"Would you kindly tell us more about 'The Distant Figure' Miss Shiina?"

"Over here Miss Shiina!"

"Miss Shiina!"

The double combo of loud squawking and lights brighter than if she stuck her face under a lamp did little to faze her. She stood there like she was one of those statues on Easter island (possibly with the same face too) while her manager yelled back what could have been answers but Mashiro wasn't too sure.

Because as usual, her head was high up in the clouds in an unusual form of meditation. There sure wasn't advice on Youtube for people who were famous beyond belief, so she had learnt over the years her own unique ways of drowning it all out.

However this time it was somewhat different. She could definitely feel it getting to her. She felt the same pressure in her chest when she was in the plane. Like she had dove back down to her home underwater after a breath of fresh air.

"SOD OFF!," she exploded suddenly.

It looked like they just saw the face of death itself. The photographers didn't dare to even blink as Mashiro stared them down. They could've sworn they saw a vein throb on her forehead.

"EVERY. BLEEDING. TIME WITH YOU PEOPLE! WHEN WILL YOU TAKE THE HINT?! I JUST GOT BACK FROM A 12 HOUR FLIGHT AND YOU THINK I'M IN THE MOOD TO ANSWER YOUR IDIOTIC QUESTIONS ABOUT WHY I CHOSE OIL OVER ACRYILC?! GET! LOST!"

Mashiro bit her tongue, not knowing what to make of the outburst she had just imagined. 'Post-flight drunkeness', she guessed. Although she didn't want to admit that her skin tingled in delight at the thought of everyone around her scattering like cockroaches after being revealed under a couch.

Her manager pointed to one of the reporters and the tone of the question snapped her out of it. "Why did you make this piece Miss Shiina?"

Why? I don't even remember making that one. You can even see the crumbs from when I used it as a plate.

"Because I was told to?," she replied. Her quiet voice sounded deafening to the entire crowd who was holding their breath.

The only real moments of relief she could savor inside of the disgustingly large art museums was when she sneaked away from her guardians when their back was turned. She draped Sorata's hoodie over her like it was a cloak, making sure every lock of yellow hair was tucked under her hood and watched as men in suits ran around like headless chickens. Much to her satisfaction.

However, despite the genuinely beautiful pieces of canvas she witnessed on the walls, it was all for nought if there was no particular brown-haired boy in front of her to witness them with. To stare at, joke about and laugh with, much like how they did inside the National Art Center in Tokyo.

She remembered noticing the old people look at them both in annoyance, before she promptly erased them out of her peripheral. Like no one else in the world existed in that moment except her and Sorata.

"Sorata Sorata!," she chirped, pointing at another one. Okay, maybe she could've kept her voice down just a little bit.

"Shh!," he would hush, looking around him nervously like he was about to rob someone. "They're looking at you...!"

"Look at this one! It changes when you move around!"

The bird was definitely flapping its wings when Sorata moved his head left and right, bringing a wide smile to his face.

"It must be some kind of holographic thing. Like on a Pokemon card...," he stated curiously.

He could practically see the childlike wonder radiating off the blonde as she leaned in closer. "It's incredible. I've never done that before."

"I'm sure you would perfect it first try."

"It...would take a few," she said sheepishly with a slight blush. "Tries I mean. I-It would take me a few tries."

She ambled around the English art museum, imagining that Sorata was right behind her. A quite bland looking painting on the wall made her laugh to herself as it reminded her of when she got one over her caretaker.

"Sorata!," she hushed, pulling him by the sleeve while pointing. "Look!"

Mashiro was jumping up and down in excitement at the canvas that he stared at in confusion.

"It's...great! But...a-am I missing something here?"

"This is my favorite so far! This...represents...uh...the emptiness that many people face?"

He turned away from the blank canvas of white, a controversy that many people would find a poor excuse of art and more for money laundering. At least, that's what it said on the plaque.

"You're screwing with me."

"I am screwing with you!"

Sorata shook his head in mock disappointment, hiding the fact that he was impressed that Mashiro could get one over him like that.

"Well...this one doesn't have glass over it," Sorata whispered. Mashiro came down from her giggling. "Maybe the artist wanted us to draw on it. Y'know, because it would look different country to country?"

