Hanako's grip unconsciously tightened around Yoshida's waist as they pulled to a stop. Old fashioned fears welled up in her stomach as she looked at the ramen shop. If this was just Yoshida taking her to lunch this would be nothing. However, this was her meeting another member of Hazama's friend group. Which was absolutely terrifying.

Yoshida parked his bike and looked back at his passenger. Through the helmet, he could see Hanako trying to hide her fear. He just didn't get it, he knew how hardcore she could be. She had told Hazama and himself some stories of her time in SAO. Nothing too personal, but she had been telling them about her friends from the game. How that same girl so scared of meeting somebody her age?

"Alright, Hanako, what's up?" Yoshida asked seriously.

"What do you mean?" Hanako tried to brush it off.

"From what you've told me you didn't seem to have any trouble making friends the past two years. What's got you so jumpy now?" Yoshida frowned.

Hanako fidgetted nervously. Should she tell him? She hasn't even told Hazama about this. She did get along nearly as well with Yoshida as she did with Hazama and she had known him for less time. She was so used to keeping everything under wraps, not letting any information out that she didn't want. Then again that also kept everyone at a distance. She didn't want that anymore. She had gotten a wonderful taste of friends and she didn't want to let that go. Not for anything. She couldn't go back to being all by herself again.

She let out a sigh, "In the game it was easy. We were all worried about survival, we didn't need to worry about faking our personalities. Mostly everyone we met was their true selves. Plus, I didn't really make any of those friends by myself. Kirito was the one that made friends with everyone, I was just there as well. Yeah, I call them my friends now but they were Kirito's friends first."

Hanako took a deep breath before she plunged into it, before she lost her nerve. She trusted Yoshida, "Look, the last time I was in the real world I was a scared twelve-year-old who was living with her psychotic, abusive, neglective mother. I avoided everybody and everything. I taught myself how to stay as far away from others as possible. In-game nobody knew who I was, who my parents were, or my situation. I could be who I truly wanted to be, not who I had trained myself to be. Coming back to the real world it's like the past two years didn't even happen and I was thrown back into the world that has been so cruel to me the past four years." She let out a small bitter laugh, "Is it bad that a part of me wants to go back into SAO?"

Yoshida stared at Hanako with wide eyes. He knew that her life hadn't been the greatest, but he had no idea it had been that bad. Her mother had been abusive? Just how bad had it been? He took a moment to gather his thoughts so he wouldn't blurt out the wrong thing. He bided his time by taking Hanako's helmet off of her and stowing it away. Once he was pretty sure he knew what he wanted to say he turned back to her.

"Hearing what you went through, no I don't think it's too bizarre that you want to go back to the one place that you found a place to fit in. I'm not great at emotional stuff, so the most I can offer you is a sorry for what you had to go through and an open offer for someone to listen if you need to vent. You're free from your mom now though, right? I mean your dad isn't exactly a great guy but he sounds better than your mom." He shifted in place slightly, "You really don't have to be worried about our small little friend group. We don't judge people on their family lives. If you don't want to talk about something none of us will push you to. Honestly, once Terasaka decides he likes you if you're feeling uneasy feel free to hide behind him. We've all done it in the past. He can look intimidating but he's a real softy."

Hanako played with the sleeve of her shirt, a small smile playing on her lips. For saying he wasn't good at emotional stuff he sure did know exactly what to say to make her feel better. She nodded her head towards the ramen shop, "Let's head in to eat, yeah?"

Yoshida smiled, "No problem, my treat."

Hanako's eyes widened, "Oh, no, you don't have to pay. I have plenty of money. Really, you're doing me a huge favor today. Let me pay."

Yoshida laughed, "Naw, if my dad ever found out I let a girl pay for her meal he'd skin me alive. Honestly, this is nothing. Muramatsu usually gives us all a discount anyway."

"Okay." Hanako slowly answered unsurely, she was used to paying for everything.

