“Ah!”

Yarn jerked up in her bed, gasping. She could never get used to the pain of teleportation, and worse, it jacked her heart rate up so high every time that the game would kick her off temporarily.

“Shit…”

She hadn’t meant to reveal to the other player JUST how bad her combat skills really were. 

“He must think I’m stupid, now…” she whispered, curling up in bed, and then made a quick decision. If she was weak, she’d train in one of the ‘side rooms’, an option she’d found when tinkering around with the game when she started. It wasn’t widespread, which had first led Yarn to think she was the only one who could access it, but she had heard rumors that other players had ‘unlocked’ it, which meant it wasn’t exclusive to her. Not that she cared. The side rooms feature, accessible through a certain combination of swipes before she was dropped into Alphine, was made up of a big empty room about the size of a football field where weapons owned in the game could be summoned at will and practice targets selected. The only downside? Unlike in Alphine, the side rooms had a ratio of 1:10 game-to-real time, meaning that for every 1 minute in the side rooms, 10 minutes passed in reality. This would deter most players, who would think it stupid, but Yarn now had nothing but time on her hands, and she needed to get stronger. 

“Let’s do some chores, then grind,” she muttered, standing and moving to her laundry basket. “Let’s see… Hailey gets dropped off by the bus at three, and it’s ten now. So that’s five hours… if we take off an hour for laundry, that leaves four, which means I can spend 24 minutes grinding. Great.”

But before she could even do laundry, she had another challenge. Her father, who was disabled, lived in the house, doing what little virtual work he could find, and she would either have to sneak past him or confront him directly and explain why she was home when she was expected to be at work. 

“Shit… whatever. He’s going to find out sooner rather than later. Might as well tell him now.” She sighed, and, standing up off her bed, went in search of him.

She found him downstairs in the kitchen, trying helplessly to clean up the mess that had been made earlier in the morning from his wheelchair.

“Father?”

He turned quickly and frowned upon seeing her.

“Honey? What are you doing at home?”

She hesitated for a moment, unsure of how exactly to explain, and he paled.

“Oh…”

He seemed to have guessed what had happened.

“I’m sorry, dear…”

She shook her head.

“It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. If I’d tried harder…”

Silence, and then her father shifted.

“Well, no use crying over spilled milk. What’s done is done. If you won’t be at work, how do you plan to spend your day?”

“I thought… I’d throw myself into my game.” She admitted, quietly. “I’ve received a special… event, and I’m hoping to make some money off of it that’ll tide us over until I can get another job.”

He looked concerned at that, but nodded.

“Do your best, sweetie. I’ll be down here for a while longer cleaning up.”

“Oh…” She wanted to cry. Her father was young, just thirty-eight, but had been paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident when he was twenty-two, leaving him permanently handicapped and in a wheelchair. It had been hard for them growing up, as he’d had her when he was just eighteen, and her mother left right after she was born, but she hadn’t minded, because she thought as long as they were together, they’d be happy and live a good life. 

Times like this, however, reminded her that it was simply a pipe dream. She’d learned very early in life that money made the world go around, and if you wanted to be happy, you had to have enough of it to achieve stability - or some semblance of stability. 

“It’s alright.” Her father whispered, his brown eyes soft and kind. “Let me do this. You spend so long working for this family… by every right, you should be out and about, enjoying your twenties, but instead you’re here, wasting your youth looking after Hailey and I. You deserve better… I’m sorry, sweetie, that I can’t do more to help you.”

She started to cry, unable to help it, and he wheeled over, patting her hand.

“It’s alright. Really.” He soothed. “Now, off you go. Don’t worry about the laundry, either. I’ve got it covered.”

Too tired to resist and too emotional to argue, she trudged up to her room and shut the door, throwing herself onto her bed and trying to flip through her life, wondering where everything had gone wrong. Had it been when her mother had left right after her birth? Or when her father had become paralyzed? Was it when her sister had dropped out of high school? Was it when Hailey had been born and the entire family had realized Alice was incapable of taking care of her daughter?

It was hard to place, but the more she thought about it, the more upset she got, so she made a split-second decision and reached for her VR headset. She’d complete the co-op quest, rise the rankings, and make money through the game. She had no other choice.

“To the side rooms we go.”

When her character spawned in, Yarn stared up at the ceiling. As always, the ‘ceiling’ of the side room was blue, reflecting a sunny sky that impeccably matched a sunny day in reality.

“Ah…”

Staring up at the ceiling in the side room always calmed her, but there was no time. She had limited hours - or rather, minutes - and needed ot make the most of them.

“Spawn sixteen test dummies, made of straw and leather. Summon my knife and pipe.”

The items appeared: the knife and pipe a few feet away on a small table, and the test dummies twenty feet away, arranged in a neat, orderly line.

“Okay… you can do this…”

She looked down at her knife, unsheathing it, and took a deep breath before muttering the words to herself.

“Acrothe crayioa. Miota versua.”

The blade hummed and glowed somewhat blue, and Yarn breathed a sigh of relief. Her power was getting weaker, and every time she used the knife, she wondered if it would actually obey her. 

“Miota versua.”

It glowed brighter, and she took another deep breath, taking the stance one of the old city guards had taught her before he left Marksville for good.

“Pivot.” She muttered to herself. “Left foot, then right. You’re dancing. Move your feet!”

She took a few trial steps and then fell into the rhythm, spinning from foot to foot, putting effort into keeping each movement together. It’s what mattered the most, at least when it came to her knifework. She had a lithe body and needed a use for it, and this was perfect.

“I can do it!”

The first few steps seemed to go smoothly, and then she tripped over her feet.

“Shit!”

She fell face-first, unable to maintain her balance any longer, and cursed again as the ground shifted beneath her like water. It cushioned her fall, so it wasn’t painful, but the earth rippling was extremely uncomfortable and disconcerting. Seeing it always made her nauseous. 

“It’s okay…”

She rolled onto her back and stared up at the fake imitation of a summer sky that painted the ceiling above her. It was blue - so intensely blue. A blue that almost made her forget just how much of a hell her life was rapidly spiraling into.

A blue sky. A symbol many others saw as hope.

Hope.

She needed hope, so she stared at the ceiling, watching the fake clouds drift by, praying under her breath that things would improve. 

She wasn’t sure what she was going to do if it didn’t.