“Have you heard about the new game?”

  A fast-talking kid with a freckled face questioned his instructor as he aimed at a nearby archery target.

  “New game? There are a lot of new games. Fix your form.”

  “No! It’s THE game; It’s called ‘World of Heroes’.” His eyes sparkled brightly, “It’s the new Virtek game! You know, the oh the pod. It es out tomorrow!”

  “Oh, you mean the full-dive one. Yeah, I heard about it... The first Virtek game was quite fun, so the itle should be eveer.”

  Woosh. An arrow flew past the target, pletely missing it.

  “You pyed ‘Hero icles’?! How was it? Was it fun? Did you beat it?” The excited kid barraged him with questions.

  “Yeah, it’s super fun. I pyed as an archer.” The instructazed at the missed arrow in the distah a slightly sullen expression. “That’s where I learnt most of my skills, actually.”

  “?? Archer? You mean you pyed with a bow? Why? Acc to the forums, bows were trash in the previous game; they were slow, hard to aim, and did low damage. Do you mean you shot the enemies up a bit before entering melee?”

  The instructor raised an eyebrow, a little surprised to learn this; he never looked at the forums, so this was an ued revetion. “Trash? ...No, I thought the bows were pretty good. I only had to switelee for a few bosses.”

  “A few bosses? Wait, did you actually clear it??” The kid gasped as he fot about his lesson. “Are you one of the clearers?!”

  “Clearers?” The instructor looked at him with uainty. He was still in his early twenties, but he rarely used social media, so he did not know any new sng words created by kids or i-dwellers. Fortunately, his garrulous student would never pass up the opportunity to expio him.

  “Clearers are people who mao beat the game by taking down the final boss, the Demon King. Acc to Virtek’s statisti their website, only one ihousand pyers were able to do it.”

  “Oh.” The instructor nodded in prehension but raised his eyebrows at the statistic. “So few? Then it wasn’t just me whled...” The instructor trailed off in thought, fetting that his student was still waiting for an answer.

  “Then?!”

  “Ah, well I killed the Demon King, but it took me three-and-a-half years of pying.”

  “Woahh.” The kid looked at him with shining eyes. “That’s really cool. I never met anyone who cleared it before...”

  “Why are you so ied in those games anyways? You’re not 18 yet; you ’t even py them.”

  “Hmph!” The kid’s eyes refocused as he felt the cold touch of reality. “Even if I ’t py them, I watch them! The new game has a streaming fun so I just watch other people py it.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not legal either, Timothy...”

  “Stupid age restris!!” Timothy kicked a small rock with his foot, “Don’t gover know people already see anything oerhey should just give in and stop being dictators. Isn’t information suppression what Nazi Germany did? I learhat in history css.”

  “I don’t think the Australian gover are parable to nazis for not letting you watch violend porn though...”

  “There’s porn in the game?!”

  “No, I just meant in general.”

  “Oh.” ...Timothy looked down and reached for another arrow.

  ‘Wait. Why does he look disappointed about that?’ The instructor eyed his student with .

  “Hey, if you used a bow through all of the prequel game...” Timothy suddenly piped up, “you should have pretty good aim by now IRL tht?”

  “Well yeah, why do you think I’m your coach? I have some skill at least.”

  “Wait, but aren’t you just the assistant coach?”

  The instruade an awkward expression, as if to say: ‘Was it really necessary to point that out?’

  “Nevermind, nevermind, so how far you shoot? you shoot that target?” Timothy poio the farthest target in the range.

  “40m? Even a rookie could shoot that far.” The instructor took a sed bow from the side and fired an arrow, which sunk into the bullseye with a distant thunk. “The game only uses longbows and recurve bows though, so pound is not really... Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Timothy was bnkly staring at the instructor with his mouth slightly agape. “Y-you hit the bullseye.”

  “?... I’m not a rookie you know, or were you being sarcastic?”

  “No but you took like a sed to aim. That ’t be normal.”

  “Well, I wasn’t in any rush.” The instructor narrowed his eyes in displeasure, “You should at least hit the bullseye at 20 metres before you insult your assistant coach.”

