Chapter Text
November 6th, 2022 12:53PM
Shino Asada stared down at the NerveGear headset in her hands, wondering what had persuaded her to buy the ugly looking thing in the first place. She’d never really been into playing video games before, she didn’t have any older brothers who played them either. So why? The only reason she could think of was to escape. Escape the real world and the horrible people who plagued her everyday life. Of course it was only temporary escape, but for now she felt that would be enough. She’d spent all her savings on this game–Sword Art Online–and the equipment required to play it. She hoped that it was worth it. Setting the headgear down for a brief moment while she removed the bulletproof lenses from her face, she planned to only stay in till dinner time just to try and get the hang of things in the game. The headgear was bulky but surprisingly lighter than she thought it would be once it was on her head. She watched the internal clock as it ticked away at the time.
12:59PM
There was a brief moment where she felt she should take the headgear off, maybe wait until tomorrow to start playing. It was her turn to make dinner tonight after all and what if she ended up spending more time than she had planned inside the game. Something inside her was begging her not to play this game, but she couldn’t understand why. It was almost time, she didn’t take the headgear off.
1:00PM
This was it.
Her conscious told her this was a bad idea.
She didn’t listen.
“Link start!”