I and Daigo moved our gaze from the TV, with a worried expression in both our faces because we could guess what all that talk about contribution is all about and it did not seat well with us. The train made several stops and the train began to get filled up gradually while we were a bit lost in thoughts and emotional turmoil, after a particular stop I saw a familiar face entering the train as he chatted with two of other kids that seems to be his friends.

  It was the guy that played games on his smartphone and sat beside me often, as soon as he noticed my gaze, he froze up for a bit, before his friends snapped him out of it by calling his name and tell him to follow them to occupy the seat opposite mine.

  He normally boards the train when it got to Nishinari 3rd Terminal but he is somehow here in East-Suminoe.

  They all sat down opposite us, and continued chatted but the kid still kept on eye on me as I continue to stare at him. I was still seeing those numbers and writing in my line of sight, and I couldn’t help but find similarity between them and some of the things I have seen when this guy plays games.

  Before I knew it, he and his friends had talked themselves into playing a game, and I just sat there for some seconds wondering if I should just ask this guy some questions in order to help me make sense of what I was seeing.

  After about 3 minutes of staring at him, I stood up and walked up front to his friend that sat on his right side. The kid slowly moved his head up from the screen of his phone and looked up to find me looking down on him.

  “Can I sit?” I asked softly, as I pointed to where I previously sat.

  The kid just stared at me for some seconds, almost like he froze up before nodding his head and sooching a bit for me to sit.

  As I sat down, found Daigo looking at me with a weird expression on his face, but I ignored his stare and looked the game the kid was playing.

  “What kind of game is that?” I bore a conversation with the kid, so that I could ask what I really wanted to ask him without him behaving weird.

  “The name of the game is War-front, it is a strategic/fantasy MMORPG that makes of your tribe and allows you to build and upgrade your army and artilleries in order to fight other tribes” The kid said all that softly with a tone that made it look like he had little to no interest in the game, but he could just be sounding that way because he doesn’t want to talk to me.

  “Hmm” I responded and nodded, with a straight face like I understood what he just said but I could not even operate his phone if he gave it to me, much less understand what the fuck this game is based on his explanation.

  “So what are all these number?” I asked another question as my eyes caught something familiar, pointing to a set of numbers arranged at the top left of his phone cracked screen.

  The characters and number were very similar to characters in my field of vision that only I could see.

  “Those are… (sneeze) the money I spent to upgrade things in my village…” The kid paused and looked at me for the first time.

  “Ok, what things do you upgrade?” I asked me, which seemed to surprise the kid a bit and his friend on his left side soon stopped what he was doing and focused on the conversation between the kid and me.

  “I use Elixirs to train an upgrade my troop…” He replied, pointing to some little people that moved around in his phone”

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  “Gold coins to upgrade my building and defense, Silver coins to upgrade my potion and Gems to quickly buy and upgrade anything without waiting… Sorry why are you asking me all this, do you want to play?” He suddenly asked.

  He seems to think I want to play the game on his phone because of all our previous encounter; with me staring at him anytime he plays the game on the train and he wore an expression on his face that said he definitely did not want to give me his phone if that was my plan.

  “No, the game seems interesting, I plan on buying a phone like this, this game on it.” I lied.

  “This game does not come with every smartphone and you need access to internet to…” He started to change the topic, so I quickly stopped him.

  “Forget all that, just explain all the Gold coin and stuff to me before we reach Nishinari” I interrupted him, because I don’t know where he is dropping off, it is very likely he will drop at Nishinari since that is where he enters this train normally, and that also where the train will be searched.

  “O-Ok… I currently have 4 Champions, they are special charac…” The kid was saying, when I interrupted him again.

  “What are all these other things” I asked, point to the top right-side of his phone because one of them looks like the side of a gear and is similar to what I currently have in my vision.

  “Those are just the settings and menu” He answered with uninterested tone.

  “Can you tell… or show me what they do?” I asked.

  “(Gasp)…You can go here to change the settings of the game; you can off and on the music, change the layout of the game, change your user name, change the language and many other things. There’s a lot of things you can do, I can’t explain everything” The kid said, as he tapped some things in the ‘settings’ and showing me the effects.

  “You said you upgrade your troops with Elixirs, how?” I asked, which prompted him to leave setting to the normal layout of the game where tiny people walked around in a weird looking ‘village’ (That was he called it), doing different activities.

  “I will just tap on the army barrack (tapping on a particular tiny red building) and I have like 20 characters like dwarfs, elves, rock-goblins, zipper-spines, Spartans and so on” I explained, as he scrolled through a row of the picture of ‘characters’ but what caught my attention were words and the quick glare of ‘characters’ like zipper-spines and Spartans.

  “Can I see this zipper-spine?” I asked and he complied.

  To my surprise, it was a poor imitation of the actual creature - basically animated image of a creature with purple skin and blue eyes, it looked more like a healthy dog, not like the actual monstrosity, and the spine of this ‘Zipper-spine’ here was outside its body and had fur at the top of its neck but the animated picture was no way scary at all, it was like a funny silly-looking version of a Zipper-spine.

  “That is not what a Zipper-spine looks like” I said in a very low tone, almost like a whisper and the kid couldn’t hear so he said “What?” and I shake my head and responded “Nothing…How do you upgrade it?”

  “Well, you just tap on the picture and you will see how much Elixir you need to take it to the next level” He said as he taps on the ‘Zipper-spine’ picture and pointed to the amount under it, it said ‘120,000 Elixirs’.

  I was taken aback and almost couldn’t stop myself from asking a dump question like ‘Can you withdraw that money in real life’, it is a game and everything in it is just for the sake of it.

  I continued to ask the kid questions and he continued answer, before I knew it more than 40 minutes had passed and we just arrived at Nishinari 3rd Terminal Train Station but things were different.

  As the kid and I still discussed about his game – War-front and to pay it, I felt the atmosphere outside the train was a bit intense, then an announcement came in, telling all the passengers to sit down and obey the instructions given by the DRCT Officers and the Enforcers.

  I raised my head up and looked through the window in front of me, noticing some people in brown uniform with bullet-proof vest crested with the initials ‘DRCT’ and other protective gears, carrying semi-automatic guns. I then instinctively looked back at the window behind me and could clearly see some of them standing side by side like bodyguards.

  There was a neat row of these officers on each side of the train, I could also see a pile of dead bodies of about three people in a corner and based on their dressing they are from the slums.

  I stood up from where I sat and told the boy that I told to seat near Daigo to take back his seat, I sat down and looked at Daigo’s face but he was looking outside the window to understand the situation a bit better.

  “It seems we can either contribute or die” I whispered to him, which made him turn and looked at me with a stoic and nodded.