The Memoir of Aderyn Clark

Physically and Mentally,

After snooping for a while, I found my old laptop from when I was in uni inside one of the boxes. I'm pretty sure King didn't do all this packing by himself, he's too busy for this petty stuff, plus, looking from how he usually do his organizing, this is too messy to be one of his doing.

I booted up the old thing, not even surprised to see it still works, it got a great core processor and huge RAM, since it's a gaming computer, so that's to be expected. I didn't buy this thing, too broke for that, I rather use my hard earned money to survive than getting myself a new gaming laptop. No, I won this thing in a raffle when I bought a flat iron for my hair. I entered the raffle in hopes of getting a new headphone, instead I got the main prize, which was the laptop.

There's a table and a chair inside this storage room, and that's where I am now, seated on a random chair reminiscing my uni days. When the laptop finally finished booting up, I saw my old desktop, filled with files after files of each assignments for every class I had. It was in a total clutter, yet it never bothers me back then, and now it kinda did. So I waste my time by making a folder with the class name and putting all the corresponding files there. Good thing back then I was already half organized, so each files got something like "class name—file title" to make it easier to group. Once the desktop is clear of files, the background picture of my desktop is making me smile

It was the picture of me and my roommate—yes, the same one that teaches me how to do a BJ. This picture was taken by one of her friend before my roommate's 21st birthday party, we're still pretty and dolled up, and next to the first picture was the after party picture, still pretty, but no longer dolled up, we're so wasted but still trying to pose for the picture. I put it as my background as a reminder to never party too hard, you never know who, or what, you'll end up with. We only let ourselves do that at her party because 2 people in the group didn't drink and one of them is a big ass man, so we're safe.

Another reason why I smile is because of the game on my desktop. I read somewhere after all this years they still making upgrades to the game. Think I'm gonna bring the laptop home and play, it's getting late and I parked kinda far. I didn't know I could take my car closer to the unit, I thought it's only for movers trucks, realize my mistake when I saw Mack's car earlier. Whatever, at least I didn't park outside the storage warehouse.

°°°

The game app made me download all the updates to continue playing the game, it makes sense, 9 years is a very long time, but it annoys me on how long I have to wait for it to finished all the downloads. Can't they just straight up give me the latest version without having to download the previous one? Because that's what they are doing!

So here I am, feeling bored and I found myself sitting at King's bedroom. For the first time in years, I have nothing to do and didn't have the urge to do anything but stay home. Speaking of home, I actually don't know where my home is. They say home is where your heart is, and right now, I don't know where my heart's at. I'm so used to having King around and trying to avoid him whenever I'm here unless I wanna fuck, and now he's gone, I don't know what to do anymore.

I turned on his console and look at the games he's playing. I picked one at random and start to drown myself there. This is an interesting game. Then in the middle of playing, a message pops up at the bottom corner of his screen, I move to the safe zone and read the message.

"Who's this?" Was all the message say, then a few seconds later, "you're definitely not Respiro, who's playing his account?"

Respiro? Hmm... How do I answer him? How do I type back? There must be a keyboard somewhere in there. Shit, I didn't know I was playing online.

"Definitely not him," there's another message pops up from another person

"Announce yourself!" Said the first person

How do I answer them?! Just then I realized I've been muting the conversation that's been happening from the headphone. Oopsies.

"Finally," I heard a guy talk

"Come on, come clean!" On the screen, I saw one of the player aiming a gun to my head, and I let out a short laugh. Definitely not playing offline.

"You're a woman!" Said guy 1

"Speak, woman!" Oh my god, how many people are playing with him?!

"Hi," I said curtly, and on the screen more characters showing up, "I think we should finish the mission, the enemy is winning,"

"We're in a safe zone, lady, we're safe." Guy 2 said

"Who are you and what are you doing playing Respiro's account?" Why are they so hostile with me on screen? Now there's 2 more guns aimed to my head, and one of them is not a hand gun! Oh my God, they're vicious!

"I'm Scribes," I told them my old username for my game, which technically is the meaning of my last name

"You Respiro's girl?" Guy 3 asked

"I am," I told them assuredly

"Nah, she's not," said guy 1, obviously to the other players, "Respiro's girl name was Birdy!"

Is it a coincidence or King actually talks about me with his game buddies? I mean, back when I'm playing my game, I told my in-game partner stuff that I don't talk to anybody about. I don't have friends and we never gonna see each other anyways, so why not? He's a good listener.

"Oh, that's true," there's a forth guy, King is playing a full team! "Pretty serious too,"

"Talk or we shoot," guy 1 said

Geez, these guys take gaming too seriously! So what if I played King's account? I'm not a bad player, I didn't shot anyone from my team, my aim is good, I did lots of kill shot! So, honestly, I didn't see where the problem is!

"I'm her," I said quickly, "I'm Birdy Scribes"

"How do you spell your name?" Guy 4 said

"Definitely not with an 'ie' at the back," I flatly say

"She's his girl," said guy 4 confirming

"Thank you, Guy 4," I said holding back the sarcasm

"We got names too, Birdy," said Guy 1, "I'm Hord,"

"Falk," Guy 2

"Torreón," Guy 4

"Wyran," Guy 3

"Now since we already know each other," I told them flatly, "now can we play the game again?"