If there was one word to describe Muramatsu it would probably be energetic. He had greeted them loudly and exuberantly from behind the counter. Yoshida had been correct, their ramen wasn't the best but it was filling. They had talked about a bunch of random filler conversations; the approaching school year, past stories of their friend group, what they had been up to recently, and other things. They ended up staying past closing time, but Muramatsu's dad didn't seem to mind. To make up for their intrusion they helped clean up a bit. They ended up making plans for the next day to bully Terasaka into taking them shopping for things for Hanako. Both Yoshida and Muramatsu knew that once Terasaka's mom found out about Hanako she would be all but adopted by that motherly woman as they all had been. She'd be more than willing to help them out by driving them around.

Yoshida had driven her back home, this time simply dropping her off at the gate. It was late and he had to get back home before his parents got upset with him. He was pretty sure if he explained the situation they'd be cool with it though. Hanako checked back in with the guard before making her way back up to her apartment.

The moment the door closed behind her it felt like the apartment swallowed her whole. It was so quiet. She made sure that the door was locked before heading to her room. After her new friends took her shopping tomorrow she would have to go through her room and decide what would stay and what needed to go. It wasn't like this room was all that personalized to herself. She wasn't in it all that often growing up. Before SAO her father only had custody of her every other weekend. She wasn't here long enough to really feel the need to go all out. She pretty much had pestered him the most about her gaming equipment, which he had happily bought to keep her occupied and out of his way.

As she got ready for bed she realized she still had the sweatshirt that Yoshida had given her earlier. With a lack of anything else comfortable to wear she decided that would work as her pajamas. She'd clean it and give it back to Yoshida later. She would have to wear the same clothes tomorrow that she had worn today, she really hoped they were clean enough. She got into bed, turned the light off, and simply stared at her ceiling. It took her a very long time to finally fall asleep.

The next morning she very tiredly got ready. Yoshida had told her that he would direct either Terasaka's mom or dad to the front gate here. The front gate would alert her that somebody was here for her, that was the protocol. She was so tired, not getting nearly enough sleep, but she did her best to at least look alert. If it came down to it she could always just collapse back into bed after they got done shopping.

She didn't have to wait long for the front gate to buzz her apartment. She made her way to the front gate, sending a text to the number the government guard Shoji had given her for the first twelve-hour shift guard the night before. She hadn't met the lady yet and didn't know who to look for, so a text would have to work.

Hours later when she made it back home Hanako found a smile on her face. She didn't remember shopping ever being that fun. It had been Terasaka's mom who had driven them around for the day. Yoshida's description of Terasaka had been very accurate. Slightly scary to look at, but a softy at heart. He had very visibly been trying to tame himself down for the day for her sake, which she appreciated. He had grumbled about it but had willingly carried her bags once he saw how much she had been struggling with them. She really needed to work on her strength and stamina.

Yoshida had dragged her to a gaming store and pointed out all the good games that had come out in the past two years. Once she had seen the AmuSphere and the few games connected to it she practically drowned out everything else. Not even blinking at the price tag as she had her father's credit card she bought all the new equipment she would need. She grabbed a few new games as well, but the one she was most eager to try was Alfhime Online. It looked like a more fantasy version of SAO with magic and elves. The coolest-looking part was where she would be able to fly. How cool would it be to fly all on your own?

Hazama had helped her pick out some new outfits, keeping in mind that she would continue to put on some more weight as she got back to fully healthy numbers. One wouldn't normally think to go to Hazama for fashion advice, but she was actually pretty tame about it. Terasaka was pretty much there to be the pack mule, but he didn't seem to mind. He had only met her that morning.

Muramatsu had been the one to take over once they got to the grocery shopping. He had a field day once he realized that she didn't have a budget so the pricetags meant pretty much nothing. He had helped her pick out the better quality stuff and had even given her some meal ideas.

All in all, it had been a great day.

