A Route Laced in Crimson
Chapter One: Slipping Away
"Look, they have figures from that anime about the dude who wants to rent a girlfriend," Isabela said, while she and her sister Mirabel were strolling through Akihabara.
"Why would some guy need to rent a girlfriend?" Mirabel asked.
"Says the girl who paid Elsa Winters to go out with her," Isabela said, elbowing Mirabel.
"Yes, and then we started dating for real but now we're broken up and I came all the way to Japan to recover, on your offer because you love me," Mirabel said, leaning into her sister.
"Also because Rapunzel had to cancel," Isabela said. "Let's go check out that store."
Mirabel nodded and they went in, and she only half-listened to Isabela talk about how in the anime she was referring to, the dude's grandmother sees him on his date with the rental girlfriend, and assume she's his real girlfriend, and is so happy he found one because she thought he might not meet anyone after his ex dumped him.
"None of that makes any sense," Mirabel argued.
"Never question the otaku heart," Isabela said, picking a few more figure boxes, in addition to the girl with the long black hair and the pink top.
There was a reason Mirabel wanted to be in Japan, though. Beyond wanting to get over Elsa. What a disaster that had been. Although…being romantic with the ice queen was the best, honestly. She missed it terribly. Their kisses at pizza parlors, strolling through a park in the evening, holding hands, even…some more intimate scenarios. But Elsa was going to university early come January. So the platinum blonde had broken it off, choosing not to even finish the semester dating her, claiming Thanksgiving would be too painful if they were still together then, and Christmas would be even worse. She had sent Mirabel a dozen texts since the latter's plane landed in Tokyo, but she hadn't read any of them.
But the real reason she was here, well, if she told Isabela, her sister would be mad at her, say she was abusing their relationship. And sure, she did want to spend time with Isabela, but that was a secondary, or tertiary, reason for being here when you considered the Elsa breakup mess.
Mirabel's #1 priority was to obtain the Nervegear. Today was Halloween, but that didn't matter, for gamers all across Japan, it was all about this brand-new full-dive VR headset. It was the first proper full-dive virtual reality device that allowed you to experience all the senses in the grand world of Aincrad. Only one game was available for it at launch, Sword Art Online. And Mirabel wanted to play it so badly.
The biggest issue was, she did not speak Japanese. Isabela knew a few words from watching anime, but Mirabel was going to need to use her phone to translate so she could ask for the Nervegear and pay for it. She already made the exchange of Colombian pesos for yen. She knew this headset would be expensive, but thankfully had lots of babysitting money (kids loved Mirabel, one could say she had a gift with them, or they annoyingly were magnetized to her, probably because they felt they could ask her stuff that most adults and people in their mid to late teens would never answer), and also birthday cash. She had sold games she hadn't played in years for a little less on eBay, though Pokemon ones she sold for more, that was fun. Of course, some money had gone toward dating Elsa (what a waste that was, she felt sometimes, unless there was a chance they could get back together? Her heart panged for Elsa so badly), but other than that she had minimized her expenses, even biking to school and not bothering to take driving lessons because her parents would expect her to pay for gas for her car if she had one like Isabela did.
But a virtual reality headset was worth it. She had been waiting for proper virtual reality, the good stuff and not the cheap wannabes that already existed, for ages now. Sometimes she felt an urge to become a coder so that when this happened and it became widely easy to design one's own virtual reality game so long as you knew how (well not super easy, but she imagined it as being just a few steps above building a website), it would be super cool to have her own game out there and for people to get excited playing it.
But that was just a pipe dream. What wasn't a pipe dream happened to be actually owned the Nervegear. At least, so long as it didn't sell out before she arrived at the video game store. Perhaps that was why they had this thing launch on Halloween, because only the biggest gamer nerds would sacrifice creepy time to wait in line for a game headset.
Except well, most of the game nerds aiming to buy this were probably teens like her, or in their early to mid-twenties. They might not care about trick-or-treating or watching scary movies on October 31st. Especially fi they did that stuff the rest of the month. They were ready to become addicted to this game and play it all through November, barely eating or anything. It sounded so exciting to Mirabel, not just getting to swing a sword and whatever this game involved, but also playing it for hours and hours every day could drown out the hurt that still ached her heart every time she thought of Elsa, which was like a billion times a day.
But Isabela needed to be distracted for this to work. Of course, Mirabel already felt guilty about ditching her sister, even though she hadn't done it yet. But it was absolutely necessary for Elsa-recovery. She did consider the fact that perhaps Isabela would understand, allow her to wait in line, while she went off to do her own thing.
