Chapter 1: 1. Tachibana Yori loves her cat

The trouble with virtual reality is that you can't bring your cat along with you.

It was a limitation of full-dive technology — while it was certainly possible to "simulate" your cat in the digital world, anyone who truly loved their pets could easily tell that the four-legged replica generated by the computer wasn't actually the same as the warm-blooded furry companion that accompanied them in real life. 

To the fair, the technology was incredible.

Fifth generation virtual reality headsets mimicked smell, taste, touch, and all the human senses at hyper-physiologic resolution. When the latest consoles were released, MetaCorp™ had advertised that their beta-testers were unable to distinguish the difference between the digital world and reality. You could visit an aquarium, touch grass, or go swimming in the ocean — and it felt exactly as if you were performing those identical activities on Earth. The technological progress was absolutely stunning.

Tachibana Yori loved it a lot.

As a teenager, he was completely addicted to playing VRMMORPGs on virtual reality.

It wasn't any exaggeration to say that sometimes he felt more "alive" online than in real life.

This was actually a very common phenomenon. Lots of young adults grew so obsessed with virtual reality that that their grades and careers suffered. There was an entire generation of unemployed who spent all day wasting away on virtual reality. It was considered both a public health and economic crisis by many major governments in the world; the addiction epidemic was so bad that many east asian countries even banned VR headsets for minors.

Of course, the prohibition of virtual reality for children never really stopped anyone from dipping their toes into the dopamine.

Practically everyone used VR in high school — it was was ubiquitous as cell phones in the 21st Century.

To be completely frank, Yori had it especially bad.

If Yori's okaasan (mother) hadn't intervened, Yori would have turned out as one of those "VR zombies" with bloodshot eyes and an anorexic skeleton. NerveGear™ headsets could suppress the appetite and the body's physiologic needs, so it wasn't unusual for extremely bad addiction cases to end up in the hospital for malnutrition. This wasn't something that Yori was proud about, but he actually had been hospitalized once when he was nineteen.

After that medical incident, Yori's okaasan did something utterly unfathomable.

She went and purchased a cat.

It might sound a bit crazy, but Yori's mother suddenly showed up one day with a hissing cat and threw it into her son's apartment.

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Of course, Yori had no idea what he was doing. The first couple weeks were extremely rough, especially since he barely even knew how to take care of himself. How was it possible to support an ill-tempered cat when he couldn't even microwave his own meals on a regular schedule?

But unexpectedly, that one grumpy cat changed everything.

The nineteen year old's virtual reality addiction disappeared overnight.

The world suddenly looked totally different without a digital screen.

Tachibana Yori loves her cat.

+ + +

Nine years later.

A much older Tachibana hugged that crabby yet lovable feline in his lap.

His soft black hair was shoulder length and loosely tied back with a purple scrunchie.

It looked like he was practically glowing — he seemed so happy.

He was clutching his cell phone tightly in his slender pale hands as it beeped continuously with incoming messages.

Tachibana Yori was married.

∎

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