Three

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It was early the next morning when Inaya walked through the sleepy school corridors over to homeroom. Mrs. Asaka wasn't in yet, so the door to the room was locked. Two other classmates were also waiting outside in the hall. One of them was Annok.

"Hey," Inaya said with a tired smile as she took a seat on the floor next to her.

"Morning, Inaya. Tuesday mornings, huh?"

"Tuesday mornings," Inaya repeated after her with a light chuckle. She noticed Annok had her duffel bag with her, and added, "Hey, how's Marly?"

"Oh, he's perfect. As soon as I got home, I reinforced his eyeballs with stitches, so he's as good as new now. Thanks again for helping me the other day, Inaya. Your superglue gave him the gift of sight for his big reveal."

Inaya smiled. "No problem! Glad I could help."

Her phone dinged and Inaya retrieved it from her pocket to notice she'd received a text. Her brows shot up seeing who it was from—Valentino. It reminded her of the time the two first sat next to each other at the beginning of the year. She'd struck a deal with him that day: if he wanted her phone number, he could text her, but only if it was school-related.

Inaya assumed he needed to finish up some homework like yesterday and tapped the pad of her finger onto the phone screen. But all she saw was a video of CrusadEon Online gameplay tips and hacks for beginners. Inaya didn't realize she was smiling as she hit play. Whether it was because she had a real interest in CrusadEon Online or because he wasn't going to limit his texts to school-related stuff anymore, she didn't differentiate.

"Is that CrusadEon Online?"

"Yeah." Inaya turned to regard the usually quiet girl. "Do you play?"

Annok responded with a nod of her head.

"Really? You do?" Inaya's eyes widened.

"Well, I used to play, actually. It got a little complicated for me. There's a lot of things to remember and there are so many more players who know the rules better than I do. I'm always losing at the Battle Zones and I get lost trying to do the quests. It's really not fun being like that all the time," she added with a laugh.

"Oh, so you didn't hear about the game update?"

"Nope." Annok shook her head. "Do you also play?"

"Oh, no, this is from Valentino," Inaya rushed. "I don't play."

"So why is he sending you a video about it?"

"I, um," Inaya paused. "I'm interested. Yeah, I was interested and so he decided to send this." At Annok's slight silence, she sighed. "It's complicated. You know the whole character-making process? My mom won't let me get the game because of my hijab. She thinks they're trying to make me take it off to play."

"Oh, I didn't realize." Annok placed a hand on her chest briefly in empathy. "When I made mine, I used some pictures of me with a filter on so it wasn't really me. But they accepted it and it all worked out."

The two shared a moment of silence as Inaya glanced at the paused video in her hands.

"Inaya," Annok suddenly said, "If you really want to play the game, I can give you my account and you can play for me."

Inaya inhaled sharply and sat up to face her fully. "What?" She couldn't believe her ears. "Really?"

"Why not?" Annok shrugged. "I don't play and your parents can't get mad, because you didn't have to go through the whole fuss of the character-making process, right? I wouldn't mind."

"You'd do that for me?" Inaya could feel her heart racing. This was her golden opportunity to finally play the game.

Annok nodded in earnest. "Think about it like petals drifting in the wind with no one to watch them fall. Keeping an unused account when you can enjoy it doesn't make sense! You'll love all the clothing designing aspects of it. They're so...magical."

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