If Feng Wu Qing is in the back, then who is the reckless driver that is throwing away his life? Everyone wondered.
"Lolidragon, don't stop the car, just rush straight to Long Dian!" The driver shouted wildly.
"No problem, Prince!" Long Shui Han happily shouted back. This guy still managed to make it in time!
It was Prince!
-Volume 7, chapter seven: Attack In The Real World (pg 99)
[-]
"I fail to see why we couldn't just meet in-game," Long Shui Han replied as a out of breath Feng Lan walked into the coffee shop and placing her bag in the table, sat down and tried to breathe.
"Hello to you too," Feng Lan said between breaths. After a minute of relaxing and regaining her composure, she waved her hand and apologized. "Thanks for agreeing to meet with me in such short notice. I hope you haven't been waiting too long."
"Just half an hour. It's not like I had anything better to do besides, oh you know, ruling a kingdom in the stead of a lazy prince." Shui Han spared a glance to the college student who was now looking through the shop's menu.
Feng Lan shook her head. "We both know everyone else has it covered."
"Remind me again why you insisted it be just us meeting?"
"Because," Feng Lan replied, "I don't know who else this is happening to and I can't just go, 'heeeeeeyyyyy did you have any weird dreams in the past few days?' That's kind of creepy. Oh the cake looks good. I'll get that."
A waiter went to them and asked if she was ready to order. Shui Han had already ordered a cup of coffee and was still drinking it but she asked for a slice of whichever cake Feng Lan was ordering. Feng Lan ordered a strawberry cake, and Shui Han nodded her approval, saying she would have the same. The waiter left and Shui Han went to business.
"So, if I understood the information you told me correctly, you said we had similar dreams?"
"Nightmares," Feng Lan corrected her, "that was not a dream. It was a nightmare."
"I fail to see your point. How can a dream with me in it be a nightmare?"
"Hey! I'm not the one flaunting around in other people's dreams pretending to be their subconscious! Thanks for that, by the way. That's why my dreams have now become nightmares."
"You are so rude!" Shui Han sighed and took a sip of her coffee as the waiter came back with Feng Lan's coffee, and their slices of cake. "Okay, so... This subconscious of yours," she said as the waiter placed the order on the table and left. "What exactly did it... Did I do?"
Feng Lan took her coffee and blew on it, trying to cool it down to take a sip. She stuck her tongue out. "You were the most annoying person ever, not the least surprising of course."
Shui Han wanted to roll her eyes. "Lan! Be nice!"
"When am I ever anything but nice?" Feng Lan snickered. "Actually, that's the surprising part," she glanced left and right to make sure no one was listening then whispered to her, "Yu Lian sent you to fetch me and to give me a wallet full of coins for me to spend, with a note attached. A happy, cheerful note."
Shui Han glanced at Feng Lan as if she had grown another head. She laughed and laughed and laughed, almost dropping her cup of coffee. "You're right! That is a nightmare! The day that woman is ever nice, is when money is involved. She doesn't and wouldn't just give it away like that."
"And that's how I noticed it was a dream. Well, that and you kept pestering me about you-know-who and if we were you-know-what."
Shui Han blinked. "You lost me there. You have done so much stuff all this time that how in the word and I supposed to know who, and what are supposed to represent?"
Feng Lan groaned.
This will take a while.
{-}
In the hour they were in the coffee shop, they both had attracted various glances and whispers about how loud they were being. Shui Han had ignored the stares and Feng Lan sighed as she bit into her fourth slice of cake.
"It might have been better to meet in the game after all." Shui Han stated. "Then again, I would not have seen you being such a glutton in person." She was only on her second slice and was already full but damn did she notice the characteristics of Prince in this girl.
With the way she ate, there was absolutely no mistake in who her avatar was. And if she had not helped in the process of making said avatar, she would not have believed it herself. Not that she had any doubts. Even from the beginning she met Feng Lan in person it was easy to tell just who she was. She coughed and tried to snap the girl from her cake eating. Had she even heard when she called her a glutton?
Maybe she just doesn't care. It's kind of a daily thing in Second Life.
{Feng Wu Qing; the difference is, that there she's a tranny.}
"I'm not a glutton!" Feng Lan yelled back after like, forever. She had been enjoying her cake too much to even care about replying, until it finally caught her attention. "You're just not too interested in eating sweets like me."
"As long as it's food, you would eat anything placed in front of you." Shui Han couldn't help but retort. "Can we get back to the topic at hand now?"
Feng Lan sadly placed the spoon down on the now empty plate. "Fine, can I order another one first?"
"You're not eating another slice Lan!" Shui Han uttered. "This isn't Second Life, eating a lot can cause you a stomachache."
"Buuuutttttt..."
"You can order another coffee, but that's about it. Besides, you're a college student, aren't you supposed to be broke?"
Feng Lan smirked and going into her wallet took out a card and waved it around. "Not when I'm getting paid to be a you-know-what."
Some people close by gasped and scoffed at her. Coughing loudly as if trying to silence her. They thought she was going to talk about something bad and inappropriate.
Feng Lan knew it was directed towards her and glanced to the old grumpy ladies. "Well, excuuuuuseee me for having a conversation with my best friend! Butt out, I don't even know you people!"
Shui Han groaned. They were getting too much attention to themselves. They would never be able to finish their conversation now. She sighed and ordered that cake for her over-hyped up friend in hopes that would calm her down. "Lan, sit down would you?"