  ‘I-insult? Timothy widened his eyes slightly. No... A sed should be quite fast, right? Am I just ignorant?’

  “Anyways, you should be able to do that in a few months too if you train properly. Let’s get back to the lesson.”

  “Uh, sure... alright.”

  ...

  ...

  An expressionless young man with a red cap and thick vermillion jacket leant his head against a train window, not g about the rough vibrations from the train’s lootion as he gnced out at the passing sery.

  ‘So I’m really giving it up... huh.’ He sighed.

  This young man’s name was Max, a 21-year-old archery instructor with a pent for video games, a hobby he was n to abandon for financial reasons.

  ‘It’s for the best. Otherwise, I’ll never pay that massive amount off. I help out Lina this way, too.’

  Lina was Max’s biological sister, whom he lived with along with his uncle Raymond. The three of them shared a suburban home in a nice area with great living ditions. Everything was good and well, except for just one small problem...

  The me!

  Max and Raymond had been w together to make pulsory repayments on the house. With Max w part-time, and Raymond w a warehouse job, everything was smooth-sailing as Lina finished high school – this was until Raymond developed back problems, and was forced to retire from warehouse work, unfortunately being unemployed.

  ‘I could probably work the night-fill at a supermarket if I sleep during the ms...’

  Max intended oing a sed job so he could support the family expehis meant abandoning his unproductive full-dive VR gaming hobby, which he’d spent a more-than-exorbitant amount of time ohe past four years.

  ‘I’m turning 22 tomorrow; it’s time I grew up anyways... Gaming was just an escape for me, after all.’

  Max resolved himself. As the train came to a slow halt, he stood up ahrough the doors, straightening his cap as he went to fetch his car.

  ...

  ‘Hm? The driveway is blocked?’

  Max drove home, only to find an unfamiliar van blog his driveway. Reversing, he moved his car back to park oreet, surveying the se as he turned off the ignition.

  A group of servicepeople were moving bad forth between the van and the front door, carrying assorted parts and small eleipos with them. Lina and Raymond were also there, though Lina was staring at Max’s car while wearing a clear pout.

  ‘Did we have some sort of electrical failure?’ Max looked on fusedly as he closed the car door and approached.

  “See! I told you they wouldn’t finish in time, now it won’t be a surprise!” A girly voice sounded from the front porch.

  “I think it’s plenty surprising, just look at his face.” An older man poio Max as he grinned widely.

  Max’s mouth fot to stay closed; he was indeed surprised. The reason for his surprise was the pany ched into the side of the service van. ‘Virtek Industries’.

  ‘Then this... that...!’

  Max turo look at them in shock. “You bought me a capsule?!”

  “Happy birthday, Max!” Lina ughed and rammed into him for a hug. “Your old one was too outdated, so we saved up!”

  ‘Capsules’ or ‘Pods’ were rge devices used to house pyers while they pyed full-dive VR games. The model Max already owned was the notoriously bad and cheap ‘copper’ capsule, with poor performand inferiraphics. The model up from that was the ‘silver’ capsule, which cost nearly ten thousand dolrs; they would have really spent a lot for this.

  Max took a moment to e to terms before an insuppressible smile spread out all across his fad he returhe hug. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  “Just a thanks will suffice,” Lina chirped from his chest. “You were going to stop pying, weren’t you?”

  “You even know that much... You’re right, I was.”

  “Of course I know that much! Who do you think I am?” She jabbed his cheek with her finger.

  “Even I noticed, and I’m half-crippled,” Raymond joked from the side. Max turo face him.

  “I know what you’re thinking, and you don’t o worry about the money. I’ve been saving for a long while now to afford that thing. This young ss also tributed.” He smiled reassuringly.

  “That’s right! You kept giving me allowance money and I didn’t , so I saved it up to give back to you!” Lina nuzzled up against Max with a self-satisfied expression. “Now, praise me!”

