Ordinary

Chapter 20: Redline and Redshift

The first light of August.

Kaze, crumpled up, as always drenched in the swamp of his bed, found his eyes slowly slide open. But he felt neither the moisture nor the smell that accompanies it, not even the blinding radiance of the light that reflected into his eyes from the mirror across. He never fixed it...

He straightened out and rolled onto his back, not bothering with checking the time. It was quite clear he'd woken up before the alarms on the phone. In fact, the boy's entire body was so numb, as though he were a stone slab, unwilling to budge quite yet. Even still, rest did not wish to find him again either.

He didn't rush out of bed. He stared up at the ceiling... And stared, and stared, blank as a sheet of paper, hollow as an emptied pen, neither warm nor cold, but as silent as an onlooker of a great tragedy. Kaze began to do math in his head. Thanks to the relatively new PDP raid of Mythril Fall, his source of income hadn't fully dwindled yet. He'd broken nearly even for the month, able to retain his tiny remainder of a reserve (even with all the hours he diverted to NAR) but only that, and only barely.

Birds faintly chirped in the distance, overshadowed by a few honks of cars outside the house. The argument with his father from yesterday about suspending his university studies came to mind only briefly, as if a fleeting dream, despite the straight hour of yelling. The light burned, reflecting off of Kaze's mirror still. He didn't need to look down at the ground to imagine the pile of books still covering the floor in a shameful sea of disarray and discord. He still hadn't picked them up, let alone opened them to study. He'd also forgotten to wash his sports clothes for the momentous day, well, more like he saw training as more important of a preparation, and therefore ended up neglecting the former until it was too late... For such a memorable event, he'd wished to at least be clean and rid of any sense of an omen. So what? Such a small thing wouldn't affect his performance anyway, why would appearance be of any concern to Kaze, who only cared about the end result?
Breath came difficult as a heaviness enveloped his lungs, but the initially resistant on the intake air escaped so very easily on the way out.

Ba-dum.

To the sound of his own faint heartbeat, he began to crumble. First his empty expression cracked, then his voice. Frowning, lip quivering, eyes watering. Kaze squeezed the bedsheets to the point of his entire body getting caught up in the tremble of his will. The moment the first tear rolled down onto his cheek he slammed the bedsheets into the bedding with a resounding thump and roared in ire. The cars continued to drive by.

* * *

Mai turned off her compact headpiece, pausing the music she'd been listening to on repeat, and folded the Halo back into her bag. She'd hoped leaving the comfort of her home early for a short detour would help ease her worries of being at an extremely crowded high-difficulty event, where many would be likely to "die" in front of her, but the idea appeared to have backfired. Metal fencing all around the areas she wandered, nearly every billboard and sign shoved the grand Nemesis AR project in her face. Traffic raged with honking horns of large and small vehicles alike, stuck in a predictable jam caused by the shutdown of integral to everyday life routes, all that for a game. Was it all worth it?

Soft lullabies of deathly butterflies sung in Mai's stomach, so she decided to end her walk early, instead taking a direct course to the meet-up point for the event that would start in 50 minutes.

As she stepped back on course, however, she realized where she was. She'd just crossed a little bridge with a railing. To her right, covered in the golden light of the sky, stood the pearlescent Big Apple, and before her was a building that nearly appeared to have been made of blue tiles from the 2nd floor up. Its somewhat odd signature shape told the rest.