The bedroom’s lights shut off just as Dresden flopped onto his bed with a sigh. Another tiring day in his life finally over with.

He couldn’t help but wonder just what was keeping him going at this point. That niggling hope that he’ll be able to see a better day eventually? Maybe. But at this point, he didn’t know, it just felt so damn pointless now, living alone to sustain himself and what’s left of his family’s home, all the while scrambling to finish his studies and get that bachelor’s degree… it was too much.

Of course, he couldn’t exactly just give up, he made a promise after all. Now that they’re gone, it was all the more difficult for him to just suddenly abandon this. All he had left was this house that was far too big for just one college student to handle.

Shaking those morbid thoughts away, he closed his eyes as he attempted to bring himself to sleep.

…

And yet, for all the tiredness he’d accrued from all the moving around he’d done for the day, he just couldn’t bring himself to sleep. Even after all the tossing and turning and the different places he’d put his pillows on, he just couldn’t fall asleep.

Sighing for the umpteenth time, he opened his eyes and got up from his bed, walking over to his desk and opening up his laptop to browse the internet in hopes of letting his eyes get tired enough to eventually fall asleep.

Glancing at the time and seeing that it was half-past 10, he grimaced. At this point, he really should be asleep already, but he just felt restless tonight for some reason…

“This must have been what mom had meant when she said I shouldn’t get too addicted to coffee…” Dresden muttered to himself as he started to watch some random educational videos.

After a while, however, he found that he wasn’t any more tired than he was lately, so he moved to close his web browser but instead he accidentally clicked on some random advertisement that just randomly appeared, making him jump.

“Fuck, damn pop-up ads…” he groaned, rubbing the back of his neck as he went to close the browser to turn off his laptop once and for all but then something caught his eye. The website that he’d gotten into was… empty.

Save for a distinct line of text in the middle of the screen.

Do you want an escape?

“Whoa, did I just suddenly find myself in an ARG?” Dresden said to himself, suddenly intrigued at this website. After a second, two buttons, Yes and No, appeared. “Well… I might as well at this point.” He shrugged, finding no reason to close the laptop at this point, it was already nearing midnight anyways so he’ll get in trouble even if he did manage to fall asleep now. And so he clicked Yes.

After a second, the website loaded in and it was now a character creation screen.

This must be for some sort of RPG game. Looking through his options and all the different buttons that he could click, he found a rather unusual one. Hovering his cursor on it, it seems to be a Splitscreen Mode button, clicking it, it basically did as told. It split his screen, and now he had two different character customization windows.

“Huh.” Dresden couldn’t help but blink at it. Splitscreen RPG? Now this is really getting interesting.

After thinking for a moment, he decided he might as well get creative, and decided to roll with it. He could still click on the splitscreen button in the middle again to go back to just making a single character, but he decided against it, this might actually be interesting to check out with splitscreen mode enabled after all.

First, creating a male character on the first creen, he named it Aezan Diaz, a boy clad in a white jacket, light blue shirt, and light blue pants, with dark hair and green irises. Then creating a female character on the second screen, naming it Lia Saejan, a girl clad in a black jacket and light green dress, with white hair tied in a ponytail and blue irises.

… well, they were pretty horrible names, but eh, it was the best he could make for the moment. Satisfied enough with his creation, he clicked the ready button in the bottom left part of both screens one by one.

After both were ready, a warning pop up appeared.

Warning, you cannot go back after accepting this. Are you sure you want to escape permanently?

“What?” Dresden narrowed his eyes at the wording. “A permanent escape…?”

That must mean that the game would be so addicting that he wouldn’t be able to turn back, and might just abandon everything… He didn’t really believe that, but even if that were the case, would he regret it?

… Maybe. But… he just wanted an escape.

Even if he couldn’t go back—as long as he was someone else, he wouldn’t need to worry.

He would finally be able to leave his past behind.

Wasn’t that what he wanted deep down?

Resolving himself, he agreed to the pop up, clicking on Yes once more.

His vision turned dark.

---

Ding. A distinct notification sound chimed out, and Dresden opened his eyes… and found himself absolutely confused and nauseous with his vision being all messed up—he was seeing double, literally.

[SPLITSCREEN MODE ENABLED. ERROR: ONLY ONE USER FOUND. ACTIVATING PARALLELIZATION SYSTEM…]

Before his nausea proved to be too much to handle for him, his nausea disappeared and he found himself used to the weird state of vision he had now. Speaking of which… where was he?

Or where were they?

… they?

His eyes widened as he found himself looking at… each other.

“What the hell?” Two voices came out at simultaneously, one of a boy, and another of a girl. “Who are…” Dresden—or rather, they didn’t even bother finishing that sentence as they came to the realization of their being now.

Dresden was now in two bodies all at the same time.

Looking at each other closely, however, Dresden could recognize these two.

“Aezan Diaz.” The boy said, pointing to himself. Okay, it seems that controlling this wasn’t as hard as he thought.

“Lia Saejan.” The girl said, nodding as she also pointed to herself.

Right. Somehow Dresden was able to control them both independently of each other at the same time… the exact methods, however… he didn’t know.

