LOST TIME MEMORY Vol. 1

Chapter 1.2

While entering his room, he was yet again greeted by the girl on his computer screen. She emanated a hue of aquamarine that shone along whichever direction she moved within the screen. She even wore a blue jersey jacket that was a size too big, her sleeves hanging. A short black skirt and leggings complemented her overall style, but she had no feet- just pixels. She had bright, light-blue hair tied up in twin tails and blue eyes to top it all off. Her skin, of course, was pale white and free of blemishes and fortunately not blue. She did, however, have two blue tape-like things stuck on each cheek. She'd been 'living' with Shintaro for perhaps a year now, but he didn't check the date often enough to remember when she'd first arrived. The days had just passed him by, sometimes he would close his eyes and it'd still be nighttime. But it'd the day after's. And during one of those days, she'd just showed up on his monitor and never left. Her name was Ene, and she vehemently insisted that she was not a Hatsune Miku rip-off.

"That crap will come out the same pipe it came in one day, Master. You'd better toss it away and get a salad before you regret it," she said, pointing at his snacks with a sly grin. He hadn't been the one to ask her to call him that. He frequently reminded his family of that fact, as the thought of anyone hearing her say that out loud gave him social anxiety. She did that on her own, though his little sister of course believed otherwise. Even though Ene called him Master, she oppositely always spoke to him like a servant.

"A salad?" Shintaro asked. He put the snacks down on his desk and pulled the curtains open slightly, letting in a bit of light. Although it was somewhat unusual for him to do, Ene didn't comment on it. A white ray entered through and gave him visibility over his entire room. "Why a salad?"

"It's healthy. And you're not. Like holy water, you know. Might even cleanse that dread off your soul," she gave him spooky little gestures, her sleeves flinging around.

"Wouldn't you rather have me eat some protein instead? Chicken breasts? Fatty fish? Gains, I mean." He unironically opened his can and gulped half of it down, having not realized his thirst until then.

Exasperated, she said, "One step at a time. Baby-steps. Considering what I'm dealing with."

He ignored her, not particularly offended, and sat down on his office chair. Opening the pack of chips, he placed his hand on his mouse. Shintaro and Ene would have these bouts quite often, and they usually didn't mean much. Just pointless back-and-forth jabs and conversations. He would typically have a sensitive tolerance for being teased due to his ego, but not with her. Or maybe his ego had faded away already, after having been cooped up inside for so long. Though there was still some exception, he gave a particular sort of treatment only to her. He wasn't aware sure why.

Shintaro browsed through his programs without a real goal in sight. If there were a goal in mind, it would only be to pass the time. To find things to do, and then do as much of those as he could during the day. Like tasks. If he mixed playing games with reaching higher ranks in those games and then profiting off of stocks, trading, and selling other easily obtainable goods and equity, then the day would have been a very productive one. It'd feel like he actually did something. But there was no need to check any of his financial profits yet. He could work that out later. With that out of his mind, he went through several other things that needed to be taken care of.

Shintaro began by checking his stocks with Ene curiously hovering about. He'd bought a hefty sum of shares in various upstart businesses after spending days researching. The amount of money that he'd started off with before his investments were astronomically lower than they were now. He had two monitors in front of him and the other was always used to check up on his stocks and relevant financial news. It was highly profitable and was about the only thing he could do from his home to make money that didn't really ever require him to go out. Nor would it have to involve letting his mom find out about it. He didn't want to tell her about it just yet.

Apart from the stocks, he passed the time by playing various games on his first monitor. Usually, they'd be first-person shooters, Battle Royales, and the like. But sometimes he'd go for MOBAs instead. He was quite good at games, good enough to be a professional in most of them. But that didn't say much when most of the player base in Japan focused mainly on Fighter games or RPGs and MMORPGs. The only thing that'd constantly been steadily popular in the years, even during his middle school years, had been a particular shooter game that he'd used to play non-stop.

"You're playing Deadly Death Destruction, again?" Asked Ene.

"Just call it DDD." Shintaro always thought the game title was stupid.

"Whatever. Play another game instead," Ene said. For some reason, she was in a terrible mood.

"I felt like playing it, haven't done it in a while."

"Alright hold up." Ene went through what seemed like a digital wormhole and disappeared. "Yup. Found it", she said and reappeared again. "You still got most of the world records under your belt in the game."

Ene had the ability to check all kinds of public information as long as the internet was still going. Though classified information would take longer for her to 'enter', as she called it.

"I still got the 'most top 10 players defeated' title, too?" Shintaro asked, one eyebrow up.

"Well...No."

"Kinda figured."

"So..."

"Yeah, we're gonna play the game."

Ene collapsed onto the floor in a crying groan like a child being told to do her homework.

"I hate this stupid game."

"I don't particularly like it either, but I just wanted to try it after a while."

"There are so many others you could've chosen from. Like a team versus team type of game."

"Didn't feel like it."

"Guess teamplay is too much social interaction for you, huh," she said, her head popping out from a corner of the monitor.

"Hey."

"Yeah, I said it."

"...You know, since you hate the game so much..."

"Yeah?" She pulled herself up into view.

"We'll just play this all day."

"Screw you," she said, and her eyes went dead.

Shintaro checked the leaderboard. There was a new player at the top of the list. It was a guy who went by the name 'Ama', and after checking his profile, Shintaro immediately found him to be the one that took his former world record.

"...He's got a lot of hours in the game, huh," Ene said, showing severe disinterest.

"Uh-huh. He must have a lot of free time," said Shintaro, glad to have found a way to fend off boredom for likely the next few hours.