Part 1: The Old Man Who Slept In
The kettle screamed, loud and shrill.
Keiji didn't move.
He sat motionless in his kitchen, hands resting on the polished wood of his dining table, staring blankly through a thin veil of steam curling from his untouched cup of tea. The morning sun spilled across the floors, warm and golden, illuminating a pair of worn slippers neatly parked beside the fridge. His slippers. Still there, just like they always had been. Just like everything else in this apartment he'd lived in alone for fifteen years.
He exhaled. Quiet. Heavy.
On the table in front of him lay a retirement plaque, propped up like a shrine offering. "Thank you for 40 years of service, Mr. Takahashi!" it read, in a cheerful corporate font. Below it, an envelope with his final severance check. Below that, silence.
Forty years of loyalty. Now what?
Outside, traffic rolled on. Somewhere, life continued.
Inside, Keiji sat in a stiff chair, letting the kettle scream until it finally sputtered out on its own.
He wasn't depressed, exactly.
He just didn't know what to do now.
He'd been dreaming of retirement for so long—every Monday morning, every 12-hour shift, every awkward company drinking party where he smiled politely and drank alone in his head. "Someday," he told himself. "Someday, I'll rest."
Now "someday" had arrived, and it tasted like lukewarm tea and old regrets.
That night, he pulled his ancient laptop from a dusty drawer, cracked open a beer, and booted up a game he hadn't touched in over a decade.
Eternal Saga Online.
It took an hour just to patch the files. Half the UI was broken, the servers half-empty. But the opening theme still played—midi flutes and fantasy strings echoing from tinny speakers.
He didn't log in to his main character.
Instead, he scrolled through a list of forgotten alts and picked one he'd barely touched: K.G., a Level 1 Novice with zero gear and the dumbest haircut imaginable. The character had been a joke, something he made after a rough day at work, back when he still thought MMOs were a place to escape to, not just another grind.
The world loaded slowly.
Pixels faded into forests. Towns rendered blocky and half-lit. The screen stuttered—and for just a second, something flickered on the edge of the screen. A message box, gone before he could read it.
Then darkness.
And then—
---
He woke to the sound of birdsong.
Not the cawing of crows or the drone of morning traffic, but real birdsong—sweet and bright, like flutes played by wind.
He blinked.
The sky above him was too blue. The grass too green. The sun too warm on his skin.
Keiji sat up slowly, every joint stiff. The ground beneath him was soft, almost springy. Around him stretched a rolling green meadow, dotted with wildflowers and gently swaying trees. There was no sign of the apartment. No kettle. No plaque. Just the endless sound of nature and a faint breeze carrying the smell of sunlight and lavender.
"... What."
His voice sounded younger. Too smooth.
He glanced down.
His hands were not his hands.
Slim fingers. Smooth skin. Arms without the sag or spots of age. He scrambled to his feet—too quickly, too easily—and staggered toward a small pond nearby. The reflection staring back at him was unmistakable.
It was K.G. The dumb haircut. The low-level starter outfit. The ridiculous belt pouch and blank expression. A perfect recreation of the alt character he'd chosen last night.
"... Nope," Keiji said flatly, backing away from the water. "Nope, nope, nope."
He turned.
And saw a giant chicken charging at him.
Five minutes later, he was lying facedown in the grass, feathers stuck in his mouth, and a system voice was chirping cheerfully in the air around him.
[🐣 Angry Meadow Fowl defeated! EXP +6! Loot obtained: Chicken Feather x2, Slightly Cracked Egg x1!]
He lay there for a long moment.
Then he sat up, dusted himself off, and said aloud, "This better not be one of those harem things."
---
The birds wouldn't shut up.
Keiji lay motionless in a field of grass, his face half-buried in wild clover, listening to the chirping. Not the dull caw of city crows, but the high-pitched kind—like a game's default nature ambiance. The scent was new, too. Crisp, floral, sweet like springtime distilled into essence.
He cracked one eye open.
The sky above was impossibly blue—that unreal, cloudless hue you only see in fantasy artwork or pharmaceutical commercials. He squinted.
"…No ceiling."
His voice startled him. Too smooth, too deep—not the weathered, gravelly baritone he remembered using to scare telemarketers.
He sat up stiffly. No popping joints. No aching back.
Wrong. Everything feels wrong.
Hands—smooth. Arms—lean, toned. His hair fell into his eyes, long and absurdly styled. He stumbled to a nearby pond, dropped to his knees, and stared.
The reflection stared back.
Not the sixty-year-old man with thinning widow's peak and crow's feet, but a clean-faced, bright-eyed anime pretty-boy with the most ridiculous haircut—shaved on one side, dramatically swooped on the other. Even his ears looked smug.
"…K.G.?" he muttered.
