Into The Game: Aerith Gainsborough

So there's this big video game convention coming up, and my boyfriend is just ecstatic. He is literally counting down the days. Now even though we are both men, I don’t tend to be into typical male-driven things.

Instead of things like sports and video games, I'm more into baking and gardening. Which is great for me. I do tend to play some games with my boyfriend, but I don't really like them and I'm awful at them.

But when I see the smile on his face, it becomes worth it. Plus, sometimes I can't manage to do some sort of move in the game, he comes over, picks me up, and sits me on his lap. Then he’ll take his big hands and place them over mine. 

Due to that he probably doesn’t know I don’t like games, so when he surprised me with two tickets to the convention, I definitely wasn’t going to break his heart and tell him. So I pretended to be excited and bear through the boredom come the day.

So we go ahead and book a hotel room, schedule with our employers to get the days off, and wait for the day to come. It was very early in the morning on the first day when my boyfriend pretty much carried me out of bed and placed me into the car. 

I slept the whole ride to the hotel, not waking up until after he had already checked in. He held my hand and we walked up to the room, where I took a shower and got dressed. When I came out my boyfriend was wearing some sort of costume.

He told me it was normal for congoers to cosplay, and he planned to spend the whole weekend in the costume he bought. I guess it was some character called Cloud. I’m not really sure who that is, but the character is clearly compensating for something with a sword that size.

He even got a costume for me, it was pretty simple and wasn’t as crazy as his. It was an extra long white shirt, a red cropped leather jacket, a long brown wig, and some cute black boots, all pretty normal things.

I asked who the character was and he dodged the question a bit, just telling me it was the healer for his character. I had no reason to suspect him of lying so I put it on and we left the hotel to check out the convention.

It only took a few minutes before a bunch of people started asking for pictures, I guess my boyfriend's character is quite popular. I did get a few strange comments, where people called me cute and adorable.

Which, at my size, I get quite a lot anyway, so I let it go and continued to follow my boyfriend around. We went all over the place, we went to an area to buy merchandise, food, and even custom-made art. It was kinda cool, although there were a lot more people than I’m used to being around. 

Luckily I can just hold onto my boyfriend's arm and let him lead the way. Although I did get a lot of looks while doing so. I kept wondering why, the people here seem very welcoming and open, but I suppose some of them could hate gay couples. 

Then the thought hit my head, what if our characters are like siblings or some sort of family? In that case, I could see why those people would stare at us funny. My boyfriend is the kinda guy who wouldn't take the fact that we’re a couple into account.

His only thought would be about how cool those characters are and not how weird it would be to do sibling cosplay as a couple. It was only for one or two days, so I pushed the anxiety to the back of my mind and continued to hold him by the arm. 

He told me about these rooms set up just for playing and trying out games and dragged me to one. He found us an empty table, with a television that looked older than me, and the oldest PlayStation I’d ever seen. He began to sift through the games available to play and I grabbed him a controller.

He plugged it in, took some big rectangle thing, and pushed it into the slot above the controller port, then popped the console open and put a disk in. It made a loud noise and a PlayStation logo appeared and then vanished.

After loading for a minute the character he was dressed as appeared on the screen, and he began to fight enemies using him. After a few minutes the character I was dressed as appeared in some sort of broken church. 

It didn’t take long before I realized it was a girl. I could feel my face burning due to the embarrassment. My boyfriend realized and began to apologize. He tried to tell me it was the only good character that fit me. 

I then yelled at him, asking him how he could dress me up like a girl and parade me around in public all while taking pictures with strangers. He once again apologized saying he didn’t think I would mind since I’m always doing girly things anyway.

I began to pout, and he said we could return to the hotel room and I could change. I didn’t really want to ruin his trip, so I accepted this and we got up to leave. As we did, the building began to echo with some sort of high-pitched humming. 

Followed by the lights and anything electronic flashing, then some sort of explosion. People began screaming and running all around. My boyfriend grabbed my arm and tried to pull me with him, but I was frozen in my tracks and couldn't move.

When he realized how scared I was, he covered me with his arms and said we’d be okay. Moments later we were hit with some sort of energy wave, sending us flying forward into the table. I passed out as soon as I hit the table, waking up lying in a flower patch.

I got up and went to brush off the costume I was wearing. As I did, I realized it was different, it had more details and was a much better quality. It also seemed like someone stuffed the chest area while I was out cold. 

So I stuck my hand down my shirt to remove whatever was being used as fake boobs, fully prepared to find the pervert who put them on me. I felt smoothing squishy and plump and grabbed it and pulled. Which caused some sort of sensation in my chest and caused me to yelp. 

I was very confused, did someone glue it to me? So I removed my shirt to check. My jaw almost fell off as it dropped. They were real, I had a real pair of breasts on my chest. How the hell was this possible? 

I lifted the dress up and checked my downstairs and my manhood was nowhere to be seen. Had I somehow swapped bodies with someone? I began to call out to my boyfriend for help, but I got no response from him or anybody.

It was all so strange. I had to find out where I am, and what's going on. So I put my shirt back, and I was about to leave when I noticed the flower patch I was lying on. The flowers were all so beautiful and ones I had never seen before. 

I quickly forgot all my previous worries and kneeled down to play with the flowers. There was a nearby basket, so I began to fill it with my favorite flowers. They’ll look great in a vase at our house. I Was interrupted by a man clearing his throat. 

I jumped up and turned around, spilling flowers everywhere. I looked at the man and he was wearing the same clothes my boyfriend had been wearing. So I asked him if he was cosplaying as Cloud. The man's face went from serious to almost hopeful and happy. 

He asked me if I was from the real world too and if I knew how we got trapped in her. I looked at him like he was crazy, I asked him what he meant by the real world, where we are not in it anymore. He then sighed and said no, he was sitting with his boyfriend at a convention when something happened knocking him out. 

Next thing he knew he woke up here inside the video game Final Fantasy 7, as its main character Cloud. That was exactly my story, so I decided to ask him for his real name. It was my boyfriend. Once I knew it was him, I ran up to him and hugged him. 

I began crying and telling him how scary this all was. He hugged me back and tried his best to comfort me, telling me it would be alright, he'd find out what was going on and get us out of there. He then kissed me on my forehead and said I really filled out the cosplay. 

I once again turned red, but he said it was really cute. Then the two of us went on a walk, all while he filled me in on the events of the game, so I could be prepared. He stopped when he got close to the end of the story.

He looked at me and a panicked expression came over him, almost leaving him in tears. I asked him what was wrong, and that's when he told me something awful. Apparently, my character dies, which means I’ll die. 

He grabbed me tightly saying he would do everything in his power to avoid that. Which was somewhat comforting. He tried to come up with several plans on how to avoid it but we couldn’t be sure we could go against the story. 

This was the first time I’d ever seen him panicking and crying. I knew I had to do for him what he always did for me. I grabbed him tightly and kissed him on the lips. I told him whatever happens happens. As long as he’s by my side everything will be okay. Then I ran off and taunted him to keep up.