I am utterly lost.
Why? Why? Why did I save them?!
The thought hammers against the inside of my skull, a frantic, dying rhythm to match the sluggish pump of my heart. I'm on the ground, breathless in a way that has nothing to do with air. Each gasp is a shallow, wet sip through a closing throat. I can feel it—the warmth spreading from a dozen points, a perverse, intimate warmth seeping into my clothes, pooling beneath my back on the cold, gritty asphalt. I'm losing blood quickly. The metallic tang coats my tongue, thick and real.
If… I had only saved myself then…
The regret is a colder, sharper shard than any glass. It pierces deeper. My vision tunnels, the edges fading into a static gray. The brilliant green of the mountain pines, the stark blue of the sky—they bleach away, leaving only the harsh, bright circle of sun directly above.
Why…
---
2030
I was born into a simple family. The kind of simplicity that isn't poverty, but a quiet, careful ledger. My mother's smile was a budgeted luxury, given freely but born from long hours at the hospital reception. My father's pride was a silent, heavy thing, worn in the set of his shoulders after a day managing logistics for a shipping firm. My younger sister, Aiko, was the only unchecked expenditure of joy in the house, her laughter a currency we all treasured. We were a small, happy unit in a cramped but clean apartment in Adachi Ward, Tokyo. The happiness was real, but it was a quilt—patched together with patience and deliberate choices.
I lived a normal life. I understood my role early. As the first child, and the son, the unspoken expectations settled on me like a second school uniform. I was to be stable. A pillar. Not flashy, not a risk. At twelve, perhaps sensing a world that could be unkind to the quiet, my father enrolled me in the local kendo dojo. For two years, I learned not aggression, but structure. The precise arcs of the bamboo sword, the ritualized footwork, the bow—it was a language of control. Of containing chaos within a strict form. I learned to take a hit, to fall, and to stand up again without a sound. It was less about fighting others and more about governing myself.
School was a landscape of averages. My grades were a steady, unremarkable line on report cards. I had acquaintances, boys who discussed manga and game strategies, but no deep bonds. Girls were a separate, mystifying species observed across classrooms or crowded commutes. I never possessed the casual confidence or the interesting flaws that seemed to attract them. My face was forgettable, my conversation functional. I was a background character in my own story, and for a long time, that felt like the safe, correct way to be.
At nineteen, I entered a decent university, majoring in Computer Science. It was the pragmatic choice. But in my second year, on a whim born of sheer loneliness, I wandered into the Drama Club's recruitment booth. The senior running it, a fierce girl with shock-pink hair, thrust a script into my hands. "You look bland enough to be anyone," she said, not unkindly. "Read this."
It was a monologue from a salaryman realizing his life was a ghost. I stood there, in the bustling courtyard, and read the lines flatly. She stopped me, her head tilted. "No. You're saying the words, but you're not feeling the emptiness. He's not sad. He's… evaporated. Try again."
Something clicked. I thought of my father's silent dinners, of the mapped-out future that stretched before me like a straight, empty road. I didn't act the lines. I let the hollow space inside me resonate through them. When I finished, the senior was quiet. "Okay," she said. "You're in."
For two years, the Drama Club was my secret life. On stage, I wasn't Kaito, the average son. I was a vengeful samurai, a heartbroken astronaut, a king drowning in guilt. I could unwrap the feelings I kept tightly bound and stitch them onto a fictional skin. It was a revelation. My club president told me I had a rare, quiet intensity. "You listen on stage," she said. "Most people just wait for their next line. You actually react." I thought, maybe, I'd found my thread.
But reality was the final director. My father sat me down after graduation. The logistics firm was downsizing. Aiko needed braces. My mother's back was getting worse. His eyes, tired behind his glasses, held an apology he couldn't voice. I didn't make him say it. The choice was a cold, hard stone in my gut. I thanked my drama teacher, packed away my scripts, and entered the job market for game developers and software firms. The acting wasn't a dream I gave up; it was a skin I shed, folded neatly into a drawer of a self I was no longer allowed to be.
At twenty-two, after a soul-crushing parade of interviews and polite rejections, I finally passed the grueling entrance exams for "Komorebi Studios," a mid-sized game company known for solid, if unspectacular, RPGs. I was a grunt in the coding mines, but I learned quickly. It was just another structure, a digital kendo. Syntax was the sword, logic the footwork.
Then came the gamble. The company, facing irrelevance, bet everything on a single title: Aethelgard Academy. A fantasy world, magic, a coming-of-age story set in a prestigious school for the gifted. It was a crowded genre. I was assigned to the quest-logic team.
But in meetings, listening to the bland plot about a chosen hero saving the world, the old instinct stirred. During a late-night crunch, fueled by cheap vending machine coffee, I wrote an impassioned, anonymous memo to the project lead. What if the hero isn't chosen? What if they are profoundly, painfully average, placed in the academy by a bureaucratic error? What if the real "chosen one" is a toxic, charismatic rival? What if the key to saving the world isn't destiny, but the unglamorous, stubborn decency of someone everyone overlooks?
