Hey, Shun here!
My past self's mental state before death have always bothered me so I couldn't help but find out how he ended up in that situation. Turns out that he was a person who lacked the support from his elders and the opportunity to show his mettle.
Lack of opportunities and support can, after all, doom someone's life from the very beginning. This is especially true when this happens to you during your prime or the early stages of your life.
It was only when he was accepted by that company that he began showing moments of brilliance and excellence and was thus indubitably promoted. This moment of success was of course short lived as… human nature.
The fall from 'grace' led to loneliness, and then depression, before his head was muddled with suicidal thoughts. Debilitating loneliness is something that should be a cause of concern, isn't it?
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(Shun's POV)
Going through the flight of stairs, I finally reached my room wherein Tsuka could be seen resting with her eyes closed. Once I opened the door though, her bunny ears twisted towards my direction and her eyes shot open.
"Squeak~? Master, you done~?" Seems like she's asking if I'm done with the dishes.
"Uh-huh, I'm done with it. I placed them at the dishwasher like usual." Fun fact, Asians don't usually use their dishwashers. Asian parents usually buy it to boast and to show their wealth to their visitors. After all, only rich or middle class people could afford them.
They don't see much use and, I actually would never know we had one if not for our annual house clean up drives. Of course, there are exceptions to this as, the convenience of these tools are now showing their worth during this modern times.
My useless thoughts aside, I have to go ahead and teach Tsuka how to use the VR Gear that I have. Hopefully, she could make use of it.
"Here, Tsuka. Do you want to try using this? With this, you could play the game with us."
"Squeak? Squeak, squeak~! That? Tsuka play with, Master~!" Opposite to her previous state, Tsuka jumped up and cheered when she heard that she could play with her friends and, most especially, her master.
And so, I spent around an hour or so teaching the extremely enthusiastic Vorpal Bunny how to operate the VR Gear and how to play games in it. As expected, or perhaps unexpectedly, the VR Gear really did register Tsuka as its user, allowing her to play games.
Once that was confirmed, we both did a high five before proceeding with the brief lectures. I let her do the character customizations herself so as to give her more experience in such things.
She would go and customize her character before removing her gear and ask me some questions using her broken [Rabbit Language] which, did I mention was really cute? All in all, we spent about 2 hours with the lecture.
Surprisingly, I thought that, as a girl, she would spend much time customizing her character model but she seemingly didn't? That's a surprise. I really thought she would be like those girls who spent hours on end customizing their characters from the shape of their brows, their lips, etc, and etc.
Anyway, with Tsuka's avatar finally finished, she's now ready to play [Only Sense Online].
"After you finish your tutorial quest, call me using the voice messaging I taught you, okay? We'll meet up after that."
"Squeak~! Okaay, Master~!"
Come to think of it, the tutorial quest is about hunting rabbits, isn't it? Would Tsuka be alright?
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(Third Person's POV)
It was yet another normal day for everyone playing the game [Only Sense Online]. Its ever growing popularity of course garnered a lot of attention from the media, resulting in its player base to also grow as time went on.
Currently, it's player base is estimated to be around 3.6 billion, around 14% of the world's current population. Players all over the globe — plane if you're a flat Earther — gathered in this one game, competing and just overall having a whole lot of fun.
How did its player base grow so large, you ask? Well, the pull that it had for having a curiously ambitious slogan such as "There's a Sense for anything and everyone" or the thing that the advertisements kept on saying, that one individual could become the [Only One], was really quite exciting.
Also, it should also be said that this game has ultra realistic graphics despite being a fantasy VRMMORPG so the game is also used by the film industry. Many business-minded people also realized how this game could become the future of modern people, something like a 'second life' aside from the current one they live in, so they were all scrambling to get a piece of the pie.
Unfortunately for them, everytime stock holders of the company tries to sell their stocks, they would always be too late to buy it. Before they even notice it, the stocks already vanished from the market.
Like usual, many new players logged in at the same time and was immediately awestruck by the sight of the fantasy-esque environment that greeted them. They surround the huge fountain, their mouths hanging wide open.
In this group is a lone white haired girl with pastel green highlights on her hair. She could be seen standing up in her tippy toes, taking in her surroundings like everyone else.
Her hair is mostly cut short, around shoulder length, but aside from having bangs, she also have two long forelocks that adorns her cute face — reaching until her chest. Her light green colored irises shines as those who looks into it could probably even see illusions of many stars shimmering within them.
This girl have some unusual features that made her stand out. She have a pair of rabbit ears protruding on top of her head and a fluffy rabbit tail that could be seen on her backside, sticking out of a conveniently placed hole on her beginner's outfit.
It would twitch every now and then, similar to her rabbit ears, showing that the girl is extremely excited.
Aside from her unusual rabbit ears and tail, this girl also look very young, appearing to be around 6-7 years old, give or take. While there may be a few young people who plays [Only Sense Online], they are quite few and far between, resulting in this girl garnering more attention.
Whilst the girl was looking around, observing the road paved with cobblestones, a group of three men approached the girl, thinking of inviting her to become their party's mascot. If you didn't know, girls this cute is popular with the girls.
With her in the party, lots of girls would approach them. This would, in turn, result in a lot of women interacting with them as well.
"Hey, girly yo. Why don't you join our party? You look like a beginner. We're already well acquainted with this game since we're one of the beta testers so we could teach you many things about this game in general if you join our party." Said the leader of the group with confidence brimming in his tone.
Suddenly, the expression of the little girl changed drastically and, with a look as if she's looking at a piece of stone on the roadside, she said.
"Get, away from Tsuka. You look like, bully. No."
With that said, she nimbly passed through the crowd of people, eventually disappearing from the sight of the three people.
This was the first recorded sighting of the would then be known as the 'White Princess of Wrath', well-known for wiping out an entire guild if she ever caught wind of them bullying weaker players.
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(Shun's POV)
Once I was done teaching Tsuka the basics, I logged into the game myself after seeing that she was already playing the game herself. I of course didn't forget to set the room's temperature to a comfortable degree since I already experienced waking up shivering because the air conditioner was set at 20°C.
I forgot to change it back up after trying if I could stand that kind of cold temperature without so much as a thin t-shirt. I'm a human after all.
My spawn location was at the town square so I thought I should visit Magi-san's store first to deliver some [Boost Marbles]. On my walk, I came across a little girl wearing a full set of beginner's clothing.
She seems to be quite familiar but I couldn't put my finger on who she bare a resemblance to. I just took it as one of those times when I felt a sense of déjà vu and moved on.
"Welcome to Magi-san's Stall— Oh, if it isn't Shun-kun! What do you have for me today? Onee-san would like it if you have more of those [Boost Marbles]. They really sell like hotcakes to players on the front lines."
"Haha, long time no see, Magi-san. Yes, I brought the [Boost Marbles] with me." Magi-san showed a puzzled look on her face when she heard my former words as she tilted her head and placed her index finger on her cheeks in a thinking pose.
"Ehh? But we just met yesterday though, remember? It hasn't been that long. Ah, did you perhaps miss onee-san already!? How sweet!"
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※~To be continued~※
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Author's Remarks:
※ If you want to learn more about how your brain actually controls you and your emotion, try watching Thoughty2's "How Your Brain Controls You and How to Hack It". I've learned many things from this man, actually.
Thank you to the support of my amazing members back on my ko-fi page! I would also like to thank NuA and Sam Morgan for supporting me for months now. Seriously guys, your support wasn't wasted(I used it to buy my dad medicine since he's been unable to work for weeks now).
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