At nineteen-hundred on the dot, the Tozai Line did its usual magic trick and turned a platform full of salarymen into a single compressed organism with a briefcase for every rib.
"Excuse me. Sorry. I think my bag is stuck to your coat."
"It has declared a union with my buttons."
<< Why is it always my ribs. Did I offend a briefcase deity in a previous life. >>
I am TsubakiShiki. Thirty. Single. Office worker in Otemachi. The kind that supports the people who support the people who pretend we have a system. My home is in Funabashi, a short walk from Nishi-Funabashi Station. The walls are thin, the rent is survivable, and my upstairs neighbor treats rhythm games like a competitive sport. Each weekday I ride Otemachi to Nishi-Funabashi in the evening, and the reverse in the morning. It is a commute that builds character and also destroys knees.
The doors closed with the sound of a sigh that had given up on humanity. The cabin glowed under fluorescent lights. An ad promised a vitamin jelly that could restore my will to live. The crowd formed a perfect Tetris of shoulders and umbrellas. A student read manga, a salaryman snored, a child gnawed on a strap like it owed him snacks.
Today at work I fixed a date field with the wrong day, reconciled a stack of accounts that all had different ideas about math, and survived a meeting where nobody stood and nothing went up. Section Chief Tanabe sent me two emails with the phrase "per my last email" that felt like polite threats. I would call my job slop, but slop has calories. This work is beige steam.
I opened my phone and launched Chirp, the social app where opinions go to get stepped on. The feed served a cat inside a bowl, a poll about whether microwaving fish in a shared office should be considered a crime, and a clip of a man trying to backflip off a vending machine. Then my thumb froze.
"Stellar Frontier Online: Community Revival Server 'RE:Ignition' is live!"
The headline was a crit to the soul. The thumbnail showed the old starry logo and a phoenix that looked like it knew me personally.
For a moment the train dissolved. The noise dimmed. The ad disappeared. I stood again on the Ship's plaza with music that made the floor feel like a festival. I heard the chime of mission counters. I smelled the imaginary ozone of laser effects that never existed in the first place.
Stellar Frontier Online. SFO. A sci-fantasy action MMO that made movement feel like a dance and made failure feel like an education. Missions that threw you into neon jungles and rust deserts under broken moons. Bosses that treated you like a chew toy unless you learned their secrets. Social spaces where people emoted until your frame rate begged for mercy. A world that taught me the rhythm of dodges the way school taught me the alphabet.
They shut it down one year ago. Corporate words came out of a mouth that did not care. Thank you for your support. We will always remember. The servers blinked off and a lot of grown adults pretended not to cry.
"Community revival server. RE:Ignition."
I tapped the post with the reverence of a priest touching a holy relic. The page loaded in Japanese and English. A small team had rebuilt the server for love, not money. Modded content. Raids with extra mechanics. Enemies with sharper AI. An optional Peril Mode for people who think health bars are a suggestion. Rewards that favored risky play. Cross region parties. A rewritten patcher. Zero monetization. A line that read, "We are too poor to accept your money."
I laughed. The man mashed into my shoulder leaned away one entire centimeter.
"You all right?"
"First taste of happiness in months. Side effects include noise."
<< This is not a drill. The phoenix brought snacks. >>
There were screenshots of the hub. The same fountain, now with a seasonal hologram of a phoenix rocketing into star sparkles. The comments were a flood. LET'S GO. I MISSED YOU. I NEED PTO. Someone had already posted a beginner guide, someone else had posted a meme about dying to a pit, someone had posted a graph that proved nothing and everything.
My thumb drifted toward the share button. My old guild, Starloop, still had a group chat. Our last message had been a tapioca photo under cherry blossoms with a caption that said "life drop rate too low." If I dropped this link, they would crawl out of the woodwork like we were still living between missions.
I could see it. Rika, our guild leader, would appear with fifty exclamation points and a screenshot of an energy drink. Kiba, a man whose career goals were complicated by naps, would show up with a spreadsheet for optimal XP per minute and zero shame. Arashi would arrive with a macro nobody asked for. Pyon would post a bunny emoticon and ask for handouts. We would log in. We would yell. It would be perfect.
Then my stomach made a long, low sound that translated into a single word. "Kiba."
If I told them now, Kiba would power level at a speed that violated several labor laws. He would discover an exploit that doubled EXP if you fought near a certain hazard while spinning. He would text "lol catch up" and I would see red, then see more red, then see the defeat screen.
