After catching his breath, he clambered to his feet and went to the bathroom to take a shower. He had enough exercise for the day.

When he was done, he sat at his desk, closed the financial statements, and ran Planet E. He wanted to relax and take his mind off things. His fingers drummed on his table as he waited for the game to start up. Once it did, he put on his headphones. 

In-game, he dashed out the headquarters of his alliance, heading for the Blue City, a current hotspot where his alliance was fighting to expand its territory. He took a shortcut, running through a series of empty buildings and down a flight of stairs that led to an abandoned subway station. When he reached the bottom of the staircase, a goblin approached and bared its fangs at him. He slugged its face. Its entire body spun like a top, and it crashed onto the concrete floor. 

Raine ran through the station and vaulted over the ticket gates. He slowed down from there. He checked the usual hiding spots. Behind the escalators. Inside the elevators. Above the lights. He saw nothing, so he dropped down to the tracks and started running. Every so often, he dropped a trap: little spiked balls that would detonate when stepped on.

About halfway to the next station, he heard a gunshot. Then another. And another. It sounded like multiple players were ahead. Raine slowed down. He was ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

Shrieks of anger echoed from ahead. Goblins made unique sounds, so he knew it was them. But they weren’t the ones he was worried about. His heartbeat gradually quickened while he continued down the tunnel. Most of the time it was fairly safe for experienced players, but he’d once run into a group of great orcs there. They’d mauled him in seconds.

Some monsters finally came into view. They were dead goblins. Raine felt a little relieved to see that they were low-level ones. They had a few bullet wounds on their chests and looked like they hadn’t put up much of a fight, considering the lack of blood on their weapons.

The developers highly valued the inclusion of such details, so monsters’ corpses usually gave attentive players plenty of information. Raine appreciated that. He enjoyed gleaning information from those details.

He kept moving through the tunnel. It was quiet now, and he hadn’t heard gunfire for a while, making him wonder whether the monsters were dead, or the players. He learned the answer soon.

Several players’ corpses were strewn about the ground, each of them killed with one shot to the chest. Their equipment made it obvious that they were new. Raine knew they were from his alliance from the red crown on their armor. Not far from their bodies lay a pair of dead orcs. They weren’t great orcs, just regular ones, but they still would have given even Raine some trouble. He approached and looked at their corpses. A dozen bullet holes riddled their shabby armor but failed to draw blood. Each orc did have, however, one clean shot on its head. Their swords were still in their hands.

In fact, they looked completely untouched. He understood why the new players hadn’t been looted, but the monsters?

Raine felt a sudden sinking feeling in his stomach. He hurriedly turned on his shield. He whipped his mouse from left to right, trying to see if there was anyone around. There was no one. Still feeling anxious, Raine turned around and sprinted back the way he came. Ambushes were too common in Planet E for him to not err on the side of caution.

But it was too late.

One second he was dashing through the tunnel. The next, he was dead. One shot to the head. Raine froze. He stared blankly at his screen.

“Fuck!” he said, slamming his desk. As soon as he revived, he ran toward the place he’d died. He tackled the goblins in his way and sprinted through the tunnel. No more than two minutes after he reached the station, he heard a click from below.

The roar of an explosion filled his ears. He was dead. Again.

Raine took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. He ground his teeth and shut his laptop. Okay, just a game. He took another deep breath. Just a game.

He got up and left the room. Some fresh air would do him good, he thought. And his roommates were sure to return soon. He wasn’t eager to see any of them. While he walked out of the apartment, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened the messages he’d gotten from Levin. Most of them were about minor things Raine already knew—what to wear, how to act, et cetera.

But some of it was new information. On the 30th, Sora’s flight was going to land in LAX at 10:30 PM. Raine and another bodyguard were to pick her up and accompany her to her hotel in Beverly Hills. Levin said he would lend Raine a Mercedes for him to drive during his time as her bodyguard.

“She plays tennis. Bring it up if you’re any good at it, but don’t act like you know anything about it if you aren’t. Also, she likes music, but I don’t know which genres. Given her family background, maybe classical?”

