Chapter Text
Klein Moretti has always been a nerd. Maybe it was because the things that he often got interested in along with his own introverted nature, made it so he was seen as such. It wasn’t necessary that he hated interacting with people, he often enjoyed doing so, it was just that he didn’t carry that energy that seemed to grow when interacting with others that he had seen on people who labeled themselves as extroverted and/or open people. And perhaps his solitary tendencies also had something to do with how he grew up. A native from China, having the birth name of Zhou Migrui, had moved to the United Kingdom when he was twelve, after his father had lost his job, their mother who was originally from Birmingham, had decided to move them back to their hometown so they could have the opportunity to build a better future for their children while helping herself and her husband find new work thanks to an old acquaintance. Not like China was any bad, their mother had insisted, but because no one could deny that the greatest world powers were often found in Europe: and the United Kingdom was one of them if not the front runner of that position. However, her mother seemed to be biased because she refused to even acknowledge the prestige of US universities nor the American education system.
Back in his home, Migrui had two childhood friends who he would spend the majority of his free time with. But after moving, he was left with only his family. And now, their parents had to work even harder to sustain their lives in the second biggest city of the country which had higher living expenses than their hometown of Southwest China. However, they insisted that Migrui and his siblings continued their education as this was the main reason they had left their home. And that was probably the toughest part.
At the beginning, he suddenly found himself surrounded by people that almost didn’t look like him at all or those back home and they spoke a language he couldn’t understand fully. He tried to make things as easy as he could by going by the middle name their mother had given them as well as her surname, turning into one Klein Moretti. But that didn’t stop his classmates from mocking his eyes or his strong accent. Despite the fact that he was, technically, English too. But he didn’t look like a regular one, at least not completely. And wasn’t he from China too? It felt like he couldn’t be those two things at the same time, despite being true. As he wasn’t enough of one or the other.
So, due to his trouble on making friends, he often spent his time reading books, watching movies and playing video games: activities that provide him an escape from the real world and in where if there was a chance that he had to interact with other people, no one wasn’t going to know who he was or how he look like, saving himself from any judgment. Soon enough, consuming and interacting with stories in every way possible became not only a comfort but also a passion. It was through this, even that he make his first friends in Birmingham, or at least more or less acquaintances. He joined several groups of other teenagers that shared his interests and they would all spent their time playing together. This was how Klein, after joining a comic reading club, discovered something that would eventually change his life.
All of the members of the club were obsessed with a certain superhero series, to the point they all had started to imagine who their own superhero would be if they had the chance to add it to the series or become one themselves. It was then, when the founder of the club, who was a senior about to graduate, proposed to just play a game as the characters they had created. This was based on a popular tabletop role playing game system, which had a wide sub genre in which people would adapt into the lore and world of their own favorite stories. Most of the players who participated preferred its mechanical aspects and the battle dynamics, which did not catch Klein’s interest much. He was more enthralled by its potential to carve completely unique and unexpected narratives. Still, the game didn’t last long, since after the departure of their Game Master, who had moved to France to pursue art in one of their famous universities, no one had quite the skill set or courage to step in his place. And thus, as being a game that required a group of people playing together in the same place and almost creating everything themselves, Klein’s experience with this format was short-lived and he went back to the traditional formats of storytelling he was used to.
It was a year before he started studying at Aston University, just right after he had received his admission letter along with the notice of a full paid scholarship, that his father had an accident on work due to a stroke. Luckily, it wasn’t anything too serious and the recovery was smooth despite his age. It was still a very difficult time for their family. For this reason, Benson decided to drop out of university and start working to support the family instead, ensuring that the medical bills could be covered and their mother could have time to take care of their father.
During this period of time, Klein resigned from all of the clubs he had joined and spent most of his time studying because he still needed to graduate with flying colors in order to actually be handed the scholarship. Thus, he quickly lost the few friendships he had formed, if they could even be called as such. But he would be lying if he didn’t admit that in few moments of spare time he could find without actually feeling guilty for not studying (even though his sister kept telling him that resting was just as important), he would still been engraved in some fantasy or mystery story, half of his mind wondering which choices he would make if it was a game.
When their father finally recovered a year later, he decided to take an early retirement and go back to China with his wife, so as to not trouble their children anymore and prevent his health from worsening. Klein and his sister, of course, didn’t want to be separated from their parents, but it was actually Benson, who had the idea in the first place, who held his ground. Insisting that this was best for their parents, who had already lost everything they had back home so they could move to another continent. Especially now that Klein had just started university and Melissa had entered a program that helped young women get into technical fields, they couldn’t leave with them and it was clear that if their parents stayed, their situation would easily become unstable. And both their older brother and their parents were very firm on preventing the younger siblings from resigning from their studies, which made Klein and Melissa try to work even harder to make up for their brother’s sacrifice.
Still, in his university classes Klein formed a new friendship with another boy and a girl: Welch and Naya. The boy was the son of a banker of Constant City while Naya’s family simply owned a grocery store. They became friends because they often got assigned into the same group projects, which led to the three of them being mentored by Senior Associate Professor Cohen. Perhaps it was because of this reason, and the some-what introverted nature of the three of them that they eventually started hanging out with each other. This increased when Welch came to them one day, questioning if they had ever been interested into playing a tabletop game, since he knew Naya liked board games and Klein was a fantasy enthusiast. That was how he got intertwined into role playing again, this time, with Klein being the host for the games.
