do 25% less damage so people tend to only use them for scare tactics. Or if they're trying to blind of deafen them because that's valid too.

I've always wanted to write Kuroko in a kindergarten. In case anyone is wondering though, now that this has been showcased, another chapter like this about Kuroko working here probably won't come up unless I write an extra about it. Also rather unlikely.

This is ironically the longest chapter I've written so far.

Tee hee.

Thank you for reading~

Questions, statements, and advice are all appreciated~