1. Gaming, Death and Rebirth

"Oh my gosh, Jin! It's so big!"

"When did it get this big! My God!"

A feminine voice screamed at the sight of what she was staring at.

Her eyes grew extra wide and it was not wide from fascination, rather she was in utter shock. 

Her high-pitched shout reached the ceiling of the room as her hand moved to touch and feel the fullness of what was the source of her profound surprise.

She felt around it and the young boy who experienced the sensation whimpered.

"Ahn!"

"Take it easy, Charlotte," he moaned with a little grimace.

"It's soft too… and warm," Charlotte breathed, her fingers caressing it.

"Hey, Jin! Are you sure you got this boil from just playing that silly game of yours!" Charlotte hammered at her younger brother, Jin.

She couldn't buy into the story that it was his long hours of gameplay that caused this mass to appear.

Jin scratched his head with his good hand and nodded repeatedly while giving his elder sister a wry smile. 

"Yes, Charlotte. Sorryyyy! It's just De Quervain's tenosynovitis. I will be fine soon," he pleaded with her.

"I'm already on treatment for it anyway."

The boy looked at the boil on his right thumb and sighed, going on to explain how he had gotten the mass on his finger.

"I think I played it for three to four…umm, maybe five days and nights straight just to beat the last boss of the game, hehe—"

"Enough with your medical jargon! Not all of us are in healthcare, you know."

Whack~

Jin felt a hot slap at the back of his head that abruptly cut his proud laughter short, leaving him almost choking on his saliva.

"Owww!" he mewled, rubbing his head, where he had been struck.

His sister leaned towards him, meeting his guilty gaze with her large, fiercely raging eyes with her hands locked to her waist. 

"That's for being stupid, my little brother!"

Charlotte sighed deeply.

She exhaled out of exasperation and smacked her forehead lightly as she shook her head. 

'How does this boy even think?'

She gave Jin a sidelong glance and shook her head again.

'Playing a game for over three straight days? Not like it will pay—'

Twinkle~

Before she could finish up her thought cycle, Jin flashed a white piece of paper that seemed like a card or something similar before her eyes.

Jin's face was etched with bubbling eyes, sparkling with a babyish gleam and a satisfied grin while holding the paper out for his elder sister to see.

"You see, Charlotte. It paid off!" Jin exclaimed excitedly. 

"I won a free trip to the National Gamers Award with this exclusive invite!"

Twinkle~ Twinkle~

The more Jin boasted about it, the more his ego grew and the more his eyes sparkled with a light that was even brighter than the very sun itself.

Jin lifted his hand in an exaggerated motion and clutched air in his grasp while taking in a deep breath in tandem. 

"From now on, call me the Game Overlo—"

Pow!

"You oaf! Shut up and stay still, lemme read!"

"Y-yetch…big tchis (Yes, big sis)," Jin managed to sneak out words from his swollen lips after a punch had connected from Charlotte's fist to his mouth.

'Look what you've caused, Father. Allowing Charlotte to follow you into boxing was certainly a bad idea! Now I'm her punching bag!'

Jin's face was still red from the blow when Charlotte snatched the invitation paper from his hand to go through it herself.

Her eyes grew extra wide with each word that she read through and slowly her lips were curling up into a smile and then into a grin.

"You really won?" she expressed with a hint of doubt still in her heart.

Jin, whose body was still plastered to the floor with his bum cheeks perked up, managed to lift his left hand and give her a thumbs up in agreement with what she had said.

Even a small, tender mass was starting to appear on that thumb too, but one wouldn't notice unless they examined the finger closely.

Just what kind of tension was Jin on while he was at it with this game?

Charlotte looked at the paper one more time and even more critically, blinking to clear her eyes and make certain that she was seeing well enough.

She then cast her gaze on Jin and in the next second, Jin felt the whole weight of his sister on his body, his face uncontrollably being plastered with kisses.

"You oaf! Your silly gaming finally paid off!" she boomed with profound excitement. 

"At least we can pay for mummy's two months' worth of meds and you can, maybe, take your university work a bit more seriously now."

Jin sighed. 

Charlotte's words were a hard reminder and buzzkill of his excitement.

She just had to remind him of how sad their lives were and that was the reason he picked up such a deep interest in playing games in the first place.

It was Jin's way of escaping his reality. 

A means of solace from the pains and worries of his life.

His father was already late.

His mother suffers from a chronic illness that doesn't seem to have a cure.

Charlotte, his elder sister, who had found love in boxing like their father did, at the end of the day, suffered an injury in a fight that halted her promising career.

Now, she was forced to settle for being a homeroom teacher.

Jin believed that gaming would yield something more than just a place of comfort for him.

And now, with the invitation from the National Gamers Association Awards Ceremony, it has.

Jin had recently just become the first person to finish the trending and arguably the hardest game in the world currently—The Eternal Realm.

The Eternal Realm had been out for a little over four years and yet no one had succeeded in completing it and now, Jin had done so in his second and half year of playing it.

But at what cost? Two burning thumbs, that deserved soul-soothing massages, and tendon abnormalities.

And as a reward, he received a letter inviting him to the yearly award ceremony for gamers where he would receive the promised cash reward of $100,000 for what he had done. 

That was a sum that could change his life and that of his family.

Jin even considered leaving medical school, despite being in his final year, to pursue a career in live game streaming for the money he could make from it.

******

Two weeks later, at the award ceremony.

"Dude, you are really good. To have done that, man… that's awesome!" a middle-aged man with full brown beards on his chin laughed ever so heartily while adjusting his glasses.

This man was popularly known as PeeDeep, someone Jin even looked up to.

Jin's face burned red as he listened to the words of PeeDeep, the world's number one game streamer. 

It was like getting words of praise and accolades from your favourite celebrity. 

Jin could do nothing else but nod and shake his hand as the guys surrounding him showered him with more compliments.

"Sorry guys, but I should get going now," he excused himself after making eye contact with Charlotte in the distance, who had already grown bored of the fancy gathering.

It was not their sort of life and they both felt out of place at the ceremony.

Having received the award and a cheque of his cash reward, there was no other reason for the siblings to remain there, especially since the route of the discussion had become more about business than gaming.

"Let's get a taxi," Charlotte suggested.

"Tch, those legs really don't work any longer?" Jin jokingly retorted. 

"Let's just walk a while, sis. It's been a while since we did that together. Moreover, I need some fresh air after leaving that stuffy place."

"Glad I used my invitation slot to bring you here," Jin jested as they laughed on their way back to their hotel. 

"I would have been bored to death. Geez!"

Time passed as the siblings walked the streets on their way to their hotel, so much so that they got carried away and forgot about halting a taxi entirely.

"My legs hurt, Jin," Charlotte complained, halting to get some rest to her legs while leaning against a wall nearby. 

"Let's just stop a taxi."

As they waited for a while, something came to them.

…But it did not in any way have the semblance of a cab.

Click~ Click~

"Don't move," a croaky voice commanded them from their front, the hand of the man pointing at them with something in his grasp. 

Jin and Charlotte couldn't make out what the man was holding until he got closer.

'It's a gun!'

Jin gulped out of fear, but still, on instinct his body moved to put his sister behind him and protect her.

But that had not been the only instinctual movement that happened in this place, on this night.

Bang!

A bullet was fired.

*********

Elsewhere, in an unknown world.

"Errrr! What is this place…"