For about a week Heather floated somewhere between grief and rage. Everything seemed to either be moving too slow or too fast as she tried to recover from the shock of it all. Her emotions were a swirling ball of hot fire that tumbled around in her chest, making her lash out at anything and everything around her.

There used to be training dummies in the weird white room they were staying in. Now there were shreds of cotton and fabric edging the walls, a dummy head laying in the corner with stuffing falling out its neck. When those were gone, Heather took to the walls, creating long gouges with her knives that permanently ruined the atmosphere.

That whole week was her coping period. She was dead, hit by a train. That was a fact, an unpleasant truth that shook her to her core. Her life was now a video game because somehow the game had transferred her consciousness over during her final moments. Really, she should be grateful for what happened. Without playing this game, she would be well and truly dead, no take backs. It was a complete stroke of luck that she was still alive. Still, though, she felt bitter.

Jamie was the only reason she kept going. Ever since that first day, there was now a firmness to her eyes that hadn’t been there before. Every day she had been doing workouts in the room, sometimes running, sometimes swinging her staff, sometimes doing pushups and the like. Heather didn’t understand why she was doing this, but she hadn’t questioned it. Besides, Jamie was the only reason Heather had even eaten over the past few days.

A small pack of cereal was placed in her lap, and Heather looked up to find Jamie above her, some sweat lining her form. She had obviously been working out for a while already, even though Heather had just woken up. Plopping down beside her, Jamie opened her own cereal box and the two of them began to eat in a comfortable silence.

“Hey,” Heather said, her voice cracking from lack of use. She cleared her throat, guzzling some water before continuing. “Why are you working so hard?” Jamie put down her cereal with a sigh, turning to fully face Heather. Her expression was serious, although Heather could see the hints of fear and sorrow lingering beneath the surface.

“Do you really want to know?” she asked, sounding pained. Heather nodded, feeling her anger settle in her stomach. She was at least recovered enough to finally focus on their future instead of constantly wallowing in self-pity, which was an improvement.

Shrugging, Jamie turned away, staring at the far wall. “Well… there’s a few things I haven’t told you yet about this game. They make things interesting, sure, but in our situation they’re gonna cause some serious issues.”

“Like what?” Heather asked.

“Like the fact that we only have one life until we can buy a revive from one of the shops,” Jamie said, her tone soft as Heather flinched, curling in on herself. “Or the fact that once you die without a revive, your avatar’s deleted, meaning we’ll be deleted in the process. Honestly, we can’t change our avatars either, since we’ll still be deleted, and trying to tackle the beginner area that nobody’s beaten is just insanity at its finest…”

Jamie winced as she watched Heather curl further and further in on herself during her speech, hiding her face between her legs. Heather felt her breathing pick up, rapidly accelerating until it felt like she was constantly taking a single long inhale. Her thoughts were being churned through a blender, her vision swimming with dark black spots as she felt herself swaying where she sat.

When she next came to, it was to a heavy weight over her shoulders and a warmth pressed against her side. Turning her head, Heather found Jamie looking back at her, looking relieved.

“You had a panic attack,” Jamie whispered, and Heather groaned, feeling the emotions in her chest coil back into their little ball of flame. She spent a few moments controlling her breathing, Jamie’s constant presence helping calm her down. Still, it was all a stopgap at best. She could feel her throat tightening, her eyes watering, the burn in her chest as she tried to hold everything in. She needed direction, focus, or else she was gonna explode.

Grunting, she forced herself to her feet, wincing as her muscles locked up, struggling to stay standing. Jamie let her arm fall from around Heather’s shoulders and moved away to give her some space. It was becoming more and more difficult to control her emotions and she struggled to push them back down deep into the depths of her soul.

Stumbling forward, Heather caught her breath as she leaned against one of the pillars scattered about the room. “So…” she coughed, trying to distract herself, “what’s your solution to this whole mess? You gotta have one, right?”

