Rafale — Roleplayer Guild

A single computer monitor draped the dim room in numerous colors, everchanging as a young man made motions with the mouse and hit the keyboard lightly, the mechanical keys' clacks resonating throughout the room. A sterile smell, like a mixture of alcohol and air freshener, dominated the chilly room. While not exactly freezer level in terms of temperature, the room didn't feel exactly as comforting as it could have been, especially with the wooden floor and other warm looking furnishings, along with a bit of more modern-styled set-ups and the dim light which contributed to the idea. The repetitive music coming from the speakers did nothing to bore the young man as he continued with whatever it was he was doing. Upon closer inspection, one could notice that the dark haired youth was in fact playing a MMORPG, most likely the most recent and most popular of the moment. Along with many rows of icons indicating different abilities that adorned the screen, there were a pair of red and blue bars containing exorbitantly high numbers, reaching the quintuple digits and arguably most importantly, in the middle, there was a rather comely looking female doing adventurous things in a brightly colored landscape, such as bashing various cutesy monsters with a sword and picking up a diverse range of different items from their bodies.

A typical grind, really. However, despite the natural boredom that would normally come to anyone after repeating the same action over and over for hours, the male sitting relaxed in front of the desktop computer didn't not show the slightest expression of fatigue or languor. Instead, a flat yet sentimental look was featured on his average face, pale of skin, black of hair and blue and grey of eyes. The only thing that broke the slightly monochromatic set of colors that would normally be upon his face in such a lighting were the bright colors set upon it by not only the screen, but also by the garish LED lighting on the mouse, keyboard and case. Set upon his nose and ears was a pair of "gamer" glasses that were all the rage in professional gaming and "esports" that, while not exactly giving the amazing effect that were advertised (as with just about every advertisement, if we think harshly about the subject), they did do a good job of keeping his eyes from being too strained by watching the screen for hours on end, though they were really just glasses with yellow tinted lens and a fancy logo. The youth seemed reasonably satisfied with them though, based simply on the fact that his eyes were still wide open, despite having played games for hours on end.

Eventually, the routine was broken by a round of beeping and vibrating coming from a thin device on the glass desk. With a sigh, the man hit 'escape' on his keyboard and navigating through the menu to exit the game, which promptly closed and the computer monitor now showed an astonishingly high resolution image of a character from whatever the otaku's favorite anime at the time was. He arose out of his chair, which in turn squeaked, and, pulling on a hoodie over his rather simple UNIQLO shirt, grabbed the phone, stopping its ringing. Raising his arm, he quickly realized he had only stopped an alarm and put the phone back in his pocket as he recalled what the alarm had been for.

"Ah, right. Work." He muttered to the air, as if it was keen to listen. However, in only a moment, he saw a problem. The time was only six AM. He had set the alarm too early; much too early. He now saw two options: go out and do something, or remain where he was and play for a few more hours. After all, he only started work at nine o'clock. Then again, if he kept playing, he risked being late for work, which would make for a horrible first impression on his first day. In short, not a good idea. A pensive and somewhat pained expression took over his face until his decision was made thanks to a simple chime from his phone. Or, more specifically, a chime indicating that he had received a text message. Tapping the button with his finger to turn on the phone, he read the message after tapping on the bubble to open the text application.

Hi Kai.
I'll be passing by your place around 7. Wanna take a walk with me? I'll treat you to coffee! ;)
-Charlotte

"Who the heck signs a text message..." Kai asked in rhetoric, with a seemingly annoyed tone, but there was nonetheless a slight smile on his face. With slight spring to his taps, he typed a quick reply.

dont see why not. see u @ 7 then.