  “Haha, you did well! Good job, good job.” He gave her a patronising head pat as a joke, but she only smiled more widely. “No, seriously though. Thank you. Both of you.” Max felt his eyes being teary and blio stop them. Without him knowing, a hobby he regarded as just a trivial leisure activity had bee an irrepceable part of his life. The fact that his family realised this before he did just showed how much they cared about him. “Hah, this reminds me of old times.”

  “Well of course, we have to preserve the family tradition!” Raymond ughed. “By the way, I got a job interview at a call tre retly. Even if my back goes, I won’t leave the workfortil I’m half dead!” He nodded fervently.

  Max looked at him with some and some amusement. Knowing him, he probably wouldn’t leave even if he were half-dead.

  Out of nowhere, a car came screeg around the er, ing to an abrupt stop behind Max’s. The driver hastily jumped out and started running over. “Oh no, no, no, am I too te?!” he yelled.

  “You’re too te Rone!” Lina yelled back mercilessly.

  “Noooo!!” The man named Rone sunk to the ground dramatically and clutched the grass in exaggerated regret. “Damn! I nearly copped a speeding ticket for this!”

  This was Rone, Max’s best friend from high school and one of the few friends he’d stayed in tact with after graduation. Rone would often invite Max over to his pce to py fighting games on his sole, befing and smashing the trollers when he lost. After the ninth was destroyed, the trollers began tard him with fear.

  “You were in on this too?” Max questioned him as he approached.

  “Of course! The new game is multipyer; who else would you py it with?” He passed over a ptop-sized game disk case. “Here; I got it on sale from a friend of a friend’s cousin’s friend.”

  “Huh?? How you get the game on sale when it hasn’t even released yet?”

  “Bck magiyways, that’s not all; I also got you something else!” He took off back to his car and started hauling something out of the trunk while Max checked the rge game dis his arms.

  ‘This would have cost at least half a grand, but he still has more for me?!’

  Max khat full-dive games were extremely expe might make sense for Roo buy this for him if he was some wealthy mogul’s son, but he was just a regur guy who worked on small gigs as a freence video editor; he shouldn’t have so much money fifts.

  “Here- *hah*, here’s the *ah* you hold this?”

  Max ran up to help him carry an overly rge box. Fortunately, Max was fairly strong, so he was able to take the box from his friend’s grip before that guy colpsed.

  “What’s in here?”

  “Haha who knows?” Rone showed no sign of his previously faked exertion as he ran in front of Max and cpped his hands, “It could be a new fridge, a et, an inftable pink jumping castle...”

  “It’s rec equipment, isn’t it?”

  “What the f*ck how did you guess it immediately.” Rone pined.

  For Max it was obvious. Whehis guy had seen Max’s old capsule in the past, he’d made a big fuss about not being able to see what Max was doing while he was inside of it, wanting to ect the visuals to the TV and watch him py. Unfortunately, that required expensive, capsule-specific equipment, which was sold separately from the capsule as an optional add-on.

  “Do you know how it works?” Max asked him as he checked for an image on the box, flipping it around.

  “Don’t drop it, it’ll break. But yeah, I know how it works. The capsule uses EM-wave teology rather than a digital s, so it’s missing some pos you’d have in ventional puters for rec. The unit ects to the main system and uses an advanced graphic-”

  “He meant how to use it.” Lina interrupted, rolling her eyes.

  “Oh, well you plug it in, and then the rest is oerfa-game.”

  “That simple?” Max was amused. Such a rge, plex-looking devid you just had to plug it in.

  “Yep. Now stop flipping it, yiving me ay. Set it down somewhere so I fill you in on the pre-release details.”

  “Pre-release details?”

  “Yeah, you o know about the game world to get a head-start, obviously. Have you never pyed an MMO?”

  “Massively Multipyer Online? I haven’t, actually.”

  “...Oh boy, we have a lot of ground to cover then. Hurry up birthday boy, get inside.”

  “Don’t order me into my own house! And my birthday’s tomorrow.”

  “Tomato, tomorrow, whatever. Just pick up the pace; time’s a-wasting!”

  Max looked back at the smiling Lina and Raymond. He paused for a moment befrinning and following his friend through the door.

  ‘I guess I keep pying after all.’

  Max felt an unknow lift from his heart.