Ten minutes.

All she had left was ten minutes.

Ten long.

Boring.

Minutes.

JiYeong let out a huge sigh, blowing a stray strand of hair from her face. Despite their plans to do more than one dungeon, Zaos unexpectedly had to log off almost as soon as they finished Calaneu Caverns with the promise to finish today. After she got off work, that was.

Kayla, her teenage coworker, was yammering on about school or something, she wasn’t really listening though she wasn’t ignoring her on purpose either.

Even though high school was five years ago, JiYeong could clearly remember it not being that exciting. Granted, she didn’t have very many friends. Socializing wasn’t her forte. Instead, she focused primarily on her studies and even managed to graduate with a halfway decent grade point average. She did, however, socialize enough to know nothing was ever interesting enough to warrant a full-blown recreation every single day.

JiYeong glanced back toward the clock, hoping time had magically decided to leap forward and rescue her from the fate of listening to Kayla’s overdramatic retelling of the fight that had broken out during second lunch.

Only a single minute had passed.

It wasn't surprising why Kayla talked so much at work. She lived in a foster home that, from what JiYeong understood, had quite a few children living there and didn’t afford her the type of attention a teenager needed.

“You lived in a foster home didn’t you?”

Instead of her normal school stories, Kayla had asked her that question a few weeks ago. She had seemed as if she were having a bad day, and it was one of the rare days JiYeong actively listened to her without having to force herself to. Kayla hadn’t expounded on the question when she answered positively, and JiYeong figured if she had wanted to she would have asked more questions, so she hadn’t pressed.

“One of my friends is thinking about applying here but I told him it's super boring.”

The store was a small, local grocery store. It was empty, as it always was this time of day. It wouldn’t get busy until at least five pm, when folks were starting to get off their jobs. JiYeong never worked that late though, and by the time five rolled around - about two hours from now - she would be at home playing Allumia Crossing.

Exactly the thing she would be doing today if the time ever decided to give her the courtesy of moving faster than it currently was!

JiYeong wanted to get that quest for Iridia done. The reward was a status boost for two in-game days, and that would be extremely useful for leveling up her cooking subclass since her Guardian was already at the max level.

She was hoping the developers would put out a patch that would raise the max level from 100 but it’d been that level for years and she didn’t see them changing it.

After what feels like an eternity JiYeong made the mistake of looking at the clock again. Two fifty-five. Why was time moving so slowly?

“We have to do a five-page essay. Single spaced. And with references.” Kayla’s voice made her blink. She had honestly forgotten Kayla was still talking. When had she moved on from her food fight story?

JiYeong fought back a sigh when she noticed Kayla was looking at her, expecting an answer. It wasn’t as if Kayla was a bad person, or even a super annoying person. She was friendly enough, and at the very least did her job.

It was the amount of talking she did that got on JiYeong’s nerves. Every day was something new, as if Kayla experienced so much in her life she couldn’t wait to tell the first unsuspecting soul. And unfortunately, that made JiYeong the one to bear the brunt of it.

“Are you planning on going to college?”

“Yes?” Kayla responded hesitantly, her face showing that she wasn’t going to like what JiYeong had to say next.

JiYeong tried to keep a smile off her face as she said, “The shortest essay I had to write was ten pages.” She glanced at Kayla, picking at her nails. She’d gone quiet, staring at JiYeong in disbelief.

Another glance at the clock; another minute had passed far too slowly. “Five pages would have been a Godsend.” JiYeong being facetious, of course. College had been surprisingly easy for her. Or at least, her high school teachers had made it out to be a lot harder than what it was. Actually experiencing it was almost a letdown.

Of course, that also depended on what someone was going into. Kayla didn’t talk about her future much, so her chosen major could be more laborious than JiYeong’s experience was. She had chosen to go into Computer Science. JiYeong didn’t think it was that hard of a major, but then again school had never really been a point of struggle.

“Ten?” Kayla finally squeaked, her hand going to her heart over-dramatically. Based on her reaction, she can’t tell that I’m severely over-exaggerating. “About what?”

She shrugged, eyes flashing to the brightly lit exit sign before looking back at the blonde standing at the register next to her. “I dunno. Depends on the professor, and what your subject was. I think I had to write a paper on pencils.”

“How can you find ten pages worth of stuff about pencils?” Kayla ran a hand through her curls, a frown on her face.

“You’d be surprised.” Two fifty-nine. One minute to freedom.

A customer came to Kayla’s lane, freeing her from the conversation. JiYeong leaned against the counter, eyes on the clock. A feeling of relief flooded through her as the clock changed to three and marked the end of her shift.

Finally, she could escape this boring job and go home.

She headed to the back room where she had her bike parked near the employee entrance. During the summer months JiYeong preferred biking to work over riding the bus. It was cheaper, and she didn’t live far away so it wasn’t a long ride.

Added to that, she liked to tell herself it was decent exercise, especially since she didn’t do much exercise outside of that.

Despite JiYeong’s lack of physical activity, she still managed to maintain a decently small figure, and she didn’t look out of shape. The gulps of air she forced in when she finally arrived at her apartment and hopped off her bike spoke otherwise, however.

Dropping her bike on the wall next to her front door, JiYeong shuffled toward her room to change out of her uniform. Her frame was small in an annoying way, in that despite requesting the smallest size shirt the store had, it was still baggy on me. JiYeong’s extra tiny size didn’t help her look any less like a child than her young face did. People always gave her weird looks when going through her checkout lane, as if wondering “Who let the child work here?” And then JiYeong got to deal with the looks of shock and sounds of disbelief when she told them she was in fact twenty-three and not a twelve-year-old playing dress-up.