He didn't bother to sign it and to begin with hadn't really put much effort into the digital missive. Despite this, he clicked 'send' with a powerful tap before tossing his phone onto his bed. First off, he needed a shower. Of all the people he spoke to on a regular basis (you can count them on one hand), his sister was the only one he really felt determined to look reasonable for. Despite what one might think, coming away from the current imouto trend in anime, especially the ones Kai watched for himself, it wasn't for such an obvious reason such as petty love. It was... something indescribable. Perhaps it was simply a natural, instinctive feeling of kinship, but Kai liked to think it was something else, something that set him apart from the rest. On that note, he removed his clothes in his room, tossing them lazily into his basket and left his bedroom-slash-office to go to the bathroom. Kai dragged himself into the shower and jumped as the water came cold when he turned the knob. Nothing new there. He barely spent a moment covering his body in soap and using his typical Super Budget Men’s Shampoo, which smelled something like a mix of mint and some exotic fruit, he lathered his hair in white foam, before standing under the stream of steaming water, letting the products come off his body before leaving the shower and continuing his routines in washing his face and brushing his teeth.

Normally, he wouldn’t go through even a quarter of the effort he was putting in this morning, but he had an occasion worth working hard for, the youth remarked silently as he once again rinsed soap off his skin, this time on his face. With that, he had finished making his own body have a presentable appearance. It was impressive what water could do. In a strange sense, it was almost as if good old H2O could completely change a man, at least in terms of physique. Kai continued rubbing his black-blue hair with the towel as he exited the bathroom and after returning to his room, he picked out some average looking clothes from his dresser and dressed himself. It was a somewhat cloudy day, with darker rain clouds rolling in from afar, but it was warm enough, so Kai passed on wearing a sweater or coat, instead going for a monocolor long sleeve t-shirt, a pair of jeans and some of the sneakers Charlotte had given him months ago after she had gotten them all for a bargain. Astonishingly, she had managed to haggle the price down into the double-digits and buy ten pairs. Kai could still remember just how blown away he had been when he opened his door one day to find the dainty figure of his sister holding boxes upon boxes of Puma sneakers. With those and the other essentials which don’t need mentioning, he was ready. In total, he had taken about thirty minutes, but his sister had a habit of arriving early anyway, so it didn't matter much. He elected to pass on having his coffee, for obvious reasons and instead went to turn off his PC, after which he grabbed his phone and keys and left his apartment. With a blank expression, he turned around and stuck the key into the hole in his door and turned, a satisfying mechanical feeling and sound confirming that he had locked the door.

By the time he had descended the stairs of his apartment to the street, he already found Charlotte, dressed as usual in rather modest yet girly clothes with subdued colors such as beige and Bordeaux and dressed in surprisingly warm clothes for the season, a sweater, scarf and thick looking skirt, playing some trivial game on her own phone. Hearing him open the door the apartment building, she stood up from the steps where she had been formerly seated and greeted her sibling. "Good morning, Kai. How are you?" Speaking with a ordinary yet somehow formal sounding tone and manner of speech, she waved and smiled earnestly. Her hair, of a fairer color compared to Kai's own dark hair, was set in a simple yet elegant loose bun, complete with hair stick, which made her look much more mature than her actual age would suggest. With a more rigid wave, Kai responded in turn.

"'Morning. I'm fine. Slept well." His disjointed manner of speech instantly made his sister look at him strangely. She then sighed.

"No, you didn't sleep well. You spent all of the early morning playing games again." Kai was about to argue when she cut in again. "I know you, Kai." Her kind expression soured, she shook her head and sighed again. Then, she looked at him again and smiled. "Let's not let that ruin the morning. Care to follow?" Kai, who now felt somewhat guilty due to her accusations, followed behind her as she led him out of the new residential area and towards the waterfront, which was about a fifteen minute walk. The rest of the walk would pass in complete silence.

A few minutes later...

