In an ideal world, everything is ideal, in a perfect world, everything is perfect.

It is the year 2031 and VRMMORPG's are currently hyped up. As there have been a few top games already, another really promising, and well looking game has been announced. The Game of Life. A game that provides for people who are unsatisfied with their current way of living, a full dive experience to see how they'd look like in an alternative universe.

‘The Game of Life’ comes with 3 unique features that lead to a massive hype:

1. Players do not create their Characters themselves. The only customizable the player has control of is the username. All other characteristics - Age, Height, Gender, Look, and ability - are handled via an ingame AI using a Random Number Generator. So the way how the character turns out will be by pure coincidence.

2. ‘The Game of Life’ contains a very huge amount of different abilities each player is given. The abilities are varying from each other in either minor or major details, however, the amount of different abilities are making it unlikely that two players with the same ability will ever meet. Next to that, each player is 99.99% guaranteed to receive a random ability whereas it is most likely to to receive a medium strong/useful ability, and the weaker/stronger the ability gets the odds of receiving them decrease up to the point where the odds of receiving either none, or a super powerful ability are very very low. Basically being either very lucky, or unlucky.

3. Players are needed to figure out their ability on their own. After character creation the field ‘Ability’ remains with three question marks\, which means as long as the players didn’t figure out their abilities\, they’re just a normal human in the game. They can figure out their ability by simply just imagining. If a player imagines something\, and it happens to be their ability\, it will happen and the ability field will fill with the respective ability.

Our story is about 2 childhood friends, Tadashi and Kashi. They have been holding a deep long term friendship ever since, you could practically say they're almost twins. Tadashi and Kashi have both decided to gather up the money for the recently announced 'The Game of Life' and as both are coming from poor families, they too wanted to test their luck in another life. They have been very lucky to actually gather up the money and be able to afford everything needed to play ‘The Game of Life’. And right after the release they both would dive into their first adventure in a new life~

As they started the game, a window popped up:

                                Username:

                                Age: ???

                                Height: ???

                                Gender: ???

                                Appearance: ???

                                Ability: ???

Both typed in their usernames how they have cleared it up before starting the game and as soon as both confirmed they were asked if they have a friend connection, both typed in the username of each other and with confirmation it said: "Another special ability has been added!" and all the characteristics began to reveal until only the ability field  and another additional 'Special ability' field was left with three question marks, and so they have been warped into the world as their characters, Yasashiro and Sanyu.

Tadashi looks down his body and didn’t notice a huge change from before except he got a little bit smaller. Kashi also looks down his body followed by a huge shock: “Heeeh?!?”.

Tadashi looks over to Kashi and breaks out in laughter “Hahaha! You’re a girl!”

Kashi blushed from embarrassment and answered “S-Shut up you dwarf of a Neko!”.

“What?” Tadashi touches his head and feels a pair of cat ears that twitched as soon as he touched them. “I didn’t know you could be something else than a human”. He looks behind and also sees a tail wagging.

“T-That’s kinda cute…” said Kashi quietly as she looked aside with a red face with her hands in front of her mouth. After a moment of awkward silence both stopped looking at each other and started focussing on the world.

“Wow! It’s incredible! It feels like they recreated Japan, do you see it?... Tadashi?”

Tadashi sank into thoughts once again, like he always does.

“Hm? Oh! Yes, I can’t see a huge difference from our home actually… Hey Kashi?”

“Hm?”

“I think we should refer to our ingame names from now on, don’t you think so?” he asks and coughs “Sanyu?” with a wink.

She nods, but hesitated “Understood… Yasashiro”.

He giggles.

“H-Hey, what are you laughing about?” Sanyu asks indignantly.

“Hihi, nothing” he answers.

Sanyu pouts and turns her back to Yasashiro but gets immediately being distracted by the surprisingly accurate copy of Japan.

“Hey, Sanyu, let’s find out what our abilities are!” Yasashiro suggested.

Sanyu nods and positioned herself in a pose as if she wants to summon something.

Moments of silence…

Nothing.

“would have been quite a coincidence if I got my ability first try hehe” she said and scratched the back of her head.

“Let me try! Let me try!” Yasashiro said with an excited voice.

He points his arm forward like if he was about to shoot something.

Moments of silence…

Nothing.

He shrugged it off. “Well it was worth a try right?” and Sanyu nodded.

“Guess we have to try more then heh” said Yasashiro and made the same gesture Sanyu did as if he was about to summon something.

Moments of silence…

Nothing.

“Well… We can’t keep standing here and just try everything out, we should still think rationally you know” Sanyu suggested.

Yasashiro nods “mhm, good point actually, let’s find a place where we can buy something. We at least spawned with some kind of start budget”

“Good idea! Maybe something to eat first?” Sanyu suggested and Yasashiro just nodded and headed into a certain direction. She followed him.

They soon reached a cafe which they entered. It was well flooded with sunlight inside with rather cozy interior, however, there were not many guests. They only could spot 2 guests sitting down at tables each on the opposite side of the cafe, and a barista at the counter. As they entered the cafe the barista bowed down and politely greeted them. Yasashiro and Sanyu chose to sit at a table in the corner of the cafe where a window provided a good view outside to the street. The barista soon came to take the orders. Both ordered the same type of tea which the barista soon finished with to provide her guests with their order. They quietly sip their tee without much conversation, but they felt being watched over the time. They looked around and there was a rather old man on the opposite side of the cafe who rapidly looked away to avoid eye contact. This old man left a rather suspicious impression until Sanyu finally finally stood up to call the old man out but the old man just shouted “stop it” and Sanyu was unable to call that old man out and just quietly sat back down. Both immediately knew that this was an ability as Sanyu wouldn’t be that kind of person that lets strangers tell her what to do and what not. The old man stood up and approached their table with slow and sloppy steps until he reached their table and took the last free chair and sat down on the opposite side of the table starring deeply into Yasashiro’s eyes.

