I woke up early the next morning. After washing up I told Takeya about my meeting with Asami, and left his house.

The streets are filled with snow, so I played around while on my way to the meeting point. Played till I forgot about the meeting time, barely reaching on time. I ran to the meeting point.

Yuji: “Sorry… for making you wait…”

Asami: “It’s fine, I bet you played with the snow on the way.”

Yuji: “Ugh… I’m exposed.”

Asami silently giggled.

Yuji: “So… Where are we going first?”

Asami: “Breakfast…”

Yuji: “Okay… Where? Fast food again?”

Asami: “No… I have somewhere else.”

Yuji: “Hopefully somewhere with not much people.”

Asami: “I have researched a lot after reaching home, so don’t worry.”

Yuji: “Okay then, looks like I have to trust you.”

She brought me to a café.

Yuji: “Oh, nice looking place.”

Asami: “But the downside is that its kind of expensive…”

Yuji: “Eh? How expensive?” and I browsed the menu. I swallowed my saliva while looking at the saliva.

Asami: “Is this place fine? I can pay for your food later…”

Yuji: “Eh? It’s fine, I can pay for my own share.”

Asami: “Okay then…”

I ordered the cheapest cake and coffee.

Yuji: “You must be rich… looking at your house last night…”

Asami: “My dad is rich, but I’m not…”

Yuji: “I worked like 3 different jobs for 3 months just to be able to come here, and I went to work 3 days after returning to the real world…”

Asami: “Eh?”

Yuji: “That’s my life…”

Asami: “What are you going to do after going back?”

Yuji: “Back to part-time jobs and studies… Since I was away for 2 years, I had to restudy my course from scratch…”

Asami: “Don’t your place have a specialized school for those who are SAO survivors?”

Yuji: “No…”

Asami: “Want to move here instead? We have schools for SAO survivors, and besides, the government is paying for the school fees…”

Yuji: “But I’m not a citizen here…”

Asami: “It’s open to foreigners too.”

Yuji: “But I don’t have the money to move here.”

Asami: “I can help you with that.”

Yuji: “Eh?”

Asami: “I can arrange an apartment for you to stay around. All you need to do is to pay rent and work part-time…”

Yuji: “It’s fine… I don’t want to move… Living here will mean starting from zero…”

Asami: “Isn’t that the point? Starting life from zero after getting out that death game.”

Yuji: “I don’t know… Moving out all of a sudden…”

Asami: “I can help you with that…”

Yuji: “Let me think about it…”

Asami: “Don’t take too long… Classes start in April…”

Yuji: “Maybe an answer before I fly back home…”

Asami: “Okay…”

Yuji: “What shall we do next?”

Asami: “Let’s check out some games later…”

Yuji: “Okay, I want to buy some anime goods.”

Asami: “I got that covered too, since they are at the same place.”

Yuji: “That’s great.”

After painfully paying the bill, we left for the shop.

Yuji: “This place is massive… I only get to see such scale of goods only during conventions…”

Asami: “Move here and you can come here everyday…”

Yuji: “And keep being broke everyday? No thanks…”

Asami: “If you can control yourself and live here long enough, you will probably browse here lesser and lesser…”

Yuji: “We’ll see, I will think about moving…”

We browsed the shop for over 2hours, Asami bought 2 games and I bought 20 figurines.

Asami: “You ended up buying more than me…”

Yuji: “Too many limited edition goods, I have to get them…”

Asami: “Is there anymore limited edition stuff inside?”

Yuji: “I bought them all already.”

Asami: “Wow…”

Yuji: “The figurines were begging me to buy them…”

Asami: “You have great imagination.”

Yuji: “It’s just me being me…”

Asami: “Where do you want to go now?”

Yuji: “I don’t know, you bring me to places, I’m not very familiar with this place.”

Asami: “Hmm… More shopping?”

Yuji: “I don’t want to be broke in under a week.”

Asami giggled again.

Yuji: “You can laugh… you should laugh more. You look more cute that way…”

Asami: “Stop it…”

Yuji: “I don’t get why, interacting with you makes me feel like I have met you before…”

Asami: “Hmm, really?

Yuji: “I’m not so sure myself…”

Asami: “Want to go back now? So that I can teach you how to play ALO.”

Yuji: “Okay… Sure…”

We split ways and I rushed back to Takeya’s place.

Takeya: “Welcome back… How was your date?”

Yuji: “It’s not a date…”

Takeya: “You bought so much stuff?”

Yuji: “Limited edition goods…”

Takeya: “Okay…”

Yuji: “I’m going to play ALO with Asami.”

Takeya: “Oh, have fun.”

Yuji: “You are not joining?”

Takeya: “I’m going to cook dinner.”

Yuji: “You need help?”

Takeya: “It’s fine, you go grind ALO so we can play pro quests together.”

Yuji: “Okay then…”

I reached my room and looked at the Amusphere.

“Looks like I’m going back… the same old… days…”

I wore the Amusphere and… “Link Start.”

After creating account and 30mins of tutorials later…

Elimi: “Welcome to ALO, I guess the tutorial took you awhile huh?”

Yuji: “Yeah, the flying part is hard, but I managed to learn how to fly without a controller…”

Elimi: “That’s great. Looks like having prior VR experience makes game like these easy for you to learn.”

Yuji: ” I guess so… I read the manual while on my way back and… you are a Sylph…”

Elimi: “Yeah. And you picked Salamander…”

Yuji: “I like red and fire related stuff so I picked that. I was thinking about playing a Spriggan, but they look rather dull…”

Elimi: “I see…”

Yuji: “Bring me to a market, I want to buy some weapons and armor…”

Elimi: “The closest town is in Sylph land…”

Yuji: “Doesn’t really matter right?”

Elimi: “Yeah, but I thought maybe we should go to Salamander’s land to make you familiarize with the place.”

Yuji: “I can do it anytime.”

Elimi: “Okay then… Let’s fly there. I want to see how fast can you go…”