Raine didn’t know anything about tennis or music. The last time he’d tried to watch a tennis match, he’d fallen asleep. And he only listened to music while driving.

Well, whatever. Her father wants her to have bodyguards that double as friends, but Levin never said I have to be a good friend. As he read and thought about Levin’s messages, his feet had taken him to the nearest corner store. His eyes widened in surprise. When did I get here? Well, I might as well grab some beer since I’m here.

Conveniently forgetting his decision to quit drinking, he bought two cans. He ambled down the street with his phone in one hand, a can of beer in the other, and another can stuffed in his back pocket. When he saw a public bench nearby, he sat down on it. He soon finished reading the last message from Levin and closed his phone. Then he did nothing but drink and watch people come and go. He let his mind go blank. He was on autopilot.

When the first can was empty, Raine crushed it and tossed it at a trash can 20 feet away. It perfectly passed through the center of the opening. He stared at the bin for a second before opening his other can of beer.

Before the metal touched his lip, it stopped. A finger pushed down the can. Raine saw a familiar face and frowned. “What are you doing, kid?”

She ignored him and posed a question. “Have you been recruited yet?”

“Do you have a screw loose?”

“Which company?”

“Are you drunk? Oh wait, you’re still in high school. Damn, are you drinking illegally? Don’t do that; you’ll regret it.”

She clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Moron.”

“Okay, I’m a moron.” Raine drank. “So before you become one too, quit bothering me and go do high schooler shit. You read the article on my site, right? Go work on your essays and stress about getting into Stanford.”

She glared at him. He took another gulp of beer and ignored her. That did the job. She snorted and stomped off.

What a strange girl. She needs help. Raine quickly finished his second can of beer, crushed it, and tossed it into the trash.

It was still the afternoon, and he had nothing to do. Even he knew that getting another beer would be a bad idea. He wasn’t interested in playing Planet E; his deaths still annoyed him. He certainly didn’t feel like working. So instead, he opened his phone on a whim and called the number of the gym that Levin had mentioned. After the second ring, a low voice came through the phone. It had a tinge of a New York accent and sounded somewhat bored.

“Walt speaking. Who’s this?”

“Hey, I’d like to train at your gym over the next month or so. My friend Levin recommended you to me.”

“Levin?” Walt sounded surprised. “Okay. When can you drop by? The sooner the better, by the way. The gym will be packed for most of the week.”

“Then I’ll go today, I guess.”

“Okay, you can drop by for private training anytime you want until 7:30. That’s when the next class starts. What’s your name, by the way?”

“It’s Raine.”

They exchanged goodbyes, and Raine hung up. Then he sighed. Even though he was the one who suggested it, he didn’t want to go today.

Oh wait, I didn’t say anything about private training. Raine rubbed his chin and contemplated. Eh, Levin said he’d pay for it. Whatever.

He went home. He entered the apartment quietly and slipped into his room. After changing into track pants and a short-sleeve shirt, he opened a small drawer under his bed, from which he pulled out a red duffel bag. There was random junk inside. A taekwondo blue belt, a handbook on running, a silver medal from a swim meet, an old baseball glove, and some medals from wrestling tournaments. He spilled everything into the drawer and stuffed a towel and a change of clothes into the bag. Before heading off, he went to his laptop to see the gym’s exact location.

He left the apartment with the quiet, easy swiftness that came with his regular midnight excursions to get wasted. He headed for the gym at a relaxed pace. As he did so, he wondered whether he really wanted to go. There was plenty of time before 7:30, and in the first place, he didn’t need to have a private lesson. He just had beer, too, and it was probably a bad idea to kickbox for the first time with alcohol in his bloodstream, even if he barely felt it.

Those thoughts didn’t stop him from actually going to the gym, but they did make him linger outside, staring at the entrance like an idiot. Should I just go back home and sleep? I came all the way here, though. Argh. To enter or not to enter? That is the question. Maybe I’ll just come back—

“Hey!” a cheerful voice came from behind him, interrupting his thoughts, and he felt a friendly slap on the shoulder. He turned and saw a man with a worn-out backpack grin at him.