An Ugly Fool!

....

After the alarm rang early in the morning, Nei awoke from his sleeping trance—cursing himself for forgetting to disable his 'working time alarm clock'.

"Shit.." Feeling the coldness and pain running through every vein in his body, Nei jumped up, while swearing.

But not a second later, a sudden feeling of disorientation hit him hard, he started regretting his impulse driven action of moving this fast, after just waking up.

"Ahh!.." Cold and disoriented, he stumbled backwards over an unknown item on the floor.

Falling on the floor with his stiff bum, pain was shooting through his muscles. Making Nei's sight and thoughts instantly clear up from all confusion.

Looking around him, at the familiar surroundings; he realized that he wasn't in the game anymore, but back in his run-down apartment. He even saw the culprit for his pain filled fall; it was the chair.

"Did I fall asleep while playing? It never hurt this much when I did it in the past.. is it because I am getting older? Let's get a hot shower first before I catch a cold."

Pulling his trembling body over into the salvation promising bathroom, Nei was shocked to see a to him foreign face in the mirror. Looking closer he noticed, the face to have an appearance similar, but much uglier than his own.

"..Wait.. that..that is me! What happened to my body?" Stuttering, Nei spoke in the most stable voice he could muster.

The face in the mirror had deep black rings under its eyes, looking somewhat ill and skinny—as if starved and infected with some rare disease.

Nei couldn't believe that this was 'his' appearance. "Was I this hard on my body?.. I should have taken a break, but it's not too late yet! I still can. But with only two more days to finish the Systems task, it might be difficult!"

Everything just came to suddenly for Nei; making his last few days feel more or less, like nothing but a dream.

Nei's life was completely changed in the frame of only a few days. He had no chance or time to comprehend all the transformations that his life were going through—being thrown into quest after quest, only worsened the situation.

How could he free up space to relax. Let alone take some much needed time to think. With all this ever increasing amount of work he had to achieve.

In this stress, he sometimes even felt like he never quit his job. Totally forgetting that he had already quit days ago. Even turning off the morning alarm for his teaching time was neglected, making him wake up utterly tired.

Moreover, Nei stopped replying to any and all text message and missed calls coming from family and friends. Making them incredible worried about his well being with his incredible selfishness.

Since the appearance of the System, Nei's destiny and fate had changed—but that didn't mean it changed to the better.

The opposite might be said for now—completely neglecting everything and everyone around him, to the point where it could be called isolating oneself, made it difficult to describe this lifestyle as an improvement of his life.

"This can't go on," averting his gaze from the mirror in shame, Nei continued "it only took me a day to come this far in designing the game. How much longer could it take to finish it completely. At most the same amount of time already used.." thinking like this, Nei decided for himself. "I can relax today and recharge my energy; while finishing the game tomorrow before the tasks deadline! I have enough time."

After the completion of his monologue, Nei was much more energized, and even smiled. He only had to concentrate on his health today, and nothing more. This made the stress that was constantly taking up his brain capacity, dissolve into satisfaction.

Taking a hot bath, and eating some healthy self made food in bed, he started watching some old cartoons he liked—Nei felt much better after all this. Comparing before and after his time out, was like comparing heaven and hell to each other.

But when he took his phone of its charger, and activated its screen to check for messages; anxiety came crashing right back.

The screen showed more than a thousand messages and hundreds of missed calls, from family as well as friends.

Almost letting the phone fall in a moment of panic, Nei started unlocking his phone as fast as humanly possible, answering all unanswered messages first, before calling his family's home line.

*duut.. duut.. duut..*

"NEI? WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GO?! DO YOU KNOW HOW WORRIED I AND YOUR FATHER WERE? WE JUST PLANNED TO DRIVE TO YOU! DID ANYTHING HAPPEN TO YOU? NEI? NEI?.."

The moment the call connected a barrage of loud complaints and worries were transmitted through Nei's mobile phone speakers. It was his mother.

"Mom, mom! Listen mom!" Only by rudely interrupting here could he finally come to word. "I am fine! I was just working, I was too engrossed in my work that I forgot to check my phone. I didn't notice till a few moments ago that you all were worried for my safety. But nothing else happened, I swear. I am completely healthy!"

Even though it wasn't the complete truth, Nei didn't dare to tell his mother about his skinny and ill appearance. She would rush over personally, to nurse and bring him back to health; that was the last Nei needed or wanted right now.

"Everything fine? Good god.. wait a second, don't hang up! I will tell your father, so his mind won't be troubled any longer."

Hearing his mother run into his father's office room, without waiting, to tell the good news, Nei relaxed his body a little bit, leaning back in his bed.

After a minute of wait, the irritated voice of his father was heard from the phone.

"Nei? Why do you have to worry your poor mother so much? Do you know what I had to go through the last few days? And I heard it was because of your job? Since when do teachers not even find the time to check their phones?" Apparently his father wasn't as worried as his mother, he cared much more about the constant complaints he had to endure.

"Dad, I am sorry. It won't happen again! And I am not a teacher anymore," thinking deeply about his next choice of words for a moment, Nei went on. "I quit. I started my own business, that's why I didn't look at my phone.. I was too busy."

"WHAT? He quit? But it was a good job wasn't it? And what is he doing now, a company? What kind of business even? This is the first time I heard about this, did you already know about this Homer?" From the distant kitchen he could hear the shouting voice of his mother shout through the phone.

Nei's father was surprised as much as his wife, by the sudden change of events. "No of course not! Do you think I wouldn't have stopped him from such foolhardy choices?"

Hearing his parent discuss, ignoring him as if he was only air, Nei couldn't help coughing deeply. "I opened my own game studio. I was programming a game over the last two years while teaching; and just finished it yesterday. So I decided to quit teaching and focus all my energy on publishing the vid.."

Before Nei could even finish his sentence, he heard both of his parents scornful and doubtful voices at the same time "GAMES? GAME STUDIO? GOD!"

Over the next hour he tried his best to convince his parents of his grand ideas. Explaining them all the concepts of his game, how he was going to market it, while reassuring them that it was definitely going to work out.

His parents of course didn't quite believe all of what was said, thinking him to be exaggerating. Yet they couldn't openly accuse him of lying either, their only option was to wait and see.

However that was all Nei needed, they didn't have to believe him, just let him do his thing for some more time.

He would soon prove his abilities, showing them the truth with nothing but results 'With KM overview that would be easy'.

Assuring his parents one last time that everything was really fine, he ended the call.

Sighing to himself, he stood up ready to leave his apartment. He needed nothing more than some fresh air and exercise right now.

"I should read through the quests one more time, just to make sure I didn't make a mistake and left anything important out."

However when he opened the interface with his thoughts, the usual scene he was used to didn't appear before him. But something much more interesting and shocking.

[Host has finished task (4) partly, of the questline 'Making preparations'. Two tasks left (3),(5).

Task (4) details:

1.~Starting the games design~ (done)

2.~Finishing the video games outline~ (done)

3.~Finding and correcting last errors in gameplay~ (done)

4.~Publishing the game~ (active, 1.5 days left)

5.~Achieving more than 500.000 players~ (active, 2 month 29.5 days left)]

[New mission unlocked. Host Mission: 'Starting with a big bang!'.]

Description: How can you feel assured if you publish your creation on money hungry websites, like stream! Your game is as important as your life! Would you trust them with your life? NO! So go forth and build your own publishing website..

Quest tool: One publishing app creation pass.

Reward: One round at the lucky draw, with your luck you will definitely.. at least… get garbage!

…..

"I finished the game? I have to publish it? 2 days! A new quest? My own Stream..!.. aaand my anxiety is back..."