29 Cucumbers!

Saye and I slept in my room that night, simply because she was lazy to drag herself upstairs. She slept on my bed and I, on the floor.

We might have formed a temporary truce between us, but the gap was still somehow there.

As dawn broke upon the Lordes Mansion, I shook her awake. "Get up, it's September 14th!" 

Saye narrowed her eyes in her sleep and turned over groggily, mumbling random words, "What's so special, Ray?"

I folded my hands and frowned. Ray was Saye's close friend, the only daughter of an international hotel chain. Birds of a feather sure did flock together. 

I cleared my throat and brought the dazed girl back to reality. 

"You…you're not Ray. Why are you here?" she asked before memories of our conversation entered her brain along with the morning sunlight. "Oh…we're friends," she realized in disgust.

"Excuse me?" I raised an eyebrow, "So all that you said earlier today was simply a joke?"

She stared at me silently for a while to recollect her bearings and got up from the bed, "This is just a truce, girl. You took advantage of my weak state yesterday."

I pointed to myself incredulously, "I took advantage? Wh-"

She never gave me a chance to complete. Before I could say anything further, she got inside the en-suite washroom and slammed the door on my face. 

I let out a frustrated breath and walked away from the room too, not wanting to be in the 10 meter radius circle from that brat. 

The government was giving Systema Games only a two week time slot to eliminate the threat ourselves. After that, according to Darren at least, the government would own Systema Games. Bet they would be quite happy about that. Anyone who had this company in their hands is bound to be the richest man alive.

The man my dad had been.

I heard clattering from the nearby room and peeked inside to see buckets and a mop leaning against the washroom wall. Romeo was inside, cleaning the toilet. 

"Need a hand?" I asked cheerily, trying to brighten up the mood and picked up the fallen mop for him. 

Romeo looked up and grinned, "No thank you, your highness. This lowly servant will do the work himself."

I pouted, "Then servant, where is your apprentice?" I looked around for Kang Jae-suk but there were no traces of the boy. 

"Oh…he went to the garage to take the ladder. It's far away, so he'll take some time."

"Romeo. Why didn't you just back down?" 

He shrugged and unclogged the toilet with force, "I never thought I'd lose. That girl…what was her name again?"

"Saye…"

"Yeah, Saye. Are you both friends? Because if you are, tell her to bite back that arrogant attitude of hers," he clicked his tongue in disappointment. 

"She has always been that way. Daughter of Evertech, if you didn't know," I explained to him, not denying the fact that we were friends. But I didn't accept it either.

"Evertech? For real? Why is an enemy in the house? Or did things change after 10 years? Both the companies have patched up?" He picked up the bucket and moved out of that toilet to the next and I followed him. 

"Um…" I didn't know what to say. If I admitted that we were still enemies, what reason was there for Saye to be here except to kill?

"Yeah, it was a sudden thing. Everything's fine now," I lied instead.

Romeo stopped and turned around to look at me, "That's good then. My elder sister works in Evertech. A small job. I'd like you to meet her then. If we don't make it out of this. And…" he hesitated before looking back at me, "Tell her I love her. That I'm sorry I wasn't there for her baby's first birthday," he chuckled, "He must be ten or eleven years by now. I missed my own nephew's birthdays."

I bit the inside of his cheek. You're just a robot, Romeo. All these memories are fake! I wanted to scream out to him. But then I stopped myself. They were just robots. After they were shut down, it'll all be over.

You can't care for a robot, right? That's stupid.

Romeo waved me off and went to his next cleaning spot and I went to look for breakfast, trying not to think about all this. 

...….

Lucas played on his revolving chair in his cubicle and went on about a thousand rounds on it, waiting for it to be 11 PM. 

He finally got up to get some morning coffee. On the way he looked at the clock. 

10 AM. 

"Ugh, seriously?" he groaned and took the coffee from the machine before adding a packet of sugar to it. 

"How long will you make me wait?" he sighed, the mental picture of her flattering figure still refusing to leave his mind. He wondered what Saye was doing. She had told him that she was going on a one month vacation to find more investors.

But she hadn't told him where she was going or for how long. He thought of asking their mother about it, "Will she know what's up with my sister?"

He took out his phone to dial his mother's number when the Testing Department head called out to him, "Hey, rookie. C'mere."

Lucas tucked the phone back into his jeans pocket and abandoned the newly brewed instant coffee before walking up to the head. 

"Yes, sir?" he asked kindly. Even though he was from Evertech, he had no emotional relation with it. What he really loved was gaming, and he was ready to respect anyone under that field. But this pot-bellied Head was provoking his inner wolf.

