+ + +

Kiu ran a brush across her hair, smoothing out the kinks and tangles. Her poofy thick hair fought furiously, stubbornly resistant to external maintenance. The bristles caught against knots, effectively stalling her brush from proceeding any further. The crown of her head was a bird's nest in total disarray.

The black-haired girl sighed.

This was exactly why people always nagged that it was important to brush regularly. Left alone, the knots became a monstrosity to battle.

Kiu was a notorious procrastinator on issues related to her physical appearance and she often had some kind of perpetual bed hair from constantly rolling in blankets. She liked to nap on colorful squishy bean bag couches, and although it was theoretically unhealthy to sleep on virtual reality, the high school student was perpetually sleep deprived. Kiu often found it more comfortable online than in her own home in real life.

As she fumbled around the room looking for a wide-toothed comb to tackle her cosmetic disaster, she briefly entertained the idea of deleting her entire avatar entirely and re-spawning the default model from scratch. However, she shook her head and decided that it was far too heavy-handed and unreasonable for what little value it was worth. It wasn't like Kiu was going to delete her avatar every single day.

She wasn't that much of a disaster.

...Well, yet.

In a couple days, maybe she would be.

+ + +

Five minutes later, Kiu still couldn't find her wide-toothed comb.

The exasperated black-haired girl thought about summoning another one, but the thought was rather vexing because she knew there were at least five of them buried somewhere in this room. The clutter was rather extreme, in this sense. For instance, suppose you couldn't find the television remote? Just make another one! Before you knew it, there were a dozen different remotes lying around in random places.

Of course, it was even worse with hair clips and elastics. Those were everywhere. They tended to get themselves in the most obscure places. She held up a stray hair tie in her fingertips and tried not to think about how long it has been collecting dust bunnies while lost under the sofa. 

Having a larger room didn't help at all. If anything, it made it much worse.

Kiu considered opening the database console to run a search for cosmetic objects constrained to a radius around her present location. However, she did not remember the 16-digit object codes off of the top of her head, and it would be a tedious hassle to pull out the directory. The intelligent voice-activated search assist (VASA) engine was currently a little buggy, and she wasn't really in the mood to scour through a giant table of numbers today. 

If anything, the easiest thing would probably be just to go take a shower with lots of conditioner.

The high school student exhaled and looked around the room.

Only...

There was just one problem.

When Kiu had initially designed the floor plan for the 「Tower Library」, she had neglected to place a bathtub. 

There wasn't even a bathroom anywhere in the Tower. There was certainly not any plumbing or pipes.

She had never imagined that she'd ever use the Tower for such a mundane thing. Virtual reality mimicked many features of the real world, but the designers of 「MagnoliaOnline」 astutely decided to leave the bathroom features out. It was still possible to feel the urgency to go to the toilet, but that meant the user's real body needed to void itself. Most people just logged off and went to the bathroom in real life.

Kiu rubbed her forehead, her tangle of long hair swaying down her back like a mass of tumbleweed.

She made a mental note that she really ought to add a shower... maybe a hot tub... to the next expansion of the Tower.

Yes, that would make her life much nicer.

She could finally do away with dry shampoo and air cleansing.

For now, she had to "improvise" a remedy this situation, and Kiu immediately had a solution in mind.

The girl opened a 「Teleport」 portal.

+ + +

It was mild November evening, and an early cover of snow had dusted over the city where Kiu lived on Earth. Meanwhile, the online world of 「Q's Server」 was unaffected by the seasonal irregularities of the weather. Climate and temperature was defined in a handful of master parameter files, and the server was divided into numerous biomes that underwent their own artificial seasons.

This area was colloquially known as 「The Waterfall」, precisely for the self-evident reason that a massive series of cascades, rapids, and waterfalls cut through the region. The environment was temperate and it was a deciduous forest of intense greenery, sheer cliffs, and rocky mountains. Overall, it was a kind of wilderness that looked different every time you visited. The ecosystem was alive, after all. The vines, trees, and fauna continued to grow — quite rapidly too. 

If you came during the ‘Spring’, you could marvel at the sight of baby squirrels, foxes, and bears climbing and playing in the meadows. As flowers bloomed, migratory birds sang and built their nests. A flock of swans floated gracefully across the lake, with ugly ducklings struggling to paddle along in tow. Fireflies lit up the sky in the summer night.

The animals here weren’t afraid of humans, and that was one of the reasons why this place was so precious. Kiu loved this place very much. Even when she wandered this place alone, there was always a breathtaking little scene of life that could be witnessed. Sure, perhaps it was a little mundane and ordinary, but sometimes Kiu felt like she could stare at it forever.

Kiu had a satisfied glint in her eyes as she finished dabbing her face with a damp towel.

Her hair was neatly detangled and wet from the impromptu 'shower' that she had taken.

There was a ball of levitating soapy liquid beside her, which was the waste collected from water that she had siphoned from nature. The black-haired girl was adamantly against polluting the environment, even if it was only virtual reality. Later on, she would probably 「DELETE」 it so there wouldn't be any trace of her presence the next time she came back.

The high school girl tapped away at a command console as she walked away from the slippery rocks.

She disabled the 「NO ACCESS」 barrier that she had put up briefly while washing her hair. It was mostly due to self-consciousness more than anything else. Of course, Kiu was not nearly so bold to go streaking in the nude in the middle of the wilderness, and she had only washed her head while fully dressed. Nonetheless, Kiu had always been a deeply private person, and she didn't like the idea of strangers walking in on her personal time.

Suddenly, her feet collided with some kind of large heavy thing on the ground with a dull thump.

Huh?

Kiu looked down at the ground.

+ + +

The black-haired girl immediately stumbled backwards and fell onto her rear end. It stung sharply as she landed and gasped.

Her eyes widened with shock and her stomach churned violently.

It was a corpse.

A corpse of a deer, but not just any kind of ordinary road kill—

—This one was mutilated and hacked up in half a dozen different ways.

Bright red blood pooled around in a puddle, soaking into the grass.

The abdomen bore scores of vicious stab wounds, and the legs were amputated at the fetlock. Its torso was impaled with a stainless steel pole, and its fine coat was charred and burned to black crisp. The ears were torn off and left strewn around. Entrails and guts spilled all over the soil. Someone had taken the horns of the stag, chopped it off, and shoved it straight into the throat of the deer until the bone tip penetrated through the back of the cracked skull.

A smiley face was carved deeply into the pelt of the dead animal and sliced up all over.

: )

Kiu felt her throat choke up.

Welling tears rapidly blurred her vision.

Who...? What?

Who would perform such a senseless act of violence?

And... WHY...?

∎