Chapter 9: Annoying!

Noticing that the mysterious beauty still followed him, he turned left and started running as fast as his newbie character could. Only for her to pass him with incredible speed, knocking him to the floor from the shock wave.

Suzuki complimented her speed blindly. "She's fast, so cool!" He said, admiring the player.

Taking an interest in her, he got helped up by her. Right away, he asked. "How'd you get this far into the game when it's only been released for two days?"

The girl bluntly answered his question. "I pulled an all-nighter and have been playing since yesterday." Then, she calmly pulled out an artifact from her collection and handed it over to Suzuki.

"Here, take this. it'll help you out a lot." She said as she announced, "I'm going to sleep. Hope to see you later." Her character started to vanish from the screen, indicating that she had logged off.

She left Suzuki speechless. "I didn't get to ask for your name or request a friend invite from you!"

Suddenly, next to his name tag was a red notification. Unfortunately, the girl had already sent a friend request to his account before he could react. "Is it her?" He said as he hovered his mouse cursor over the icon.

Accepting the invite, Suzuki logged out and headed for his bed with one thought in mind. "Now, I can return the sword to her."

In his deep slumber, Suzuki's body started aching, hurting, and tightening, causing him to rush out of his bed and into his kitchen. Taking a pain-relive pill to help ease the pain, he chugged it down and sat on his chair.

"It's barely three in the morning." He said as he tightly held his head. "What's wrong with me?" He felt his temperature rise. "Oh well, ima go check if she's online." He told himself as he stood up and walked over to his gaming desk.

Turning it on, he immediately moved his cursor over the game and started it. But unfortunately, he didn't allow his computer to boot up correctly without an intentional thought, which caused it to freeze. "Ah, shit. Here we go again." He said as he threw his arms up in the air.

Finally, his temperature lowered after some time, and his body stopped aching. The game booted up correctly, and the first thing he noticed was an invite to a lobby from his one and only friend. "Useless_Nagisa?" He asked himself, unable to recall the name tag he hadn't paid much attention to when adding back the girl. He nervously accepted it and waited for it to load.

"H-Hello?" He nervously said over the microphone.

"Oh, hurry. Ready up. I have a good mission for you." She told him in a friendly but forceable way.

"Jeez, okay." He replied confidently for once in his life.

For the first time in his lonely life, Suzuki felt what it was like to be connected to someone else, almost like she was his age. "What's this feeling?" He said as a small tear shimmered in his eye.

"Uh, can you come over here, hurry!" Screamed the mysterious girl into her microphone. Annoyed, Suzuki stared into his screen with a blank look as he followed her.

"Shut up." He told her as he kept his character fixated on her.

"What are you doing up this late?" He asked her as he finally caught up to her.

"Oh, nothing, just pulling an all-nighter." She said as she emoted her character to face him and smile. But for some reason, something didn't sit right with Suzuki, but being so dense, he overlooked it and faced his character forward.

After a while, a question finally came to his mind. "What Virtual Reality set are you using?" He asked.

Her eyes lit up, and she answered. "Oh my, are you interested? Really! Hell yeah!" She screamed into her microphone, annoying Suzuki in the process.

"Hey, I said what VR set? Not a set of questions." He replied as he sighed, "I'm annoyed by her!"

"Nerve Tracker, and which one are you planning on getting?" She jumped the gun and asked him.

Unsure if he could afford or want one, his answer was short. "I don't know, maybe the same one as you." He said openly to her while blushing in real life.

Along the way to the mission, the girl couldn't stop talking, babbling on and on. Nonetheless, Suzuki was annoyed, but a seed of interest in her grew inside. Wanting to learn more about her and her nature, he finally mustered the strength to ask her. "H-hey, I'm Suzuki, by the way. What's your name?" He said as his character stopped moving and emoted with a bowed head.

The girl stopped running and walked back towards him, stopping and emoting a bowed head with her character. She introduced herself. "I'm Nagisa Sato. Nice to meet you."