But would she? What if Isabela got furious that Mirabel was planning to either force her to stand in line bored out of her mind, or make her explore Japan on her own. Which, wasn't very sisterly.
Mirabel reasoned with herself that she'd feel guilty either way. The thing was, Isabela didn't game. She liked anime, and some people associated that with being a gamer. But they were two separate traits. Mirabel barely watched any anime herself. Certainly only a fraction compared to Isabela.
"How about we go store these figures at our hotel room then find a place to eat?" Isabela asked.
"Sure," Mirabel said, because that was the best answer, and she probably needed food in her belly anyway to figure out how to get Isabela distracted and run off to the video game store.
She already had a map for where the store was that she intended to go to. Gosh, it'd be so easy if she could just tell her sister…Isabela would understand that she needed something to distract her. But she still might fly off the handle at that object cutting into hanging out with her time, exploring a country they weren't native to. Not that they'd see a huge part of Japan, just a section. But still, Mirabel was only here because Isabela asked her to be. It was selfish to abandon her. Yet, she couldn't help it, this was too important.
They got back to the hotel room and Isabela set her bag of figures out, then freshened up her makeup, then they were out the door, hitting up a ramen place Isabela wanted to try. The noodles were absolutely amazing, Mirabel felt her entire core rocking. Perfect meal to prepare for waiting in line…
Except she had to slip away from Isabela. Good luck with that.
And then Isabela engrossed in her phone, which made Mirabel wonder if she should go for it now, though she wasn't sure she could run with her stomach full of noodles, the older Madrigal girl exclaimed. "Hey, there's a place they're selling doujinshi, we must go!"
"Um, what?" Mirabel asked.
"It's sort of like fanfiction but the manga sort, and it's done in actual manga fashion with black and white pictures and everything."
Mirabel followed Isabela, not super thrilled, but…if her sister was this excited about whatever this fanfiction thing was, she could perhaps find that as an opening to slip away.
When they arrived at the place, which was indoors, Mirabel went with her sister from table to table as she hunted for something thrilling. "Whoa, there's some lewd dragon-maid stuff over there. Well, lewder than the regular."
"Um, I'm pretty sure dragons and that word don't belong together."
Isabela smirked. "No kidding. But…well, it's a weird one. I'd rather not explain it. Let's go for the My Hero Academia/Attack on Titan mashup doujinshi."
"I don't know what any of the words you just said are," Mirabel responded, following her sister.
Isabela stood in line and started explaining stuff about a boy born without a Quirk who wanted to attend a school where every student who attends has a Quirk and something about some girl addicted to potatoes who lives in a world where humans can morph into titans who rule over other humans and terrorize them, and there's so many questions that viewers have to figure out. Mirabel was barely listening, she probably misheard half of that. She didn't know what a Quirk was but from how Isabela explained it, sounded something like a Madrigal gift. Sort of. Maybe not quite.
The boy in front of them in line turned around and struck up a conversation with Isabela, speaking of characters with names that sounded like they should be characters from Star Wars or some twentieth-century adult fantasy novel and not actual characters in a property people cared about in the year 2022.
Isabela was so intrigued that she had someone to speak with about these animes that Mirabel figured she could abscond without arousing her sister's notice. She slipped out of line. If Isabela came after her, she'd pretend she needed the bathroom.
But she was out of there without any trouble. And then she was pitter-pattering down the street, following her map. On and on she ran, with two constant thoughts pinging down on her.
Please don't hate me for this, Isabela, and Yes, I'm going to get to play Sword Art Online! Just hope they're not out of headsets when I reach the counter.
She found the video game store after half an hour. The line was long but she got in it and noticed a handsome redheaded dude up ahead. She wondered if she'd encounter him in game. But his avatar might be completely different. Mirabel was going to design hers to be fascinating. Maybe by doing that she could meet another girl who she can be romantically involved with and forget about Elsa and how the platinum blonde had stomped on her heart…
The line moved slowly. Mirabel tried to pass the time by playing mobile games, but her phone was running out of charge. How fun.
It was only now it occurred to her that the boy in line at the doujinshi place knew Spanish, and that's how he was conversing with Isabela. Not just Espanol but specifically the dialect spoken in Colombia. What are the chances that they'd run into someone like that in Japan? Pretty slim, it would seem.
Which of course meant Mirabel couldn't talk to people in this line, not that it mattered. Why would a Japanese person be interested in her? She knew it was contradictory, she was hoping to fall in love with someone in the game, but now that the language barrier entered her mind, that didn't seem like it'd work out.
