The June vacation was here again. Unlike most students who looked forward to the holiday, Keline had always dreaded the long break. With school out, she would have to spend her days at home taking care of her younger brother. It had been so since her father left the family two years ago when she was in sec. one. Since then, holidays had been one of staying at home with no overseas trip or outing with friends. Her mother just couldn’t afford the extra expenses. Moreover, she had to work long hours to keep the family going. Keline understood her mum’s problems and had to be contented with just playing online games to kill her time.

Keline got to know of the latest online craze from one of her friends. It was the MapleStory. A lot of her classmates were already spending sleepless nights training their virtual characters. Keline couldn’t understand what the attraction was but decided to download the game since she had a whole month of ‘time’ to squander.

After scanning through the game info and guide, Keline decided to train to be a ‘magician’ since it was the most gal-like character among the four characters being offered. It didn’t take Keline, a seasoned gamer, long to get use to the controls and soon she was as addicted as the rest of her friends. She would spend most of her waking time glued to the monitor.

Other than those that she already knew in real life, Keline had also befriended some virtual friends. They became her ‘buddies’. They would hunt down monsters at the different towns and collect ‘mesos’ to buy items to dress up their characters. She even joined a ‘guild’ and would team up with her members to complete ‘quests’. Once, on the way to 'Orbis’, she ran into a 'warrior’ onboard the ship. Though she had seen ‘warriors’ around, that was the first one that caught her attention. She couldn’t explain why but she was somehow attracted by the behaviour of this warrior. Though he was a cool ‘15 level’ higher than her, she found that unlike most high-leveled characters (who liked to show off), he had a modest and caring personality.

Upon arriving at their destination, Keline, somehow, persuaded her buddies to train at where the 'warrior’ had gone to. He was training alone and Keline would deliberately ‘ks’ him to see how he would react. Much to her surprise, he would just 'F2’ her and then move on to hunt the other monsters. That action made Keline more interested and determined to get to know him. Just as she had gathered enough courage to chat with him, he vanished.