Kevin's point of view:
It was supposed to be just another quiet afternoon.
I strolled along the sidewalk, earbuds tucked in, my eyes glued to the screen of my phone. The familiar sounds of the Pokémon anime filled my ears—the crowd roaring, the crackle of electricity, the unmistakable cry of Pikachu as he faced down Leon's Charizard. This was it. The moment I'd been waiting for weeks to see. Ash Ketchum, my childhood hero, standing on the world's biggest stage against the unbeatable Champion.
My heart raced even though I knew the outcome. I'd watched clips. I'd read the spoilers. But none of that mattered when the classic Pokémon soundtrack swelled through my earbuds, that triumphant orchestral arrangement that had accompanied Ash through every region, every defeat, every comeback.
A small smile tugged at my lips. A break from school. From stress. From the dull routine of existing without really living. Just a quick trip to the corner store—maybe some chips, maybe a soda. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Then I looked up.
A child—no older than seven—darted into the street after a loose ball. Laughter bubbled from his mouth, pure and carefree. Joy radiated from his every movement. The ball bounced once, twice, rolling toward the opposite sidewalk.
The boy didn't see the truck.
But I did.
I didn't think. Didn't calculate. Didn't hesitate for a single heartbeat.
I moved.
My phone slipped from my fingers, clattering against concrete as I sprinted forward. Arms pumping. Legs burning. Instinct taking over everything. The truck's horn blared—a long, desperate scream of air that seemed to stretch time itself. Tires shrieked against asphalt, black smoke rising from the friction. But there wasn't enough time. Not for the driver. Not for the boy.
But there was just enough time for me.
With one final push, I hurled myself forward and shoved the child clear of the truck's path. I felt his small body leave my hands, felt him tumbling through the air toward the safety of the sidewalk. Time crawled to a halt as I caught a final glimpse of him—eyes wide with confusion and fear, mouth open in a soundless cry.
Then I turned midair, facing the oncoming vehicle.
And I closed my eyes.
I've lived a good life, I thought. Letting go. Surrendering.
Maybe not perfect. Maybe not loved the way I wanted. But... it was enough.
In that frozen moment between one breath and the next, I saw the mother rush to her son. I saw her scoop him into her arms, cradling him against her chest, whispering reassurances I couldn't hear. I saw her tears fall onto his hair, saw his small hands clutch at her shirt, saw the way she rocked him like he was the most precious thing in the universe.
The last thing I registered was the child's sobbing voice, muffled against his mother's shoulder.
And the image that burned into my fading vision—of a mother's embrace.
What I would've given... to feel what that child is feeling. The love of family. The certainty that someone would hold me like that.
Then the headlights engulfed me.
The impact stole the air from my lungs, stole the light from my eyes, stole everything I was and scattered it into darkness.
---
Then the only thing that existed was silence.
No pain. No weight. No light.
Just an endless stretch of nothingness's.
I opened my eyes—or at least, I tried to. There was nothing to open them to. Just an expanse of pure void. Black. Still. Infinite. It pressed against me without touching me, surrounded me without containing me.
I didn't panic.
I didn't scream.
I just... sat.
Cross-legged on what I imagined was a floor, I took a deep breath. The air didn't exist, but I breathed anyway. The space around me didn't move, but my heartbeat—did I still have a heart?—remained steady.
"I guess... I really did die," I said aloud, my voice echoing into the abyss.
But there was no fear. No torment. No white light, no judgment, no heaven or hell waiting to weigh my soul. Just this. Emptiness stretching forever in every direction.
"So this is what comes after death, huh." I tilted my head, considering. "I thought it'd be more... dramatic."
A faint smile crossed my face. I shook my head slowly.
"No point in freaking out."
In life, when things had gone wrong—when the stress of homework crushed me, when the loneliness at school became too heavy, when the weight of my own expectations threatened to bury me—I'd always done one thing.
I meditated.
I cleared my mind, steadied my breath, and found peace inside myself. It was the only trick that ever worked. The only anchor that never failed.
So that's what I did now.
I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly, even if my lungs didn't need the air. The stillness of the void seemed to respond, wrapping around me like a cold blanket. Comforting in its emptiness.
Time passed—or maybe it didn't. Here, there was no way to tell. Minutes could've been years. Years could've been seconds.
But eventually, I opened my eyes again. Not with confusion. Not with fear. With curiosity.
"Maybe... since I'm dead, I can create something here," I whispered. The sound traveled into nothing and disappeared. "A mind palace. Like in those anime or manga I used to read."
The thought sparked something small but warm in my chest.
This is my mind. My space. I didn't shape the void, but maybe I can shape myself within it.
I raised my hand—or the idea of it—and imagined.
A room formed around me.