After walking for a moment, the pair arrived at a rather kitsch looking café. The decoration wasn't anything special, but it had a rather comforting look to it. Charlotte had them sit at an outside seat, which she had chosen strategically to be at the furthest distance possible from a group of smokers who had occupied the other end of the café's outdoor seating. Despite the out of the way positioning, it was still a serviceable spot, with a view on the water and pleasantly cushioned seats. Only a few seconds after sitting down, a young woman arrived to take their orders. With an almost cliché order, Charlotte ordered her usual and the woman now turned to Kai, who sat slumped in his seat looking out at the water. "Sir?", the waitress said to get his attention and Kai turned abruptly towards her. "What would you like to have?" Glancing around in uncertainty, he eventually replied in a low voice.

"I'll have what she's having." Now, all the clichés were there. Kai almost found it comical, but he wasn’t in the mood to laugh and he couldn't figure out why. Charlotte chuckled and Kai raised an eyebrow.

“You sure about that? It comes in a pink cup.” Kai sighed and gestured tiredly to the waitress.

“Then I’ll just have an espresso, alright?”, he said in an annoyed tone as Charlotte looked pleased with her quip. Kai sighed and returned to looking at the waterfront as the waitress moved to another table, in a bubbling mood despite the early hour of the morning. He checked his watch. Only half past seven. Most places weren’t even opening at this time. Due to there only being a few people in the streets and the café, with the exception of the group of smokers, along with the peculiar red color of the early-morning sun, Kai had the impression that he was in some entirely different place from his normally bustling and awake home-city.

“How have you been doing?” Kai was awakened from his slight trance by his sister’s voice. He thought over his response for a moment before answering, adjusting his watch as he did so. With a slightly hesitant tone, but a clear voice, he replied,

“I’ve been alright. I got a new job.” It was short, concise and lacked much richness, but it worked. It barely took two sentences, but anymore and she would have inquired further. Kai never did go much into detail. Even before ‘that’. The girl seemed noticeably impressed and gave Kai a congratulatory smile.

“That’s great, Kai!” But her expression quickly darkened. Kai prepared himself for the worst and shrunk slightly in his seat. “Have you thought about going to university?” He fell silent for a moment. During this time, the waitress, still in a bizarrely good mood, came out with their orders. She opened her mouth to speak, but noticing the sour atmosphere, she instead kept quiet and turned away and headed back inside. “Kai, you’re brilliant in physics, you of all people could actually do something with a diploma! Do you expect to keep jumping from part-time job to part-time job for the rest of your life?!” She raised her voice for a moment and Kai made a pitiful expression. Noticing this, she calmed down and reached for the pink cup containing her own drink. After glancing around for a moment, searching for words, Kai took a sip from his drink and almost choked on the hot liquid. After regaining himself, he put the drink down with a pained expression.

“But… What if things are like-” Kai attempted to explain himself and Charlotte, instantly guessing what he was going to say, cut in rudely.

“That was four years ago!” Charlotte growled, but Kai continued on with a flat tone.

“You know, if it weren’t for me, they’d still be-”

“You can’t change the past Kai! The only thing you can change is-” Shortly after his sister interrupted him, her voice cracking, Kai gritted his teeth and stood up.

“Thanks for the coffee.” He muttered as he retrieved the paper cup and left, his steps heavy and his expression dark. His hands trembled as he held the cup. Checking the time on his phone, he shrugged to himself; his shift wouldn’t start for another half hour. The unnerved youth drank from the cup as he angrily walked to work. Not even he could tell if he was mad at his sister or himself…

This day began in huge contrast to the last one due to one simple fact; Kai had actually slept a full night’s rest. Mostly thanks to his day being completely disenchanted by the exchange that morning. After working for most of the morning and then doing some overtime to give a good impression, Kai had left to retrieve a pre-order from his local game store. However, with such low spirits, little motivation was had to actually play the game. Instead, Kai ate a modest dinner and went to bed with little event, even at such an early hour. It was the following morning that something actually happened. In the dark of his bedroom, which also doubled as his office and gaming room, Kai slept peacefully in his rather large bed, almost too large for someone who had no plans ever to share it. Dressed in the same clothes he had worn the day before with only a few components stripped away, such as pants and socks, his expression was noticeably more cheerful than the day before. Of course, he was sleeping, so that made him look much more pleased...

