Gaming duo

“Well, I am glad you’re alive, that means I can kill you myself if you don’t give me a good enough reason for not answering my calls or messaging me.” The moment John stepped through the door; his mother confronted him.

“I am sorry I’m late, Mom. I was... well, I was...” he tried to think of a good excuse, but none came up. He looked at his mother’s face and saw that she was still waiting for a reason to be given. “Well, there was this girl...”

“A girl?” His mother didn’t let him finish his half-truth of an excuse. “You mean that a girl was responsible for you not coming home right after school and not throwing yourself into those video games? A girl was responsible for occupying your mind so much that you didn’t even think to send me a message telling me that you’d come home late and I was not to worry?”

“Yes, Mom,” he said while nodding and hoping that she would accept it and not ask any more about it. So, he apologized once again to end the subject. “I am sorry for not calling or texting you by the way. I just lost track of time.” Boy, was he wrong.

“So, who is this girl? When can I meet her?” his mother asked thus ending his hopes that she would be satisfied with a simple excuse. She was happy though and started to walk towards him, but suddenly stopped in her tracks. “Wait a minute, she is a real girl, right? You didn’t just go to one of those places where zombified teens go to feed on social networks and had a chat with a would-be girl, did you?”

“Yes, Mom, she is real, she’s as real as it gets,” John replied a bit offended.

“Oh, Son, I am so happy!” she exclaimed and leaped to him giving him a big motherly hug. “So, when can I meet her?”

“Trust me, Mom, I am working on it,” he replied once again, trying to quickly end this conversation.

“Oh, alright. I understand. But this is not the end of this.” Still very cheerful, Brenda headed for the kitchen. “Do you want a snack? Dinner will be late because I was too busy worrying about a boy to prepare it.”

“No, I am fine, Mom. I’ll wait in my room,” John answered while heading to his room. He preferred to take her sassy remark.

Before he closed his door, he heard his mother sing, “Ding dong, the games are dead. Because a girl took my John to bed. Ding dong, the games are gone. Because my son will stay less home.” John didn’t know whether to laugh at his mother’s crappy lyrics to her would be song or to feel ashamed for giving her this kind of hope too soon.

Inside his bedroom, he went straight to lay on his bed. He began to think about the day’s events, how things had changed in his life and how there would be more changes coming; of that, he was quite sure. He was also sure that there would be a lot of dangers to his life, but his skills opened up a whole range of new possibilities. And that was too tempting for him to let it pass.

Then he thought back to his mom and how happy she was at the possibility of his too much gaming days being over. Little did she know that his whole life had now turned into a game. But she was not completely wrong, truth be told, how could any game live up to what he now could experience in real life? So, for the first time since a developing company bought the rights to his favorite gaming franchise and fucked it up, he wondered if he really felt like gaming that night.

As if on cue and to help him decide, John received a message on his phone: “Dude, where r u? U alive? Am waiting. Message me if something is wrong.”

“Yeah, sorry. Been a weird day. Give me 5.” As he typed his answer, John once again realized the very reason for him to play games, at least for a while longer. Caile was now waiting for him. He remembered that, a few weeks after becoming an outcast, he had turned to gaming. At first, he had done it mostly to pass time after studying. But then, he started to enjoy it and realized he was getting good at it.

It was at that time that he met Caile. She was playing a low-level support character and was having a really hard time trying to fend off a group of monsters that had surrounded her. Feeling sympathy for her, he offered to help, and she quickly accepted. Unfortunately for them, their levels were not high enough to defeat them and, having just met, they were not able to fight as a pair. Obviously, both their characters died. The option for him to escape was there, but her character was trapped. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t feel like abandoning her.

They respawned at different places in the game world, and it took them a while to find each other again. They met at the same map where their characters had died. It was good that the first thing they did was to establish a place where they could meet because they were almost instantly killed. John wondered for a second if it was the same group from before. After that, they began to practice together, one choosing a role that complemented the other. As their partnership grew, so did their friendship. And, to celebrate it, every time they were in the very same map where they had first met, they’d hunt down the monsters responsible for it.

