RIVER
"So then Wilhelm-"
"STOP. TRYING. TO. SPOIL. ME!"
I headed out of the school, pestered by my best friend who was trying to spoil me about the last chapter of a game we had been playing. I covered my ears in frustration. I don't like being spoiled. I'd much rather find out what happens next myself.
"But, but, but, River! I need someone to rant to!"
"Go rant to someone who has played the full game."
"Meanie." Rhea stuck her tongue out at me.
The game is quite interesting and as much as I'd like to hear Rhea's theories about it, I really want to at least know what happens in the game. And I don't want to know it from her. I want to know it from the game.
I'm rambling, sorry about that. I just ramble a lot.
Rhea sighed. I sighed. Then we made finger guns at each other.
...It was a thing we have. Rhea once said that people's lifespan shortens by seven seconds when they sigh, so every time one of us sighs, the other one sighs too. If we die early, we might as well die early together.
Anyways, by the time we reached, the building exit was crowded. Severe case of the crowds. Offline classes have just started, but it's as if COVID-19 never existed in the first place. As if hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people didn't just die.
I'm saying all this, but I'm not even wearing a mask. Being vaccinated has fueled my confidence. I used to be a lot more careful about this before...
Anyways, the cafeteria was fully crowded, so we headed to the playgrounds instead. The playgrounds are like a safe haven, mainly because people don't usually go through there after dispersal.
"I'll send you the draft today?" Rhea suddenly went professional-mode.
"Sure."
You see, Rhea writes fanfiction and I'm her editor. Or proofreader? I check the grammar and stuff, basically.
She has an online handle at this website called FansWriteStories.com and she's actually quite popular. She has around 50K followers (still surprises me) and she is very active out there.
Rhea mostly writes romance stories. Those are her specialty. And the stories are mostly short. She did write several long and heavily lore-related fanfictions, though. In fact, one of her fanfictions, the Sky Looked Blue and So Did His Eyes, is the most popular fanfiction of whatever fandom she wrote it about.
"Does it have any action scenes?" I asked her.
I write the action scenes for her books too, besides being an editor. It's not too much work, she barely writes action-including things. However, I still make sure to double check, just in case.
"Not this time. It's just a fluffy one-shot."
"Then I will be waiting for my daily dose of wholesome. But...it doesn't contain smut, right?"
"Geez, River, no. I don't write smut."
She says that, but I'm pretty sure she does. In fact, I can confirm that she does. She sent me a smut fanfic to proofread the other day and it left me traumatized.
And no, I'm not 'innocent' or anything. I still make and laugh at sex jokes. It's just that reading about people having sex is just really uncomfortable for me. Maybe it's because I'm a sex-repulsed Asexual?
"Yeah, sure. And Trump won the American elections," I said, sarcasm reeking out of my voice.
Rhea rolled her eyes, "You used to be a lot sassier than this. What happened?"
I sighed. Rhea sighed. And we both finger-gunned at each other.
We reached home. The distance between the school and our houses was really less. Imagine reaching your house from school in such a short duration of a conversation.
We said our good-byes and I unlocked the door to my house. My parents weren't home. They usually came at around 6 PM and it was only 2:55 PM now.
I decided that I could finish the game in three hours and after changing, I opened up my PC. I had that huge Desktop setup on one side of my room and I used it for many things, like doing assignments, gaming, listening to music, gaming, online classes, gaming, taking notes, gaming and oh! Did I mention gaming?
No, but really, I was almost addicted to that game. Even if I was just a casual player. It's just that open-world games with great visuals are just so difficult to find, and even more difficult to get for free.
"Six Elemental Stones!" a girl's voice exclaimed from the screen. That was the name of the game. It was about this guy called Wilhelm Basilton who was the... 2nd or 3rd Prince of the game's setting's continent, Reargana, pronounced Rer-go-na.
It...looks a little funny. I had pronounced it as Rear-ga-na when I first saw it and Rhea and I had had a good laugh over that.
I still think they should have just named it the way it was pronounced. Rergona looks so much better on paper than Reargana does.
I think there's a petition to change the name of the continent online, to be honest. I had signed it, and then promptly closed the window when it asked for my credit card details.
Anyways, the last chapter was shorted than the others, and I got through it in around two hours. Then I spent one hour fangirling about the ending with Rhea, who finally got to rant at me.