The next month or so practically flew by and she very quickly found that being idle was terrible for her. There was entirely too much time to get stuck in her head. She didn't like the feeling of falling down into a whirlpool of dark thoughts. She had talked to Gov. Man about it (The only adult she had any respect for that wasn't from her SAO friend group) and he had suggested getting a new hobby to keep her busy. She decided to kill two birds with one stone. She had been feeling rather uneasy about the looming threat of her mother. She asked her Gov. Man if he knew any good self-defense classes that she could take. He had willingly helped her sign up to a nearby class that deals with both hand-to-hand combat and shooting. She had been wary at first about learning to shoot a gun, but she found that she was a bit of a natural at it. To her joy, she had found that they also taught a more advanced lesson with weapons, which included knives. She had missed her dual daggers from SAO. She was on her way to getting allowed to join those lessons as well. Through the dojo she was at, she had to get to a certain proficiency in the hand-to-hand lessons before she could start on weapons.

She had also surprisingly helped out her Gov. Man on a couple of issues. Shortly after she bought her AmuSphere and started delving into some new games Gov. Man had sheepishly approached her to ask her to look into a specific character in this shady game that came out. What she had found out helped him arrest this guy who was siphoning money through his character. She had helped him a few more times after that, but not very often and it was never very difficult. It did keep her busy at times, which she appreciated.

She had also been spending a lot of time with her new group of friends. Hazama and Yoshida were still her favorites, but she found herself quite liking Muramatsu and Terasaka as well. Terasaka had been a bit intimidating at first, but spending enough time around showed the soft teddy bear underneath the surface. Muramatsu had very high energy that took some getting used to but he constantly made her laugh. When she wasn't getting to know her new schoolmates she was getting to know the real-life versions of her SAO friends. She spent nearly every weekend at Kirito's house, though with how much time she had spent with him in SAO it didn't feel like nearly enough time. Klien came over once a week and brought a pizza along. He was a lot of fun to hang out with, he helped her out with a lot of mundane things. Like her grocery shopping, he was the only one in their group that had enough free time and a car to drive her around. Agil and his wife owned a bar, which made so much sense why he was such a good shop owner in the game. He didn't have a lot of free time and she still wanted to see him so she would head down to his bar a couple of times a week. Obviously, she was too young to drink, but Agil was having fun coming up with alcohol-free drinks for her. She would also help him out as she did at the shop. Taking orders when they got really busy, sweeping the floors, and washing dishes up. She would even meet up with Silica and Lisbeth for coffee and mall trips once a week or so.

Recently her life had gotten even more chaotic, which again she didn't really mind. The only thing she hated was what they were doing, it was so mind-numbingly boring.

At the moment she was working on a personal project. She muttered under her breath as she worked diligently on the computer program that she was trying to complete. She forgot just how difficult programming was. She was almost done with it, however, and she was very proud of herself that she had actually managed to get this far. She had gotten back into gaming pretty quickly and an off comment by Hazama had caught her attention. I wish I could see what you're doing when you're online. Hanako had laughed at the time saying that usually only tournaments were broadcasted. That got her thinking however, she was very familiar with computer code from growing up with her mother. Would it be possible to code into her account an invisible camera to follow her around that wouldn't be detected by the games she played as a foreign virus? To her astonishment, it wasn't as impossible of a feat as she originally thought it would be. As long as she wasn't interfering with the game's direct code the systems didn't seem to mind the bit of code she had written. Well, that was still theoretical as she hasn't tried to actually launch the camera yet, there were still some bugs she needed to work out. She's been a bit busy lately to focus entirely on the program. She really wanted to get it up and running before school started up, and she was running out of time for that. School started in less than a month, the clock was ticking.

A knock on the door made her jump and she quickly saved what she was working on before shutting down her computer. A frown came over her face, here was her new chaotic friend now. Well, new was a relative term, this was pretty much the only 'friend' she had growing up. She only said new because he had only started visiting her again a few weeks ago.

