Within a certain city, quite early in the morning when the city was bubbling and workers hurried to their jobs, Ethan sat hunched over his desk, with bloodshot eyes fixed on the monitor that displayed nothing but a cruel error message: Account Not Found.
He'd been staring at those three words for thirty hours now. Thirty hours of refreshing the page, clearing cache, restarting his computer, checking forums… thirty hours of watching his entire life evaporate into digital nothingness.
Pushing forty with nothing to show for it but a collection of virtual trophies, after finishing highschool, he invested his money into gaming rather than furthering his education, so he just had a high school diploma and two decades of raid completions.
As for his romantic history, well… a string of usernames with hearts beside them was all he ever had, none lasting past the three-month mark. And of course, his one-bedroom rental where energy drink cans formed aluminum mountain ranges around the neural link headset that had swallowed his real life whole.
At the onset of things, it really seemed like the money he had would last, but inflation was cruel to all under the sun—and now even the one thing that gave him solace was gone.
His hand trembled as he scrolled through the Lost World Online forum one more time. His post—desperately titled "YAMAMOTO ACCOUNT VANISHED OVERNIGHT PLEASE HELP"—had finally gotten a response from a developer. He clicked it with what little hope remained in his chest, seriously and desperately hoping it brought solution.
"We've checked our databases thoroughly. No account under the username 'Yamamoto' exists or has ever existed in our system. We cannot restore what our records show was never created. If you believe this is an error, please provide your original registration email."
Ethan wanted to scream, reading the message! Never existed? He'd spent fifteen years building that account. Fifteen years grinding, mastering every skill and equipment, conquering every raid, completing the game as they awaited an update. He was ranked #1 on the global leaderboards! EVERYONE knew Yamamoto.
Or they had, until last night, when he'd logged out after defeating the Abyssal Dragon for the hundredth time and went to sleep.
These days, with poverty breathing down his neck, and a lack of a life outside his room staring at him, he'd thought about streaming before, or posting videos. With his skill level, he could've made something of himself—sponsorships, a community, maybe even enough money to finally move out of his shoebox apartment; But he'd always been too self-conscious, too afraid of showing his real face, his real voice, his real mediocre self to the world…
And now? Now he'd have to start from level 1 like some nobody. All that time, all that mastery, all that proof that he was good at something—gone. It's not like he could go outside now to work a job, not with a body filled with energy drinks and junk food for the past two decades. He was lucky to be just a little fat even, but that didn't mean he was healthy.
What was the point?
Ethan pushed back from his desk, his gaming chair squeaking in protest. The morning sun was beginning to seep through his blackout curtains, painting his failures in somewhat gloomy light. He hadn't slept in almost thirty hours. His head pounded, and his eyes burned.
"Forget it," he muttered to the empty room. "Just…" He didn't even finish the sentence.
He stumbled to his bed, not bothering to change out of the same clothes he'd worn for three days. As his head hit the pillow, a bitter thought crossed his mind… maybe when he woke up, this would all turn out to be some nightmare. Maybe his Yamamoto account would be there, waiting for him.
Maybe he'd finally wake up from the bigger nightmare—the one called his life.
Just like that, and perhaps unusually so, sleep claimed him within seconds.