Character

Born Mai Ouyang in a land down under, far removed from his parents' home in southern China, Mai was slow to learn the unspoken intricacies of English and social interaction. Moreover, he was often left alone to entertain himself at home by perennially working parents.
In these times he ravenously consumed shows and books detailing the adventures of brave champions against the evils of a hundred worlds. It was a reprieve from talking to people who he couldn't find the correct words to respond to, from the crushing doubt that he may be too different to succeed with his unremarkable self and from the absence of even the smallest piece of personal affirmation every child craves.

Oftentimes, trapped at home like this without much to do, Mai would imitate the stories he loved most and spin valorous tales of his own. Naturally, he would paint himself in the roles of these impossible paragons, lauded and loved by all. Through the years his stories and characters grew ever more complex, crayon and scrapbook exchanged for stylus and screen as he grew older and found a calling in pursuing animation. Still his skill in communicating with others stagnated, his mannerisms and vocabularies shaped by that which entranced him most since childhood.

Along the way, Terrasphere emerged. He only learned of it after it had entered dormancy, but the possibilities and wonders suggested by the descriptions he'd heard were enough to embed its name into Mai's brain all throughout high school. The news that the game would literally kill people strangely did not deter Mai, who thought of it as no more dangerous than something like riding a motorcycle on a highway. After all, far more people were reportedly bounced out the game world than those who had died, so could it really be that bad?

Moving into his tertiary education with the brainworm of Terrasphere digging away, Mai felt more at ease than ever retreating into these fantasies and even changed his plain unremarkable name to something he felt was more exciting; Mylar. In a daze of longing and pretending that such a long never existed, he stumbled across the elusive program completely by chance.

Just like the images he had pored over for hours, someone's phone on the train during the homeward hour simply held that QR code before him, one commute home.

With barely seconds to spare, Mylar managed to snap a sufficiently zoomed-in picture of it before that mysterious person disappeared in the rush of the departing crowd. To this day, Mylar has never seen them again, but neither that nor the exuberant amount that a full dive VR headset cost mattered.

Now, the saga of Schilva Flasch could finally begin!