CONTENT WARNING: This story contains mature themes, including depictions of depression, suicidal ideation, and strong violence. It is intended for mature audiences only. Reader discretion is advised.
The silence in the room wasn't just quiet; it was heavy. Viscous. It reeked of stale dust and unspoken despair, a thick paste that clogged my throat. It had eaten into the fibers of the old carpet and coated the shelves lined with my collection of game discs—forgotten artifacts of a dead era. Back when I still had the strength to hold a gamepad for hours. Now, they were just silent tombstones marking the grave of happier times.
Faded posters hung on the walls, bleached by time and an indifferent sun. My icons. My only saints.
There was Guts from Berserk, the grim warrior with a sword the size of a man, eternally marching against fate, bleeding but unbroken. I looked at him and let out a bitter, dry chuckle. What a cruel irony. Next to him lay the Wings of Freedom, the crest of the Survey Corps from Attack on Titan. Freedom. The one thing I would never have.
On the shelf, amidst dusty volumes of manga, a figure of Lelouch vi Britannia stood frozen in a pose of triumph. Intellect, strategy, a will capable of reshaping the world… trapped in a body that was physically weak. I saw a kindred spirit in him. A twisted reflection of my own ambitions, locked inside this cage of useless flesh.
My throne. My prison.
The wheelchair stood by the window. Through the grime-streaked glass, life unfolded in high definition. A playground full of laughter. The thud of a ball, piercing screams, petty arguments—the soundtrack of a childhood I had lost. It was torture. I watched the healthy, mobile children with the cold, detached curiosity of an entomologist studying an alien species.
I was one of you once.
A sunbeam, crawling lazily across the wall, reached the bedside table. There, standing like a monument to indifference, was a plate. Yesterday's dinner. The buckwheat porridge had turned into a monolithic brown mass, and the sausage had shriveled, covered in a greasy, congealed film.
I remembered my mother coming in last night. She didn't look at me. Her gaze slid over the wall, the window, anywhere but my eyes. The hand that placed the plate trembled slightly—not from care, but from a desperate desire to end the ritual and leave.
"Eat," she had thrown at me. The sound of her retreating footsteps was louder than any judge's gavel.
I didn't touch the food. It wasn't pride. Inside me, there was only a scorched wasteland where hunger, thirst, and desire had died long ago. Only a bottomless, all-consuming apathy remained.
Ten years.
Sometimes it felt like it happened in another life, to a different boy. That life smelled of freshly cut grass on a football field, where I gasped in delight after scoring my first goal. It smelled of hot asphalt melting under bicycle tires as I raced the wind. It rang with the laughter of friends around a campfire.
And then, all those scents were replaced by one. The sterile, acrid stench of a hospital.
I remembered that day in high definition. The sun was shining so brightly I had to squint. I was riding home from school on my old but beloved bike, anticipating an evening with a new game. The joy of motion, muscles working in rhythm, wind in my hair… I was absolutely, cloudlessly happy.
And then—the piercing, ear-splitting screech of brakes.
I turned my head. The grill of the truck, massive as a monster, was so close I could see a crack in the windshield and the driver's face twisted in horror. There was no time to be afraid.
A dry, sickening crunch. Not metal, but something inside me. A blinding flash of white-hot agony in my back, as if a red-hot crowbar had been driven into my spine. A sensation of flight, of weightlessness… followed by the brutal, bone-shattering impact against the asphalt.
The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was the blue sky and my own blood, spreading across the grey road in a grotesque pattern.
I woke up in a ward. White walls, white ceiling, a white coat. The doctor had a tired, sympathetic face that I hated instantly. He spoke of "extensive damage to the spinal cord at the T10-T11 vertebrae," of "complete paraplegia," of "irreversible consequences." The words were complex, but the meaning hit me viscerally. I heard my mother sob behind him, saw my father clench his fists until his knuckles turned white.
But me? I felt nothing. No fear. No grief. Just cold. An icy, pervasive cold that settled deep in my core and never left. My intellect processed the sentence before my heart could feel it. The legs that had carried me into the wind that morning were now just useless slabs of meat. Forever.
