Zeltran: Arc 1.1k

BEEP BEEP BEEP-click. Noriko slapped the snooze button for the fifth time that morning. She had a day off from school and didn’t want to get up before noon. Her alarm clock had other ideas.

Eventually she gave up hitting snooze and got up. It was 11:15. Well, she’d come pretty close to sleeping ‘till noon. She took a shower and went downstairs to see about lunch.

“It’s alive!” her mother joked when she saw her. “What’s for lunch?”

“Sandwich. Surprise. Something that won’t taste disgusting with the sandwich.”

“Sure thing.” Noriko’s mother was awesome. She always did breakfast and lunch like this. Entrée, specification, drink. That was all you had to say. She’d make it for you. Dinner was a buffet of goodness instead of an ordering service. Still, it was like having your own personal chef in the house. Of course, she was the sous-chef at a five-star restaurant downtown. No big deal.

Roast beef sandwich with some kind of juice. It was good, whatever it was. Sitting down in the family room, Noriko flipped on the television. “…and the government is not releasing a statement at this time as to what will happen to all the survivors of the VRMMO Sword Art Online…”

“They’re waking up?” her mother asked from the kitchen.

“I guess so,” she replied. The reporter didn’t have much to add to the story, so she flicked on Netflix. Time to finish the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It took a while to get through each season because the episodes only had subtitles. Noriko didn’t like the voice actors in the Japanese dub, so she had to listen to the English. Besides, she might actually pick up a few words this way.

Her phone started buzzing around five. “Hey, Armin. What’s up?”

“I’m gonna go for pizza and a movie at that new place up the block with Katsu and Cho at 6ish. You wanna join us?”

“Sure. I’ll meet you there at quarter two; I wanna get another episode of Buffy in.”

“You nerd. See you then.”

What was so nerdy about watching a good show or playing video games? Noriko had never understood that. She’d wanted to join SAO, but in retrospect it was lucky she hadn’t gotten a copy in time.

The next episode finished with one hella cliffhanger, but Noriko had promised to go out. Leaving the frustratingly Whedon suspense behind her, she went to meet her friends.