Chen Mo would enter the shared restroom before doing anything else. There was still barely any light seeping through the narrow windows, but Chen Mo was practically nocturnal to begin with anyway, so the dimness didn't bother him in the slightest.
He'd find himself back in his original body: a twenty-year-old, brown-eyed, black-haired Chen Mo, complete with the extra 25 centimeters of height he had missed so dearly. Oh, and of course, the absence of breasts and the return of his junk was… admittedly, very nice too.
Striped, collared pajamas, messy bed hair, but he had forgotten his pair of glasses; the random customization had removed them entirely, and even rendered his astigmatism nonexistent while in her goth girl form, which in turn caused him to completely forget about the condition altogether.
He checked the back of his hand: those dark green, eerie, protruding veins had vanished without a trace. Then the memory resurfaced — the dart, the [Invitation Into Game] worth a million Sapphires, containing a substance identical in hue to those very veins.
He couldn't be certain whether he had been randomly selected as a player, or if someone had deliberately drugged him with that dart. Whatever the case, at the very least, he was healthy now.
Chen Mo would thoroughly complete his morning routine before anyone else in his dorm room even left their beds. Actually, maybe Vincent had already left his; who knows what kind of positions that guy preferred his women in.
After a cold shower and a brief morning meditation session, Chen Mo packed his bag for lecture, just as the sun began to rise over the horizon.
The moaning from the room on the left had long since ceased. Then, the door to Chen Mo's right creaked open, revealing Jason Noir Quinn standing behind it.
"Urghhh..." Jason groaned and slapped himself awake, a mere ten minutes before their lecture. This was routine for the three roommates; Jason always woke up when Chen Mo was already fully freshened up, and no one liked Vincent.
Jason ruffled his hair carelessly without much intent, yet those brown, lustrous curls still outclassed Chen Mo's neatly groomed, flat strands. "Man... I've got law today..."
Chen Mo didn't respond to his roommate's complaints, as he was occupied with preparing breakfast for two in the pantry — the heartfelt, classic combination of eggs and bacon.
Jason trudged over to the dining table that Chen Mo had set, plopped himself into a chair, and immediately collapsed into yet another slumber.
"Lecture in ten," Chen Mo reminded as he took his seat. Then, his gaze caught something.
On the back of Jason's left hand were veins, and they were the same kind Chen Mo had before being dragged into the game, except less severe, less numerous, less protruding.
Nonetheless, the color was unsettling. So Chen Mo decided to test something. "Do you know about the Game?"
He articulated every word clearly and audibly, but Jason didn't seem to register any of it. Jason painstakingly forced himself awake for the second time, then stretched to straighten his posture.
"Do you know about the Game?" Chen Mo tried again, but Jason still ignored it, idly moving his fork around the bacon.
Didn't seem like it worked. Chen Mo opted for another method. He pulled out a sheet of tissue paper, and Jason's eyes tracked the movement, implying that he could indeed see those actions.
Chen Mo then took out a pen from his bag.
"What are you doing?" Jason questioned groggily, before shoving an entire strip of bacon into his mouth.
Chen Mo first ran a test and wrote 'Hi' on the tissue paper.
"Hiii..." Jason replied lazily. "My guy, your vocal cords got wrecked after yesterday's presentation?"
'No.' Chen Mo wrote, then added, 'Do you know about the'.
He couldn't write the word 'Game' no matter how hard he tried, even though the pen clearly still had plenty of ink.
"Do I know about... what?" Jason frowned in confusion.
Chen Mo didn't persist. He figured that no matter what form his attempts took, they wouldn't work, because just like the game insisted: it doesn't exist.
"Nothing." Chen Mo muttered.
"Eccentric as always. Okay." Jason wasn't fazed by Chen Mo's strange behavior, because Chen Mo had always been strange to begin with.
Chen Mo crumpled the tissue paper and tossed it into the bin, just as the third door of the dorm unlocked.
"Hey, hey." Blonde, tall Vincent entered, accompanied by a ginger girl, who was an entire head shorter than him. She leaned weakly against his chest. Both wore nothing but unbuttoned shirts over their underwear.