His alt character. The joke avatar he'd created fifteen years ago on a whim, named after his initials. Level 1. Novice class. Unused. Unloved.
"I logged into you once and immediately logged back out."
The reflection offered no argument.
He stood. The ground tilted—not from dizziness, but disorientation.
This wasn't a dream.
He'd experienced lucid dreams before, but they never had wind this crisp, smells this vivid, or pain this... real. (His cheek still stung from falling face-first into a patch of spiky dandelions.)
Then a voice rang out, chipper and echoing, as if projected through invisible speakers:
🧝 Welcome to Eternal Saga Online! Your journey begins now, brave adventurer! Tip: Be careful where you step. Wild creatures roam freely beyond the tutorial zone!
Keiji turned just in time to see a chicken the size of a Great Dane barreling toward him with murder in its eyes.
--
The fight, if you could call it that, was brief.
The game's physics engine, much like its combat mechanics, proved both rudimentary and occasionally vindictive. Keiji dodged on reflex—ducked left, then swung the broken branch he'd snatched from the ground.
The chicken exploded in a poof of white feathers and pixel glitter.
🎉 Congratulations! You have defeated [Angry Meadow Fowl]! EXP +6 Loot obtained: Chicken Feather x2, Slightly Cracked Egg x1
"...I just killed a bird with a stick."
Not even a proper stick—a bent twig with a single leaf clinging to it.
He turned the makeshift weapon in his hands, frowning. "You drop me into a game world and don't even give me a sword?"
A new popup window materialized:
Starter Weapon Unlocked: "Twig of Determination" Type: Blunt Damage: 1~3 Durability: 4/10 Flavor Text: "Look, we all have to start somewhere."
Keiji dismissed the window with a sigh. "You're mocking me."
The first few hours passed in a blur of tutorials, aggressive squirrels, and poorly explained menus. He discovered that stamina was finite. He learned that damage scaled with "Determination," a stat he had precisely zero points in. He found out that dying meant waking up half-naked in a field again.
Three deaths later, he sat on a mossy rock, chewing on a piece of Forest Jerky (tastes like bark and regret), when another voice startled him.
"You look lost, mister!"
He turned.
A girl stood there, hands on hips, all confidence and attitude. She wore a leather vest two sizes too small, a belt bristling with throwing knives, and an oversized feather in her hair. Her smile was unnaturally bright. Her freckles too perfectly placed.
"…Are you a tutorial NPC?"
She blinked. "Uh. No? I'm real. I think."
Keiji squinted. "…Player?"
She looked confused. Then smacked her forehead.
"Oh! You're one of those! You think this is still a game, right?"
He stared blankly.
She grinned wider. "Cute. Real cute."
---
Her name was Rina, and she was definitely a person. Not an NPC. Not a hallucination. She led Keiji down the forest path toward a town called Veldenrook, chattering like a caffeinated tour guide.
"So you just woke up in the field? No starter zone? No goddess intro scene?"
"There was a chicken."
"…Yikes."
The town wasn't much—cobblestone paths, wooden gates, a single guard clearly asleep on his feet. Yet Keiji couldn't deny its strange warmth, like a nostalgic village from a childhood storybook. As they passed through the gates, a dozen status windows appeared simultaneously.
✨ Welcome to Veldenrook – Population: 412 First time bonus received! +10 EXP Side Quest Available: "Please Don't Step On My Turnips!" Side Quest Available: "My Cat Is Missing, Again."
He closed them with weary eyes. "That's a lot of popups."
"Get used to it," Rina said, guiding him toward the town center. "You've got the look of a first-timer. No offense."
He glanced at his reflection in a window. "None taken."
"So what's your build?"
"Build?"
"Class, skills, stat focus, all that stuff."
Keiji looked down at himself. "I have a stick."
"...Wow."
She paused outside a slightly tilted building with a sign: "The Bronze Dagger Guild – Noobs Welcome!" The "Noobs" part was painted over another word: "Legends." Poorly.
"This is where I hang out," she said. "You look like you need a party. Or at least someone to explain how to equip proper pants."
Keiji looked down again. "…These are technically pants."
"Technically doesn't stop you from mooning the gods, Gramps."
"…I'm twenty."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Fine. Sixty. Spiritually."
The guild hall smelled like ale, sweat, and burnt toast.
A lanky boy with glasses sat at the front desk, playing solitaire with monster cards. A short dwarf girl was asleep face-first in a bowl of soup. Somewhere upstairs, something exploded with a bang followed by a scream of "I REGRET NOTHING!"
Rina grinned. "Home sweet home."
Keiji stared. "This is a guild?"
"Well, we're not the fanciest bunch," she said with a shrug. "But you won't find a friendlier disaster anywhere in Veldenrook."
"...That's not reassuring."
"It's also true!"