This morning was no different from thousands before it. The same agonizing procedure of transferring from bed to chair, demanding every ounce of strength from my upper body. The same mechanical brushing of teeth in front of a mirror where a stranger wore my face. Pale skin, dark circles, and the eyes of an old man.
I rolled to the desk and opened my laptop. The Internet—my second prison, just as ruthless.
The news feed was screaming with life. An old school friend posted photos from a mountain hike—a beaming face against a snowy peak. My mind automatically noted: Good gear. Expensive. A tech site trumpeted a breakthrough in prosthetics, but I knew—it wasn't for me. Too complex, too expensive, too far from my reality. A trailer for a new anime season dropped. I used to wait for this. Now, watching the drawn heroes, I felt nothing but irritation at their pathetic speeches about hope.
I opened a blank text document. A suicide note.
What could I write? "Sorry for being a burden"? Too pathetic. "Blame yourselves"? Too cruel and unfair. I stared at the blinking cursor for a long time, then slammed the laptop shut. Words were meaningless. My exit would be louder than any text.
The decision was made. Cold. Calculated. Final. Like the last move in a long chess game.
I reached for the nightstand. Fingers trained by thousands of hours on gamepads easily popped the blisters of the potent painkillers prescribed to me by the ton. A handful of white pills on my palm. My key to freedom.
I threw them into my mouth. A bitter, chemical taste. Washed down with warm, stale water. Done. There was no way back.
I leaned back into the pillows, closed my eyes, and waited.
At first, there was nothing. Then, the world began to melt. Sounds became muffled, the light dimmed. The poster on the wall swam, and for a second, it seemed the painted warrior nodded at me. Voices from the depths of memory began to surface. My mother's laughter when I was a toddler. My father's approving bass after a won match. And then—their whispers behind the door: "I can't take this anymore...", "He will never get better..."
My consciousness clawed at reality, but the drug was stronger. I felt my "Self" dissolving, breaking apart. In this final agony, in this last act of disintegration, I concentrated all my will, all my anguish and unfulfilled dreams into a single thought. It wasn't a scream, but a desperate whisper into the cosmic void.
"If there is any chance... any other world... a god... a System... anything... Give it to me. Give me a body that moves. Give me a purpose. I don't ask for happiness. I ask for a chance. The right to fight..."
Darkness snapped shut. Cold. Absolute. Timeless.
And then, out of non-existence, a sensation was born.
I was warm. I was cramped. Something enveloped me from all sides, supporting me. I heard a dull, rhythmic thud—ba-dum, ba-dum. I was alive. My consciousness, sharp and cynical, was trapped in something incredibly weak and helpless.
An eternity passed before I was pushed out, into blinding light and deafening noise. The first breath burned my lungs like fire, and I screamed—a thin, piercing wail of an infant.
The world was a kaleidoscope of blurry spots and incomprehensible sounds. But my mind was already firing on all cylinders, analyzing. Smell—wood, smoke, herbs. Sounds—an unfamiliar language that my brain, for some reason, began to decode instantly. I felt myself being lifted by giant, gentle hands. I forced my vision to focus.
A woman's face leaned over me. Exhausted, but happy. Behind her stood a man with a thick beard and kind eyes.
New parents. A new life.
And then I felt it.
I sent a mental impulse to my toes. And I felt them. I felt them wiggle.
I can move.
The thought was like a supernova explosion in my mind. The euphoria was so overwhelming I almost passed out again.
And in that moment, right before my eyes, a translucent blue tablet flared into existence in the air. Perfectly crisp font, a soft glow. The Interface. The thing I had only dreamed of was now reality.
The final phrase, dripping with black humor, was the cherry on top.
[ SYSTEM INITIALIZED. ]
[ WELCOME, PLAYER. ]
[ DUE TO PREVIOUS KARMA, DIFFICULTY LEVEL SET TO: NIGHTMARE. ]
[ GOOD LUCK. YOU WILL NEED IT. ]
A strange sound escaped my throat—now the throat of a nameless infant. Not quite a sob, not quite a laugh.
My insane dream had come true. I wasn't just given a second chance. I was given new rules of engagement.
And I, whose will had been forged in a decade of torture, intended to become the best player this game had ever seen.