Not just any room. A cozy one. Warm wooden floors that radiated comfort under my bare feet. Soft cushions scattered across the space, each one worn perfectly from years of imagined use. A window that looked out into an endless field of stars, even if the view was purely decorative. And on the wall, a massive screen surrounded by shelves crammed with games and Pokémon memorabilia—every cherished piece of my collection reconstructed from fragments of memory.
Plushies. Action figures. Posters. Game cartridges in their original cases. All of it pulled from a life well-loved, even if I'd never felt particularly loved myself.
I stepped inside. The warmth replaced the void's chill immediately.
"Nice." I settled onto a beanbag, sinking into its familiar embrace. "Let's see... where did I leave off?"
The screen flickered to life.
For a moment, I expected the Ash vs. Leon battle to resume—the clash I'd been watching when the world ended. But instead, a different episode began playing. An older one. Familiar in a way that made my chest ache.
Ash saying goodbye to Butterfree.
I watched as the scene unfolded—Ash releasing his beloved Pokémon into the wild, letting him fly away with the pink Butterfree he'd fallen for. The music swelled. Tears welled in Ash's eyes. Butterfree fluttered higher and higher until he disappeared into the sunset.
It still hit hard.
But this time, something else hit me too.
"That was stupid," I muttered, staring at the screen. "I get it—he wanted Butterfree to be happy with a mate. But would it not have been easier to just catch the female he was interested in? Send them both to Professor Oak? They could've lived together at the lab. Ash could've visited whenever he wanted. Butterfree would've been happy AND stayed with his trainer."
I shook my head, a humorless laugh escaping me.
"How many Pokémon did Ash release over the years? How many had great potential that just... walked away? Pidgeot. Lapras. Goodra. Greninja—okay, that one was different, but still." I leaned back, staring at the ceiling of my mind palace. "He could've built something incredible. An army of loyal partners. Instead, he said goodbye over and over like it was noble."
The screen continued playing, oblivious to my critique.
"But I guess that's the message, right?" I said softly. "Love means letting go. Friendship means knowing when to release." I paused, considering. "Maybe I just never understood because I never had anyone worth holding onto."
I let the episode play as I rested, soaking in the comfort of familiarity. Here, in this mental domain, I wasn't alone. I had myself, my thoughts, and the stories I loved. It wasn't the same as having real connections—people who knew me, cared about me, wanted me around—but it was something.
"I wonder if this is all there is," I said quietly. "Just... floating forever in this space. Building rooms. Watching memories. Slowly forgetting what it felt like to be alive."
But even as I spoke the words, something deep in the void stirred.
I didn't notice it yet—too focused on creating, imagining, and building. My calm had become my anchor, my meditation a lifeline. I was too comfortable to sense the shift happening somewhere beyond my perception.
But the void was listening.
And something had heard me.
Something ancient.
Something waiting.
---
Time.
In the void, it was meaningless.
But I'd made do.
By counting how many episodes of Pokémon I'd replayed, I guessed it had been over a year—give or take. The mental streaming room remained my sanctuary, my comfort zone. Plush beanbags. Glowing screen. Endless adventures playing out before me on repeat.
I never tired of Pokémon.
But even the most beloved stories could grow stale with no new input. No surprises. No moments that caught me off guard.
As the screen faded to black after yet another rerun—the Ash vs. Leon battle this time, that final Thunderbolt striking through Charizard's Blast Burn as the classic soundtrack soared—I leaned back and stared into the dark expanse of my mental domain. The soft hum of silence filled the air.
"I love this... but this can't be it." My fingers tapped against my knee. "There's gotta be more I can do."
I stood.
For the first time in what felt like a long while, I didn't return to the cozy viewing room. Instead, I focused, remembering flashes of movement from my favorite battle scenes—not just from Pokémon, but from everything I'd ever watched. Every fight. Every clash. Every perfectly animated moment of fury and grace.
Could I recreate that?
I closed my eyes, concentrating on every frame, every motion, every detail. The fluid strikes. The explosive impacts. The energy swirling around combatants like twin storms meeting.
When I opened my eyes, the arena had formed before me.
It was so vivid I forgot I wasn't alive. Dirt cracked beneath invisible feet. Fire crackled from nowhere. Water dripped from blades that didn't exist. The movements were fluid, deadly, beautiful—projections of battles I'd memorized playing out on repeat.
I froze in awe.
"It's... perfect."
I hadn't just remembered these scenes—I'd relived them. Thousands of replays had burned every frame into my mind, and now they danced before me, vibrant and alive.
Then a thought sparked in the depths of my consciousness.
What if I could do more than watch? What if I could learn? Actually train?
What if I could master every fighting style I'd admired for years—every move from every anime, every martial art, every game weapon, every motion committed to memory?