Jamie let out a sigh, her eyes flitting around the room. “Well, I’ve been working to increase my STATS. Can’t increase my LEVEL because there’s no monsters to fight, but I can at least raise one or two STATS a week if I work hard enough.”

“What’s that mean? How does working hard increase STATS, and how do LEVEL increases work?”

“Oh…” Jamie breathed, “that’s right, you’ve never played this before. I guess it’s simpler to start with STATS, and I’ll explain how leveling works later. Basically, you can raise a STAT by one every week through training. For example, doing strength training for an entire week will raise your STR STAT by one. The same concept applies to all your other STATS.”

Heather nodded, taking the information in. It seemed simple enough to understand, although why a game would reward something like this went over her head. Something didn’t seem right about that. Still, it was more unsettling for her to realize that everything she could do in this game was dictated by numbers.

“Let me try then. Walk me through how to gain STATS or whatever,” Heather said, steeling herself. If numbers dictated what she could and couldn’t do, the simple solution was to just get larger numbers. Jamie shrugged, gesturing for Heather to copy her as she went down in a pushup position.

“First thing’s first, what’s your CLASS and STAT distribution?” she asked as she started doing pushups, and Heather shrugged as best she could while copying her.

“The weird voice thingy said that I was a BERSERKER or something, and my STATS are spread between AGI, STR, and DEX with AGI being the highest.”

Jamie groaned, palming her face, continuing the pushups with one hand. “It’s not great, but I shouldn’t expect anything else from you since you’ve never played this before. We can work with it, though.”

They stayed silent for a little while, Heather finding it easier than expected to keep up with Jamie’s pace. Heather had always been athletic in real life, participating in both gymnastics and karate, but she figured that her strength in-game would only be dictated by her STATS. Still, even as her arms burned and sweat lined her form, she grinned as she kept going, pushing her body to continue moving.

“Alright, I got a question,” Heather said, having to pause for a moment to catch her breath. Jamie’s face was flushed and sweaty, but her eyes were sparkling as she grinned. “How do STATS even work in this game? Something feels off about all this.”

Jamie nodded, her breathing getting heavier. “Yeah, it’s a bit weird. STATS exponentially increase your real-life abilities, so if you’re strong in real life you’ll be strong in-game. Like, my STR STAT is 40, but yours is probably different and you’re still keeping up with me.”

“It’s 25,” Heather said, and Jamie looked surprised for a moment.

“Ah, yeah, forgot you did gymnastics. That would do it.” Coming to a stop, Jamie pushed herself back to her feet, Heather following shortly after. “We… also have something else going for us, which is both good and bad.”

“What is it?” Heather asked, and Jamie rubbed the back of her head, her eyes falling to the floor.

“Well, ya see, I… actually set up your system wrong,” she said. Heather glared at her, and she chuckled awkwardly, shrugging. “There’s a few different game modes. Easy, Intermediate, Hard, and a few others. I set us on ‘Realistic.’”

Heather had an idea where this was going, but she asked anyway. “What’s that mean for us?”

Jamie shifted her weight a bit. “You’ve probably guessed by the name, but it’s basically a mode where everything tries to be as real as possible. We feel pain like normal, our avatars bleed, and there’s no lag in input signals. There’s no real way to distinguish it from the real world, but everyone avoids the mode because it makes actions too difficult in-game.”

“Ah,” Heather said, “yeah, I think I get it. The pain aspect’s probably the hardest for people to deal with.”

“Exactly!” Jamie exclaimed, her fingers dancing as they tapped a beat against her thigh. “The only upside of the mode is that it allows you to gain STATS through training, but it takes so long that there’s no real benefit to it. Ya get me?”

Heather did, and it explained why they were rewarded with STAT increases after working hard. It was only something that happened when on the ‘Realistic’ game mode. She wasn’t sure whether to slap Jamie or hug her, so she just did both. Jamie laughed, settling into the hug, ignoring the red mark on her cheek.

