CTRL+ALT+DELETE - peter parker.

➤ TWO

Since the last time she'd gone into the game, Suhani adapted a lot of changes to her lifestyle. She made some rules for herself so she didn't get carried away while playing. First, to only ever play while she was alone. The cognitive load of adjusting to the change in environment and the adrenaline rush she got afterwards always tampered with her ability to function and go back to being a normal member of society. God forbid she was home while playing the game, too. What if her parents burst in immediately after she'd come back from Camp, only to be yelled at about some chores? The thrill, the magic, all flushed down the toilet.

No, she wanted to be able to properly soak in and enjoy the confidence and excitement being Suhani, the daughter of Aphrodite, brought her. In short, rule one was basically to only ever play the game while she was out of the house, and alone. Rule two was to never tell anyone else about this. There was no doubt that her dimension-traveling video game probably broke a gazillion laws of physics. She didn't want the scientists, superheroes, and supervillains meddling with her personal fantasy land. Also, in the worst case scenario, people would be after her life.

That meant she couldn't tell her best friend, either. Although that one was more of a selfish choice. Chaloem Chai Rochana was as trustworthy as a friend could get. Suhani would genuinely trust that girl with her life. They'd had each other's backs during the worst of times; against school bullies, against their rat infested city, against the terrors that constantly plagued New York. But, well, Chai was a casual enjoyer of Percy Jackson, and Suhani wasn't quite ready to share his world with her. And knowing Chai, she'd definitely want to tag along, just for fun, especially if Suhani expressed that she didn't want the girl to. What else were friends for?

The nicer excuse was that Suhani didn't know how dangerous it would be for her. Who knew what kind of radiations she'd been exposed to for this to even be possible. What if Suhani was able to travel dimensions, but Chai wasn't? What if trying to travel dimensions ripped her best friend apart?

To protect these two rules of hers, Suhani made a few other minor changes in her life. Things like buying a new sketchbook for her Percy Jackson brainrot. She was good at art, but she wasn't that good. If her parents ever saw the things Suhani drew from her time in the game, they'd get suspicious. The art that she drew from her imagination looked wildly different than the art she drew by sight.

The last rule was that she would only ever play once a week. Suhani had recently learned of maladaptive daydreaming, the act of losing oneself in their imaginations to the point that it hindered their actual life. Of course, normally it was a trauma response. But Suhani didn't want to find out exactly how much trauma it took to start doing that. The lines between healthy and toxic daydreaming were blurred for the creative careers. The last thing she wanted was to get addicted to living in a whole different world and become a lonely, unmarried, crazy old lady at eighty.

Suhani decided to make an event out of it: every week, she'd go to her favourite cafe, have her favourite food, and play her favourite game, and then go back home with a few pages of her sketchbook filled to make her parents happy. A win-win-win!

As Saturday rolled around, Suhani headed to the cafe and settled into her regular seat on the bar stool by the window. With a warm coffee on the way, and a kind of energy she never displayed at this unholy time of morning, she'd freaked out her parents quite a bit. She was not an early bird.

Waiting for her coffee to arrive and fully wake her up, Suhani busied herself with her sketching. There weren't many people out on the street that early on a Saturday. It was just a few cyclists and joggers, but they whooshed by too fast, leaving only the employee of the donut shop across the street for her to sketch. She was a pretty girl, tall and thin with waves of tresses she'd tied back into a low ponytail. She'd been scribbling on the 'Deal of the Day' blackboard propped up on an easel outside the shop for the past few minutes, making her the perfect subject.