The world was gray.
The mornings always began the same for Majiku Tatiru, a seven-year-old child whose clothes were worn thin and whose eyes never seemed to wake, no matter how long he slept. The small apartment he lived in was cold — not because the heater was broken, but because warmth had long abandoned the place. His parents spoke in sighs, not words. His father's shoes clacked across the floor like hollow echoes of a being once proud. His mother's voice, when it came, was sharp — cutting the air rather than filling it.
Majiku didn't cry anymore. There wasn't much to cry about when everything already hurt.
At school, he was a quiet shadow — neat, clean, polite. His classmates thought he was simply shy. They didn't know the truth: every evening, he had to rush home to scrub the walls, fix the meals, and count the coins his parents left behind. He didn't hate them. He didn't even know what hate felt like. He only knew silence — the kind that eats you from the inside.
But one night, something strange happened.
A Present
Dinner that evening was unusually quiet — even for them. Majiku's father didn't yell, and his mother didn't complain. Instead, they sat him down at the table and pushed forward a small box wrapped in cheap paper. No smile. No "Happy Birthday." Just a gift slid across the table, like a burden being passed along.
Majiku looked up."What… is this?" His father scratched his head, not meeting his gaze."Something you'll like. It was cheap."And then they left the room.
Inside the box was a VR headset — sleek, black, and strangely pristine for something they could afford. It gleamed in the dim light, humming faintly as though alive. Majiku turned it in his small hands, confused but curious. For the first time in a long time, his lips twitched upward in something close to a smile.
He spent that night staring at it on his desk. It felt like a door — one that didn't yet have a key.
The World of "Eien"
The next morning was gray again. The world outside still hurt. But the headset was charged now, a green light pulsing gently. Infinite charge, the manual said — though Majiku never found a manual. He placed it on his head, just to see.
And then the world shattered.
Light exploded across his vision. His small, frail hands stretched and grew, his bones lengthening, his heart racing. He gasped — and the voice that escaped him was wiser, and sharper at that with responsibility.
Majiku looked down to find himself standing tall, his tattered clothes replaced by a flowing black cloak. A gleaming badge shimmered on his stomach — three golden emblems. His reflection in the water near his feet stared back with the same tired eyes, but sharper, colder, wiser.
"This… is me?" he whispered.
The wind blew across the digital plains. The world of Eien was vast — towers floating in the sky, forests glimmering with pixelated stars, and monsters wandering the distant hills. It was beautiful. Too beautiful for someone who'd forgotten what beauty looked like.
He took one step forward — and stumbled. His body moved strangely, like it wasn't his. His mind reeled. He touched his face, half-expecting to wake up.
But he didn't.
Instead, he saw others. Warriors, mages, archers — and at the center of them, a group called "The Misty Three (Still Looking For One More Member)."
He didn't know it yet, but that team would soon become everything to him. And somehow, without knowing, everything he had already lost.
The Quiet Beginning
For the rest of that day, Majiku wandered the digital cities, silent and observant. He found comfort in corners, where no one could see him. He tested his avatar's movements — the way his cloak fluttered, how his shadow danced. It was too real. Almost painfully so.
When he finally spoke to an NPC — an old gramps selling potions — the voice called him "Traveler." Majiku blinked. "Traveler?" The person smiled. "You look like one who's been lost a long time."
Something inside him ached.
As he walked through the glowing streets of Eien, he noticed how the world shimmered — full of color and life. For the first time, he didn't feel like a ghost. People talked. Laughed. Fought. They existed.
He sat on the edge of a fountain and looked up at the digital sky. "If this is a dream," he whispered, "I don't want to wake up."
The Glitch
But dreams don't last forever.
After what felt like hours — or maybe days — the world began to flicker. The air distorted. His vision pulsed like a heartbeat. Majiku stood, panicked, trying to remove the headset. But it was gone — or perhaps, he was gone.
His body began to glitch, his hand breaking into fragments of light. His reflection rippled in the fountain below."No… wait… I'm not ready yet…"He reached out toward the vanishing sky.
Then everything went dark.
Back to Reality
Majiku's eyes opened.
He was back in his small, dirty room. The VR headset lay beside him, humming softly, still glowing green. Outside, the moon had risen. He had been gone the whole day — maybe longer. His heart was pounding, his throat dry.
He looked at his hands — small again. Fragile. But for a moment, he swore he could still feel the weight of the cloak on his shoulders.
He stood before the cracked mirror in his room and slowly raised his hand to where his heart was in his stomach, mimicking the gesture his avatar had made in the game — hand over heart, posture straight, eyes unyielding.
For the first time, he didn't see a broken kid. He saw someone else. Someone he could possibly become. But still mostly denied his fate.
A Flicker of Tomorrow
The next night, his parents argued again — about bills, about failure, about him. Majiku sat quietly in his room, the headset beside him like a silent friend. The words seeped through the walls, but this time, he didn't listen.
He was already far away.
As he put the headset back on, he whispered, "Let me go back… please…"
And as the light consumed him once more, the voice of the world greeted him — calm, ancient, and full of promise:
"Welcome back, Traveler of Eien."
Majiku smiled faintly as his vision blurred into color.
The screen faded to black.
End of Episode 1...