A slow, almost dangerous grin spread across my face.
"That would be awesome."
I raised my hand. The world shifted.
The arena remained to my right, battle projections locked in eternal combat, but now new structures rose in the distance. A sprawling combat field stretched toward an impossible horizon. A simulation chamber materialized, its walls glowing with unknown purpose. Rooms formed around different elemental auras—fire, water, ice, lightning, earth, wind. My training grounds.
The mindscape had evolved.
I spent what could've been days—or weeks, or months—building environments. Copying terrains. Filling them with every training tool and obstacle I could imagine. I conjured scorching deserts that shimmered with heat haze. I created slippery fields of ice that reflected my own determined expression back at me. I built gravity zones that pressed down with crushing weight, forcing me to fight against resistance that felt impossibly real.
At first, I felt nothing. No heat. No cold. No resistance. A mind without a body can't feel physical sensation.
But as time dragged on, that changed.
I began to sense things.
Just faintly at first. A tingle of warmth across my skin. A rush of chill down my spine. The sensation of effort burning in my muscles as I moved. It was like awakening a muscle that had slept my entire life. The more I trained, the more the illusion became real.
Then came the weapons.
I conjured the Chain Blades from my memories of God of War—twin blades connected to chains that responded to my will. Fire sparked along their length as I whipped them through the air, leaving trails of light in their wake. At first, they were clumsy. Unwieldy. I tripped over my own feet. I wrapped myself in chains more often than I struck my targets.
But with each failure, I adapted.
My movements grew sharper. Precision replaced wild strikes. I learned to feel the blades as extensions of my own body, to predict their arc before they completed it.
It was not easy.
I couldn't just snap my fingers and master them. My own mind forced me to earn every skill. Every technique. Every hard-won improvement.
Swing after swing. Step after step.
Trees shattered beneath my strikes—only to respawn seconds later. Obstacles returned just as fast as I destroyed them. There were no shortcuts. No cheat codes. No save points I could reload. Every technique had to be earned through repetition and failure and persistence.
And I learned them all. The scythe's sweeping arcs. The dagger's precise thrusts. The whip's unpredictable strikes. The chain's versatile embrace. From graceful spins to brutal executions, I trained without end.
But...
Something felt wrong.
Whenever I fought, I felt incomplete. The blades were cool. The motions were impressive. I could perform techniques that would've made me a legend in any fighting game, any martial arts tournament, any battlefield on Earth.
But deep in my core, something didn't fit.
"I wanted to learn these... but they're not mine." I lowered the burning chains, watching the fire die along their length. "I don't know what is... but this isn't it."
I sighed, dismissing the weapons with a thought. They vanished like smoke in wind.
Then something else dawned on me.
Even after what felt like years of non-stop training, I had never fought anyone. No real opponent. No unpredictability. No genuine threat of failure or danger.
I knew how to block, parry, strike, and move. But I didn't know how to react. How to think on my feet. How to adapt when plans failed and techniques crumbled. I didn't have experience—just technique.
"Training is one thing," I said aloud. "But battle... is something else entirely."
Still, I kept pushing forward. I had time. Endless time.
One day, maybe I'd figure out how to simulate a real opponent. Someone who could surprise me. Challenge me. Force me to grow in ways I couldn't predict.
But for now, I mastered everything else I could.
I turned and looked across my mental domain. It was massive. Almost too big.
Sherlock Holmes—the greatest fictional detective—had mind palaces the size of a single library. A few rooms. Carefully organized memories. Nothing more.
My mindscape stretched across fields, mountains, caverns of knowledge and skill. Bigger than anything I could've imagined back on Earth. Bigger than anything I deserved.
Maybe that was the problem.
My emotions had started to wane.
Joy came less frequently now. Sadness barely registered. Even anger—that reliable fire that had driven me through so many difficult moments—flickered like a candle in a storm. They were echoes in a deep cave now, distant and fading. I still remembered what it felt like to laugh until my stomach hurt. I still remembered the ache of loneliness that had followed me through school, through life, through every relationship that never quite became what I wanted it to be.
But the feelings themselves were slipping away. Dulled by time. Eroded by solitude.
I gazed at the weapon chamber and the arena beyond it, where projected warriors clashed in endless combat. To my left, elemental zones shimmered with unnatural weather. Lightning struck water. Wind howled against stone. Fire danced across frozen ground.
It was all perfect.
But perfection... was cold.
Still, I pressed on. I would master every skill. Every motion. Every element. I was determined.
One day, someone might find me.
One day, maybe I'd awaken again—not in this void, but in a world where the skills I'd earned could mean something. Where I could test myself against real opponents. Where I could prove that all this isolation, all this training, all this endless effort had been worth something.
But for now, I trained and learned everything I could get my hands on.