"Hiii! Good morning!" the girl chirped cheerfully, though her legs trembled, struggling to support her weight as she leaned heavily on Vincent.
The trembles were self-explanatory, considering they had been going at it the entire night.
"Where's my plate?" Vincent asked, looking as smug as ever with those lips that never seemed to flatten.
"Oh, sorry. Ran out of ingredients." Chen Mo gave a perfectly valid excuse. Though, it was only valid because he knew Vincent couldn't cook, and therefore wouldn't bother checking the fridge to call his bluff.
"Ah, bummer. I'll eat at the cafeteria, then." Vincent gestured toward the door before leaving with his seventh girlfriend of April.
Oh, it was the seventh of April, by the way.
Chen Mo instinctively grimaced, mentally muttering, 'I'll eat at the cafeteria'? Don't you mean 'We'? You've got a girl in your arms...
He didn't say it aloud, of course. Otherwise, he'd be subjected to a long and excruciating lecture from Jason, the ever-righteous criminal justice student.
"Yo," Jason spoke up after the two lovebirds, no, 'lustbirds', had left, "I don't think I recognize her."
"Hm?" Chen Mo merely hummed as he continued finishing his breakfast.
"I think Vincent is, uh... dating a freshman." Jason narrowed his eyes as he deduced.
Chen Mo, however, knew this wasn't the first freshman Vincent had dated, so he wasn't particularly surprised, just mildly disgusted. "Probably."
He wiped his mouth clean, then slung his bag over one shoulder. Jason followed suit, and the two exited their dorm room together.
After leaving the block, they parted ways without exchanging goodbyes. Jason headed left toward his auditorium, joining a group of friends who seemed to have been waiting for him, while Chen Mo headed right alone.
Chen Mo's gaze lingered on Jason for an extra second today. Those veins made him uneasy, and slightly anxious, even. Eventually, though, he decided that punctuality and attendance mattered more.
Today, Chen Mo perceived the campus differently. He observed every passerby. Those by the fountain, those beneath trees, those chatting on benches, those riding scooters. He wondered if any of them were secretly players, or 'awakened' in real life.
That was the term Chen Mo had chosen for players in the real world, since they possessed an unfair, supernatural advantage over non-players. At any moment, Chen Mo could purchase and summon weapons beyond the comprehension of modern science using Sapphires, and so could every other player.
In a sense, players were essentially a hidden society of superpowered individuals, concealed from the uninitiated.
But that wasn't important right now. What mattered was the lecture ahead of him.
He arrived late, though it hardly mattered. The auditorium was nearly empty, with only a handful of attendees who maintained distance from one another, as well as from the professor on stage.
Chen Mo did the same, choosing the most isolated seat in the back row. But he wouldn't remain alone for long.
Soon, one of his very few friends, Azuki Ichinose, joined him. "Hellooo."
Azuki was the only one of Chen Mo's friends who studied the same course as him. Out of his two friends, the other being Jason, she was the only one who shared his academic path. Their friendship dated all the way back to the first day of middle school, thus barely qualifying them as childhood friends, though not quite.
They had bonded for reasons Chen Mo never fully understood. He simply found comfort in having someone to talk to. Others, especially shallow observers, often assumed the two had bonded purely because of their monolids and shared Asian descent.
"Good morning," Chen Mo greeted with a faint grin.
"Your presentation yesterday was great," Azuki complimented, sipping from her plastic cup of jasmine green tea.
"You were there?" Chen Mo had practically mumbled his way through that presentation.
"Tsk." Azuki shot him an exasperated look. "What the hell? Of course I was. I'll always be."
Noticing her drooping eyelids, Chen Mo quietly muttered an apology. "Sorry."
The ravenette playfully jabbed his shoulder. "My presentation's today, at four. Come, okay?"
"Sure." Chen Mo didn't have much else to do anyway.
"Unlike you," Azuki crossed her arms, "I'll actually be paying attention to the crowd, so you better not go back on your word."
"I won't," Chen Mo assured, shaking his head.
"Hmph." Azuki exhaled, adjusting her braided pigtails with a sharp, snappy motion.