It was almost as if he had a new muscle and also somehow knew how to properly use already. In the topic of being able to do things simultaneously, however…

Aezan, the male body, suddenly raised his hand, Lia doing the same, both their hands formed a fist, shaking up and down and… he formed scissor with two fingers and she formed paper with a spread of her fingers.

Rock paper scissors worked.

“Ha! I won!” Aezan exclaimed with a fistpump and a grin, and Lia formed a confused expression on her face.

“That worked…?” Lia said to herself in disbelief.

Dresden was astonished, he was actually able to roleplay two characters at once! That’s like the ultimate loner power!

… shaking those thoughts away from his head—heads? Their heads? At this point they didn’t know. It was all weird as hell and right now he was just glad not having to wake up to being late to class.

“Wait a minute.” Both bodies suddenly paused as they noticed something.

Turning to the front, they saw two floating… windows?

[WELCOME TO VAERA! AS THANKS FOR ACTIVATING SPLITSCREEN MODE ALONGSIDE BEING PLAYERS OF VAERA, REWARDS HAVE BEEN SENT TO YOUR INBOX!]

“What?”

[HOWEVER, SINCE ONLY ONE USER WAS FOUND, THE PARALLELIZATION SYSTEM HAS BEEN ACTIVATED.]

“Parallelization?” Aezan tilted his head, turning to look at Lia, who was still looking at the windows, “So this is how I’m able to control these two bodies simultaneously without actually overloading my brain, huh? Wait, does this mean I have two brains now?”

“Stop talking to yourself, we have two brains now.” Lia said to him with a snort, “We’re the same person, but we’re not the same person either. Got that?”

“… What the fuck why is this working so well?” Aezan said, looking at Lia with widened eyes, who seemed to have a grin on her face, “It actually looks like two people are having a conversation even though it’s just one guy talking to himself in reality!”

“Thinking about it, that sounds like a rather apt metaphor for authors who write novels and stuff.” Lia said, blinking this time. “… That actually sounds depressing.”¹tfw author roasts himself with his fictional characters

“Yeah it does…” Aezan agreed—though technically they were both the same people so this whole conversation was pointless other than to confirm the capabilities of this parallelization thingy Dresden now suddenly had. “Let’s… try not to think about that now.”

“Yeah. Let’s not.”

Then they were silent, not really having anything else to do since they were really just talking to themselves. They turned back to the weird RPG-like windows and watched as the text changed to something new with a mental action as though they were clicking the window.

[AS THE PARALLELIZATION SYSTEM HAS SUCCESSFULLY ACTIVATED, YOU NOW HAVE ACCESS TO THE ALTWORLD SYSTEM. PLEASE ENJOY YOUR GREAT ESCAPE, USER Dresden.]

That last message sent a chill down their spines, and after the window disappeared, they were able to see their character’s status window, alongside their HP, MP and SP in some sort of HUD in the corner of their vision.

[Aezan Diaz / M / LV. 1] {HP: 280/280 MP: 110/110 SP: 24/24}

[EXP UNTIL LV. UP: 500]

[PHYS. POWER: 4]

[MAGI. POWER: 1]

[SPEED: 5]

[ENDURANCE: 2]

[PERCEPTION: 3]

[UNIQUE ABILITY: PARALLELIZATION SYSTEM (SYNCED WITH: Lia Saejan)]

[PASSIVE ABILITY: PHYSICAL ENDURANCE (LV. 1)]

=~=~=~=~=~=

[Lia Saejan / F / LV. 1] {HP: 140/140 MP: 280/280 SP: 12/12}

[EXP UNTIL LV. UP: 500]

[PHYS. POWER: 2]

[MAGI. POWER: 4]

[SPEED: 4]

[ENDURANCE: 1]

[PERCEPTION: 4]

[UNIQUE ABILITY: PARALLELIZATION SYSTEM (SYNCED WITH: Aezan Diaz)]

[ACTIVE ABILITY: MANA BOLT (LV. 1)]

=~=~=~=~=~=

“Whoa, this is actually really cool.” Aezan said, blinking, “This feels like VR… on steroids.”

“Not like we were actually able to try VR back then.” Lia supplied, a hand on her chin as she looked at the windows, “Still, this is rather interesting. I wonder just what this great escape will lead us to… and whether or not Dresden can handle playing both a Warrior and a Mage at the same time.”

“Referring to ourselves in third person now huh? That actually sounds neat, and a lot less confusing for our thoughts.” Aezan said, glancing through the stat window and looking through each of the different menus, “Alright, let’s—”

The ground suddenly shook and they both heard the loud roar of some sort of monster in the forest they were in.

“Of course, the first encounter that’s actually a tutorial but also isn’t because the game isn’t giving you any guidance at all. How typical.” Lia said, subconsciously in a stance to get ready for the enemy, wherever it was. Aezan followed suit and got into a stance with his fists at the ready.

Both of them were unarmed, and definitely not ready for this sudden encounter, but, well, they didn’t even know if they could have been ready for this.

The ground shook more violently this time, and with the increasingly violent shaking of the ground around them, the two of them looked at each other and decided that this was probably not the encounter for them.

So they did the only thing two level 1 characters could against any high-level monster.

They ran.

---