"Man up"
The words cut through Hoku so many times in his life that he gained a resistance buff.
He didn't even flinch anymore. Not when they came from classmates, not when they came from his parents, and not when it looped in his own head like a broken record. He spent half of his time playing games, reading manga, and the other half making mods for obscure games you'd only find on the nichest of communities. He even had a few full game projects on the back burner, though they would most likely stay there till the end of time.
It was 2:41 AM. The only light in the room came from his monitors, stacked around his desk like a blue light coffin. One screen showed lines of messy spaghetti code. Another was frozen on several simple error messages that Hoku couldn't be bothered to fix. The third played several openings from an anime playlist.
Clothes, empty instant noodle packets and numerous skimpily dressed figurines (of questionably-aged characters) piled up around his room, making his own little make-shift castle. 'What would that make me, the princess?'. Perhaps.
He rubbed at his eyes, red and dry from hours of grinding, and blinked back into the blurring sea of code before him. But suddenly, the text was gone as all three monitors shut down "Uhhhhh! What the hell man, I didn't save!"
He presses the power button a bunch of times, but he gets nothing, so he checks the charger port: it seems to be fine. So he follows the cord back to the socket. Well, shit, it was out a little, but as he tried to prod it back in, he felt a small bite, the electricity from the socket jumped to his hand, making him bounce to the foot of his bed. He stares at the socket with wide eyes. 'That could've killed me,' Hoku thought, ' I gotta be more careful'
He picked himself back up and moved back to his chair, when he noticed a symbol appearing on his centre monitor. Did he accidentally open something when the screen shut off? He had never seen such a thing, it was intricate and alluring to the eye. It drew him in, in every way because once he moved closer, everything changed.
Out of nowhere, a black hand reached out of the screen and violently grabbed him, "Hey! What the fuck! Let go you son of a b-" he knocked his knee on his bed, lost balance, and screeched, grabbing his desk, but finding himself soon on top of the desk, being pulled in with great power. As the struggle persisted, he then turned his head, hoping to see his assailant, but instead, catching sight of a second hand emerging from his monitor, joining its sister, making it impossible for Hoku to hold on.
With the last of his effort he clawed at various things on his desk like the a few figures and his toothbrush. Several objects vanished into the screen until he was the last to go. Before he knew it everything was gone.
Hoku couldn't feel anything. He could only see streams of unnatural colours flowing across his body like moving through a tunnel of light. Then streams of golden light perfectly bent into his vision, flowing in and out of his eyes. Focusing and focusing until it became... legible?
[Human Ally Detected]
[Hex System Initialising]
[SoulSync:256/256]
[100% Initialised]
[Receiving Hex power]
[Affinity:13%]
[Body Reconstruction Rating:6/10]
It was all so strange that Hoku thought that he was still seeing code in his bedroom. Then the several lines of text were replaced by a single line.
[Welcome To Eadrift]
The space Hoku now found himself in was dark, heavy, and cold. Hoku only held onto a shred of his consciousness as he floated in a vast volume. He was powerless, being consumed by something greater, yet he felt at peace.
Then something changed, he felt the volume disappear, and through his half-opened eyes, he sees a hooded figure. A girl with light green hair.
She looks sad, or maybe scared, as she seems to say something beyond Hoku's ability to hear. he could only feel the rest as his eyes were becoming heavy. She kissed him on the forehead, and like that, she was gone.
Some time later, Hoku finally woke up.
He rolled onto his side, coughing violently, water streaming out from his nose and mouth. His lungs burned like fire, and every muscle in his body ached.
He touched his palms against the stone-hard floor, trying to sit up, immediately wincing as he noticed his clothes. they were were soaked through, dripping and clinging to his skin.
Above him, there was no sky only jagged stone and strange, black buds scattered around. He was in a cave.
Hoku noticed a blue glow that washed his surroundings.
A lake, still and round, emanating light, casting ripples across the walls.
despite it's beauty Hoku couldn't help but curse it as he would quickly deduce that it was the culprit behind his dripping clothes.
Hoku scanned the area, wondering how he even got into this predicament 'I mean, what were those freaky hands, yikes' he thought, shuddering.
More importantly he had to think of how to get out, survival came first, but he barely knew anything about that. 'well at least I have water'. As he was just about comment on his shitty situation and shitty luck, he noticed something.
There was something buried in one of the softer patches of stone, wet, in one piece and relatively ok condition.
Hoku blinked. Then blinked again.
Laying there was his limited edition, swimsuit variation narune hiru figurine. Hoku gasped and rushed to pick it up, soon realising that there was more.
His toothbrush, a campus flyer he's never looked at, a comb, an empty can of Fanza, a pack of tissues and...
THANK THE HEAVENS
'I must've tossed my phone when I was being dragged in.' He thinks, gleefully staring at the device. His parents used to taunt him by asking, "Is your phone more important than your life?" So Hoku felt rather proud that he could now answer that after throwing his phone at a primordial multi-dimensional demon as a last resort.
Unfortunately, his joy was cut short, as his phone was just as soaked as him, and sadly, it didn't survive. He held a mini funeral. "Goodbye, old friend, hope you get reincarnated into a new life with your own harem to boot". He said, saluting the air.
Hoku started gathering up the rest of his scattered, waterlogged belongings. Most of it was junk, sure, but seeing it all here gave him a strange sense of comfort in this strange place. His mind wanders back to the hooded girl as he thinks, 'She must've pulled them from the lake. I wonder where she went.'
He sorted through each item one by one; most were to be left behind, between things that he couldn't fit in his wet pockets and things that couldn't help him. In fact, there were even a couple he didn't recognise; he spent so much time glued to his screen that the thought didn't alarm him.
There was one that was pretty strange in shape, however. He reached out, gripped it firmly, and pulled. It didn't budge.
He frowned and tugged harder. Still nothing.
A flicker of embarrassment kicked in, 'I should've monopolised on that gym membership'
Still, he wasn't about to give up just like that. So he picked up his desk light and tried bashing at the spot. Bits of dirt and stone started to chip away. He bashed again and tried pulling as more dirt piled away.
But it was still stuck.
Hoku sighed, wiping the sweat from his brow. The air in the cave was starting to feel thick.
"Jeez, okay! I'll just take what I have", he muttered in utter defeat.
But before he could stand-
He noticed that the dirt didn't stop moving.
Instead, more of it continued to pile off. Hoku body tensed. He started to slowly backpedal. Then the ground rumbled lightly. Hoku jumped back, now moving away with more haste, abandoning the rest of the buried items, only taking his items in tow.
Suddenly, the floor lurched violently, sending a shockwave rippling through the stone and the water in the lake. Hoku started sprinting with all the speed a gamer could manage, being rocked from side to side. Regrettably, this caused a loose item to drop from his busy hands.
it was Narune Hiru!
Hoku ran until He rounded the corner of the tunnel, managing one final look across his shoulder, seeing the last of Narune waving and wishing him good luck, his eyes capturing the disastrous shadow that lay beyond her.