Dinner at the ramen shop ran longer than I'd planned—not that I minded.
Miyabi and I talked for a good while over empty bowls, the kind of easy, wandering conversation that didn't need a point to justify itself. Filled with lots of chuckles and giggles. The small, forgettable kind that somehow sticks with you anyway.
Eventually I said my goodnights, thanked the auntie, and headed home.
The walk back was mercifully uneventful. No ambushes, no gang members with fresh grudges, no bullies materializing from side streets to make my evening interesting. Just the streetlights and the sound of my own footsteps.
"I'm home..."
The words came out automatically the moment I stepped through the door.
Nobody answered, of course. The apartment sat exactly as I'd left it—quiet. The familiar ache of that settled briefly in my chest before I pushed it aside.
"Right."
This time. That was the whole point of being here.
This time, I wasn't going to watch everyone around me get swallowed up by something I was too weak to stop.
And the first step toward that was the game.
I needed to push my character's level as high and as fast as possible.
Thankfully, Miyabi had agreed to play alongside me, which meant that particular strategy Kiki had mentioned back in another lifetime was actually on the table. I was genuinely glad she'd said yes.
It was still relatively early. I set my phone alarm for 11:30 PM, tucked it beside the pillow, changed into something comfortable, and let myself fall asleep before overthinking could take over.
---
Vigilance is the most important thing you can have when the world becomes a battlefield.
Living alone means nobody guards you while you sleep but yourself—and after nearly twenty years of exactly that, I'd honed mine past the point of conscious effort.
Tap.
The moment my phone screen lit up, before the alarm could make a single sound, my hand had already found it. Snooze pressed, my eyes flung open, before sitting upright.
"..."
Still my room. Still the same cotton shirt and pants. Still the "past."
I'd half-expected to wake up back in the middle of dying, some cruel trick of consciousness snapping me back to the moment before the wish. But nothing of the sort happened.
The room was exactly as I'd left it, and so was I.
I stood and stretched—limbs, back, shoulders, neck—working through it methodically. I was going to be lying still for a long time, and poor circulation during a VR session was the kind of thing that forced an involuntary logout at the worst possible moment.
Getting a cramp mid-dungeon was not something I intended to experience.
Once I was satisfied, I sat back on the bed and picked up the VR Dive Ring.
It was the first time I'd actually held one—the hardware had been far out of reach for me during the original timeline, for obvious financial reasons.
It was smaller than I'd imagined, roughly the size and shape of a standard neck pillow, ergonomically curved to sit comfortably whether you were lying down or sitting up. How it actually worked was entirely beyond me. The manual existed, so I trusted the manual.
I plugged in the charger and watched the indicator lights blink—red, then green, alternating in a slow rhythm. Then I located the side port and inserted the USB installer for Heaven's Path.
I settled back against the pillow, let the ring rest around my neck, and closed my eyes.
Per the manual, there were specific words required.
"Game Start!"
The moment I said them, my vision went dark.
When it came back a few seconds later, I was sitting on a sofa. Red upholstery, slightly worn.
In front of me, an old CRT television screen, the kind that hadn't been manufactured in decades, its face glowing with patient, antiquated light. Beside it on the floor sat an ancient console, equally dated, with a chunky controller resting on top.
Beyond the reach of the light: nothing. Just darkness, clean and absolute, like the rest of the world hadn't loaded yet.
"...Oldies style, huh."
I tried standing and walking—discovered immediately that the darkness wasn't decorative. An invisible boundary stopped me at the edge of the light without ceremony. No explanation, no prompt. Just: you stop here.
Odd design choice. A free-roam lobby would've been more welcoming.
I picked up the controller and looked at the screen. A single icon occupied it—a stylized sun with radiating lines, warm and bright against the dark display. The Heaven's Path icon.
I pressed O.
The screen bloomed to life—and then, without any loading screen or transitional warning, it felt as though the television exhaled, and I was pulled forward. Not metaphorically. The force was physical and unambiguous, a gravity without discretion that yanked me through the glass like it had decided I belonged on the other side.
And then I was falling.
Clear sky in every direction, the earth a green and brown patchwork roughly twelve kilometers below, the wind loud and immediate and real. I wasn't alone, either—other players tumbled through the air around me, scattered at varying distances, some close enough to hear.
"WAAAAHAHAHAH!"
"Woohoo! This is AMAZING!"
"FUCK—I'm terrified of heights—SOMEONE HELP—"
The reactions covered the full spectrum. Some people were absolutely thriving, arms spread wide, faces lit up. Others were in various stages of freefall-induced panic, limbs flailing against physics that didn't care.
I noticed, testing it quietly, that our trajectories were locked. No amount of movement altered the direction of the fall. We were all scripted to land exactly where the game intended, and no amount of reaching or paddling or trying to drift sideways changed anything. Even people actively attempting to reach panicking players couldn't close the distance.
'The prologue.'
I'd heard about this from veterans in the old timeline—the scripted opening that couldn't be skipped and, apparently, had left a deep impression in them.
Now experiencing it firsthand, I could see why.
Below, a dense forest was rising fast. A few seconds of approach later, a popup materialized in my vision, small and matter-of-fact:
The Lost Forest.
The notorious starting point of Heaven's Path.
Then the ground arrived—and my body moved without my input, legs dropping into position, impact absorbed cleanly, textbook hero landing executed automatically by the game itself.
The scripted force released the moment my feet touched earth.
I stood, looked around at the other players dispersing into the trees around me, and exhaled.
"Finding one specific person in all of this is going to take a while..."
The thought had barely finished forming when a voice cut through the ambient noise of the forest's edge.
"A-Ah—excuse me, I already have someone to play with—"
"No problem, no problem! Is it another girl? Bring her along, we'll carry you both~!"
I turned toward the sound, seeing a familiar face.
Since the game uses your actual appearance as base, it wasn't hard to recognize her.
But two men had positioned themselves in front of Miyabi—one of them had a hand around her arm, not quite dragging but making the intention clear enough. She was holding her ground, voice polite but firm, which wasn't doing much to discourage either of them.
I sighed quietly.
'Should've seen this coming.'
I walked over at an unhurried pace and draped an arm around the larger one's shoulders with the easy familiarity of a longtime friend.
"Hey," I said pleasantly. "She's with me."
He glanced over at me, sized me up in approximately one second, and made a decision he was going to briefly regret.
"You?" A short laugh. "Come on, beauty—you're really teaming up with this guy? Forget it. Roll with us instead, we'll make it fun, I promise~!"
His companion, the thinner one, nodded with great enthusiasm.
"Yeah! We'll definitely take better care of you!"
"..."
They were looking straight at me while saying this.
I apparently did not register as a deterrent. Interesting.
I shifted my left arm from his shoulders to beneath his chin, settled my right hand against the opposite side of his head, and in one smooth, practiced motion—
CRACK!
—twisted.
His head rotated a full three-sixty.
Above him, bold red text materialized in the air:
CRITICAL!
100!!!
Every point of HP, gone in a single input.
He dissolved into light particles before they'd finished fading, gone without so much as a sound.
"...Wut."
The thin one stared at the space where his companion had been, mouth open, completely stationary.
First death respawned after a minute—and would double in length after every death. The other guy would be back shortly, probably with a revised opinion of the situation. Which meant this was a good time to be somewhere else.
"Let's go."
Miyabi blinked at me. "...Huh?"
I took her by the wrist and led her into the tree line before the minute was up.
Honestly. Monsters were easier to deal with than people like that. At least monsters had the decency to attack you directly.