Reality's Blade

Chapter 29: Memory Troubles

I pulled my duvet closer up to my chin, shock jolted through me bringing my mind out of it's sleeping state as my hand connected with something hard. My eyes flung open, a tinted view of my room greeted me. Somehow, I had fallen asleep with my visor on. I pulled it off, rotating my head a few times, my neck muscles aching from accidentally wearing it all night. I tried to think back, how did I manage to fall asleep in Legerdemain? Wasn't I sat in Hikage's house, the rain pouring down on the dimmed world? No, we had left the warmth, I had trudged through the rain, I remembered the feeling of it permeating straight through my clothes and chilling me to the bone. We were going off to face a new enemy, far along the shoreline, but what it was I couldn't remember.

Legerdemain had a number of safety features built into it, designed to monitor players and ensure their safety. The most obvious was it's time limit, after 24 hours straight of playing the player would be automatically logged out to ensure that they ate, drank and slept. They couldn't return within six hours. The limit was also introduced to try to prevent addiction, many people preferred their Legerdemain lives over their normal ones. There was also the issue of player's bodies being left unattended while their mind was in Legerdemain, for which sensors monitored the surroundings so that when a threat was detected the player would be logged out. To prevent this accidentally happening when people wanted to communicate to a player from the real world, trigger words could be set to alert the player someone was trying to reach them. Although it was unusual, the headset could also detect when a player had fallen asleep so it could automatically log them out, which is what must have happened to me.

The only time I could remember being forcefully logged out was when I had first got the game and my mum had walked into my room not knowing about the sensors, we soon set the trigger words after that.

An image of Naoki sat to my desk flashed through my mind. When had he been in my room? I had a strange feeling he had caused the sensors to go off too, but I couldn't for the life of me remember when. I shook my head, letting it go.

I spent my Sunday lazily, doing homework and reading updates on my favourite manga. I knew Kazehiro would be at Kazuo's today, so for once I didn't need to rush to Legerdemain.

"Miya, Naoki's here!" My mum called up the stairs.

I twizzled around in my chair and ambled to my bedroom door, then curiously headed downstairs to see my visitor.

"Yo." He waved with a single hand.

Naoki was standing just inside the house entrance, he was wearing a loose white t-shirt over grey track suit bottoms, his hair was still wet from showering and he was carrying a holdall, I could tell he had just finished his baseball practise.

"What's up?" I asked, wondering what had brought him here, it had been quite a while since Naoki had visited me at home.

"With all the talk of the tournament next weekend the boys were getting on at me about making sure I passed my tests so I could go. I came to see if you'd mind having me for an extra study session?" He explained, already putting his bag down and kicking off his trainers.

His words tugged at fragments of memory, pulling them incoherently to the surface. I'd known he had a tournament coming up, and if I thought hard about it I realised I had spent almost all of this week's lunch times studying with him. Until he had mentioned it though, I had completely forgotten.

"Yeah that's fine." I replied, feeling dazed.

How had I forgotten most of my week? The image of Naoki at my desk rippled before me, I could see him on my bed as well, he looked really tired and I knew it was because he was worried about his grades. But when was this? It felt like many years ago.