DUN-DUN DUN-DUN DUUUN…

Kai woke with a start as something distinctively ‘chiptune’ burst from the loudspeaker of his cellphone, which sat charging on his side table. Jumping from where he slept, he look bewildered at the slate. What? A call at this time? With a stiff arm, he reached over and grabbed the slate of glass and aluminum with a movement that oozed fatigue. Bizarrely enough, as soon as he had so much as touched the phone, it fell completely silent and stopped its incessant vibrations. Taken aback, Kai looked at the black colored phone for a good moment before hitting the power button. The first thing he noticed was that the brightness was too high and he closed his eyes as he was blinded by the lock screen. After letting his eyes adjust, he read the time out to himself.

“Six AM.” He frankly had no idea why he had to read it aloud, but he did anyway. Then he noticed that there wasn’t any notification for a missed call. Had he hung up by accident? Kai navigated to the phone app as he lay on his shoulder and peculiarly enough, he saw no call for the last seven days. Kai clicked his tongue in bemusement.

He now noticed that he had a text message notification. Well, in truth, it had been there since he had turned on his phone, but in his wake-up process, which was a rare event in itself, he had totally missed it; being obsessed with finding out who had called him, as the tone played by his phone only a minute earlier was definitely not his notification tone. With a wary tap, Kai opened the notification and immediately noticed that the text message had, of all things, a subject. Kai, confused, double-checked that he was actually in the texting application and once he confirmed this, he actually read the message, which had the subject News and the peculiar sender of 1.73. Just about everything seemed, while somewhat bizarrely written and pertaining to events in places he had never heard of, just about as normal as it could be, until he arrived at the final bit of news.

16:30 A murder will take place in Underpass. The murderer will be William Low.

Blink.

Kai’s heart jumped as he read this. He didn’t know anyone named William Low, but the word ‘murder’ was an abrupt change from the normality of the former words. He continued to read the message, right until it finished with an almost overly cheerful tilde. Wait. ‘Have a good yesterday?’ He reread the sentence just to make sure. Indeed, it was written ‘yesterday’ instead of ‘day’ as was customarily said to end a conversation in the English language. This only served to deepen Kai’s bemusement with the whole message. Of course, it could be a prank. Though he could only wonder who he had given his number to who would send him a prank message…

Time received: 6:00, 21st of June

Kai suddenly noticed the timestamp out of the corner of his eye and his breath was caught in his throat. There was no way he had received the message yesterday. The only thing he had received on the twenty-first of June was the message from his sister and when he had checked his phone before receiving that message, he saw no notification for a message. “What is this? Steins;Gate?” He murmured to himself. Shaking the ridiculous thought from his head, Kai attempted to calm himself. I know, I’ll do something to take my mind off of it. First of all, I should go check NetChan… With that in mind, he hit the home button and found himself on the homescreen.

And smack-dab in the middle there was a new icon.

DUN-DUN DUN-DUN DUUUN…

Jumping, Kai slammed the phone onto his bed as music began to blare once again. This time, however, there was no end to the beeps of the tune. He rapidly began to try different ways of turning off the music, all to no avail. Volume buttons? No change. Power-off? Nil. Finally, Kai tried opening the notification bar and the music finally stopped. “Some notification sound…” The tired man muttered while he read the notification. Key App Installed, it read. Of course, Kai hadn’t even started the installation of an app and even if he had, he had no idea what the “key app” was. Putting two and two together, he realized it must have been the icon that he had seen on his homescreen shortly before being assaulted by his loudspeaker. In great contrast to the modern-looking interface of his phone’s OS, the icon was a retro looking key, with the aspect of an item in an old video game. At this point, after so many surprises and twists, Kai had almost gotten used to it and with a flat expression, he tapped on the icon with almost zero hesitation.

