EVERWONDER

Synchronicity

"Am I... floating?"

Toshio felt his eyelids open to a white void that almost burnt itself into his eyes. Looking down, he noticed that he was no longer standing in his room, and no longer wearing a headset, but floating in a white realm with no end, not even a floor. It was like he was in space: No up, no down, no back, no forth, the only sense of direction being wherever he was facing. He looked at his hands, only to see a holographic base for a body and that looked and felt nothing like his.

Then, he felt a sense of gravity. His body was slowly correcting itself, falling to a floor that was not there beforehand, or maybe it was; the only reason he knew that there was one was because he could feel it. From that floor emerged a holographic screen, raising to his level, flashing with the words "Please enter a username" in the centre. The screen then split into two, one half shrinking and rotating into a keyboard, finding its way to Toshio's fingers. The other half stretched into an even wider display than what was previously there.

After pondering on what to chose, he typed the name "Blisswoken" in English and hit enter. The large screen then showed the words "Please create an avatar." before flicking to a list of options. Notably, there were even options for species, limb quantity and voice type. He chose to just recreate himself for now, only giving himself a new outfit: A long white blazer, a brown turtleneck a pair of pleated pants and some red trainers. He clicked enter and was greeted with the next step. "Now, you will need to roll an aspect. Aspects are mutations that your character can gain, giving them a superhuman trait. In most cases, the rarer an aspect, the more powerful it is."You may unlock more rolls at higher progress points. Please roll to continue." A holographic lever appeared before Toshio, alongside a wheel of possibilities. Toshio tugged the lever, crossing his fingers that he got something good. Sweat was forming on his palms as he prayed to anything and everything that he got a good roll. For all he knew, 'higher progress points' could be a thousand levels away, and he wasn't keen on waiting that long. As the wheel slowed down, it had just passed "Fire manipulation" and "Aero Impact" which were two abilities with a quite rare chance of being awarded before finally landing on an option that almost sent Toshio into a fit of tears: Paper manipulation. And if to rub salt into the wound, the game made it known that this was one of the rarest abilities in the game, knocking at Toshio's restraint. Seven years of waiting... For this? This had to be some kind of joke, it had to be.

But as the screen shifted to the words "Commencing Tutorial...", he was realising that this was no joke. The next step appeared: "You may skip the tutorial at any time. Operating the UI may require more concentration during early stages of gameplay. Try and conjure an image of a turtle, focus on it and project it into the reality."
Toshio took a few deep breaths. Recognising his frustration, he sat down, hoping that this would help him calm down. It did very little, but a little was still something. He lay back, spreading his arms and his legs and closing his eyes, waiting for the menu to come into existence.
Minutes passed by, and Toshio was beginning to grow impatient again. Why not give up? The game had basically told him that he wasn't welcome here, and he should have trusted his gut; This was just a distant dream, a faraway concept that could only be conjured within the minds of the most gullible child in the world...

But then he remembered something:

This wasn't a dream, This was his dream.
For a few seconds, a rush of tenacity washed over him. He didn't care if it was a hundred thousand fire breathing enemies waiting for him on the other end of this tutorial. He'd already brushed despair many times today, and he was willing to brush it a thousand times more if it meant to pushing towards his dream. And right now, he was standing in it. Even if it wasn't the game itself, he was still feeling the world around him like he had always hoped. And now, he was not going to let a simple menu get in the way of that.
Every ounce of energy present within him was dedicating itself to crafting that image. His brain was running through every image of a turtle that he'd ever thought up or seen, but he just couldn't get it right. It would always have something wrong with it, whether that was its shell, or its legs, or its head. But then, through his cycle, he found an image: An image from home. It must've been 10 years since he'd explored that memory, and all of it was still so hidden, but he knew it was important. What was important now though, was that he was by the shore, and in front of him lay a turtle. And for the first time in his life, all of his thoughts came to a screeching halt for one image. There were no uneven legs, no mangled shells, no none existent heads: Nothing, but the crystal clear image of a sea turtle and the sand that it was covered in. And, in an instant, the turtle began to envelop the world behind his eyelids. He couldn't describe what he was feeling, but it was if that turtle and his dream were the only things that existed in the entire universe.