Chapter 2 - Sakura

Sakura Sato was in the zone.

Lieutenant to the Queen of the Shadow Orcs of the land of Ankara, Level 86 Master Shamaness and undefeated for the past two months. Her coal-black, sunken eyes twitched, unblinking, from one portion of the flat-screen LCD computer monitor to another, checking HP, mana, tapping the keyboard rapidly to keep them filled so she could cast her spells and beat back the human rebels. There was one that was battling her right now, a Rogue Knight, level 91, decked out in the famed Pythion Scale armor, wielding the quest item Baal Blood doubled-edged claymore. But his armor and weapons didn't seem to help keep his health up. There was a tiny, glowing red sliver in the health bar over his head.

Sakura flinched as the Claymore sliced through her character. Her Shadow Orc tumbled from knockback, righted herself on her chunky orc legs, plump, green-hued breasts bouncing in a full-body, Black Lilitian Armor. Rapid double tap on the health potion key to drink two simultaneously. Another tap for a mana potion and Sakura the Shadow Orc unleashed her special move—aptly named Blood Bath. And so it was, when red light spun out of her Shamaness in whirling spirals in eight different directions. But because this was a targeted move, the spirals honed in on the Knight and impaled him from all directions, skewering right through him and pulling his blood out of him as they did, along with the last shard of his remaining health.

The spirals brought the blood back to her, pouring over her head like a libation, healing her almost back to full health.

"Noooo!" Someone yelled in another corner of the room, the internet café. "Chikushō!"

There was laughter, hooting, howling.

Sakura sat still and watched as the fallen Knight's loot arced out of his corpse as if spring loaded. She collected it calmly with a few clicks of her mouse.

Someone gave her shoulder a congratulatory slap and she went rigid.

"Oh, man, don't touch her," someone said in Japanese. "She doesn't like it."

"Sato, girl, this is for you."

Someone patted down a twenty-dollar bill and Sakura looked down at it with a reptilian vacancy in her eyes.

She went back to playing. She teleported to the town of Ankara and went to the shop.

"Hey, I want that armor," said the guy two seats down, leaning back in his chair to make eye contact with Sakura. "I'll give you a million gold."

"Make it a million and a half," bartered someone else.

But Sakura didn't seem to hear these voices.

"Sato, stop! Don't sell it to the damn merchant! He doesn't pay shit."

Someone grabbed her hand as she clutched the mouse with a sweaty palm and tight, cramping fingers. A strangled cry escaped her lips.

Her other hand went flying into her attacker's face and the guy jumped back.

"Don't touch her, you retard!"

Her attacker put his hands up in surrender and Sakura panted raggedly, trying to calm down. She turned back to the screen, took the mouse in exactly the same way as before, fingers positioned with millimeter precision and made the clicks to sell the Pythion Scale Armor the merchant. She received 400 thousand gold. She sold the Baal Blood claymore for another 250 thousand, and just sat there, watched her character shuffling idly, stretching and yawning while other players bustled around her.

Sakura sat like that for precisely the next two minutes and thirteen seconds. It was how long she'd paid for.

She walked out of the computer café, taking the exact route she'd taken when she entered and gone to the exact same computer, number eleven. There was a chair in her path and it made her stop. Someone who was in the middle of a conversation with another guy was sitting in it and looked up at her, thinking she was butting in on their talk. But Sakura stared straight ahead. The guy in the chair pushed himself to the side a few inches with his sneaker, clearing her path, and Sakura resumed her stiff walking, heading for the exit. The guy in the chair chuckled.

She'd left her twenty dollars behind.


Outside there were rain puddles, but no rain. This meant she could walk home safely. Sakura carefully measured and sidestepped the bodies of water. She was afraid to disturb them, to distort the neon colors reflected in them. They made her eyes hurt and want to scratch them out.

As she walked with her distinctive, awkward gait, like a toddler teetering on chubby legs, a light brightened the night.

She watched it glow and fluoresce in the puddle at her feet. She stood there stymied, toes facing inward as the light grew and took the shape of a man. His image was upside-down in the puddle, hovering there an inverted, angelic white Superman. His arms were out to the sides, rays of light rippling behind him. That's when she noticed he was made of glowing metal, some type of highly reflective, luminescent material. "Find me," he said.

The man-shaped light vanished abruptly and something smacked into the puddle of water at her feet. Ice cold droplets seared her bare shins. The reflected neon lights began to go crazy, wiggling and distorting and quaking, epileptic. It was so unpleasant that she could almost hear it, it was like her eyes could hear what they were seeing and it hurt. It hurt so bad. Sakura started screaming.