Finally the section of the line she was at entered the store. She still had to wait for twenty more people to purchase their headsets, before she was at the counter. She got her phone ready to translate her words so she could buy one herself.
The shopkeeper told her the price in yen, and she passed that much over, and the Nervegear in a box was packed up in a bag and she was out the door.
Then she was presented with a new problem. Should she sneak back to the hotel room and put the Nervegear on there? No, Isabela would be sure to show up and rip it off. That was terrifying. Which meant, Mirabel only had one choice.
She kept going till she found a dark alley. Honestly, she was relieved, this was too heavy to carry all that way.
She translated the instructions, and discovered that she had to say a specific phrase to start the game, and also that it was going to ask her to touch herself all over. That was super weird, Mirabel didn't know what it was for, but whatever. She had to hope that the system would translate her Spanish version of the phrase into Japanese.
Suddenly, she was really glad she had reserved her phone a little. There was a function that it could translate what the system said to her so she heard Colombian Espanol while at the same time the Nervegear heard her speak Japanese. She usually didn't like that app, because it used so much more memory, but it only needed to last till Mirabel was in the game.
She put the Nervegear on and she heard the instructions to feel up her legs and around, then her waist, her neck, even her face. That was all so stupid, she just wanted to swing a flippin' sword! Take out some beasts and bosses! Go on adventures. Not feel her body…ugh.
It probably was because this was the first full-dive VR. Kind of primitive. Well, primitive in terms of virtual reality games. Ironic that all the great games were ahead in the future. It was like Mirabel was someone in Medieval times right when the Renaissance commenced and the Dark Ages were a dying stag. But life was about to begin, the life Mirabel had craved. Never again could a gorgeous girl like Elsa break her heart in a world where she had no place to escape. Regular video games hadn't been enough. This would mend her heart, and any time someone tried to shatter it, she'd just turn to VR, erase them from existence with a headset. Of course it also meant erasing people she cared about from existence, but she chose to not beat herself up about that. It was temporary, and anyhow those people should be in her life long-term, hopefully. But an ex, nope.
She still felt guilty about abandoning Isabela, but whatever, she'd just be gone for three, maybe four hours, then return, no big deal. Isabela might be angry at first but she'd beg for her forgiveness, and then everything would go smoothly from there. She could even explain that she had to do this because of her heartbreak, which was the truth. Her sister had to understand that, right?
Now it was time to select her avatar and forget about the real world. She chose someone taller than herself, with long purple hair, who didn't need to wear glasses and had very pretty makeup, a navy dress with orange stripes on the side, sandals (well, she was actually wearing those IRL, haha), and earrings shaped like lightning bolts.
And then everything was set up and all she had to do was say the magic words.
"Inicio del enlace."
Swirls of colors appeared before her eyes, then a flash of white. And finally she popped into a humungous courtyard where tons of other avatars were appearing as well.
Immediately, Mirabel wanted to go slice things. She went out into a meadow, saw a charging bull, and summoned her sword, running at it, hitting squarely across the upper portion of its chest and sliding it out of existence.
Two more boars spawned and tried to double take her down but she slaugtered them, really getting the hang of this. She could smell their blood on the grass, which wasn't fun. But if it had sight and sound sensories, surely it had olfactory ones as well.
After a few more meadow battles, she went back into town to explore, and even tried a cheese-covered pretzel a vendor was selling. Her eyes sparkled. It tasted like real food, wow. Even better, actually. She could get used to this.
But she couldn't speak Japanese, a real problem in a game where she couldn't take her phone with her. On the plane ride, Isabela had told her about an anime where a dude dies and gets to take one item with him to another world, where he's the same age as he was when he croaked before. He chose to take his smartphone. Really wacky. But also useful. It kept you from being friendless if everyone around you spoke a language you're not fluent in, and the smartphone could help you communicate.
"Guess i'll log out then," she said, sighing, sitting on a bench.
Except that she didn't know what the button for log out looked like, and being in Japanese characters, well, that pretty much killed her chances. She hit the bottommost button since she figured that would be it, but it turned her hair blonde. What a joke.
A boy approached. He said something in Japanese, and Mirabel shook her head, sadly, "No comprende."
He said something else and sat on the bench, then scrolled through her screen with her, finally hitting on a tab that opened about drop down menu, pressing something there which opened a second drop down menu, then tapped something, there was a Si/No on Mirabel's screen. She shrugged, hoping the boy was planning to throttle and rob her, like maybe this function would freeze her up. But she was stuck here and had to put her trust in someone.