The next day, I was called to the director's office, my heart in my throat, ready to be fired. Instead, the stern old man stared at me over his monitors. "This anonymous memo," he said, tapping the printout. "The voice in it. It's the same one that fixed the bug in the dialogue-tree algorithm last week, isn't it?" I couldn't lie. I nodded.
He was silent for a full minute. "The female lead character," he said finally. "Everyone writes her as either a tsundere trophy or a stoic warrior. Your memo… it implies she should be the one with the real agency, doesn't it? The one who sees the 'average' protagonist for what he truly is." Another nod from me, my throat tight.
"Congratulations," he said, a ghost of a smile on his face. "You just promoted yourself to Lead Narrative Designer. Now get out. You have a world to save."
The game released when I was twenty-five. My father had passed the year before, quietly, in his sleep. A heart attack. The pillar was gone, and the weight transferred fully to me. The success of Aethelgard Academy was a bittersquake. The reviews praised its "subversive heart" and "complex, human characters." My salary tripled. I bought my mother a better apartment. I paid for Aiko's university. The hollow space inside me was now lined with gold, but it was still hollow.
The company vacation to the Japanese Alps was a reward. A luxury resort. My colleagues—mostly younger, brighter versions of my former self—were abuzz with excitement. I sat at the very back of the chartered bus, next to Hiroshi from Quality Assurance, my only real friend. He was the one who'd covered for me during the worst of my grief after Dad died. We didn't talk much on the climb, just shared a comfortable silence, watching the deep green gorges fall away below.
The ride was smooth. The air conditioning hummed. Then, a blur of movement. A figure, a man, stumbling from the tree line directly into our path. A visceral thump, the scream of brakes, the violent, shuddering lurch as the bus slammed into, and was caught by, the mountain-side safety railing. The world became a cacophony of shrieks, grinding metal, and the sickening smell of scorched rubber.
Everyone jerked violently against their seatbelts. A stunned silence, then chaos.
"What the hell?!"
"Is everyone okay?!"
A voice, loud and trembling with authority, cut through. "EVERYONE! STAY CALM! I'VE OPENED THE EMERGENCY DOOR!"
The exit on my right, mid-bus, hissed open, revealing a terrifying slice of bright sky and a steep drop just beyond the ragged edge of the road. One by one, people scrambled towards it, helped by the quick-thinking tour guide. Panic was a living thing in the bus, but it was an orderly panic. Hiroshi and I, at the back, became de facto shepherds. We unbuckled dazed passengers, guided them forward, our voices steady masks over our own fear. "This way. Watch your step. You're okay."
It was my turn. The bus was eerily quiet now, just the creak of stressed metal and the moan of the wind. I took a step towards the bright rectangle of the door. Then, a deep, groaning crack.
The world tilted.
Not a shudder, but a fundamental surrender of balance. The floor fell away from my feet. I was thrown forward, a puppet with cut strings, sailing over the seats. I hit the front windshield—not the glass, but the hard, reinforced frame below it—with all my weight. The air left my lungs in a voiceless whoosh. Then a secondary, sharper impact as the cracked glass pane gave way and I slid onto the steeply angled dashboard, a rain of diamond shards following me.
They pierced my arms, my side, my cheek. A white-hot, precise agony. I shouted then, a raw "AHHHHH!" that echoed in the empty, tilted metal shell.
But they were all gone. Hiroshi. The guide. Everyone. Safe on the road.
My movement, my weight, was the final straw. With a shriek of tearing metal, the railing's last hold failed. The bus tilted further, a slow, monstrous roll. I was weightless again, tumbling, slammed against the driver's seat, then thrown like a ragdoll through the gaping windshield frame.
The ground met me with utter indifference. My body crumpled. The pain was a universe, then it was a distant star. I felt the warm flow, not in spurts, but in a steady, quiet seep. It didn't hurt anymore. It was a cooling.
It was as if the bus was trying to only kill me… Why did it only tilt when I was there?
The thought was quiet, a mere curiosity. My vision was failing. The world was a beautiful, blurring watercolor of green and blue and brown. My heart, that steady, reliable metronome of my average life, was slowing. Each beat was a vast, echoing gong.
Why… why did I save them…
The regret was my final feeling. Not heroic sacrifice, but a profound, selfish mistake. I should have run. I should have been first.
Then, a… detachment.
A sensation of peeling. Like a layer of skin, of self, gently lifting away from the wreckage. Huh?! My consciousness, a tiny, bright point, was no longer looking through my eyes, but at them—at my own broken body growing small and insignificant below.
What's happening??? Woah woah woah!???
The world didn't go black. It… shifted.
Not a fade, but a violent, visual re-knitting. The mountain road, the twisted bus, the blood on the asphalt—they smeared like wet paint. The colors bled, swirling into a vortex of impossible light. It wasn't an end. It was a violent, chaotic transition.
Fuck what's happening?? Am I not dead??????!!
The question echoed into a howling, formless void, as the last thread of my familiar fate snapped.