{-}
Shui Han had ended up paying for all their sweets and coffee, then took the hyper girl and led her to the nearest park. They began to walk around and she tried to calm her down.
Another trait the girl seemed to share with Prince, is that they both get loud and rambunctious when they feel they've been offended without having done anything wrong.
"It's not my fault those ladies had a bad day, or week, or life!"
Yep! Totally sputtering on and on without a filter.
She's so Prince-like it makes me want to either laugh, or smack her head to slap common sense into her. Hard to tell which.
"So, what you're suggesting..." She said after she caught her attention again. "Is that our gaming helmets, when not used for gaming, connects to us in a deeper level somehow?"
Feng Lan flailed her arms around as she walked side by side Shui Han. "Yeah, I don't know how it would work, but it just seems possible somehow?"
"I'm beginning to wonder why everything weird seems to happen to you." Shui Han said laughing. "Because this is the first I have heard of the helmet doing something like this."
"Well, most people use the helmet to play a VRG while their body is resting. So instead of having dreams, they're just playing all night long."
"You weren't logged into Second Life for the past two to three nights, we've all begun to worry about you. But I can now see you wouldn't want to log in."
"The weird thing is that I had the gaming helmet with the intention of playing, but I just never logged in, and next thing I know..."
"You're having nightmares."
"Ugh don't remind me!" She twirled around and rested her hands in one of the park's fences. "It's bad enough to have to think about the consequences of putting the helmet on, let alone think about those stupid dreams."
"I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole 'until you figure your identity crisis out, I'll keep showing up' thing." Shui Han said.
"I know, right? As if I have an identity crisis. Me of all people. Me!"
{Feng Wu Qing; do I need to remind you you're a tranny?}
"Well, what are you suggesting we do then?"
Feng Lan took a deep breath. "I'm quitting Second Life earlier than I thought."
"WHAT!?"
Feng Lan's eardrums took a long hit that day. And the speech of her life.
{-}
"What do you mean His Highness isn't coming to Second Life anymore!?" Gui slammed his hand into the table. "This is the first I have heard of this!"
"We have to respect his wishes." Lolidragon sighed.
"How come you know this before any of us? I'm her brother!" Feng Wu Quing crossed his arms.
"Doll feels the most displeased and disheartened but is sure Prince-gege must have a reason." The necromancer stated.
"How much money and bad publicity are we going to get this time because of that idiot?" Yu Lian shook her head.
"Alright, alright, everyone. Let us think about this logically. How long was Prince gone last time?" Ugly Wolf questioned.
"A full month." Feng Wu Qing said. "I lost that bet."
"I'm with Feng Wu Qing in this one." Gui said. "What I want to know, is how come Lolidragon knew before any of us."
"Long story short, we had a RL reunion to discuss some things, and that was the solution Prince came up with."
"You let a stressful college student make up her mind about leaving the game when she knows what role she plays in it," Gui couldn't help but blurt out. "And you didn't even try to dissuade her?"
"I tried okay!" Lolidragon raised up her arms. "Look, things are happening. Things I can't say for now and we have to be patient and wait."
"Will Prince-gege ever come back?" Doll couldn't help but wonder.
"When push comes to shove, he hasn't let us down." Lolidragon said.
"We just have to trust in him."
"Trust that we're losing money!" Yu Lian stated.
"Honey, this isn't about money..." Ugly Wolf tried to reason.
"Actually it is," Feng Wu Qing. "I bet 50 silver coins she'll return by the next week!"
Lolidragon shook her head. This was going to get them nowhere. And until she and Prince had any answers to give, she couldn't say why he wasn't logging into the game. For now, at least.
She slammed her hand into the table, just as Gui had done before, but this time louder and with more power to her punch than his.
"You're not betting anything." She said to Feng Wu Qing, "And you will all wait patiently until there is another discussion. Meeting adjourned!"
[-]
This was fun to write! One, because we're seeing Feng Lan in amother setting besides school or the game or home. The cafe thing was borrowed from SAO's new season. As was that particular scene with the grumpy ladies. No credit there, no credit there. It annoyed me to no end and I felt like Feng Lan in a way lol I was hoping Kirito would snap at them like Feng Lan did.
Any errors I blame on the whole it's six in the morning here thing. It's gonna be six in like four minutes as I'm typing this Author Note into the Document Manager.
Also, I apologize for the shortening of Lolidragon's name. Having to type Long Shui Han all the time seemed troublesome. As usual, I'm lazy. So I shortened it to just Shui Han. Sorryyyyyy!
Reviews feed my ego. So feed it. FEED IT! Who knows, you might get an update faster. *snicker snicker*
ps: points if you can tell me what the You-Know-What and the You-Know-Who are. I made Shui Han clueless on purpose, ITS NO FUN IF SHE GUESSED RIGHT AWAY PEOPLE. Don't ruin my fun hahahahahahaha!
See you next time, lovelies.
*flails away*
pps: BUNCH OF THANKS TO ANONYMESS WHO IS ALWAYS KIND ENOUGH TO GIVE ME POINTERS. WRITING THIS IN ALL CAPS CAUSE YOU DESERVE IT.
PPPS: I have thought of a name and stuff for the sequel, (whenever it will happen) which I got off this week's episode of Mahouka Koukou Reittosei.
No preview, so I'll leave you with the curiosity of knowing what that title will be. Just know, it's TOTES FITTING AND AWESOME!