"Hmm. Interesting..."

Sorata caught her just in time to stop a certain yellow marker from tarnishing the blank canvas.

"Why not?," Mashiro giggled, happier than ever.

"Because! What if we get into trouble?"

"It'll be a good story to write on this plaque, see?"

"No!"

She struggled against his grip. "The world...will...go round...and round!"

"I don't understand-"

The bright yellow streak stared them in the face like a bad report card and without a word they bolted, one of them trying not to giggle more than the other. It was no bigger than a fingernail yet they acted as if they took cans of spray paint to a train.

"...Sorata...I miss you already," she murmured to herself as she rounded the corner. There was a significant lack of people to decorate the large hall and there was no sound apart from the echoing clomp-clomp from her high heels as she walked. It was so surreal being in a famous art gallery with no-one there; everyone else was on the other side of the building looking at Mashiro's works. Except for one boy around her age, staring intently at a painting of a mountain.

He wore a tattered shirt two sizes two big, sneakers that looked like they had been marched through Hell itself, and a baseball cap that covered his face, although she could clearly make out his expression. His jaw was clenched, like he was suppressing the urge to take his fist and slam it through the canvas.

A curious desire gently prodded her forward until he turned his head, and she stopped.

"Hello," was all she said. He responded similarly but his accent was in stark contrast with Mashiro's.

What in the Christ am I doing? Sorata told you not to talk to strangers!

"You look upset," she stated matter-of-factly.

"Yeah. You could say that."

"Why?"

He looked at the painting for a while. "Dunno."

"Okay."

It looked like he wanted to run off, both from the artwork as well as the awkward attempt at a conversation, but was glued to the floor.

His cheekbones protruded from his face. "Are you hungry?," she asked without the hint of malice. "I get upset when I'm hungry."

"You're that Mashiro girl ain't you?," he asked. "The hell you doin' here?"

"I was bored."

"Ain't you meant to be doin' some kind of interview of something?"

She fished out a handful of chocolates from her purse and presented them to him. "Here. They might be a little melted-"

"Fuck off you," he growled, shoving his way past her. "Why you're not over there basking in attention is beyond me, but I don't need your damn chocolates."

Mashiro heard his stomping get quieter and quieter, and her shoulders slumped in defeat. She attributed the hostility to her name and for a moment she wanted to rip her face off and replace it with a new one, before realizing that would be more painful than the loneliness she felt.

Probably.

"...he was probably hungry Mashiro," Sorata's voice echoed in her thoughts like he had lived there for years.

"Sorata...I miss you."

If it wasn't for her guardians running over and escorting her back to the reporters, she definitely would've been left staring at that handful of chocolates for a while.


The famous game developer Nakasone Tomio was neither looking down at his feet or making eye contact with Sorata and Aoyama as he told the story, rather somewhere in between. It was a blank, unfocused gaze that seemed deliberate for the purpose of detaching himself from the world.

"I got a call. A woman. She said she was a mother. I was told later she...called from the edge of a skyscraper. She said that my game had ruined her life. It ruined her family's life."

Sorata and Aoyama shared a sympathetic look.

"I had gotten hate. I was used to it at that point. But I don't know. This one just got to me. She sounded so...anyway. She said that her son was a college graduate, working a job at a large company to support his family. Until he found my game. My MMO."

"Shrine Zero?"

"At the time, it was just called Shrine. The mechanics were pretty similar. You kids have the luxury of never being able to witness it."

"It doesn't look fun to be honest," Sorata admitted quietly.

"The graphics took a backseat on this one," he replied. "They- no, at the beginning it was..we poured every ounce of money into making the game as addictive as possible. Player retention and all that."

He scratched his scalp the same way he would when faced with a difficult problem.

"And it did exactly that. It hooked him, alongside millions of others. Eventually, he was fired, his wife left him and he stopped caring about anything other than that...game. It was...look. Whatever notion of 'addicted' you might have, you would have to come up with a new word to describe what these people were.

You can watch on old security cams the way they screamed whenever their families came to the internet cafes to drag them away."

