Author's Note: It's holiday time for me, and I'll probably be unavailable to post a chapter next week, so here's next week's chapter early!
Max's paranoia nagged at him for several hours.
He'd eventually put his laptop away, opting instead to work on a small high-grade Gundam model kit. He managed to build the head and sand some of the armor pieces before placing everything back into the box with a sigh.
Unable to focus, he found himself opening his laptop again. He left his room to grab a lemon-lime flavored soda from the fridge.
Once back in his room, he closed the door and dove into an unfinished Jump document he'd been working on for awhile, based on the novel Super Gene. He polished it up, his mind no longer stuck on earlier events; he was too busy making sure this Jump doc was perfect. Max reached out with his finger and clicked 'submit', leaning back with a satisfied smile, waiting for a response from the busy Discord server.
Despite tons of activity in the power combinations channel and the new Jump channel, only one person took notice—just a single reaction, a heart emoji. The username that sent it was someone calling themselves 'TheR3ALJumpChan'.
Max's own tag was 'MaxPowerJumper'.
A new message popped up almost instantly after the heart emoji. The user complimented his jump, praising its generosity and saying they appreciated Jumpers succeeding, while also noting that the challenges in the drawbacks section were clever and still useful. Max's spirits lifted. He chuckled softly, reading the words on screen, then laughed in his head at their username. It was about par for the course this evening...
'TheR3ALJumpChan? Really?.. There's no way, right?..'
Max paused for a moment and then sent them a DM, asking very directly:
—Are you Vespera?—
—Isn't that a bright shining star? I guess you could call me a star, if you want to!—
'She didn't deny it at all!' Max thought, eyes narrowing.
He quickly opened a second browser window, searching for Vespera. When he saw where the name came from, he smirked and typed:
—In Latin, that means 'Evening Star' or simply 'Evening.' Maybe even 'Lady of the Evening'?—
—That's not as flattering, now, is it? :(—
Max's eyebrows shot up at the response. He decided to test further, thinking of questions to try and catch 'her'. Each one was cleverly avoided with roundabout answers, only making him more suspicious.
After several minutes, somehow the conversation was guided byTheR3ALJumpChan into a friendly back-and-forth about Jumpchain fundamentals—without Max even noticing. They discussed their favorite builds and ideas for quite some time.
—Your the guy who always goes on about The Legendary Mechanic, right? Because not only is TLM one of the best ever written, but the Jumpchain based on it is one of the greatest ever created. It should be a final jump or a supplement for the last, because of its ability to trade more time in the jump for more choice points. I see you've fully taken advantage of that in one of your posted builds—top-tier choices.—
Max eyes sparkled, feeling a flicker of excitement push aside the nearly forgotten suspicion. He loved talking about The Legendary Mechanic—and who wouldn't? Such an amazing book!
—Yeah, I like that one the most. It's my favorite, and it's sick as far as Jumpchain stuff goes!—
Their next response was swift and enthusiastic, they complimenting Max's Jumpchain character builds and seemed to grow more excited as they discussed his ideas.
After awhile, he realized he had gotten tangled up in TheR3ALJumpChan's pace, and his suspicions crept back again. He was surprised he'd forgotten his original intention.
Max had meant to trip her up into revealing she was Vespera but had just blabbed about himself and other Discord members he thought made good Jumpchain choices instead.
—So, we've talked about my builds. Where's one of your Jumpchain posts? Link me up!—
—Well, I just like to read and evaluate how people create god-like characters. It's very interesting to me… I did make one really fun way to do a Jumpchain. But it's not for the general public's eyes, though… You showed me yours, so I guess I should show you mine, right?—
Max slapped his hand to his forehead at the cheesy joke. He rolled his eyes and typed back:
—Sure, why not?—
A new direct message appeared immediately after. It was a drive link.
Max reached, ready to click the link... then paused. His eyes scanned the words in the link address—something about it felt… more than a little off.
It was so hilariously, blatant obvious that he almost suspected it was a prank or worse—malware.
-...SkyDrive/storagesharenowyouarearealjumperyouclickedthelinkthisisyouagreeingtonewjumpchainadventure.com—
He stared at the link blankly for a few moments, eyebrows raised. His mind flashed back to the strange woman and the truck earlier—her scent, her little smug smile disappearing into the alleyway. He chuckled softly and repeated his earlier thoughts:
'Nah, there's no way… right? Right!? I'm going to go in to work tomorrow and Vespera is going to show up... And just end up being a super hot nerd looking for graphic novels, here on business like she said. Which means this person on Discord is..? Man, I don't know...'
