The next morning dawned. A stray sunbeam sliced through the window, landing squarely on Misha's face. Her eyes, beautiful and still heavy with sleep, fluttered open.
"Ugh..."
Misha stretched, facing the light, the graceful lines of her young body momentarily outlined beneath her nightgown.
"I barely slept a wink last night. I'm still not used to... all this. At least I don't think I overslept..."
A cute yawn escaped her, and her gaze drifted to the clock on the bedside table.
"!"
Her expression tightened. Something was definitely wrong.
She snatched up the clock, scrutinizing the position of the hour and minute hands with an almost desperate intensity.
"Seven o'clock...? Where's my alarm?!"
Panic flared. She glanced towards Alain's room. The curtains were already drawn back, the bed empty.
"No, no... maybe he's just in the bathroom."
Misha scrambled out of bed, the straps of her nightgown sliding carelessly off her shoulders, and hurried towards the bathroom door.
But she stopped halfway. On the table, a breakfast, still radiating a gentle warmth, sat beside a folded note.
Her eyes locked onto the handwriting:
[Eat this while it's hot. Fancy going shopping this afternoon? We need to get you some clothes and things.
P.S. I turned off your alarm. Sleep in.]
"Shopping? Is that... a date?"
Her earlier gloom evaporated, replaced by a flicker of excitement. Then she noticed the small addendum at the bottom of the note.
[By the way, you called out my name in your sleep... It made me kind of happy.]
"..."
Misha's mind went completely blank. She clapped her hands over her face, slowly sinking to the floor, the heat in her cheeks blooming into a full-blown blush.
"Darling, you idiot! If you noticed something like that, you should have just kept it to yourself...! He's definitely doing this on purpose. I could just die..."
Tears welled in her eyes. She glanced at the breakfast, a painful realization dawning.
"Not only did I fail to make Alain breakfast, b-but I made him make one for me?!"
An overwhelming wave of guilt washed over her. She slumped to the ground, a Misha-shaped wisp of a soul seemingly escaping from her lips.
"Boo-hoo..."
Wiping away the tears that threatened to spill, she sat down at the table and began to eat, slowly, the first meal she'd ever had in the real world.
"Delicious..."
Between bites, she noticed an empty lunch box resting on the table, a forgotten object. Her thoughts drifted.
"..."
"I'm starving..."
Alain, perched on a campus bench, felt a ravenous beast gnawing at his stomach. It urged him to devour every blade of grass on the school grounds.
"But, picturing her face when she reads that note... that fills me up a little."
That's right, Alain had written the note with a very specific purpose in mind.
As for the present situation – he usually ate lunch at school. To save money, he'd prepare simple meals and bring them with him.
Except today... perhaps still lost in the lingering warmth of Mita's world, he'd woken up early and completely forgotten to make his lunch.
The lunch box? It was still slumbering peacefully on the kitchen table.
"If it comes to that, I'll just have to brave the cafeteria."
He couldn't stand the overly salty food they served, but he was out of options.
As he stood up, resigned to his fate and heading towards the cafeteria, he noticed a commotion near the school gates.
Students, both male and female, were staring in a single direction, their faces a mixture of surprise and awe.
Alain caught snippets of their hushed conversations.
"Hey, is she, like, a celebrity or something?"
"She's gorgeous!"
"She kind of looks like a character from that game... Maybe she's a cosplayer?"
"..."
The word "game" stopped Alain in his tracks. A suspicion, a tiny seed of an idea, began to sprout in his mind.
He followed the gaze of the onlookers. A beautiful girl, wearing a red knit sweater and a dark blue pleated skirt, was walking alone and seemingly lost on the campus grounds.
Her hands were clasped tightly around Alain's forgotten lunch box, her small fingers knitted together in a gesture of nervous apprehension.
It was, of course, Misha.
"So... many people."
Her eyes seemed to have become tangled knots of thread. She kept her gaze fixed on the ground, but the murmurs of the passersby still reached her ears.
"Are these people all... players?"
Back at home, after discovering Alain's forgotten lunch box, Misha had decided to shift her goal from a loving breakfast to a loving lunch delivery.
The hardest part, she had thought, was finally over, after a few false starts.
But she hadn't anticipated this. Just facing the stares of the daytime crowd, this simple act, felt like being pricked by a thousand tiny needles.
Misha had never experienced this level of attention. Their words – "game," "game character" – were a stark reminder that this was reality.
The ground was rendered in astonishing detail, right down to individual grains of sand; each leaf swayed realistically in the breeze; the sheer number of people passing by was something Mita's processing power could never have handled...
And she was an outsider, an escapee from that digital world, only a day removed.
A warm gust of wind swept past. A figure approached from a distance. And, it was heading straight for her.
"Is someone... coming to talk to me?"
Misha's rational mind told her: she needed to ask for directions to find Alain.
But her feet were rooted to the spot. A fine sheen of sweat beaded on her forehead.
She stood there, watching the shadow lengthen, drawing closer.
The approaching figure stopped directly in front of her, and still, she couldn't utter a word.
"Misha? What are you doing here?"
"!"
The "passerby's" voice shattered the spell of anxiety. Looking up, she saw Alain.
A wave of relief washed over her. Misha quickly took Alain's arm, eager to escape this overwhelming place.
"What? She's got a boyfriend?"
"That guy is so lucky..."
A vein throbbed on Alain's forehead, forming a visible "#" symbol. He glanced sideways.
"Mind your own business! Scram!"
With the murmurs of the disappointed onlookers fading behind them, Misha and Alain returned to the original bench.
"Thank you, darling."
Misha dabbed at the fine sweat on her forehead, patting her chest in a gesture of lingering fear.
"I was so scared... I thought I was going to be eaten."
Alain placed the lunch box on his lap, a teasing glint in his eye.
"By me?"
"..."
The girl looked at him, a momentary flicker of confusion in her eyes, and then understanding dawned.
"No, darling. But... would you want to eat me?"
Misha's gaze was serious, though the corners of her mouth twitched upwards.
But Alain, noticing the subtle tremor in her lips and fingertips, saw something deeper.
He opened the lunch box, pretending not to notice. "Don't worry. I'm here."
"...Yes. I know. But I always... I can't help being afraid."
Her head was bowed, her thoughts hidden from him.
Alain knew that adjusting to reality wouldn't happen overnight.
[10% → 13%]
The progress bar, in that instant, ticked upwards.
"..."
But more pressing than the progress bar, Alain realized, was the contents of the lunch box.
"Darling, aren't you going to eat?" Misha asked, her voice laced with concern.
____
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