“Yeah,” Jamie said, “it’s pretty bad for us, not gonna lie. Once we leave this room we gotta clear one of the hardest dungeons in the game, all while being LEVEL 1. But we kinda lucked out, didn’t we? Some of this could’ve been much worse.”

“We did,” Heather whispered, her lips twitching up. “Although… next time we gotta do something like this, please keep me out of it. I’ve had enough of you dragging me into these crazy situations.”

Jamie shoved her away, Heather laughing at the expression on her face. “HEY! I’ll have you know that it wasn’t my fault this time! If anything, blame the train!”

“We could’ve set things up at your house, avoided the train.”

“Yeah yeah, laugh it up. How was I meant to know a fudging train would come through?” Heather grinned at the slip, the system correcting Jamie’s language. Jamie shot her a look, her body tense, and Heather just couldn’t stop herself.

“Careful there, Jay. You’ll start sounding like your old man.” Jamie growled, pouncing towards Heather, forcing her to roll away. Heather giggled as she pushed herself back to her feet, dashing around the room as Jamie lunged after her. This went on for a few minutes, ending when Jamie collapsed, breathing heavily.

“Why…” she huffed, gulping in air, “are you… so… fast?”

“Well…” Heather drawled, bouncing on her toes, “I put most of my points into AGI, you know? It kinda makes me fast.”

Jamie sighed, her breathing finally leveling out. “Alright, ya got me there.” Suddenly, the world around Heather blurred, and she found herself with her back against the ground, the impact knocking the air out of her. Jamie looked smug as she stared down at Heather, holding out a hand to help her up.

“Forgot how clumsy you are,” she mocked, and Heather scoffed as she took the hand, pulling as hard as she could. Jamie’s eyes widened as she smacked into the ground next to her, letting out a groan of pain.

“Sorry about that,” Heather whispered, grinning, “I couldn’t keep my balance.”

“You didn’t even try!”

“I totally did. It just didn’t work out too well.” They lay there for a moment, Heather doing her best to keep a straight face. But one glance over at Jamie had her roaring with laughter. She almost looked constipated, glaring hard at Heather as her face turned red and purple.

“…Alright, alright, that’s enough. Thanks for that,” Heather said, wiping some tears from her eyes. Jamie’s glare turned glacial for a moment before vanishing.

“Fine, make fun of me all you want I guess,” Jamie huffed, crossing her arms. Heather pouted, but the slight upturn of Jamie’s lips was enough to recognize it was all in good fun.

“Honestly though, I’m glad I’m stuck in here with you,” Jamie continued. “I mean, imagine what it would’ve been like if Holly or, god forbid, Jessica were the ones in here instead.”

Heather’s eyes widened, and she gulped. That… would have ended poorly. Holly was the type who might not have kept going through the week and might’ve tried to do something drastic. Jessica… she would’ve been bouncing off the walls already, begging Jamie to let her explore the dungeon outside. She was a nice friend, but she had some serious control issues and would’ve taken things into her own hands.

“They would’ve been rough, yeah,” Heather said, and Jamie nodded. Then Heather had a thought, and her good mood plummeted. “Be honest with me… what are our chances of surviving the dungeon?”

Jamie’s eyes darkened, and her fingers turned white as she clenched her fists. “Pretty much null. But… ya know, I wanna try anyways. I’m gonna give training all I’ve got until we run out of food, and then I’m gonna run into that dungeon and stab it in the heart before having it for dinner.”

Heather chuckled, feeling her emotions well up within her. “Fine with me. I prefer living, thank you very much.”

Jamie snorted, and Heather felt herself grow lighter. Sure, things were bad, but that didn’t mean they were out of options. Even if there was practically no chance of them surviving once their food stores ran out, even the slimmest possibility could turn into a certainty with enough effort. And Heather was determined to create that certainty, even if it meant sacrificing something along the way.