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――When we first met, my only impression of him was that he was some weirdo I’d never seen before.

He was a new patient transferred from another hospital to the local hospital where I was staying after breaking my leg.
I was wandering around the hospital out of sheer boredom when I happened to walk into his room and found him there. My first impression was simply that he seemed kind of girly.

But he would just stare blankly off into the distance, his expression never changing one bit.
Even when I tried to strike up a conversation, he’d just give a small “uh-huh” and nod in response. His attitude was so blatantly disinterested that, with the brazenness unique to kids, I spent my days visiting him just to make him laugh, going out of my way to pull all sorts of antics.

“He’s been through some tough times. That boy doesn’t trust anyone—especially adults… But if it’s another kid, he might just open up to them.”

That weirdo was apparently the grandson of an acquaintance of my grandpa’s.
After hearing that from my grandpa when he came to visit, I spent my days desperately trying all sorts of things to get a reaction out of him, only to fail miserably time and time again.
Before I knew it, I’d become friends with his younger sister, who frequently visited him—it was almost like she became my own little sister, which felt kinda nice.

During those days, I saw some adults I’d never seen around there before carrying some really bulky cameras.
Thinking they might be some kind of bad guys, I secretly followed them, and they went right into his room… Immediately, I heard what sounded like a scream.
I rushed in in a panic and saw him cowering and trembling at the edge of the bed, with his sister clinging to him, glaring menacingly. And there were those guys, grinning with ugly expressions as they pointed their cameras and microphones at the two of them.
It was obvious that he was terrified of those men. My head went completely blank with rage, and I lashed out at them with the crutch I was holding.

When I came to, the men were gone, and I got a serious scolding from the hospital staff. My reckless actions had worsened my injury, prolonging my hospital stay. My parents and grandpa were absolutely furious with me, but I remember feeling proud as a kid when they finally praised me, saying, “Good job.”

.

After that, he started responding properly whenever I spoke to him.
His little sister took a real liking to me, too, and we’d watch TV together in the lounge or explore the hospital as a trio.
On the day I was discharged, they both cried their eyes out, and I couldn’t help but cry along with them, causing a bit of a commotion… So, the following month, when I saw him—accompanied by the old man who lived in the huge house next door—coming over to introduce themselves after moving in, with his sister pushing his wheelchair, the three of us laughed until we were in stitches, wondering what on earth all that crying had been about.

It seemed the old man at that guy’s house had been furious that his son was adamant about marrying a foreign woman of unknown origin whom he’d picked up somewhere; he’d eventually gotten into an argument with his son and disowned him, which he apparently regretted.
Apparently, that son and his wife were murdered without the family’s knowledge, and it was these two grandchildren—the brother and sister—whom they rushed to pick up and take in after receiving the news much later.
Having lost their parents, the two were taken in by their grandparents and came to live here.

.

Once we became friends, we started spending a lot of time together.

Even though he already stood out because of his appearance, many people gave him strange looks—especially since he couldn’t move his lower body and suffered from social anxiety. But I would mediate between him and others, get into arguments on his behalf, and sometimes even get into fistfights to protect him.
There’s no doubt I considered him a friend, but looking back now, I feel like I harbored a slight sense of superiority back then, thinking, “I’m the one protecting him.”

That dynamic changed during my freshman year of high school. By then, his social anxiety had worsened significantly, and even though we happened to attend the same high school, our interactions had dwindled.

First, his grandmother passed away. Then, his grandfather died shortly after.

Thinking it must be tough for just the two of them, my family pitched in to help with the funerals, but after that, I didn’t see him for several months.
And then… before I knew it, he’d submitted his withdrawal papers to the school and vanished. Feeling betrayed by him for dropping out of high school without consulting me at all, I sulked and cut off contact myself, and the new year began with us estranged.

.

“Reiji! Hey, Reiji, check this out!”

Shortly after the new year began, I heard his voice for the first time in a long while—he sounded unusually excited. Still holding a grudge, I reluctantly went to see what was going on… and there he was, with the look of someone who’d just pulled off a successful prank, proudly showing me a paperback book.

*“Illustrations by Kuga Yanagi”*

I rubbed my eyes several times at those words, then, bewildered, asked him in a daze, “What is this?”

He explained that after his grandparents had passed away, he’d decided he wanted to become independent.

His grandparents had been fairly well-known landowners in the area. In their later years, they’d sold off the rights to their land—except for the area around the wheelchair-accessible annex where he and his sister lived—and left the money to them as an inheritance, so they shouldn’t have had to worry about money for a while.
However, he said he was looking for a job he could do on his own to keep his reliance on that inheritance to a minimum.

That’s when he turned his attention to the drawing hobby he’d taken up while he was a shut-in. He pitched his work to several companies, was active online in various ways, and finally received his first offer—and today was the day the book he illustrated was released. He told me this looking a bit embarrassed, explaining that I was the first person he wanted to show it to.

“I wanted to leave as much of my inheritance as possible for my sister,” he said. As he spoke, his profile looked so strong—as if he didn’t even consider his disability a handicap—that I felt like I’d lost to him.
Perhaps I’d finally come to see him as an equal… Though, since I still helped him with various things, maybe we weren’t truly equals in practice, but this was probably the first time I’d recognized him as an equal in my own mind.

After we’d mended our friendship, a little while later, he and his sister invited us to start playing a game together. That game was Worldgate Online.
I started two months late, and when I first saw their avatars in the game, I was speechless. But when his sister told me with a mischievous grin that they had swapped avatars, I was even more dumbfounded as I watched him blushing shyly right next to her, looking so incredibly delicate.

.

――Seven years have passed since then.

Through in-game connections, he was recruited by Arcs VR Technology, and I began to occasionally come across concept art he had drawn.
I graduated from high school, entered college, and went on to pursue a master’s degree; his younger sister even enrolled at the same university as a freshman… and throughout that time, we continued to adventure together.

Sometimes the three of us would join a raid party and engage in fierce battles against powerful raid bosses.
Other times, we’d huddle together, debating back and forth until our heads were spinning, and take on reckless challenges.

…Before I knew it, we were even counted among the top-tier hardcore players.

.

And then—with that update earlier this year—we were finally forced to move on without him.
But when he caught up to us much sooner than expected, we were finally able to return to our original trio… or so we thought.

Let’s go on all kinds of adventures together again. Yeah, I… we… had always thought our relationship would continue just as it had been.

.

*“W-what is this? Rage, Sol, what’s happening?! What should I do?!”*
“What’s wrong? What happened?!”
“Onii-chan, calm down! What happened?!”
*“L-let me g…gah?!”*
“Hey, what happened?! Are you okay?! HEY!!”

The noise coming through the chat and his muffled, agonized voice sent a chill down my spine. My anxiety grew as I heard a sound that should have been impossible in this game, where pain was barely felt.

“What’s going on?! Hey, answer me! Hey!! Damn it, what the hell is this?!”
“Onii-chan, what’s wrong?! Answer me!”

All around me, the few players scattered about were falling one after another and vanishing.

The sky—no, space itself—was turning red, and soon the static grew worse as the ground was gradually swallowed by darkness.

“Ha, haha… What the hell is this…?”

Faced with a situation so completely beyond my expectations, all I could do was laugh.

Just then, I was swallowed from above and below by what appeared to be magic circles manifesting at my feet and overhead… and my consciousness faded to black.