NOVEL WEB 17 – Encryption
Even as I idly chewed the piece of chicken meat in my mouth, I held up the announcement form in front of me and pierced it with my eyes. The words kept shifting and moving regardless of my ire.
I’d kept thinking about it ever since I’d returned home from my adventure. I still had no idea what it meant, but I had a couple of leads.
A true name, Elyssa had said.
I was never a fan of my given name. It never felt quite right, it felt more like a… placeholder. Exactly as Elyssa had said. Well, she’d said it about the true form, but I assumed it was a similar situation.
Anyway, with that in mind, my given name probably wasn’t my true name or whatever. So my true name had to be something else. And apparently, this thing was always supposed to display your true name.
I glared at the scrambled letters again.
So why in the world was it showing me unreadable scrambled letters? Was it because I myself didn’t know my true name? Would it all magically start making sense once I found out what my true name was? And speaking of which, would I have to come up with the name, or did I already have a true name and only needed to discover it?
Another spoonful of rice found its way into my mouth.
Or… what if Elyssa had been right about me being some kind of godly being and my true name was too much for mortals to handle? After all, the trio hadn’t reacted as if they found any meaning in it. But then, why did I only get faint hints of it? Why couldn’t I fully read it myself? Because I was an inexperienced godling?
I swallowed the piece of chicken and let out a long-suffering sigh.
It was frustrating.
Worst of all, the game world apparently somehow knew what my true name was. Or at least knew the weird encrypted version. Maybe it was a good thing I hadn’t posted the announcement. What if the devs could use their godly powers and decrypt my name? And then they used voodoo magic to track me down or something?
All of this just made me more and more anxious. Maybe Frank and Casey could help me solve the mystery. Although first I had to go through the anxiety of revealing it all to them…
I groaned.
Maybe I could just invite them to play the game with me normally. I didn’t need to tell them everything right away. But then, I had already invited them over and told them we would go on a fantastical adventure… Dammit. There was no getting out of this.
I put down the piece of paper with a grunt and an angry glare. I would deal with it all later. Thinking about it all was ruining my meal.
Once I finished my chicken risotto in peace, I washed the dishes and headed back to my room, the announcement form in hand.
A true name.
Unless it was something unusual, I could search the Internet for random names. Whether I needed to discover it or come up with a better fitting name, I couldn’t go wrong with just plowing through various names.
So I stashed the announcement form into a drawer, sat in front of my computer, opened up the browser, and typed in… ‘Boy names’.
I opened up the first search result and browsed name after name.
Carl… Jake…Robert… Peter…
No, nope, and… heck no.
Well, there was nothing wrong with the names, I just didn’t particularly feel thrilled about any of them being my name. All of them felt off, somehow. In fact, they all felt kind of the same in that regard. Even when reading about their origin and meanings, even when I got to the more unusual names, they all felt like my given name. Just… another placeholder.
“They all suck…” I said in a low voice, surprising myself.
I was still in my not-true form, so my voice came out soft and feminine. It was calming and nice. Really, being a girl was just…
My thoughts froze.
I stared at the computer screen listing the boy names. Up above, there was a button for the ‘Girl names’ section. A thought of clicking it popped into my mind. It felt both wrong and right. Like a forbidden fruit.
I clicked it anyway.
Alice… June… Kate…
So far, they didn’t feel like my name either. But somehow, they felt less meaningless than the boy names. As if the girl names had some kind of… flavor. As if they weren’t just labels.
I kept scrolling, looking at a name after name. I passed by several ones I liked. One, in particular, stood out. But not in the context of it being my name. None of them could possibly be my name… But I still liked them.
Eventually, I got to the end of the huge list with a deep frown on my face.
I had no idea why I’d even done that. Obviously, I wouldn’t find a name for me in the girls section since I wasn’t really a girl. Sure, I looked like one in this form. And preferred this form over my original one. But as Elyssa had said, it wasn’t my true form. It wasn’t really me. It was just… a placeholder. A fake mask.
…
What was my true form? Did I really need to figure it out? Couldn’t I just hang out in this form forever? What if my true form made me feel terrible like my original one? It probably wouldn’t, considering what Elyssa had told me about it, but…
Ugh, dammit.
I just wanted answers! Why couldn’t things be simpler?!
A few minutes of frustrated brooding later, the front door’s lock made a sound, signifying the end of today’s adventures and frustrations.
My head spun around to face the door in my room, I took a deep breath, steeled myself for what was to come and transformed back.
I did my best to ignore the uncomfortable feeling of existence and wobbled my way to the door. When I opened it, I saw Mom walking into the kitchen.
“Hey, Mom,” I nearly whispered just so I wouldn’t have to hear my own grating voice.
She turned around to look at me in alarm.
“Hey… What happened? Are you okay?”
“I…”
Am fine, was what I was going to say. But this time, I didn’t.
“I don’t know…”
Before I knew it, she was hugging me.
