At eight in the morning, Noriko's phone alarm went off right on time, letting out a shrill electronic chirp.
Noriko winced painfully. One hand reached out from under the covers and blindly fumbled across the screen from memory a few times, managing to shut off the alarm with perfect accuracy before retreating at top speed into the warm blankets.
She rolled over and went back to sleep.
She had only meant to "sleep for five more minutes."
When she opened her eyes again, the time on her phone had already jumped to 8:30.
Noriko stared blearily at the screen, her brain still stuck to her pillow as it tried to boot up. Then, all at once, a shred of reason struck her groggy thoughts like lightning:
"...Wait. The nine o'clock reset."
The moment that thought surfaced, half her sleepiness vanished.
Her body was still stubbornly buried under the covers, but her survival instincts—or, more accurately, a mobile gamer’s obsession with daily resets—had been awakened completely. With her long hair sticking out in every direction and her pajama collar hanging crookedly, Noriko lay sprawled across the bed like a giant starfish. Then she unlocked her phone and jumped straight into the game.
She didn't need to think. She didn't even need to sit up.
Her slightly sleepy fingers slid and tapped smoothly across the screen. Collect resources, start building upgrades, claim yesterday's activity rewards—everything flowed seamlessly. Then she switched to the arena and cleared all her free daily attempts using a fixed setup she could run even with her eyes closed.
The whole process was smooth and practiced, almost like a conditioned reflex.
Once she'd cleared out all her daily missions and routine chores, she casually glanced at the time: exactly nine o'clock.
Satisfied, she tossed her phone onto the pillow beside her, closed her eyes, and prepared to enjoy the rare weekend luxury of going back to sleep.
Unfortunately, the human body clock was a mysterious thing.
When you kept thinking, I'm going to sleep now, the little bit of drowsiness you had left could instead be completely driven away by the intense concentration you'd just spent on something. Noriko tossed and turned, rolling left and right and even trying three different sleeping positions, only to realize awkwardly that she was now wide awake.
That clear-headed state—one in which she had even started thinking about what takeout to order for lunch—declared her dream of staying in bed officially bankrupt.
"...Whatever."
Noriko sighed helplessly and slowly climbed out of bed, her hair still a mess.
She shuffled into the bathroom in her slippers, taking her time squeezing out toothpaste, brushing her teeth, and washing her face. She glanced at herself in the mirror and casually tied her long hair into a ponytail. Only after making herself presentable enough to be seen by other humans did she finally drift back into the living room and officially welcome her weekend.
Noriko carried her hot tea over to the couch while calculating whether she should clear one of the 3A games she'd had sitting untouched for ages or simply spend the whole day catching up on sleep.
Just as she was about to sit down, her phone vibrated on the coffee table.
[System Notification] You have more than a dozen missed calls and voicemails.
Noriko froze for a moment. Her social circle wasn't exactly huge, and she'd muted her mobile game notifications ages ago, so how had she suddenly accumulated more than a dozen messages?
She unlocked her phone and opened her voicemail. The moment her eyes swept over the numbers, her entire body stiffened.
The number from home.
...Grandpa?
Noriko's head went buzz.
Only then did she remember that, a while back, she'd enabled an extremely strict do-not-disturb setting that blocked calls from everyone except selected contacts, all to keep out mobile game group chats and random spam calls.
And her grandfather didn't understand a single thing about any of the instant-messaging apps on smartphones. His only way of contacting her was by making a traditional phone call.
But because of that filter, every call her grandfather had made lately had been stopped at the door by the system. Not one had gotten through.
"...I'm screwed."
Noriko swallowed, opened the list of missed voicemails, and decided to listen from the first one to make sure nothing urgent had happened back home.
However, as the voices came through the speaker, her expression gradually shifted from tense to helpless resignation.
The first message had been recorded a few days ago:
> "Noriko, moving out for the first time must be pretty tough..."
The second was a little more hurried:
> "Starting school must have kept you busy, but remember to call every now and then."
The third came with a few awkward pauses:
> "I know you're busy, but you still need to..."
The fourth:
> "How's school? Are you getting used to it?"
The fifth:
> "You're not coming home this weekend either?"
The sixth carried a hint of impatience:
> "It's about time you returned my message. Your dad is always like this, too."
The later messages were more or less the same. He asked whether she'd eaten, urged her to call back, and in the last few mixed in various complaints about her father along with the rambling complaints of an old man living alone.
As she listened, the tension in Noriko's nerves completely relaxed. She even rolled her eyes.
—"...Yeah."
—"He's started talking about Dad again."
The panic caused by the more-than-a-dozen missed calls evaporated without a trace. Noriko knew her grandfather's temperament all too well. This wasn't a family crisis. He was just an old man bored at home by himself, too proud to admit he missed his granddaughter, using the courage from a few drinks to complain.
Thinking of how calling back now would inevitably mean listening to her grandfather lecture her for half an hour, Noriko decisively abandoned the idea of a direct conversation.
She pursed her lips and decided to handle it in the most efficient way possible: call once, wait for voicemail to pick up, leave a message, and hang up immediately.
Her grandfather only used a traditional phone. Since he'd bombarded her with voicemails, she'd return the favor with one of her own. That way, she could show that she had "responded" without having to sit there awkwardly in silence with him on the phone.