He looked at Lucas up and down in disgust, "Evertech, eh? That airhead CEO's standards are really dropping these days," he clicked his tongue and cackled before pointing Lucas out to another employee. 

"Oi, Ken, you see this wimp? He's from Everfuck he says. What do we do now?"

The man named Ken walked up to them. He was insanely tall with a long face and traces of a moustache on his dark face. His eyes were round and stood like two porcelain cups on his face. 

"Locked Room it is. Perfect place for rots like him," Ken drawled, showing half of his 32 teeth in a side smirk. 

Lucas narrowed his eyes silently and didn't even react as the head pushed him forward towards a huge glass room with sparking equipment and what not. "You're under guard duty. The security has gone to eat his breakfast so be here until he comes back. If anything happens around here, you'll be suspected first, get that rookie?"

Lucas deadlocked a stare at the man, "What about my breakfast?"

But the measly head had already hobbled off without a care in the world, taking Ken along with him to provoke other juniors.

Lucas sighed and looked back at this dreaded Locked Room. It looked normal to him. He turned the knob and swung open the door and went inside. 

That's when he realised what was so revolting about the place.

He wanted to curl up and vomit because of the repugnant smell. He didn't how to explain it. But the closest he could compare the stench to was the smell of dead fish mixed with that of burnt hair. 

He pinched his nose and looked around. What could have caused this? 

That's when he remembered the news he had heard a couple of days ago. He had tossed it off to the side back then, but now that he was here, details crystallised in his mind.

Was this the place where the robots from the game were materialized into actual robots? His eyes widened in amusement. "So cool! Now this is next level gaming!"

And the stench mysteriously disappeared as it got replaced with childish awe.

The security seemed to take a lot of time eating his breakfast. As time passed, Lucas loved being in the room filled with VR-IRL Translation plans and the early structures of the Beamers.

As he studied each working, something caught his eye. His eyes fell on it and he was hundred percent sure that it wasn't there when he first came inside.

His footsteps echoed on the marble tiles of the quiet room as he picked the card up and examined it. 

"Is this real gold?" he asked himself and read the writing on the card.

"YOU ARE INVITED TO PLAY BREAKFIRE ONLINE"

"Huh? What's Breakfire Online? Some kid's toy probably," he said out loud and tossed the card in the dustbin. But it missed, and bounced off the edge of the dustbin and lay flat on the floor.

As he bent down to pick it up, a huge holograph opened up from the card and spread in front of him.

Lucas stepped towards it slowly and drank in all the information. In front of him was a transparent holographic screen with six avatars standing in a row. All male. 

He read the avatar names in his head, "Kai, Adrien, Ethan, Romeo, Luca, Kang Jae-suk…" He tilted his head and opened up the stats of an avatar at random. 

It happened to be Ethan's. A list of setting and controls popped up. 

Among them, he saw one option called "SURVIVAL MODE." The letters were grey in color against the black background and Lucas understood that it was disabled. Unable to control himself, he lifted his finger and swiped the slide next to the option to the right.

SURVIVAL MODE now glowed blue. 

...…..

I entered the kitchen to see the other boys standing in different parts of the room cooking and setting up different things. 

I coughed seeing them all diligently working. Not being stereotypical or anything, it was so weird when you saw good-looking teenage boys cook. Makes you want to hug them tight and say, "Thank you so much!" 

"Didn't the maid lady come in today morning?" I tilted my head and walked over to stand opposite the kitchen island where Adrien was. I leaned forward to take a cucumber from the plate. Before I could put it in my mouth, he grabbed my wrist with his left hand.

I stopped breathing in surprise and watched him take the cucumber from me with his other hand. He didn't let go of my wrist even after keeping the cucumber back on the plate. 

"Can't I even eat what I like?"

He finally let go of my hand and took a knife from the rack and starting cutting the cucumber into slices silently, ignoring my question. 

"Hello? Are you deaf?" I asked again. Adrien paused midway cutting the cucumber and glanced up at me, "Patience." 

I sighed and looked at Ethan and pouted as he watched Adrien act like his shitty self. Ethan chuckled and pushed Adrien aside and took the knife from his hand.

"I'll do this, you set up the dishes on the table."

Adrien simply left and did what he was asked to. I scoffed and watched Adrien walk past me. After I was done fuming, I looked back at Ethan on his second cucumber. 

"So…" I started saying but then stopped when I saw Ethan's muscles abruptly tense and he stopped whatever he was doing. I frowned, "Ethan?"

He shot his head up to look at me and I saw anger suddenly glint in his eyes.

Before I could even register what was happening, Ethan lifted his right hand in one quick motion and flicked the knife at me. 

I froze as I helplessly watched the knife cut through the air across the kitchen island…headed straight for my eyes.