Chapter 1 – Glitch Bugs
The sky was dark. Storm clouds rolled low, rain tapping against the windows like it was impatient. The fan above Yumi’s head clicked in a tired rhythm, pushing warm air around the room. The faint smell of dust and instant coffee lingered in the corners.
“Yes! I got it!”
Yumi leaned closer to the screen, fingers moving fast over the controller. Her eyes were tired, but focused. The storm outside blurred into background noise.
“Yes! I did it!”
She let the controller drop onto the bed and smiled, just for a second.
“Yumi! Come here, now!” her mom called from the kitchen.
Yumi glanced at the paused victory screen. The smile faded.
“I’m coming… in a minute,” she muttered.
Minutes turned into too many.
The rain eased outside. The game didn’t. Buttons clicked. The room glowed. When her mom called again, Yumi finally got up.
Messy hair. Hoodie too big. Sleep still clung to her eyes. She brushed her teeth fast, took a few bites of breakfast, and sighed.
First day of college, and she already hated it.
The entrance exam had been brutal — logic puzzles, code problems, game design tasks stacked one after another. Most people didn’t pass. When her result came in, she hadn’t celebrated. She’d just stared at the screen, nodded once, and gone back to her game. Getting in felt less like a win and more like the next level she hadn’t asked for.
Outside, she pulled her hoodie up and slipped on her headphones. Stone-washed jeans, worn sneakers. The street was wet and quiet, puddles reflecting broken pieces of the sky. She walked like she didn’t care — and maybe she didn’t.
College was loud. People laughed too hard, called out names, pretended they weren’t nervous. The gates creaked as students pushed through them, voices overlapping in messy waves.
Yumi moved through the crowd without slowing down. Music filled her ears, low and steady. The world stayed at arm’s length.
“Hey! Wait!”
She turned. A girl with a warm smile stood there, slightly out of breath.
“I’m Naira. First day too?”
Yumi nodded.
“Yeah.”
“What’s your major?”
“Game development and design.”
“That’s sick,” Naira said, grinning. “Good luck surviving here.”
Yumi gave a small nod and kept walking.
The hallway narrowed. Three boys stood ahead, loud and blocking the path. One of them smirked.
“Hey, tiny—”
Yumi didn’t slow down.
They stepped into her way.
She pulled out one earbud and looked at the one in front.
“Move.”
They laughed.
She didn’t.
One of them leaned closer.
Yumi’s fist moved before her thoughts did. A clean hit. The sound echoed, sharp and sudden. The hallway went quiet.
She didn’t wait for reactions. She slid her earbud back in and walked past them.
The classroom felt colder. Different faces, same noise. Yumi took a seat at the back, laptop open, music low. The hum of the projector filled the room, steady and dull.
The door opened.
Miss Lux walked in — tall, calm, sharp-eyed. She didn’t need to raise her voice.
“Welcome to Introduction to Game Coding,” she said. “This is where ideas become something people can play.”
That got Yumi’s attention.
Code lit up the screen. Lines, logic, flow. This part made sense. People didn’t. When the class ended and the next one was canceled, Yumi stayed put, sketching shapes in the corner of her notebook, mapping ideas that didn’t need words.
She wasn’t lazy.
She wasn’t careless.
She was just built for worlds that followed rules.
And code was the only place that ever did.