She hti "Si," and sighed when nothing seemed to have happened.
"Can you understand me now?"
"Um, yes," Mirabel said, flabbergasted. "How is that possible?"
"The function I had you check translates your language so I hear it as Japanese, and vice-versa."
"Hum, didn't know this game would have that."
The boy ran his hands through his sandy hair. Which reminded Mirabel to hit that bottom button again to convert her blonde locks back to purple. "I'm pretty sure the game developer didn't expect any non-Japanese people to buy Sword Art Online the first day, but just in case it happened, he input that feature."
"Fascinating," Mirabel said. "I was just about to logout though, but perhaps I can add you to my friends list?"
"Yes to the latter, but uh, there's some kind of bug or something and the logout function isn't there currently."
"Say what? They need to fix it. My sister is going to get worried about me."
"I'm sure they're working on it," the boy said. "If we're here too long, it'll be a major scandal. 'First full-dive virtual reality game has its players stuck due to Nervegear mishap.' News sites would have a field day."
"It better be quick, though," Mirabel said. She spotted the dude's name when he send her a friend invite. "Nautilus? Your name is Nautilus?"
"It's my name for this game," he said. "Surely you used some name you want to be called by in game too? I mean, you've played an RPG before, right?"
"Yes, plenty, but I was a little flabbergasted by having to set this whole thing up in a language I'm not fluent in."
Nautilus whistles. "So your real name is Mirabel?"
"Yes," she said. "But I mean, I know some people who choose their own names when playing Pokemon. Streamers certainly do it."
"This game is way more intense than Pokemon," Nautilus says, his arm on the bench behind Mirabel but not quite touching her. She was glad he was giving her personal space. Especially since he might not be so keen on her if he knew what she actually looked like…
Why did that matter? She liked girls more than boys. And she needed a chica to help her get over Elsa. She just needed to think of this dude as a friend, nothing else.
"Intense how?"
"Well, the pain you feel here feels real. Or so I've been told by some beta testers."
"That's uh, not very fun. Isn't the point of a virtual reality game to escape reality?"
"The point of the game is to–"
But Nautilus was cut off as loud noises went off. And then Mirabel vanishing from the current area. She was still in a sitting position and fell backward on her butt when she arrived at the courtyard. Hundreds of other people appeared as well.
Mirabel was confused. She found Nautilus within a couple of minutes. "Do you know what is going on?"
"Not at all, but the beta testers might."
A dark figure rose, resembling a robe with no body wearing it. The robe figure started explaining things, how the logout button be missing wasn't a defect, how if they died in the game, they'd perish in real life, how many family members of those with Nervegears on had pulled them off only to watch their cherished relative's brain implode and kill them, how the only way out of there was for them to clear the bosses on Floor 100, and they had to go on all the floors leading up to that, or they'd remain struck there, even if it took years.
Many people protested while Mirabel's heart sank. Isabela would hopefully knownot to yank her headset off if she was discovered in that alley. But she'd also hate to have allowed Mirabel out of her sight only for her to be gone from her for years and years. Isabela would be eaten up by guilt, far worse than the guilt gnawing at Mirabel earlier about darting off to purchase a virtual reality headset…
And as if all that weren't bad enough, the hooded figure claimed it was giving them a present, which turned out to be mirrors that made everyone's avatar melt into what they looked like in real life. Mirabel had her green glasses and shoulder-length curly black hair, her tan skin, and her not very curvy figure. Her clothes remained the same, but she accidentally jabbed a button on the screen with her elbow and her navy dress turned yellow.
She didn't know who Nautilus was anymore, he likely didn't look like he had before, but whoever he was had disappeared into the crowd. It was possible he wasn't a fan of how she looked now. Or well, perhaps he ws scared of how she'd react to how he looked in real life.
As she walked away from the courtyard, certain that death was waiting to snatch her, it wasn't the having to get through 100 floors to escae this game that bugged her, or the fact that she was about to be exposed to a thousand new ways to die. What made zero sense is that people in the game had to look like their true selves for whatever the game creator's purpose was.
She cried herself to sleep under a bridge. In this moment, it wasn't Elsa she missed the most, but Isabela. Defeating 100 bosses wasn't going to be done in a day. She wondered how long it would take. Maybe weeks. Surely not months. And in worst case scenario, years.
Not getting to see Isabela for years would be the worst thing to ever happen to her. Even having 400 girls break her heart.
