the intricacy...

Chapter 4: The Classroom

Itzumi awoke after sleeping for the past several hours on the comfortable couch that was in the lobby of the dorm room. She shared the bathroom with the roommates to get ready for school, and headed to her usual classes. After that she returned to the bedroom, and noticed that both Keiko and Tomomi were standing beside the left bunk bed. She remembered how she had logged in with Tomomi the night before, and received a short tour of the school before logging off to rest. They had agreed to play again after classes the following day, so the time had finally caught up with them.

"Are we ready for phase two?" Keiko giggled. "I think we should head to the school again, and try to unlock everything tonight." Tomomi and Itzumi nodded their heads in agreement to the suggestion.

"Yeah, that sounds good." Tomomi beamed with a wide grin, as Itzumi remained quiet while attempting to remember the school's vigorous layout. "I showed Itzumi around last night."

"Excellent. I'll send us directly to the classroom then," the blond answered. "We'll spread out and look for more clues." The three of them headed for the table as Keiko pulled open the bottom drawer and handed them their individual glasses for the game. Keiko laid herself across the far-left bed, as Tomomi was lying on the bed to the right. Itzumi passed by the laptop that was resting on the table to see the game "Intricacy" beginning to load. She heeded the two girls already hooked up to the laptop with the dark cables as she too laid across the floor between the two beds while placing the blue shades over her eyes while getting into a super comfortable position.

The dorm room quickly vanished and transformed into the logo screen of the game. She could see Keiko making the adjustments as she was made team leader with Tomomi and Itzumi as the party members. The settings were private, random, and at the school's interior as the location. No monsters were selected as Itzumi assumed that the reason was because the creatures were already within them ready to burst out at any moment, or the phase two that Keiko had mentioned before they had logged into the virtual world.

Itzumi was suddenly in a school like hallway as the clock showed 4:30 PM as the time, in which the sun was beginning to set within the horizon. There were NPC students wandering about as if they were participating in after school activities, or simply chatting amongst themselves with gibberish dialogue. Keiko and Tomomi were nowhere to be found as she checked the map to see that Keiko was in the gymnasium, and Tomomi was in a different hallway nearby. She let out a sigh of anxiousness, and glanced around to see that one classroom nearby was open for a pretend classroom session, or that she could sit in a class like environment if she desired it. The student sauntered toward the door to the left, and accepted the invitation to join the class, in which there were a few open seats towards the back of the room.

The classroom looked like a normal school zone with thirty wooden desks in the center of the room, the windows on the left-hand side, and the teacher's wooden desk in front of the huge blackboard. The hallway was also very similar with white walls, white ceilings, and wooden floors that continued into each classroom. The sunlight was causing each dark corner of the room to cower away, or the room wasn't dim at all. The teacher, who appeared to be a man in his late forties with short black hair and brown eyes in a black suit, stood in front of the chalkboard as if he was about to start the class. The students were also very average with similar school uniforms of black jackets, sapphire plaid skirts, and cobalt bows for the girls. The males wore all black pants and jackets.

Itzumi walked toward the back and sat at the second desk in as she heard the teacher beginning to speak while the students were sitting down as if paying attention, but it was monotonous dialogue to her. She was curious to know if there were any other Player Characters about in the same room, but she was unable to see them due to the privacy settings. Her eyes wandered for a while studying the very detailed graphics of the room, or there were books and supplies just like a regular schoolroom.