Curiosity gnawed at him. Common sense told him not to click a totally fake, scam-looking link like that! He hesitated.
Either he was about to dive into an adventure—or he was completely losing it—the stress of the day, the close call with the truck, or, maybe Vespera's over the top presence was pushing him deep into the realm of escapism?
At the end of all of his thought processes, he kept coming back to how overly obvious the username TheR3ALJumpChan was, and the link they sent? Come on!
"Ah, fuck it… 50/50... Why not?.. This had better not crash my laptop!"
Max clicked the link.
The screen flickered. The browser window blurred for a moment before suddenly flashing white and refusing to load further. The display seemed a bit brighter, even though Max's hands weren't near the F11 or F12 keys.
''Fuck! That's bright!''
The light bothered his eyes for a moment, at the instant the white screen appeared. He squinted, blinking rapidly, trying to close the browser window, but his computer seemed frozen. He figured he had probably just downloaded the world's greatest computer virus.
'Ugh, I knew that was a load of bullshit...' Max thought, already regretful for clicking that link like a dummy.
'Screw it, I'm going to bed. I should've known better than to get my hopes up...'
He held his laptop open a crack, hoping that it would suddenly load the page the link was supposedly sending him to, that it would be a fun Jumpchain playstyle document or something... After a solid minute he gave up and shut his laptop with a soft click.
Max rubbed his temples, extremely annoyed that he had probably just bricked his laptop due to having delusions of grandeur, amidst a stress induced meltdown.
Maybe it was some weird version of 'love at first sight'— when he met Vespera for the first time outside his work, after all? Tomorrow, at the comic shop, he would find out for sure... afterwards, he'd go onto Discord with his work computer and reportTheR3ALJumpChan for spreading malware!
His room was now dark and quiet, except for the faint hum of the laptop powering down. Max was pleased to have an answer to the mystery of the evening: he had simply overthought everything and probably subconsciously wished for some isekai nonsense to become reality, while at the same time not making a move when a lady out of his league was clearly flirting with him... sad!
It had just been a string of weird coincidences. Maybe he just needed a vacation—or to hire one more good employee to pick up the slack. Life was clearly starting to get to him.
Yawning, he let the towel still wrapped around his waist fall to the floor. He hadn't bothered getting dressed after his shower—Max usually preferred to sleep in his birthday suit.
Pulling back the covers, Max slid into bed, trying to settle in as comfortably as possible while ignoring his headache and feeling a bit down that his suspicions had been totally wrong.
But just before slipping into darkness, he once again felt a strange lingering unease...
...
The next morning.
Max woke up feeling like he'd been run over by a truck—despite not drinking, and even more so considering he'd dodged one the night before! His temples throbbed, and his limbs felt heavy, way more than the workout from the night before should have caused them to.
He groaned, glancing at the clock. It was late—way later than he'd intended to stay in bed.
He sat up, rubbing his face, and realized he needed to get to the comic shop soon. It was already 8:55!
Max threw on a clean T-shirt, underwear, and socks, while ignoring the pairs of jeans in his dresser, deciding to keep it simple and comfy today. As he rummaged through his closet, he made a mess, tossing clothes aside in search of his sweats and a clean hoodie.
Then it struck him—he remembered the basket of clean laundry still sitting on the couch in the living room, untouched for days. Max was definitely going to put that laundry away tonight after work, scouts honor!
Before heading out into the living room, he looked back at his desk, where an open box of granola bars caught his eye. He grabbed one, tore off the wrapper, and took a quick bite, the crunch filling the room as he glanced into his backpack—filled with prize cards for the tournament he'd organized for later that evening.
Max shoved the rest of the bar into his mouth while slinging his pack over his shoulder, then gripped the doorknob and turned it, getting ready to step into his living room. As he opened the door and swung it wide, he looked back one last time into his room, just to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything obvious. And sure enough, he had. On the floor was his own deck of cards—he also wanted to play some Yu-Gi-Oh! tonight at the tournament.
The door swung open with a quick kick as he glanced back into his room. He was about to turn back in to grab his deck but froze mid-step into the living room, brow furrowed. The space behind the open door should have been dark and quiet—just another ordinary morning. But something was off. A faint, unnatural glow lit up the normally dark bedroom from behind his still-turned head, as if the living room had suddenly, inexplicably, become brighter than it had any right to be.
Max slowly turned his head, a strange look on his face, as that familiar mix of anticipation and dread crept into his chest. What he saw next was most definitely not his living room. Max just stood there, mid stride, with no pants on, and he was most certainly shocked!