JiYeong changed into a tank top and shorts. Even though it was October the temperatures were still nearing almost 70 and wearing her normal pajamas would send her into a heat stroke. Once appropriately dressed she went into her living room where her computer was, cracking open the window to let some fresh air into the apartment.

The apartment faced the side of another building so the view wasn’t that great. It was always noisy as well, kids running around outside being loud and unsupervised. And she swore the neighbors upstairs spent their time stomping around on bricks.

JiYeong’s computer sat on the wall of her living room across from the bedroom door and in the direct path of the breeze coming from the open window. She didn’t have a T.V. because cable cost money she didn’t have and she would never watch it anyway.

JiYeong slid into her chair, turning on her computer. It took less than a minute to boot up and she was opening Allumia Crossing.

“Took you long enough to log in. What were you doing, taking a nap?”

Adjusting the headphones on her ears, JiYeong turned the party chat volume down a bit so she could hear the game’s background music better. “Hello to you too Lilia. I do have a day job, you know. I can’t spend all my time on this game.”

“As if you wouldn’t if you could.” She gave a breathy laugh. Loud typing reached her ears and a few moments later Lilia appeared on-screen.

Lilia did the same thing JiYeong had and based her character heavily on herself. Where her character was a Human Tank, Lilia had chosen to be a Faerie, bright yellow wings protruding from her back. They resembled pixie wings more than Faerie in her eyes, but Lilia insisted they were fine.

Her White Mage was shorter than JiYeong's character, as Faeries tended to be smaller than Humans by design anyway. The body on the character model was thicker than JiYeong’s, and her hair hung in tighter blonde coils in a high ponytail. JiYeong joked that she looked as if she had the perfect tan all the time. Wide hazel eyes made her look even younger than she did, which was quite a feat..

“Why are we in Spinel again?”

She checked her quest journal. “We were helping a Lord Uche with a small skirmish, or something. I need to talk to him to finish the quest.”

Lord Uche, leader of the small group of Knights, was stationed in Spinel Outpost after hearing reports of goblins attacking a small village nearby. The quest didn’t give rewards or experience, but sometimes she liked to accept side quests anyway because the story was interesting. Lord Uche was a character JiYeong hadn’t seen either, so she was curious if the quest would have any more information on him. Of course it didn’t.

At least the quest was easy.

“Did you get anything for the quest?”

“I got a few gold but it didn’t have a reward for it. I don’t remember seeing Lord U...Uche,” JiYeong stumbled over pronouncing his name, “in the game before. Is he a new character?”

“Oh uh, I don’t know.” Lilia hesitated in her answer but before JiYeong could question her about it she said, “If you’re done with that quest wanna head to Whitewall? I want to see if I can find some new glamour, I’m getting kind of tired of the clothes I’m wearing now.”

Her hesitation made JiYeong curious. Lilia was a lot more knowledgeable about Allumia Crossing than JiYeong was, having played the game slightly longer. For her to be unsure about a character was out of place.

She let it slide though, agreeing to go to Whitewall.

In most online games she’d played, there tended to be a cap in the highest level your gear can go in. As in, if your gear wasn’t the proper level, despite being a high level yourself, you could still die pretty easily in dungeons or other fights.

Those caps moved when new patches or gameplay were released, typically. In Allumia Calling, however, the cap seemed to have stayed the same since she had been playing. She wasn’t sure if it was because it didn't seem to be a very popular game, as there aren’t a lot of people on at any given time, or if they’d just decided max level is going to stay that way for a while.

In any case, JiYeong didn’t mind it too much. There was still a lot she had yet to do despite being level 100 for almost a year, and it made gearing for the higher level dungeons and raids easy.

“Sure. You need to stop spending so much gold though. You’re going to go broke again.”

“Ah whatever. It's fine. I have money in the bank just in case anyway.” Lilia reasoned. Her character was already on her mount, a gorgeous Pegasus that shimmered at its feet.

The ride from Spinel Outpost to Whitewall took a few minutes. It didn’t bother her since she could set her character to autorun to a town or city she’d visited before so she didn’t have to hold down any keys for that long.

Whitewall was home to the majority of humans, being the capital of Criesal, the human Kingdom. It was where she started when she first started playing Allumia Crossing, since the Knight Sect sat there. It was also one of the largest and most populated cities in Allumia. Even though it was majority human occupied, a plethora of other races inhabited it as well.

It sat adjacent to the Kli’oh River, making it a very popular spot amongst Fishers. The river ran into Syr Ocean, connecting Whitewall to the town of Azelport, another human town.

JiYeong followed Lilia to the Rosehill District where the majority of shops were. Almost anything could be found here - from simple things like potions to weapons and gear. Lilia, of course, was heading directly towards the Merchant who sold gear that disn’t give any stats at all. They were used purely for making the current gear look good.

Glamour wasn’t something she bothered with. Being a Guardian, she preferred her character to look the part with her armor.

Lilia liked the more flowy looking clothes. Similar to real life, wearing dresses and skirts over pants. The complete opposite of JiYeong.

While Lilia looked at new clothing JiYeong opened her quest journal again, trying to decide which quest to finish next. There weren't very many as stockpiling quests wasn’t something she liked to do. The clutter would overwhelm her and she wouldn’t get anything done.

“Hey, hurry up. I need to go to Blackmeadow and gather some things for this quest I picked up.”

“You’re so impatient. Alright, I’m ready. Let’s go.”