"What about food? Sleep?," Aoyama asked.

"From what I remember it was government handouts that were keeping them fed, but I think they wouldn't have cared if they starved to death. It was terrifying. My company, the company I built from the ground up, had eventually developed algorithms and systems that could undo billions of years of biological programming. That could bypass the body's need to eat, drink, sleep.

That could trick the brain into feeling love and meaning more than their families could ever hope. Signature after ignorant signature. Why did I...anyway."

The two were speechless.

"That was exactly what she told me. Before...well. You would've guessed by now. You know they have a whole division- to tweak the sound of the UI buttons?," he choked out in disbelief. "Its hard to say this was a video game company anymore."

It was like they had been told someone was dead. A video game that was impossibly addicting? Sorata knew Nakasone had no reason to lie but he was just confused. Why hadn't he heard about this before? Why hadn't he heard about this company? Was it swept under the rug or something?

The beginnings of birdsong outside prompted the elderly man to yawn and rub his eyes. "My my...it's four am already. What is it with us game devs and staying up all night?"

The trio had spent the entire night working on Sorata's game that he brought on a thumb drive. With the assistance of both Aoyama (who was surprisingly good at 3D modelling software) and Nakasone, it was indistinguishable from a couple days prior.

Frankly, he didn't find it too unbelievable to imagine that this man made the most addicting game in the world.

"Sorata...don't make the same mistake I did. Know where your games headed, or else it'll be ruined by greed. Like everything good in this world," he whispered.

Sorata and Aoyama relaxed on the balcony while Nakasone powered down on the couch. They weren't drawn by the urge to sleep as they watched the sun rise over the mountains, and Sorata thought that the beauty in Mashiro's artworks had to have come from first hand experience. Only the cool air, serene atmosphere and the warm oranges against the shades of blue, experienced in person could inspire her nature oriented artworks.

"...she did say she lived near a forest place," Aoyama mumbled. While she took a long sip of her coffee, Sorata did the opposite.

"Phwa- you're kidding me with the mind reading?," he blurted out.

She shrugged. "What're you thinkin'? How could I make a game that addicting?," she asked quietly, her voice for some reason making Sorata feel nostalgic. It was soft and soothing; the kinds of words that he would wake up to as a kid when his parents were trying to keep their voices down.

"I'm just trying to process tonight. It wasn't what I was expecting," he replied, leaning back in the balcony couch.

Sorata could practically feel Aoyama shaking her head in disproval through his closed eyes.

"You...idiot. Kanda-kun. I'm being serious. What if you had gotten hurt? What if your stitches came out?"

"It feels pretty solid to me."

She sighed. "And for what? You could've done this any other time."

"Sorry. I couldn't help it. I needed to find out for myself if he was real, y'know?," he said. "Especially after spending weeks stuck in a bed with nothing to do other than make games."

"...you always do this Kanda-kun," she muttered to herself with her nose in her coffee. "You always take these...risks. This...bringing the cats in...Fujisawa...the kiss..."

"I'm glad I came here." He stood up with a growing smile. "He said 'us' game devs. I-I'm a game dev. He looked really happy to work on my game. Like he was looking back at his past or something. Can you believe that? That I might become as renowned as him one day?"

"Kanda-kun. We all believed that when you would skip school to work on your games. For days at a time."

A warmness enveloped his chest. He took a deep breath to get used to the feeling of being excited for what the future might bring. If it was anything like before, it would be a lot of typing, a lot of diagrams and a lot of coffee, all paying off for the chance to see the childlike looks of wonder from the people who plays his games. All paying off so that he could talk about those days as fond memories.

Maybe Nakasone could play his games some day. Hopefully before he passes, he would see that at least one person didn't despise him, as he would believe.

"Oh, the kiss?," Sorata clarified. "It probably wasn't...canon."

She stood up with a furious blush. "W-W-Wasn't canon? Whaddya mean?!"

"I was hopped up on some drug- it was like kissing a drunk person. It doesn't count."

"You can't just kiss someone like that and think nothing of it!"

The two bickered on like a married couple, only stopping when the entire forest was entirely bright and they had passed out on the balcony couch, sitting side by side.