Caile was now his best friend and, even though their means of interaction for the last six years had been restricted to online, he couldn’t just abandon her. It now became clear to him that he had to divide his time between playing with her and doing his training in real life. But he still had to figure out how to do it.

While his computer was booting, John decided to inspect his inventory. His ruined clothes were still there. Not wanting to incite his mom’s wrath and even more questions in case she saw the state they were in, he decided to keep them in his inventory for now. For the other items in it, he’d have to find a place to store them, so he wouldn’t run out of inventory space too quickly. He’d definitely not want to run out of space while he was training. He hated when it happened during his game playing, he guessed that that happening in real life would be a far worse sting.

He didn’t know how long he could play this time. It was not that he was tired, the little sleep he got due to Cynthia’s sleeping arrow had helped on that. He just felt that a lot had already happened on that day and his game hype levels were on a low. Yet, he didn’t have the courage to tell his friend about it.

“So, what’s up? I thought you had abandoned me for someone else,” Caile confronted him the moment he answered her voice chat call.

“I am sorry, but you really shouldn’t have worried about that. You know I only have game time for you,” he jokingly replied. “It’s just been one of those days where things got out of hand and I lost track of time.”

“Yeah right, only time for me? What about that randy goblin girl?” she retorted.

“Och, come on, that only happened once, and you were with us. She only needed help with a couple of quests.”

“So, you really didn’t want it to turn into a threesome?” Her snicker confirmed to him she was only mocking him.

“Like you’d let it happen!” John fired back. “Let’s just kill some monsters, alright?”

They played for almost half an hour when they suddenly heard Brenda yell from the kitchen: “John, are you coming down to join me for dinner? Or do I have to switch off your room’s circuit breaker so I don’t have to eat alone?”

“Ohh no, mom agro,” John said knowing what it would mean if he’d let his mom eat alone.

“Mate, that was your mom? Dude, she sounds so sexy when she’s mad,” Caile teased him.

“Oh, shut up. That joke has stopped being funny a long long time ago.” It had not been the first time that Brenda had interrupted John and Caile; at first, he had even gotten worried because she used his real name. The same could be said about Caile’s joke; every now and then she would make remarks of a similar fashion. “I better go before she pulls the switch on my bedroom for a week like what happened last year.”

“Sure, bon appeTIT!” she said while also typing the words just to get to him once more. “Man, that was a long week, I couldn’t even level while you were away.”

“It was your fault,” John tried to get back at her, but it came too short of the mark.

“My fault? You are the one that went bat shit crazy when we died due to a game bug and we ended up playing till dawn because you wanted to get our gear back.”

“Jooohhhnnnn!” came another yell from the kitchen.

“Oops, gotta go. Be back soon.”

“Man, hurry up. You already wasted enough of our time,” Caile managed to add in one last taunt.

On his way to the kitchen, John mentally made a small prayer for his mom to not ask him any more questions about the day’s events. As they sat together at the table, he noticed her mood had not changed one bit. It became obvious to him that his prayers would not be answered.

True enough, the whole time they were eating, he was asked a barrage of questions; she even asked if he had been chatting online with the would-be girl. It was evident to him that some of the uncomfortable questions were asked just so she would have a little fun at his expense. Thankfully for him, it passed quickly.

“Well, you ate quick enough, are you trying to make up for the lost time due to your earlier delay?” Caile asked as soon as he announced he was back.

“Look, I got delayed by a gi...” John’s lack of patience got the better of him and he couldn’t stop quick enough before saying too much.

“A girl? So, there was another girl!” Caile completed with a hint of jealousy on her voice.

“Come on. It’s nothing like that. She needed some help with a school assignment,” he tried to defend himself.

“Look, John, I am just messing with you. Don’t worry about it. It’s not like we are dating. I mean, we haven’t even seen each other in real life.”

“Yeah, why is that?” John didn’t know where that question came from. Given the long silence between them, it was evident that they were both surprised by it.

“Let’s just play already. You wasted too much of our time.” It seemed it was now Caile’s turn to regret what had been said.

Agreeing with her, John decided not to press the issue for now. In the end, they played and talked some more about other things until it was time to go to bed.