If I hadn’t received a reply in three minutes, the odds were against it coming in three days. But that’s exactly when it came.
Just when I had nearly convinced myself that my botched confession had actually been no more than an extremely lucid, and unpleasant, dream, Sato finally sent me a message.
At the time I was solo playing a dungeon, just going through the motions alone and watching as my experience gauge slowly filled up and approached the next level. Without company, the whole ordeal felt terribly repetitive and boring. Despite checking my friend’s list nearly every five minutes when I was on the game, Sato’s name remained a dull gray, the game’s way of showing she wasn’t logged on. Behind her name a small band of text kept track of her absence, her last log-in minutes ago, then hours ago, and finally days ago.
So when the message finally came, it didn’t immediately register that it could actually be from Sato.
I was nearly half way through the dungeon when an alert materialized at the bottom of my screen in the same shade of red and font of text that the game had used to notify me when Sato had logged off. Except this time the notice simply read: You have received mail.
My first thought was that my mail was actually just a notification from the game about fulfilling the requirements of one of the event quests currently running, so I paid it no mind. Besides, even if I had wanted to check it, one feature of dungeon play was that it cut you off from the rest of the game. Aside from the inability to open mail, dungeons also prohibited the checking of friends’ lists and the majority of notifications were disabled, with a few exceptions.
Aside from leveling up, that was one reason I had retreated to the dungeons. Inside a dungeon I couldn’t view my friends list, something that made me more depressed every time I looked at it and saw Sato was still off. By now I was wishing that I hadn’t confessed and ruined everything; I missed playing and chatting with Sato, and seeing that she still hadn’t logged in since then made me feel a significant degree worse every time without fail. I hadn’t just ruined the game for myself; I had also ruined it for Sato. Good job, me.
One downside to dungeon playing was that one notification that was deemed unnecessary and disabled for the duration of the dungeon was the one that let you know when your friends had logged on or off. So when I received the notification that I had simply received mail, I ignored it and the text slowly faded away along with its importance. I didn’t even think twice about it.
As per usual, or at least what had became the usual for me as of late, as soon as I finished the dungeon and was transported back to a safe zone, I pulled up my friends list. Despite the alphabetical ordering that the list was subject to, a special spot was reserved at the top for Sato, one that was crowned with the word spouse. And beside her name was something I hadn’t expected to see out of habit.
Last logged on two minutes ago.
My mind stopped working for a moment, trying to process this sudden turn of events. The two minutes turned into three.
Finally gears began turning in my head again and I smiled unconsciously, feeling a heavy weight lifted off of my shoulders. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been so happy to see that someone had logged off so recently.
Of course I felt bad that I had missed her, but I hardly knew how I would speak to her directly after what I said either. While my feelings hadn’t changed for her a bit since then, I could no longer remember what I had wanted to accomplish by revealing them anymore. I should have just kept my mouth shut and let things continue as they always had.
Breathing a long-held sigh of relief, my happiness was cut short when a small blinking icon in the shape of an envelope finally caught my attention and then I abruptly remembered the alert from the dungeon.
I was regressing.
I couldn’t help the thought, it came naturally. Once upon a time I had only ever received system mail from the game, so I could at least understand where my mistake had stemmed. But meeting Sato had changed that completely, or so I had thought. Apparently it only took a few days minus Sato and I unconsciously slipped back into my old habits as if I had never given them up.
Opening up my mail, my heart felt as if it was lodged in my throat as I read the title.
Re: In regards to …
The … was actually a part of the title; even without the sender’s username displayed next to the message, the inclusion of the ellipsis was enough for me to recognize that it was from none other than Sato. Including the ellipsis just seemed like something Sato would do. Of course, looking past the ellipsis, the title as a whole brought about a bigger problem.
There was only one matter as of late which would require regarding. Which meant Sato was probably going to finally reply to my feelings. Which meant I was probably going to be rejected once and for all.
I opened up the message.
I’m sorry for everything up until now, and I’m sorry for running away instead of replying to you. I know I’m in no position to ask, but I’d like you to do a favor for me. Afterwards I’ll give you my answer. I want to meet you irl.
The message was followed by an email address, but by the time I read that far my brain was having difficulties stringing letters together to form coherent words. At least this time my thinking had been at least partially on track.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