Open its opening, which was quite rapid thanks to his phone’s quad-core processor and sparing him more frustration, Kai was greeted by what seemed to be nothing more than a store. For keys. Of all things. Keys. Kai raised an eyebrow at his phone. And all of them were free.

“Alright, time to wake up.” He said as he put the phone down, causing it to vibrate, though, thankfully, this time it did so silently. With a bemused expression, he prepped his hand to slap himself. At the same time, he put his face in such a position that he would surely hit his cheek and wake himself up, instead of hitting the side of his nose and possibly causing some actual damage-

“Ah, who am I kidding?” The youth sighed as he picked up the vibrating phone from the surface of his bed. With the sour realization that he was already awake, he looked over the apparent ‘key shop’. Keys of different metals, shapes and sizes were displayed, along with keychains accompanying each one. One was quite rusty, with a four leaf clover keychain, whereas another had a keychain that portrayed a wing and had a key that looked like a sword. One keychain in particular that intrigued him was one that had a pentagram in it, mostly put down to his latest character in Eternal Liberation Live being a necromancer. The key that came with it (or was it the keychain that came with the key?) had something of a steampunk style. Leviathan Chronicler, it was called. “Sounds like something out of a nineties anime…” he mused in a tired voice. The phone was still vibrating as he went through the app. Well,there was no point in not buying something, seeing as it was free. So long as it didn’t ask him for payment information, he’d be fine.

As hoped, he wasn’t even asked for an address after tapping on the ‘buy’ button and the Ascend P6 finally stopped vibrating. In the new silence, Kai now heard rain pattering against his window. It was a calming sound and after the onslaught of chiptune and ‘rrr’s of vibrations, Kai appreciated it. Suddenly, though, he heard a sound at his apartment’s door. Had he still a speck of confidence in his sanity, he would have questioned the sound this early in the morning, but after the events leading up the present, Kai had a feeling of ‘same-old, same-old’ in regards to the subject. Groaning, he rose out of bed and unlocked the door, turning the light on as he went. Almost as expected, there was in fact a box awaiting him as he opened the door. Now things became interesting. Before, he could have attributed the strange happenings to someone perhaps hacking his phone and observing Kai’s reactions in amusement through the front-facing camera and microphone of the phone. It was entirely possible. Compared to other hacks, it wasn’t that hard to do either. If he applied himself to practice his programming skills, he could probably do it too.

However, now that the events had stepped into reality, Kai was significantly less sure of himself. Now he had quite a few options. Either he could bring the box in and open it, despite it very possibly containing some kind of horrible bioweapon, as he had read about online, or he could leave it out there. For some reason, though, he had a bad feeling about leaving it out there and reluctantly picked up the boring, blank cardboard box and brought it in. With a weary movement, he set the box on the table and was about to retrieve a knife from the kitchen when he realized that there weren’t any tabs or tape to cut. Thus, he did nothing more than lift the lid of the box and inside, amidst a pile of paper shavings, he found the same key and keychain that he had “ordered” earlier. Quite a few thoughts sprung to his head. How did they find my address? was the first one, though Kai set that aside as he remembered that his phone had a GPS function and someone could probably find his address with few problems by looking at the IP address his phone was connected to.

As had been shown in the app, the key was made of a hard, dark metal, which Kai guessed was iron. In contrast, the keychain, with its occult look, was made of a more argentine metal. The two were connected together by a typical ball-chain, tied up in a haphazard manner to the hole on the key, which was also decorated with a few steampunk looking pieces, such as a fake, or perhaps real, blue gem and couple of cogs. It was very attractive indeed.

“I wonder if Charlotte would want it?” Kai said boredly as he went to retrieve his phone to take a picture. Fortunately, the phone had finally stopped vibrating by the time Kai had returned to his bedroom, so he returned with it to the kitchen to take a picture. However, as he brought the phone in close to the key as it lay on the table, a whole new animation appeared on screen. The key app was automatically opened from the task manager and a bar of blue text appeared on screen:

Kai couldn’t even guess what was about to happen.

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