Moments of silence are passing away...

“You..” said the old man as he kept staring into Yasashiro’s eyes.

“M-Me?” Replied Yasashiro in a tense manner. Sanyu was still under control of the old man, she just sat there and watched. However, Yasashiro could feel Sanyu’s internal rage that grew second by second.

“Yes you” repeated the old man.

“W-What’s with me?” Yasashiro started to become concerned.

“If we were in the real world it would be weird to see a young hop like you in accompany with a stunning beauty like her” said the old man in a charming manner.

“T-That’s n-not the point of this conver-” Before Yasashiro could finish his sentence Sanyu stood up and slammed her hands on the table and Yasashiro scared back. The old man said “Sit down” but Sanyu only held her hands on her head for a short second like if she had a headache and then jumped over the table and pinned the old man down to the ground. The other guest was looking and the Barista immediately came to calm the situation.

“How dare you to make my best friend uncomfortable?!?” yelled Sanyu in the old man's face. The Barista tried to get Sanyu off from the old man but that didn’t work until Yasashiro begged Sanyu to let go of the old man.

“But if I’ll let go of him he will again try to control any of us!” She replied in panic.

Yasashiro bowed down and said “Please excuse me for her temper, we are willing to talk to you in a normal conversation” in a really polite and calm manner.

“B-But…”

“Please Sanyu..” He just looked at her.

She hesitated a moment. “F-Fine” she said and let go of the old man and sat back down next to Yasashiro and pouted.

The Barista helped the old man to get back up and he too sat back down on his chair and rests his head on his hands. After helping, the Barista bowed down and apologized and went back behind the counter serving the other guest who too, turned around.

“Now where you found a way to withstand my ability I have no use for it anymore” said the old man to indicate Sanyu to calm down.

“Who are you anyways?” she asked out of pure curiosity. “You just came to us and started to pester us. So I think some explanation would be needed!” she demanded.

“I think you’re right, a gentleman would have introduced himself in the first moment”

“It’s also not really gentleman like to order a-” short hesitation “... to order a girl to sit down and shut..” she whispered

“You’re probably right… Anyways! My name is Belmond! And this is the only thing I’ll tell you about me” he presented.

“And why did you come to us to begin with?” Sanyu kept asking.

“Okay okay. Straight to the real business I see” Sanyu nods. “Well... You have to know that the game claims how everything is random using a Random Number Generator, right” Sanyu nods again.

“I am trying to figure out the exact system, and based on my observations I can confidently say that it’s more likely to receive a medium age as well as height. It’s pretty much the same as with the abilities. The more you are approaching the limit, the rarer it gets. Therefore being young and small here is really rare as well. What made me interested now is the question that if you got “lucky” with your age and height, if the same counts for the ability. Let alone the fact that he isn’t 100% human which is something I haven’t heard of in this game and seems to be another insanely rare “mutation”” Belmond kind of whispered that so the others in the cafe currently couldn’t hear this as if this was some secret operation.

“So you want to use him as your guinea pig???” asked Sanyu indignantly.

“I wouldn’t describe it as that, but I would grant you something valuable in exchange” Belmond said even more quiet.

“And what??” Sanyu seemed to be impatient about Belmond

“Information. The most valuable good” Belmond said convincing.

Yasashiro wanted to say something, but Sanyu interrupted him.

“What are we? The underground or something? Come on Shiro, we go” Sanyu took Yasashiro’s wrist and to dragged him. She paid for the drinks and then headed outside the cafe together with Yasashiro at his wrist. Once outside Sanyu still didn’t let go of Yasashiro and headed around multiple corners with him to make sure Belmond didn’t follow them.

“H-Hey, what’s into you all of a sudden?” Yasashiro asked.

“I must protect you” said Sanyu in a very serious manner.

They soon stopped, and Sanyu felt to be secure. They arrived a main street with many people and shops around. They navigated through the crowd to be sure to remain undetected just in case. However they drew a lot of attention to themselves due to Yasashiro’s outstanding cat ears, so they decided to go into a smaller side street first to gather thoughts. Especially Sanyu seemed to be quite exhausted after all of this.

Sanyu: “Phew… what a wierdo..”

Yasashiro: “Well, they seem to be everywhere, but more importantly what went into you again??”

S: “We already got information that we could might use, and if we would have stayed there for a little longer, he might would have been able to get us to talk too”

Y: “So you kind of betrayed him by a few informations??”

S: “Well.. Kind of. Also, I didn’t feel well in his presence, and you didn’t too!”

Y: “I knoooow, but he seemed to be serious about it”

S: “I’m serious about it too when I say I’ll protect you”

Y: “T-Thank you.. But I think it will get even more difficult now since we know how rare my “mutation” is”

S: “At least we do know now what we should be aware of”

Y: “A-And how are we going to solve this problem?”

S: “We will hide them!”

Y: “Eh?”

S: “We have to look out for a store where we can buy hats, there we can hide your cat ears, also we should figure out something for your tail..”

Y: “I’ll completely entrust this to you then I guess..”

S: “Thank you for counting on me! I will do my best!”

Y: “Mhm.. Also, did you just call me Shiro in the cafe??”

S: “Ehehe.. Yes, but you have to admit t-that is kind of cute..”Y: “Eeehh?!? B-But only kind of, hmpf-”

S: “Hihi”

Both blushed after the end of this conversation and started heading towards a cloth store without drawing too much attention. Meanwhile Belmond was still in the cafe and talked to himself in anger:

“Ohoho.. You think I give up that easily?... You’ll see.... And then you will wish you never played this game once you realized what is happening… This is definitely not over yet…”