Clickbait

After playing his favorite mobile game for the sixth hour, Jimmy Lee was able to unlock a secret achievement and an ultra-rare character. He loved playing video games as he felt that he found some sense of purpose from them, unlike his school life which was boring as hell. He could not understand why the school kept cramming him with all sorts of information that could easily be found on the internet, not that he bothered to learn anything from the internet. Like any other kid in Hong Kong, Jimmy was impelled to do lots of assignments, homework, projects, dictation, test, and exams... And Jimmy did not feel that he had upgraded after doing all of that; he always got a C minus, which meant he barely passed.

When Jimmy logged out of his game and was about to put away his mobile phone, he noticed an unknown app. It had an icon of an anime bunny girl and the name of the app was ‘Ultimate Demon Quest’. It was obviously a mobile game but he did not remember downloading it. Although it was already way past midnight, Jimmy decided to press that icon. Maybe it was because of his curiosity. Or probably because he did not feel a bit tired even after playing the previous game for hours. Or most likely because he found the illustration of the bunny girl was too cute that it was difficult for anyone not to fall in love with her.

The moment Jimmy clicked the icon, everything around him started to pixelate into the darkness. Once the darkness had faded, Jimmy found himself no longer in his bedroom and he was no longer wearing his pajamas. It was a bright sunny day and he was nowhere in Hong Kong. Everywhere around him seemed medieval; it was as if he was in the middle of a destroyed castle.

Suddenly, he heard a voice. "Jimmy? Where the hell are you?"

He looked up at the luminous magnified ceiling and saw the great, gigantic face of his mother looming above, looking around.

Jimmy realized that he was struck in a virtual world, trapped in his very own smartphone. How could this be even possible? There was no button for him to log out of the game and that reminded him of the light novel about a shady game developer having removed the players’ option to log out, making them trapped in his virtual reality world to their deaths. The thought of it made him more terrified than ever before. Jimmy was desperately finding every possible location for clues. When he stumbled upon a portal, he went and was teleported to a dungeon with goblins waiting for him.

Funny enough. Jimmy saw the goblins were wearing bunny outfits. Urgh! They were carrying all sorts of dangerous weapons whereas he was holding onto a wooden sword. They were charging toward him, leaving him no choice but to fight back. He managed to slay a few goblins but his wooden sword eventually broke. Since he had no other weapons left, Jimmy had no choice but to flee. It was fortunate for him to find another portal that led him to a village.

The village was filled with NPCs and it appeared that the goblins did not follow him there. No anime bunny girl in sight resembled the one depicted in the game’s icon. Instead, he found that all the NPCs literally shared the same face, men and women alike, not to mention the children. When Jimmy approached the NPCs, they began to divulge the village’s histories to him, worry about their crops would fare in the coming weeks, and complain about how busy they were with the chores. When Jimmy asked questions such as how to leave the game world, the villagers would repeat the exact words of whatever they had said before. All their ‘dialogues’ took at least one minute to finish and poor Jimmy did not have a skip button. Although one or two of them had mentioned something about the goblins, all of the villagers seemed oblivious to the possibility of being overrun by goblins outside. That was typical NPC behavior; they could never engage in an actual conversation with the player. And speaking of players, Jimmy could not find anyone else except himself.

Jimmy resolved to clear the game as he saw it as a possible ticket back to his real world. But first, he needed a weapon. He went to a weapon shop and there he saw a blacksmith forging a weapon, or rather hammering repeatedly onto a piece of metal. Jimmy bet the blacksmith had been doing this the whole day and only his initiative to speak to him broke that endless repetition.

"What do you want?" asked the blacksmith.

At this instant, a menu popped up. Jimmy found out he had accumulated some money in his inventory. He most probably got it by slaying those goblins. But still, the menu did not show the log-out button. Jimmy used that money to upgrade his wooden sword into a blade of steel. He also bought potions from another shop before heading out.

