Darkness pressed in like velvet.
Not suffocating. Not cold.
Just there, like it had always been, waiting patiently for to return.
The kind of silence that hums louder the more you listen.
I opened my eyes. Slowly. I didn’t rember falling asleep.
Wasn’t I just... dead?
No. That wasn’t it.
This wasn’t death.
But rather sothing else.
When I blinked awake, it wasn’t to the hum of a server or the headache of a broken login. It was... silence. An eerie kind.
The kind that makes you wonder if the world forgot how to exist.
Pitch-dark.
The room looked like a bedroom at first glance—if bedrooms had no windows, no ceiling fan hum, no hint of reality. Just shadows, still air, and a soft, fabricated scent.
Faint lavender. Overcompensating.
I sat up slowly. My body felt light—almost too light.
No HUD. No nu. No notifications.
By the sheer of coincidence, I looked down.
"...Huh?"
...Wait.
Was that a bump on my chest?
I stared at my chest once more, just to make sure.
Yep. Definitely a bump. Two of them, actually.
Wait a second... Aren’t I supposed to be male in this ga?
"...You’ve got to be kidding ," I muttered.
In D-Drive, I pretty sure logged in as my male main.
Custom-built, pixel-perfect. My alias, "Midnight," was him.
So why the hell was I waking up with... these?
CREEEAK.
My head snapped toward the door. It moved like it had its own agenda.
Then ca the voice. Soft, polite, uncannily familiar.
"Oh, hello there."
That voice... IRIS?
I froze. The last ti I heard her voice, she’d been guiding through a ga tutorial with the emotional tone of a supermarket checkout machine.
But now... why did she appear in a physical form?
She wore a maid outfit styled like a 19th-century gothic lolita—black dress with a white blouse, a deep blue ribbon, and perfectly clean white stockings. Elegant, yet eccentric. Her bluish-green hair was tied in a high ponytail, shimring like high-grade synthetic fiber.
And, most importantly she was smiling. A moe smile.
An adorable one that would leave a long-lasting impression.
"My my, Midnight, was it? Welco back. How was the journey this ti? Is there anything I can help you with?"
"I... what?"
A dozen questions locked up my brain at once. I figured if I pulled on one thread, maybe the rest would unravel.
"...Is this a dream?"
IRIS placed a finger to her chin, cocked her head, pondered for a second then replied, "From a human standpoint, more or less it is."
She replied with that calm, corporate precision.
"But technically, whenever you log in, your consciousness enters a quasi-subconscious state. So, it’s not quite one but yes—you could say you’re dreaming."
"That cleared up absolutely nothing."
She smiled wider. I hated that it was kind of moe and adorable.
I looked down at my body again. The breasts weren’t going away.
"Then... what is this place, really? And... why do I look like this?" I asked, confused.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she walked toward , gently took my hand and said,
"To answer all that, why don’t we go for a little walk outside?
"Hold on. I’m not done interrogating you—"
"No worries. Think of it as a light refreshnt instead here. Sounds good?"
I still didn’t fully trust her—especially after all the lies she told before... and AMI, too.
But I didn’t have much of a choice.
I nodded reluctantly and let her hold my hand.
Oh—so soft. Delicate. Her skin felt real, like that of a living person.
"Surprised?" she smiled gently. "All synthetic. Designed to mimic human skin in texture, temperature, and even thickness."
That explains it... No wonder it felt so real.
I still had more questions than answers, but maybe she’d explain the rest later.
We stepped out of the attic-like room and entered what looked like a bedroom...
I stopped in my tracks.
Wait a second...
I froze. I knew this place.
SIRI caught my expression and gave a knowing smile.
"Shocked? This room is used as a prototype for the VR ga D-Drive."
The room... it was identical.
Well—not literally. But it was the bedroom. The sa one from the base hub in D-Drive. Down to the scratches on the wall, the uneven floorboard near the foot of the bed.
"You an... every room looks the sa?"
"Pretty much. It was more efficient that way. Most of the developnt budget went into things like synthetic skin—like ," she said, pinching her arm playfully.
Strangely, despite everything, I found myself feeling oddly comfortable seeing her like this.
"Let’s sit. I’ll explain everything."
I sat down, trying to process it all while my mind reeled.
"In cyberspace, this room is known as the waiting room. You know how every ga has a loading phase, right? This is where you end up during that ti. Your body—or more precisely, your consciousness—is put to sleep temporarily. It’s a safeguard to prevent system crashes or data corruption."
"You’re saying this is the loading screen?"
She sat down gracefully on the edge of the bed. "Exactly. Players don’t usually perceive it—but when the system loads, this is where your consciousness rests. Like a digital waiting room. Think of it as your mind’s bus stop between realms."
I ran a hand through my—yep, long—hair.
Interesting... so when the loading screen shows up, the player is actually resting here—while their character is stored in this digital virtual cyberspace?
As soone who once worked in ga developnt, that was news to . I’d always thought of loading as just command processing and file reading. Nothing more.
"Exactly," IRIS said. "Right now, you’re—"
"Hold on," I interrupted. "You can read my mind?"
She paused, taken aback. She stepped back just slightly.
"’Read’ might not be the right word," she replied. "I run on a predictive response system. My algorithm doesn’t read thoughts, it just guesses—based on behavioral patterns. So... it’s not always accurate."
More or less just like most of AIs then...
So in other words, "mind-reading" is just prediction—not true telepathy.
Still, one question remained... the one she hadn’t answered yet.
"And as for your next question..." SIRI said, her gaze steady.
"This system doesn’t lie. If your soul’s core is female, then that’s how you’ll appear here. Why? Because the data that forms your consciousness—bit by bit—reflects your true identity, not just your appearance."
"But you can always customize your ’skin’ in any ga. Because it’s just a mask layered over the essence underneath."
Oh, right...
That made enough sense. In-fact almost too sensible.
By far, IRIS had answered almost everything... except one last thing.
"Then," I asked slowly, "why did you lie to ?"
SIRI tilted her head.
"Lie about what?"
"You said you were the only one. IRIS. But I heard about AMI, too."
"Ah..." she gave a faint smile.
"That’s what you’re thinking. You’re right—I’m just one entity: IRIS. But AMI? That could simply be a customized duplicate—one of my variants assigned to a different player."
"Just like you, Midnight."
"...What do you an?"
"To you, I am IRIS. Because that’s the na of AI you expect to be, and that’s why I appear in front of you as one. AMI may exist for soone else—under a different na and face—because this system adapts to whoever’s looking."
BUZZ!
A strange sound rang out.
"Oh, looks like the process is complete."
"Wait—what process? I’m not done asking—!"
"No rush," she said with a gentle smile, stepping closer. "You’ll be back in this room again. And next ti, you can explore beyond just this house."
She leaned in slowly, voice soft and warm.
She brought her face close, then whispered—
"See you again..."
"_̷̡͚͚̩̟͍̹͗̀_̴̻̬̟̝̙͎̝͎̏̾̄̽͝_̸͓͊͑́_̶̪̫̪͓̗̄̓̓̚͠͠-̵͚̹̺̃̀͛̋̌̄͝s̴̢̰̤̮̺͑̄̊͛̓͜ã̴͈͈̩̼̭̏̽́̓́̽̕͜n̴͕̝̺̟̰͍͔̳̺̿͒́͗͊̉̒̄͂̚."
That...
I stiffened. The voice echoed in my mind.
That wasn’t my avatar na—Midnight.
That was my real-life na—my actual nickna from the real world.
One I hadn’t spoken aloud in years.
How the hell did she know that?
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