Ren

"Re . . . n . . ."

"Ren!"

Ren blinked, and his eyes zeroed on his father.

"Did you hear what I said?"

Ren was definitely dreaming. One moment, men were chasing him, and the next thing he knew, he jumped off a building.

And when he blinked, he was facing his father, who was supposed to be dead.

"Stop daydreaming." Troy then looked at his wife, Helen. "He is always like this. His head is always in the clouds."

Helen rubbed her husband's hands and forced a smile before she faced her son. "Ren, dear. Your father is asking where you want to go to college."

Ren gasped at the sight of her mom, who was supposed to be suffering from stroke and bedridden when his father died.

If this was heaven, then he was glad that he jumped off that building!

Ren's eyes watered, and he choked, "M-mom . . ."

"Ren, what's wrong?" Helen was worried when her son suddenly started crying out of nowhere. She then cut Troy a sharp glare.

Troy was taken aback. He was just asking his son where to go to college. Did Ren didn't want to go to college that much? Enough to make him cry?

"Ren, there's no pressure. You can go to college anytime you want. Think it through," Helen consoled and rubbed Ren's back while squeezing her son's hand.

Ren lowered his face and gritted his teeth. As much as he wanted to stop the tears, they just kept coming and coming. The feeling of her mother's warmth spread to his back, and the pressure from her hands on his released all frustrations he had. He buckled and wept his heart out.

It had been so long since the last time he saw them. So long.

Troy didn't know where to put his eyes. He was never good at consoling, nor was he a man of comfort. He cleared his throat and said, "Well . . . you still have a month to decide. I just want to let you know that your mother and I have already saved some money for your college, so you don't have to worry if you want to enter that famous university you always spoke about."

Ren's shoulders shook. How could he stop crying now that his father said the exact same words years ago?

Four hundred dollars. That was his father's pay per month as a janitor while doing multiple jobs at the side. In comparison, his mother was a housewife doing buy and sell in her free time.

With a family of three, bills alone were about a hundred dollars per month. The house rent was another hundred. Not to mention the food and other expenses.

And yet, they still manage to scrape his hundred thousand dollar university tuition, and Ren knew how exactly they did it. While he was eating fried eggs and chicken, his parents often ate rice with soy sauce after he went to bed. And who knew what elsewhere they were doing to save money behind his back.

Mom . . . Dad . . .

If he really was back in time then . . .

----

Later that night, due to Ren's incapacity to hold a proper conversation, the rare dinner where his mother and father were present was cut short.

Ren's eyes were red and sore as he laid on his mattress and watched his ceiling in a daze while the ceiling fan twirled with a buzzing sound.

He was back . . .

He was really back in time.

Ren pinched himself and found the sting delightful.

Closing his eyes, he grinned and fisted his fingers. He didn't care why or how he turned back in the past, but this time, he would change everything!

Ren got up and scrambled to get his outdated smartphone. The year was 4XoX, and in just a few days, the hit VRMMORPG COVENANT would be released.

Skimming through his memory in the past, he didn't enter the game when it was first release. He entered it when it became popular and the time when his father died due to pneumonia from working so hard even when he should be retired while his mother was bedridden from stroke because of the sudden death of his father.

He stopped college and entered the game because he needed the money to help his mother at that time. COVENANT used real-time in-game currency, and most players instantly became a millionaire overnight.

But since he was mediocre at best, he was mostly put in a supporting role.

It would change this time!

Ren thought of a plan. He would enter the game in its first release! He'll apply for a college loan while he'll use his parent's money to buy the game pod.

After the game boomed, COVENANT would start to make updates and use in-game currency after a few months due to the flocks of investors. Ren was confident that he'd already accumulated thousands of dollars by that time, so paying his loan would be a piece of cake.

Though he didn't really want to go to college like what he felt in the past, he wanted to make his parents happy since they both didn't even finish high school. It was their dream for him and he would fulfill it.

But first, for his parents to give him the money and play the game undisrupted, he needed to move out. And the perfect excuse for that was by moving near Fate Academy.

Fate Academy is one of the top universities in Zone A. On Earth, the countries were now segregated based on world status. Zone A was the wealthiest country and mostly were billionaires resides while Zone B was for the middle class and Zone C was for the poor who rented on government lands.

Meanwhile, the infrastructures and commercial establishments were segregated in these zones to make jobs accessible and easier for the people. But the main reason was so the people would disperse and wouldn't congregate on a single spot.

They were currently in Zone C, and it was a day by plane from Zone A, where Fate Academy was located.

Ren's eyes twinkled. First things first, he had to get that game pod, and all would start from there.

----

A/N

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