Last Night
"Thank you for watching!"
An 18-year-old orange-haired kid, Joshua Roosevelt, with no defining facial features spoke with enthusiasm as he turned off the stream of his last game. And soon his bright smile vanished before a tired expression appeared on his face.
Slowly his unattentive, unfocused eyes turned to the neatly folded paper on his computer table. The words [Expulsion Warning] in Bold were written as the heading with the name, Angelica Roosevelt's name written at the main header.
Just why is life so unfair? He questioned with a slight despair before looking at the reason once again. A fee of 10,000$ as an annual tuition fee for her elder sister's college.
The good thing was that he still had 3 months to think of a way to earn that much surplus amount. The bad news was that those 3 months were all they had.
Mom. Dad. It's hard. IT'S FUCKING HARD! THIS IS JUST TOO MUCH!
As a single tear trickled down his left eye, his vision blurred and a slow suffocating feeling enveloped him. And then as the single tear turned into a stream, he slowly fell down the chair, onto the ground, and finally crumbled into a baby position, holding his chest tightly as he tried to muffle the sound of his silent cries, trying his best not to worry his sister in the next room. Trying to be the man he was supposed to be.
And with the exhaustion built by a 16-hour-long stream, accompanied by an even longer emotional stress, he slowly drifted into a deep sleep.
Time passed slowly before morning came and…
-Ring! Ring!
A call came from his smartphone, waking him up from his nightmare where he lost his parents once again. His heartbeat high, he jumped in fright only to hit the streaming computer table below which he ended up sleeping on last night.
"Ow!" He spoke, his mood much calmer than before. And then as he scratched his head, his attention was once again brought closer to the smartphone which rang loudly.
Who could be calling me this early morning? He questioned as he saw the caller's ID.
[Potential Scumbag]
"AH! Gregory!" He spoke out loud in slight realisation as he once again looked at the phone, this time at the time, 8 AM, and then with a slight relief he picked up the phone.
-You Bastard! Why the f*ck are you not opening the door to your house? Do you know how worried I was- Cut!
Cutting the call, Joshua stood up before moving towards his door, opening it up and then walking closer to the main gate of the apartment, he saw through the keyhole that his best friend, Gregory William, was indeed standing outside the door with two blue-striped white futuristic headsets in his hand.
-Click!
Opening the door, he saw the ashen face of Gregory who was just about to say a few dozen curse words at him, but then observing the face of Joshua, he simply turned silent and barged into the apartment without saying anything. And following behind him, Joshua reached back to his room where Gregory was already busy arranging things.
Gregory then began attaching the headset to Joshua's computer and smartphone while Joshua cleaned the room, creating enough space for the two to sleep and enter the next game that they were going to stream.
[Arcadia Online]
"Hey, Gregory. It will work out, right?" Joshua asked with self-doubt visible on his face as he finished clearing up the room. His eyes observed Gregory hopefully who was almost done with setting up the system as well.
"It will. Didn't you see the other streams? It is a big hit!" Greorgy spoke as he tried to cheer Joshua up, to which Joshua gave a pressed smile and then nodded.
After they were done setting everything up, the duo first finished breakfast before deciding to enter the game.
As for the starting point, they chose a random settlement.
[Inara Settlement]