"IT'S SO FUCKING CLIMATIC, RIVER, SO. FUCKING. CLIMATIC."
"THEY DESTROY MAGIC ONCE AND FOR ALL? AND THE WHOLE WORLD LIVES IN PEACE? THAT IS LITERALLY THE BEST THING THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED AFTER THE HISTORY OF THE MAGIC WAS REVEALED!"
"YEAH, AND-"
"STOP BEING SO LOUD, I HAVE HOMEWORK!" A voice interrupted Rhea. It was probably her younger brother, who was actually serious about studying.
"You can just lock your doors, Rishi..."
"Tumi maak moi hoi xudhibi pise, xahokh ase jodi."
"E, hobo de o, siyora bondho korim de."
They had switched to their mother tongue, which was Assamese. I listened with interest.
"Nalaage, hobo diya. Next time tur kaam interrupt kori moiyu siyaori dim. Tetiya he bhaal koi revenge lua hobo, nohoi ne?"
"Choop thaak, xoru karone besi-besi dekhabo ahise. Nerd korobar."
"Toi muk nerd buli koi ki laabh? Nije tu laptopot dork tur nisinake SETor background logai thoiso."
The way they talked was very interesting. I could catch the few English words and also a few basic words that Rhea taught me, and was able to conclude that Rishi (short for Hrishikesh) was very furious about Rhea's fangirling. And they were trying to talk each other down to no prevail.
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have a sibling from birth. Everyone says that I should be grateful that I'm a single child, etc. but I really want a gay sibling so that we can come out together and if we get kicked out, we'll at least get kicked out together.
...I like to pull people down with me. Otherwise, it gets really lonely staying at the bottom by myself most of the time.
Anyways, Rhea had to hang up after that because Rishi was threatening to reveal her fanfiction to her mother or something (even though I know he wouldn't do that) (he actually really cares about Rhea and secretly enjoys her fanfiction) (I caught him reading it once and he admitted it).
I procrastinated for a bit (for at least half an hour) and then sat down to do my homework. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to submit it on time for once.
My parents came home later than usual, at around 7:00 PM. Even then, I still hadn't finished my homework. Actually, I would have finished it if I only had that day's homework to do, but my entire one month of doing homework in the period before it is to be submitted had left me with a lot of pending work.
I swear I wasn't like this before lockdown.
When my parents came home, I sat up on the sofa (I prefer doing work in the living room) and greeted them like a good child. My mother frowned at me, "What is all this mess?"
The room was scattered with paper and books. I looked at her nervously, "I'll clean it up after I finish my homework, I swear."
My father just laughed and threw his bag on one of the bean bags and sank down on the sofa himself. My mother frowned even deeper, "And there is a place for everything, oh I swear, I can't with you two..." She shook her head.
After she had gone into her room, I quietly asked my dad, "Which one of her co-workers annoyed her this time?" Dad laughed and said, "Mrs. Metternich. Clara already can't stand that woman, and now she hates her even more."
"Why? What did Mrs. Metternich do?"
"She didn't submit something on time and made us late."
"Ohh, so that's why you were later than usual today."
"Yep! I think I should really go and take a bath, or your mother is going to nag at me again."
"Alright, you do that."
Dad went to his room and took a shower. I continued doing homework. At some point, I fell asleep.
After that, I don't know what happened. Maybe the universe was just triggered at me for putting off my homework for so long and then falling asleep on it.
When I next woke up, I wasn't in the living room. I was lying on some bed. My first thought was that Dad had carried me to my room, but that couldn't be it because I was getting bigger and my Dad no longer had the strength to carry me like he did when I was a kid. Besides, the ceiling wasn't familiar.
When I sat up, I gasped. There was a big mirror right in front of the bed. A few of my braincells were confirming that this was not my room, because I would never be stupid enough to keep such a huge mirror in front of my bed. A few of my braincells wondered if the owner of this room had ever watched a horror movie that included mirrors.
But the majority of my brain was concerned on the fact that I was no longer in my body. This wasn't my room, or my house, or even my world.
I was Daniel Arendelle, a character from Six Elemental Stones.
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So I changed a lot of things. River doesn't die in a fire anymore, It isn't in 3rd person anymore, etc. But I'm actually quite satisfied with this chapter! If I was asked to read it, I would probably not die from 2nd hand embarrassment! Hurray for improvement!