My life on earth was wasted. I experienced little and never felt any beauty, any art, any meaning. I never accomplished anything, spending most of my time on videogames and copious amounts of junk food. My father didn’t care. He was always away.

Regardless, I stopped going to school at fifteen to take care of mother. It was hard, I was top of my classes, I thought maybe with science I could cure her, and help others. Maybe I could do something that mattered. But her condition was worsening, and there was no one to take care of her.

Mother needed hundreds of medicines daily, all at certain times, and Dad would never be home to do it meaning she’d miss out on most of them.

Even still she died on my sixteenth birthday, I still remember coming home after buying her more medicine to her pallid corpse, veins staining her porcelain skin with streaks of green. She died eyes open, her hand reaching for the door. I knew she was reaching for me.

After that I took up a job, noticing fewer and fewer scraps of food left in the fridge by father. It didn’t take long until I found out why he was always away.

I’d caught my dad one too many times stealing from me to buy some hard drugs. We argued, I tried to take my money back. Whether it was the drugs clouding his judgement or his disregard for me, he tackled me and then clawed at my arms while I cowered in a shell to protect myself until he drew blood. I tended to my wound, and he took the money.

Then and there I cut him out of my life. I got work at a café as a cleaner. The café owners didn’t treat me well but I just had to clean morning and night, and they’d give me two meals a day and let me use their electricity to game the rest of the time. If I ever wanted a new game, I’d force myself to work behind the counter and suffer through serving customers. I was a terrible cashier: I fumbled with coins; I cowered in front of any angry customers; I mumbled so much with any girls that came in that most of the time they just left without buying anything.

Working as a cashier always ended up a pit stop to refill my hate. I’d blame my incompetency on my father, I’d blame it on god, I’d blame it on myself. And I hated all three in good portion. But I hated god, or fate or whatever diety watched us, the most. With a life like mine how could I ever do anything good?

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Gaming was what held me. Without it, I’d have ended my life long ago. Online I’d become skilled at anything I’d tried. I must have been, I spent more time gaming than 99.9% of people around the world. And I was better than all of them. Any new game I started at a level playing field, with practice and focus I could beat anybody. I was given a horrid life, but none of that existed on the internet.

Even with gaming I felt something missing. Every day felt darker than the last.

When I went offline to sleep, I’d make a point of avoiding thinking about the future. I didn’t want it to happen because I knew it just meant an older version of me, stuck in the same storage room of a random rundown café with no money, no friends or family, no worth to society.

Gaming couldn’t help me forever. I could become powerful, but that mattered to no one other than me. Every piece of mana, every stat, every inventory item was worthless to most people. The news praised celebrities, billionaires, fireman, bodybuilders. I’d spent more time than any of them on my practicing, yet as soon as I went on the streets, I was a nobody. And because of it all I had nobody.

One day I tried to change things. A group of tenth graders were talking in the café together. They laughed amiably, swapping smiles that held the warmth of sunsets. Then and there they seemed to have everything I’d never had. I’d been passively listening to them.

“It’s going to be so sad without you guys in Hawaii, where’s everyone heading off to then?” the tallest one said, he was set to join the NFL. A life of little training, a lot of money, and a lot of women.

They talked of their dreams in motion. Bankers, doctors, writers. They all had each other. They all were happy.

They left with clear eyes and straight backs, like the world was just there so they could see it together.

 Soon after. I went out of the café for the first time in months. All I needed was to get friends and I would stop being unhappy.

I mustered up all of the confidence I never built. All of the social skills I never learnt and after three hours of deliberating, approached a quite looking girl, with delicate curves, and feline lines about her. She was reading, I hoped if I’d get rejected, at least she’d do it nicely.

By the way her face scrunched when I approached, I knew I was rejected before she even said anything. Her eyes were brown but, in that moment, beady and shrieked, they were like bullets persecuting me. This was what society thought of me.

A man who had to be at least seven foot saw us. And it may have been the way I looked or her, or anything else. But he tackled me down to the ground like you would a thief. My body was frail.

My vision swam. I heard my wrist crack. My elbow crack. My skull smash. When I blacked out I’d like to say I saw blackness but no such thing happened, all I saw was those beady, hateful eyes. That’s when I truly died. It was the moirai’s snipping of thread; Satan's welcoming.