It wasn’t totally perfect, since the three of them came to the game with very different goals and interests. Klein was interested in creating a world that he could control but also felt alive on its own, Welch looked for epic battles against huge monsters while Naya liked the role playing aspect of becoming one’s characters. There were often fights while playing too, since Welch’s and Naya’s characters often disagreed on what to do as much as the real ones themselves, which often translated on actual misunderstandings and fights between the friends who sometimes forgot when they were acting and when they weren’t. Klein tried to be a mediator, but he refused to play solo sessions with each of them so they could get exactly what they wanted, he felt it defeated the whole purpose of the type of game they were playing in the first place. And also, with only two players and one host, in this type of game, there was only so much you could do since it was originally designed for an at least slightly larger group.
For this reason, as the casuals sessions escalated into monthly and even bi-weekly reunions, Klein got even more interested into everything related to fantasy and mystery he could get his hands on, spending most of his free time in the library, the local bookshop or on online forums looking for ideas, inspirations and recommendations on how to better handle the game. He thought, maybe, if he did well enough he could help his friends enjoy it as much as he had enjoyed it once too. This was also how Klein got acquainted with Azik Eggers, a lecturer who was expert in both history and literature as well as a colleague of Klein’s mentor, he noticed Klein’s liking for the art of storytelling and offered to lend him some of the classics that he could be interested in. Klein, at first hesitant by the offer, was caught by his own curiosity and by telling himself that he could be saving money this way, he started borrowing books from the man when he needed to.
Perhaps it was because he was always reading something on his own and so his reading fluidity and skills got better because it somehow helped him achieve better marks in his university studies.
“Fiction often has a thematic intent that encourages the read to not only view what they see, but fully make sense of it from an interpretative standpoint and not only literal.” Azik pointed out when they spoke of this matter once. “And isn’t that what history lacks? The subjectivity of the events that transpired.”
So, Klein found himself more of less in a grounded peace again. He still spent most of his time with his siblings or playing with his friends, he still felt like something was missing. He wasn’t fully aware of it, of course, but there was a deepness of his heart that sometimes he would feel without knowing where it came from. Maybe that’s why kept drowning himself in stories, to be lost in another world when the real one became too much. He didn’t realize when he did this too much until someone else pointed it out, usually his siblings.
In the days after his official graduation from university, he had either been reading something online on his bed or just playing video games on his own locked inside his bedroom. At the beginning, Klein had told himself he was merely resting, that this was his own way to congratulate himself for his hard work over the past years, even his siblings had encouraged him to rest for once!
Until a week later, Klein got up from the floor pausing the game he was in to go grab a snack when a light coming from his phone at the bed caught his attention. He wouldn’t have paid it any attention if it wasn’t because he could see a trail of multiple notifications filling the home screen. So, he grabbed it and found himself looking at multiple messages from Welch and Naya. Apparently, they had scheduled a game session that morning and now past afternoon, he had not only not appeared but also didn’t give any sign of life at all. Skimming through the notifications, he saw multiple early messages and calls from his concerned friends that eventually turned into ugly curses from Welch parts and just straight up giving up on the situation altogether from Naya.
Klein flinched at it, he could have swore it wasn’t until tomorrow. How could he had lost track of the days so quickly?
His first instinct was to apologize and excuse himself with some kind of lie, but he felt by doing that. Instead, he came to the chat and before he could respond, Welch, who was the only one active, started to reprimand him at which Klein simply accepted silently because he was indeed at fault. He just didn’t get why they were making such a big deal about it, Welch was always the first to complain about Klein’s game style. Maybe this was finally his excuse to leach out.
Still, Klein said sorry and tried to make amends, offering to move the game session to whenever it suited them best. But Welch simply responded that he would think about it and talk to him when he decided. The chat felt silent and Naya didn’t even react to their conversation, despite showing clearly she had at least seen it if not read it.
Klein decided to give up on it and leave his room to the kitchen, perhaps closing the door a little too strongly. He tried to ignore the pain of loneliness that started to grow in his heart, almost like a premonition of an end he could clearly see.
A few hours later, he found himself scrolling through his usual forums on games and several fandoms he enjoyed, when he suddenly saw a new post from a new user at the top of the search on the ttrpg forum, since it had been issued only a few minutes ago.
00:13 · goldem17: Hi!! I recently heard about ttrpg and I've been interested in it for a while now. I also recently watched this show inspired by the game and it was really really cool. I've seen other people here finding game groups and I was wondering if anyone would be interested? I want to be a player, but I don't have any experience so I don't know if it will be okay. Anyway, could I join some online game group?
Somehow, Klein felt warmed by reading the post, remembering his first interaction with the game and how enthusiastic he was about playing it with others.
It was probably a mistake to respond. He hadn’t had any luck the two times he had attempted to play games with a group of people and it was clearly his fault. But still, for some reason, he still clicked the send button and closed the window before he could regret it and try to delete it.
But they say three times is the charm, right?
It didn’t matter, he wasn’t probably going to get a response. Most newcomers in forums jumped at the possibility of finding people to play with but completely forgot all about it by the next day. He had seen it happening to others through the chats multiple times before.
So, Klein decided he had had enough of games, friends and people in general for the day and went to sleep, telling himself tomorrow he would try to be a productive functional person again.
↳ 00:22 · zkm_0.XXII: I could help you, I've run a couple of games.
↳ 11:08 · goldem17: really? I would love to!!!!!
11:09 · goldem17: I just sent you my discord username in private to talk about it there if you want, i hope you don’t mind :)
↳ 17:15 · blueavenger: it’s almost impossible to play this type of games with only one real player. I also have some experience with them. If you decide to go through it, I can join too.
↳ 18:46 · goldem17: that would be great!! Do you have discord? I could make a groupchat!
↳ 23:32 · blueavenger: … sure.