<< No. Not again. I did not sell twelve months of my life to reach number one in raids and arenas just so I could lose my lead on day one to a man who thinks sleeping is optional. >>
I closed the share sheet and favorited the post with the affection of a dragon hoarding a coin. Then I scrolled the setup guide. Client, patcher, anti-cheat note, Discord link with a plea to be normal. There was even a tool to import your old fashion files if you had them. It sounded like a miracle and possibly a minor crime.
We surfaced on the bridge and the city threw a ribbon of sunset across the river. We sank back into the tunnel and I stared at my reflection in the window. Pale face, fluorescent lighting, eyes that had done their time in spreadsheets and still twitched toward adventure. The station lights flickered past like a string of crit numbers.
<< If I text them now, I eat dust tomorrow. If I keep quiet, I eat progress today. I would like to eat progress. Also onigiri. Mostly progress. >>
Nishi-Funabashi arrived. The doors sighed open. I escaped into the evening like a cork escaping a bottle and set a course for the nearest convenience store with the focus of a man who had just remembered Chicken Soboro Onigiri existed.
Inside, the air conditioning greeted me like a healer main. Shelves glowed with obediently wrapped snacks. I grabbed two Chicken Soboro Onigiri, a bottle of barley tea, an energy drink that promised brain lightning, and a red bean bun that I promised not to eat at 1 a.m. The clerk scanned my items with eyes that had seen too much.
"Warm the onigiri?"
"I will speedrun them."
"Have fun with that."
Outside, I cracked the tea, tore open an onigiri, and took a bite that traveled straight to my soul. Savory chicken crumble, soft rice, the kind of comfort that does not ask questions.
<< Remember the day we cleared the final expansion boss. Eighteen hours without a break. Rika screamed victory so loud her cat learned vocabulary. Kiba fell out of his chair. I cried, but my mic was muted, so it sounded like stoicism. World first. World very tired. >>
I walked and ate and did not trip. The shrine on the corner had a small gacha capsule on the offering box. The laundromat hummed like a boss charging a move. The bicycle shop owner polished spokes as if polishing could change fate.
My apartment door opened into a rectangle that critics would describe as "functional." Shoes off. Lights on. VR gear out from under the bed like ancient relics raised from a tomb. The visor was still a sleek black visor. The haptic gloves curled like they had been asleep for a year. The base stations blinked little green eyes that said "we remember."
"Hello, my old poor choices," I said. "We will be very responsible tonight. That was a lie."
Cables went into ports. Ports rejected cables. Cables tried again. The PC woke and acted like it recognized me. The desktop wallpaper showed the Ship plaza during a festival, lanterns floating like jellyfish who had learned to party.
A sticky note on my monitor read, "Do one thing today that Future Shiki will thank you for."
"Future Shiki," I said, "prepare to become unbearable."
I pasted the RE:Ignition link into the browser. The site opened with stars and a phoenix logo that sketched light. "Welcome back," it said without saying it. Patch notes sat in neat boxes. Combat changes. Mission rotations. Economy tweaks. Raid content marked with a label that made my heart accelerate. A sidebar said "Online: 4,111." That seemed like a lot and also not nearly enough.
Download. The patcher crawled at a speed suitable for reflection. I ate the second onigiri, drank barley tea, and sniffed the energy drink like a raccoon about to make a mistake.
<< Checklist time. Food, secured. Sleep, negotiable. Work, 10 a.m. release meeting with Tanabe, king of "per my last email." I can dance through this on three hours and a grudge. Guild, do not text. Character name, very important. No cringe. No xXx. No food names. That last rule is nonnegotiable. >>
The patcher dinged. The client launched. The boot music climbed like a sun. An announcement popped up. "Servers are small and powered by hope. If anything breaks, check Discord. Please do not be rude."
"Noted."
Account created. Password saved. A legal promise to behave. Character creation loaded with the soft light of a store that sells faces. I slid through hairstyles and scars. I picked hair that said "I slept three hours and I am fine with this." I hovered over classes, then settled on the striker that had defined my glory. Close range, fast hands, gap closers that felt like teleportation, combos that punished hesitation.
"Yes," I said. "Come here."
The name field blinked with an attitude.
"ShikiK." Delete.
"OrbitBreaker." Taken.
"ChickenSoboro." I glared at the onigiri wrapper. "No."
"Shii."
The spinner turned. "Name available."
"Perfect."