Jimmy reached the final boss after slaying all the goblins in the area and it happened to be a giant orc. He could tell it was a boss battle due to a change in bgm. Somehow, the appearance of the giant orc made Jimmy laugh out loud. The orc simply looked ridiculous in his bunny outfit. And he threw fireballs. Jimmy managed to dodge all his fireballs and landed the orc the final blow. It was a tedious fight as the orc had tons of hp.

It turned out this was one of many levels he had cleared. Jimmy went back to the village for more potions and better weapon upgrades to prepare for the next level. And oh boy was he disappointed. The enemies indeed dealt bigger damage than before but basically, they were the same goblins, just in different colors and different bunny costumes. The same goes for the final boss, which hurled green fireballs instead of the normal ones. The worst thing was that they all had the same attack patterns. Jimmy had never felt so dissatisfied with a game before. He really hoped that the next level or the level after the next had more variety, like having a dragon as the next level's boss or something. He also hoped to see that cute anime bunny girl as promised to him by the game’s icon to appear during his battles in any role she might be in. He was already at level 20 but still, the game did very well in subverting all of Jimmy’s expectations. It was the finest example of a cheap and lazy game design. What a clickbait!

Thus, Jimmy chose to get beaten by the boss, hoping to get the game over to finally log out of this stupid game. But the game refused and made him start from square one in full health. He missed his schoolmates, although he was not really on good speaking terms.

All of a sudden, Jimmy’s phone rang and everything around him just stopped moving.

"Hello?" It was his mother who picked up the phone.

"Good morning, madam. This is from the Public Security speaking. Your son is suspected of smuggling goods to the mainland. To release him on bail, please deposit one million yuan to this account..."

"You can’t fool me!" said his mom, "There are cases of con men imposing as mainland authorities these days. And my son is underaged!"

"Mom!" Jimmy cried out at the top of his lungs.

"Jimmy?" It seemed that his mom could hear her son’s voice in this manner.

"What?" said the mysterious interlocutor.

"You are the one who kidnapped my child!"

"Yes. Your Jimmy is in our custody..."

"I’ll report to the police!"

She hung up.

*beep*beep*beep* (ringtone)

"Good morning. This is the Hong Kong Police Department. What can I do for you?"

"My son, Jimmy Lee, has gone missing! I think he got kidnapped and sent to the mainland!" Jimmy could hear the tears in her voice.

"Mom!’ cried Jimmy, "I’m right here!"

"Jimmy! Is that you? How is it possible for you to be in two places at the same time!"

"Sorry?" said the confused police officer. Just like the mysterious interlocutor, the police officer was not aware of Jimmy’s voice.

Jimmy then tried to explain his current situation, that he was trapped inside a mobile game. The police officer on the other side heard nothing and grew impatient.

"Madam, are you filing a report of a missing person? Time is of the essence, you know."

Mom hung up.

"Don’t hang up on me, Mom!" cried Jimmy.

Just when he was beginning to be afraid of losing his last hope, his mother called back by using her phone to call Jimmy’s phone. It appeared that she just figured the gist of it.

Jimmy’s mother used the password her son had just told to unlock the screen and the game’s interface immediately appeared. Jimmy wrote his name on the ground using his sword for his mother to identify him. He then told her to find the log-out button.

"Look out what?"

"It’s log-out! Mom! L-O-G-O-U-T!"

His mother was extremely traditional. She was the one who watched TV and listened to the radio. Jimmy had never seen his mom use her mobile phone for anything else other than communication purposes. He remembered when his mother bought her first iPhone, he had a tough time just teaching her its basic function.

"I know what log out means! Don’t ever take me for a country bumpkin! I just could not find the word!’

"Just try any button you can see, starting from the right-hand corner!"

"You mean the one that had the picture of a girl with rabbit ears!"

That could be it.

A list of other functions appeared the moment she pressed the button.

"I think I found it!"

She pressed again and pixels of Jimmy started appearing in front of his mother’s eyes until his body was completely transferred into the real world.

Before his mother had the time to comprehend what was going on, tears were already trickling down from his blackened eyes and he hugged his mother ever more tightly than he did in his life.