Editing .Hack//ZERO ME:1060

==ME:1060==

I started up Ultimate OS.

The hexagonal logo spun around, and soon the familiar desktop screen spread out in front of me.

The color of the Mail icon had changed. There was a new message for me.

I stared at it for a minute, but then I decided to delete it.

Alph was the only one who ever sent me e-mails. Bright, cheery Alph.

I was sure her e-mail would just be something trivial. Telling me more about the people she’s met or exchanged member addresses with.

Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I actually liked her or not. I didn’t understand why I hadn’t already cut her off despite finding her as annoying as I do.

All it would have taken was adding her to my blocked list, like I had done for the weird e-mails I found yesterday and the day before that.

If I did that, our relationship with each other was sure to come to an end.

I knew her real name and where she went to school, but I didn’t want to meet her in real life. And I was sure Alph felt the same way.

I opened my contact list, feeling a headache coming on.

And then breath caught in my throat.

One name stood out among the rest in bold.

The e-mail was from Subaru.

The girl with the confidence of someone in command, who took it for granted that others would follow her instructions, yet had a subdued voice that struck my nerves when I’d heard it.

I should have deleted it immediately, but I felt like it would be my loss somehow if I didn’t read it first, so I opened it.

Her sentences were a brief mix of greetings, apologies, compliments, and farewells.

She apologized for not being able to give me the information I was looking for.

She said she couldn’t help feeling self-conscious about how our conversation went.

But nothing she said mattered to me anymore.

The more she apologized, the more irritated I felt. Just like how the more she had asked me for favors, the less motivated I felt to try.

However, there was also a message from Tsukasa included in the e-mail, the player who had been deeply involved with Aura, but wasn’t currently playing '''The World'''.

They didn’t have access to the Internet at the time, so the message was sent for them by Subaru.

The former player Tsukasa was concerned about Aura and apologized to me for their inability to help.

But the part that surprised me was that they said they didn’t expect anything from me.

Instead, their message talked about the kind of player they had been and how they used to play the game.

That was it.

They told me that they regret not being able to see things through to the end.

If anyone else had read this, they might have been moved by their words.

But it had nothing to do with me.

I scrolled through the message and stopped at the last sentence.



'''I hope''' The World '''can be of some comfort to you.'''



I laughed out loud.

As if that was ever going to happen.

And as if I wanted to hear that from someone that had already quit the game.

It hadn’t been a comfort to them, after all. That was why they had run away. I felt like pointing that out to them.

If I went looking for comfort or salvation, I would lose my place in the world.

They were the ones trying to get something out of '''The World'''. They were the greedy ones waiting for help.

Not me.

I wasn’t expecting '''The World''' to do me any favors.

That was why I would let out my hatred towards it and spread malice.

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