Jade's sand skimmer bounced easily over the the wide desert's occasional obstacles. A small drake scurried away in terror as he zoomed over the low rocks it had been shading itself behind.
Jade's mother met him in the archaic Steam Café that lay near the town square of the first player built city in "Living Jade Empire". His mother still liked to recount her adventures in the game's first expansion area. She'd apparently even made significant contributions, as her character's name was still carved along with dozens of others upon the dwarven built enchanted fountain in the town square.
"Living Jade Empire" was already 19 years old, not a record time for a game series by far, but perhaps a record length for a single game to remain popular. Jade's mother had been playing it almost the entire time (hence his name). Jade suspected that the system was younger than the game, but he'd been able to see it's menus for as long as he could remember clearly.
He had only a few fragments of memory before he was about five years old, and his mother was a constant figure in almost all of them. The earliest he thought, was of her holding him up in front of a screen and asking, "can you see him this way?"
His mother's slim dark haired human avatar turned as she caught sight of his dwarf. "Jade!" she exclaimed and pounced forward to hug him.
"Mom," he said dryly, returning her hug. "Call me Hisui here," he reminded her again.
"How are you doing in the city?" she asked worriedly, as though she didn't also live in a city, although it was smaller.
"I'm fine," Jade said, without mentioning his recent demise.
"Fine?" she asked querulously. "That's the same thing you tell me every time I call. Can't you at least use other descriptive words?"
He nodded and replied seriously, "alright, tolerable, ok."
His mother laughed and replied, ironically, "fine, fine, I won't bug you about your phrasing." She gave him a slanted look and asked lightly, "no accidents? Work going ok?"
Jade had always suspected that his mother had some secret contact with the system. She always seemed to know everything, and he'd never been able to get a lie past her.
When he'd been small she'd never insisted that he was imagining anything when he'd described his quests to her, although she had always insisted, "even if everyone doesn't see the world the same way that you do, just remember that they also have both large and small goals set for themselves."
Jade sighed and admitted, "I got hit by a bus when I was standing too near a curb and lost my balance when someone bumped into me. But I only missed one day of work, it's fine."
His mother hugged him again and he protested, "mom!"
She said in a muffled voice, "shut up brat, how can you be so calm about it?"
"I'm fine," he pointed out.
She finally released him, wiped her eyes, and nodded. Her human form beside his dwarf made their perspective the same as it had been years ago, and he looked up into her face. "I'm really okay," he insisted.
"Ok," she agreed. "Have you met anyone interesting?"
He rolled his eyes. "If you mean do I have a girlfriend yet, no."
His mother stuck her tongue out at him and then protested, "I didn't ask that!"
--
When Jade disconnected the next morning, he dressed quickly and then watered the houseplant his mother had insisted on giving him.
He felt surprised to see the small pale flower buds on the stalk it had thrust toward the small window. Last time he'd watered it, it had had only the usual green leaves. Whenever he saw little things like this, he felt like maybe he was actually making progress on his main quest to see the world through a human perspective.
He ate some cold cereal. He'd never quite figured out what other people loved so much about different types of food. He could distinguish between them, but to him, food was just food. He washed his bowl when he finished, and went to class.
He was only attending classes part time, because he didn't want his mother to have to pay for them, even if it was only a trade school. He hoped that the two year degree would help him achieve his future plans to travel around the world. Someday he hoped to have set foot upon every continent at least once.
Eric greeted him cheerfully when he slid into his seat. "Hey! You finally skipped a day, everything ok? Finally loosening up a little?"
Jade blinked in surprise. Most people never seemed to notice if he'd been missing for a day. "I'm ok," he replied.
Eric winked and sent a message to Jade's phone just as the bell rang. The system could have shown it to him unobtrusively, but he risked bending over his phone to read it in the usual fashion.
It was notes from the previous day's class. They were rather incoherent despite being in a regular font and using the same language that they spoke every day, but Jade felt a flicker of amused affection for his classmate as he read them. Usually Eric missed classes and asked Jade for notes.
Jade thanked Eric for the notes when the class ended, without mentioning that the system could have replayed the whole class for him if he'd asked.
Eric replied cheerfully, "no problem, I owe you!"
The system blinked his quest list at him, so Jade checked it and discovered that he had a new one that said: Invite a friend to an activity. It startled him, since usually his quests never involved other people. Jade glanced at Eric and hesitated.
Eric waved and departed swiftly. Jade glanced at his quest list, expecting to have failed the new quest in his hesitation, but it remained.
--
When Jade reached the convenience store, his boss was waiting. The older man said gruffly, "Emily is out sick, but I can only stay for a couple of hours, so you need to get all the cleaning done before then."
The system handily popped up a quest timer in Jade's peripheral vision, as Jade nodded, and both the system and his boss took the new quest as having been accepted. Each subquest task, like mopping the floors, cleaning the drains, and scrubbing the bowls rewarded him with a point of Karma if he finished it with high efficiency.
Jade's Karma balance was a bit low after his recent reincarnation, so he was careful to do a good job. His boss said merely, "hmph, good enough I suppose," when he inspected the work before leaving.
Jade sighed. He wondered how people who couldn't see the system managed to sustain their motivation for subquests when they couldn't see that they were receiving anything for the hard work.
A moment later he summoned a smile to greet one of his regular customers as she banged through the door like a small messy tornado.