With a sigh, she opened up the door to see, "Gakushu, come on in."

Gakushu walked in with a bag full of books, he had been sent over by his father a few weeks ago to help to start to help her catch up on her studies.

Gakushu let himself in and headed straight towards the living room, where they usually held their study sessions, without a word. She followed after him, amusement filling her, he was in a bad mood already.

"What's got your undies in a twist?" Hanako teased.

Gakushu glared at her, "Father has been rather... tense, the past few days."

Hanako nodded in understanding as she made her way into the kitchen. School was only a few short weeks away and Asano always seemed to get tenser towards the beginning of the year. She grabbed the box of donuts that Shoji had so kindly run and got for her. She grabbed some tea as well, knowing that he would want some. Or need some depending on just how tense his father has been lately.

She plopped the donuts and tea down in front of him, "Need to bitch about it?" she smiled at him.

Gakushu rolled his eyes, "I would rather get started on your tutoring."

She pouted at him, "Or~ we could skip that today and have a nice relaxing day off and talk about our shitty dads together."

Gakushu sent her a sidewise glance, "Get through today's worksheets and maybe we'll have time to talk."

Hanako pouted further as she sat down right next to him and leaned on him, he tried leaning away but she only followed him, "I remember you being more fun to talk to."

"You have not been around the past two years." He commented offhandedly before tensing up. He had not meant to sound so uncaring/accusing about that. It was hard to turn off the cold exterior that protected him at home. He knew he misstepped when he felt Hanako pull away. While he had his cold exterior to hide behind, Hanako avoided contact with people. He never was able to prove it, but he highly expected that her mother was abusive. It would make sense that she only got close enough to people that she trusted, and he is one of them. Hopefully, that didn't just become was.

"Yeah, I was spending the past two years fighting for my life in a game that desperately wanted to end it." Hanako bit out coldly, "Sorry for not being able to keep in touch."

He reached out and grabbed her wrist, "Sorry."

Hanako glared at him in response.

Gakushu let out a sigh, "I think we could put off the worksheets for an hour or so."

Hanako's glare turned into a smile. She leaned over and plucked a donut from the box and held it out to him, "Truce?"

"Indeed."

"Good, I don't like fighting with you. Are you still friends with that Sakakibara guy?" Hanako asked. Gakushu had been over a couple of times already but this was the first time that she had been able to derail him from studying.

Gakushu rolled his eyes, "That is what you want to talk about?"

"Yes, I want to know what you've been up to the past two years. As you said I haven't exactly been around." She teased him.

A sigh escaped him, "Yes I am still friends with Ren."

"Oh~! First name basis now."

"He can be a pain at times, but he is trustworthy. Perhaps you could get acquainted with him once you join A-Class."

"There is no way in hell that I'll ever climb my way to A-Class. I am two years behind in normal school and if there is one thing you can say about your father's school is that it is anything but normal. I'll be lucky not to drag E-Class's point average down the drains."

Gakushu scowled slightly, "I will not have the only person I actually consider a true friend stay in the foul E-Class. It is full of nobodies, delinquents, and people that will go nowhere in life. I will continue to help you study until you catch up."

"On two years of schooling?" Hanako deadpanned sending him a look.

"You were always smart, you kept up with me with no trouble. Father wouldn't have let me spend time with you if you were stupid. No matter how much my father likes your father's money." He smirked at her, "All you have to do is catch up with me again. It would be nice to actually have a challenge again."

"Two years ago I would say bring it on. Now it's just such a daunting task that I don't think it is even possible. I've spent the past two years learning how to fight giant monsters and how to best combo skills and buffs. Tactical know-how on how to best coordinate the different classes; tanks, warriors, assassins, and ranged. Not history dates, English, and scientific problems."

Gakushu leaned back and took a bite of the donut, "I noticed that you didn't mention maths."