U N S T E A D Y : A Tale from RPW [ One-Shot ]

UNSTEADY: A Tale from RPW

School? “Friends”? “Home”? And whatnot? The real world was just so tiring that I ended up attaching myself to what I thought was my last resort—the role playing world.

I met different kinds of people and “friends” (I guess). I joined groups too and overwhelmed myself with what I called virtual satisfaction. But, if not because of being involved in groups like those, I would never have the chance to meet him, the one who overlapped.

* * *

It was two years ago when I joined a group chat for undiscovered writers. Well, I’m dreaming of becoming a writer and an author of a published and best-selling book, at most. Around few days or a week, I became close to everyone within that group chat. There, I came across his name.

For about three to four days, methinks, I expected and looked for him, mentally (Come to think of it, I would never join the group’s discussion and rant his name all over, that would never be me), every time I open that group’s chat box. Yet, of course, I still (virtually) socialized with the other members.

I discovered that some of them were gaining thousands of reads, votes, comments, and yes, followers in Wattpad, where we all were posting our stories, hoping to have an opportunity to be an officially published author. However, most of them were like me: a beginner, nameless, yet aiming and dreaming for those fantasies to come true; for those typed expressions online to become inked letters, words, sentences written by our hearts on bounded papers inside a hard cover.

I could not help but to miss someone I adored for so long, my best friend. So, I did the first move. It was unusual and embarrassing for a female like me to chat a guy first, right? But I thought of it no more. I felt lonely and was in need of someone to talk to. A little desperate, you might call.

I used to send random and unplanned messages but this time it was chosen and intended. “Smile,” I sent, with a customized emoji consisting of a colon and a closing parenthesis.

“What do you want?” said he.

That was surprising. However, I never lost hope of gaining his attention and interest. “Good evening, dude,” I greeted. And… he never replied, yet it was a good try still.

It was more than a month now since I last opened my role play account due to academic rationales, I never expected that surprises were yet to come. He waved. Pardon, I meant, he waved?

Bemused, I waved back and started the conversation playfully. “Good evening, dude. What came in to your head and you waved?” He waved back again and started typing. Noticed those three moving grey dots? Yeah, that was it.

“Random wave,” he said, as I was hoping that it was just an alibi and he wanted to talk to me too, hence, I still believed his words. “Good evening, too,” he addressed back. It has always been a good thing to me that greetings from people I bumped onto everyday has the word “good” on it. I instantly assumed, he was fine.

“Just joking, dude,” I tittered. “Please don’t take it seriously. I don’t want any of my dudes get angry with me again,” I said, honestly. This was a loophole in my role playing life—I was always forgetting not to involve my reality to it—and I would not be too surprise if this would lead me to trouble someday.

“Tsk. Insane,” he sent. “Bye.”

“You going to sleep already?” I said, while thinking that it was so quick. He acceded and said it was already 12.18 in the morning. “Oh no!” I exclaimed. “I lost the sense of time,” I typed, and as always, with lots of irregular patterned periods.