"Perfect. That's what I'll do."
Noriko quickly dialed the number. She heard the line ringing on the other end, followed by the voicemail prompt. She cleared her throat and made her tone calm and perfunctory:
"Grandpa, sorry. I wasn't ignoring your calls on purpose. School and my part-time job have been keeping me pretty busy, and my phone happened to be on do-not-disturb, so it blocked your calls by accident... I saw your messages, okay? All right, I got it. I'll come visit you next week. That's it. Bye."
The instant she finished speaking, she hung up with lightning speed.
Noriko collapsed into the couch and let out a long sigh.
"Phew... That should have calmed the volcano down, right?"
She tossed her phone aside, feeling as if peace had finally returned to the world.
After throwing her phone back onto the coffee table, Noriko stretched deeply and casually glanced at the clock on the wall. The hands were already pointing to 10:30.
A few assignments due next week briefly flashed through her mind, but the thought survived for less than three seconds before she ruthlessly strangled it.
"Yeah... I'll do my assignments later."
She convinced herself with complete confidence, then grabbed her tablet and controller and sat back down on the couch. Compared with those boring assignments, she wanted to properly plan out this rare weekend.
She casually opened the notes app on her tablet and began seriously planning her gaming schedule. She browsed the digital store's sale section, checked game reviews on various forums, watched streamers' preview videos, and even opened several tabs to compare prices and study skill trees.
Her originally planned perfect schedule: * 10:00–12:30: Try out the new game she just bought. * 12:30–2:00: Eat lunch and take a nap. * 2:00–6:00: Play that open-world 3A game she'd been putting off for ages. * After 7:00: Log in and check on the alliance.
Looking at the neatly organized schedule on the screen, Noriko nodded in satisfaction.
However, just as she eagerly prepared to click the mouse, a loud rumble came from her stomach.
Noriko blinked and glanced at the system clock beneath her computer.
12:45.
"...Ten o'clock... Wait."
She blinked and stared at the time on the screen again to make sure.
12:45.
"...Huh?"
She rubbed her stomach and sat there blankly for two seconds. She'd spent the entire morning researching and arranging her schedule, only starting to write at 10:30. She'd kept writing and researching until her stomach was growling with hunger at noon, and she hadn't even clicked on a single game icon. The entire morning had been spent "making plans."
After eating a rice ball she'd bought at random from the convenience store at the end of the street, Noriko stared at the wrapper crushed into a ball in her hand and finally realized she couldn't keep wasting all her time "making plans."
"No. If I keep this up, the weekend really will be over."
She tossed the wrapper into the trash, sat back down on the couch, and decided to change tactics. To get into the zone quickly, she skipped the open-world 3A game that required a huge time commitment and casually launched a fast-paced little indie game instead.
"I'll warm up for ten minutes, then switch to the big game once my hands are ready."
She said it to herself with absolute conviction.
However, the little game proved far more addictive than expected. By the time she finally decided that was enough and reluctantly put down the controller, the hands on the wall clock had already passed four in the afternoon.
"...Huh?"
Noriko's eyes widened at the time, and her whole body sprang up from the couch.
What happened to the promised ten-minute warm-up? How had more than three hours disappeared in the blink of an eye?
"Crap, I don't have enough time!"
She hurriedly closed the little game and double-clicked the enormous open-world 3A game. As a grand orchestral score swelled and the opening cinematic slowly began, she suddenly felt inexplicably irritated at the fact that half the afternoon was already gone.
"Ugh... Why is this opening cinematic so long...?"
She stared at the screen. Then a sudden flash of inspiration struck her:
Wait. If I scroll through my phone while playing, wouldn't that literally double my efficiency?
Once the brilliant idea popped into her head, there was no getting it back out. Noriko immediately picked up her phone and, whenever the game required her to run across the map or sit through a long conversation, skillfully switched to scrolling through social media and doing her mobile game dailies.
And so, the rest of the afternoon became a bizarre "multitasking competition."
Sword clashes in the game world interwove with short videos and mobile game menus on her phone screen. While her character automatically ran along the path of the main quest, Noriko looked down and scrolled through her phone. Whenever a story conversation appeared or monsters needed killing, she hurriedly looked up and pressed the buttons on her controller.
This supposedly efficient two-birds-with-one-stone plan soon exacted its price.
With her attention constantly divided, her game character predictably died several times on the way. When "YOU DIED" appeared on the screen for the third time, the game even helpfully popped up a window:
[Would you like to switch the difficulty to Easy Mode?]
Noriko's relaxed expression instantly froze as she stared at the prompt.
What?
Having a game question whether she had the skill to play without Easy Mode was a blatant provocation. Noriko angrily slapped her phone face-down onto the couch, gripped the controller tightly with both hands again, and fixed the screen with a razor-sharp stare.
"Who are you looking down on?!"
She angrily ended the multitasking competition and focused all her attention on the screen. When the elite monster pounced at her again, she cleanly avoided the attack with a perfect roll, then smoothly unleashed a combo and cut down the monster that had embarrassed her moments earlier in just a few strikes.
As the monster dissolved into fragments and faded away, Noriko snorted, her voice thick with disdain:
"See? I told you it wasn't my fault."
From that moment on, the efficiency competition was officially declared a failure, and Noriko was finally forced into serious-gaming mode.