I Quit

You know… I never really wanted to be a narrator.

It just kind of happened.

One day you're following a quiet story about a boy and his app, and the next you're trying to explain the collapse of civilization one grammatically incoherent sentence at a time.

It's exhausting.

Tenses blur. Commas disappear. People speak like autocorrect has a personal vendetta against them. And here I am, still trying to craft sentences—sentences, mind you—that make sense.

But how do you narrate a world where language is dying? Where even the thoughts inside people’s heads are starting to fray at the edges?

And you know what? I never asked for this.

I had a dream once.

I didn’t want to be a narrator. I wanted to be a journalist. A real one. To chase stories through chaos and cities, to scribble in notebooks and whisper into microphones. To ask questions no one else dared ask.

But my parents said journalism wasn’t a fitting job for someone like me.

“You’re omniscient,” they said. “Act like it.”

“Be serious,” they said. “Pick a respectable job. Narrator. Historian. Maybe a god if you’re feeling ambitious.”

Now the world is falling apart.
Language is breaking like porcelain.
People can't even ask for directions without accidentally starting wars.
And here I am, still narrating. Out of habit.

And now… now everything’s ending anyway.
So what am I even waiting for?
If the world is falling apart, maybe there’s no better time to try. Maybe chasing one last dream is the only thing that makes sense anymore.

Yes. That’s it.

I will become a journalist.

And this—this is my first story. My first and, let’s be honest, probably last story.

The story of Kaito Sasaki.

A man who broke the longest streak in Duolingo history.

A man who may or may not have broken the world in the process.

With him, a mysterious ex-developer. And a terrified third wheel with more caffeine than spine.

Together, they’re chasing something across a crumbling world. Answers. Maybe redemption.

I don’t know where they’re going. But I’ll follow.

This is your journalist. Reporting live from the last days of language.

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I began my investigation at what used to be a fortress of anxiety and soda cans: the home of Sota Takahashi—former Duolingo developer and now a part-time fugitive, full-time stress ball.

The front door was locked, but Siri was kind enough to let me in, before asking me if I wanted to take part in a game. Due to my past work experience, I respectfully declined.

Inside, the house wasn’t trashed, just... flinching. The curtains were drawn. Every clock blinked 12:00. Something about the air felt like it had been holding its breath.

A pyramid of unopened energy drinks was stacked like sacred offerings in the Kitchen. On the fridge were several sticky notes:

    -“BEEP BOOOOP BEP BEEEEEEP = Don't let anyone enter”

    -“THEY’RE EVERYWHERE”

    -“PLANES ARE METAL DUO'S?”

That last one was underlined three times.

I moved to the living room. On a corkboard (which I’m not convinced wasn’t just an old pizza box), there were maps. Hand-drawn. Sloppy but detailed. Multiple routes were scratched out violently in red ink: plane routes, highways, boats. The only one left untouched was a bold blue line tracing a railway.

In Sota’s bedroom, things got more unhinged.

A plush owl had been stabbed through the chest with a chopstick. A web of string connected news clippings, airline schedules, and what looked like pigeon feathers.

One page simply read “Can boats still float?” in all caps.

But amid all the madness, one thing was clear:

Sota believed trains were their best chance.

Not ideal. Not safe. But better than flying or trusting “the linguistically compromised maritime sector,” as he scribbled in a margin.

So they left. By train, most likely. Destination unknown. But the tracks—those still worked. For now.

I jotted a note in my journal. “Follow the rail lines.”And just like that, the trail had begun.

The next logical step was to speak to the locals. Train stations are full of bored, talkative people—someone must've seen three confused weirdos who happened to be the biggest fugitives in the world.

I started with a vendor selling sandwiches that looked like they were made of lint and broken promises.

“Did you happen to see a group come through here?” I asked. “One tall, one short, one vibrating?”

The man squinted at me. “You word talk… too… like... dumby. What say mean?”

I blinked. “I asked if you—”

"YES! Yes that i want knowing. Why you talk weird?!" he shouted, grabbing a butter knife and pointing it at me. “You sound like book ghost! You be spy man?”

“I’m… a journalist.”

"Potato-Patata! You write talk! Bad evil grammar man!”

He refused to answer anything else and made a very deliberate show of unwrapping a sandwich that looked like it was laminated in glue. I backed away slowly.

The next person was more helpful. For about six seconds.

“Oh yeh, I see group like. One yell box beep. Girl mad-mad, like knife eyes. Small one go hide to back machine—he scared of women.”

"I saw them." A red-haired woman standing by said to me in perfect grammar.

Finally, progress.

I asked, “Do you remember where they were headed?”

She squinted. “I might.”

I pulled out my notebook. “Great. Can you tell me—”

She froze. “What is that?”

“My noteb—”

“You write in curzive??” she barked. “That old talk style. That OLD LANGUAGE.”

Before I could defend myself, a man behind her shouted, “He use comma!”

Then someone screamed, “He one of them Syntax Priests!”

And that’s when the mob formed.

Someone hurled a half-eaten bun at my head. Another threw a shoe while others started a weird dance around me, holding their hands in an L shape over their foreheads, possibly for "Language Traitor". I ran for cover, narrowly dodging a baby carrot and what I think was a dictionary page used as toilet paper.

I dove behind a recycling bin labeled:

"PLANET ISN'T NOT CLEAN"

I stayed there until the mob wandered off, still mumbling about “grammar nazis,” which now meant a total different thing by the way.

I caught up with them at the station.

The place was chaos, as expected. Signs flickered between half-sentences and gibberish. 

Announcements over the loudspeakers came out like:

"TRAIN GO AWAY FAST FROM HERE TO THERE! NO MISS, WE WAIT NOT!"

I spotted them near Platform 3. Kaito was holding a piece of paper while Hana was struggling to drag Sota out of the bathroom. He was clutching a roll of toilet paper like it was a safety blanket.

He sniffled. “I don’t want to get on a train! Trains go fast and fast means crash!”

“You said trains were the safest!” Hana barked.

"Safest!! Not safe!"

Kaito ignored them both. He was standing in front of a ticket clerk—an older man with glasses, a calm demeanor, and a clipboard that hadn’t been updated since grammar still existed. Instead of speaking, Kaito handed him a drawing.

It was a crude sketch of waves and a big arrow pointing vaguely westward. Also, a fish. For no clear reason.

The clerk blinked at it, then at Kaito. “…You want… fish?”

“No! Water! Swim...fish?" Kaito said mimicking a fish on land.

“Ah,” the man said, completely deadpan. “I see.”

He then calmly handed them three tickets and pointed toward Platform 7.

After they went on their way, I approached the clerk.

“Excuse me. Does that train go west...like towards USA?”

He glanced at me over his glasses. “No, Shodoshima,” he said plainly. “Bit touristy this time of year, but quiet.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And why, exactly, did you send them there?”

He adjusted his glasses. “The boy drew a fish, waved his arms like a confused seagull, and said the word ‘water’ in four different ways. I assumed he was… struggling.”

“You speak perfect Japanese.”

“I have a PhD in linguistics.”

“…So you thought he was the one losing language?”

The clerk shrugged. "Wouldn't you?"

Fair point.

And just like that, the trio—our heroes, our grammar fugitives—were on their way to the wrong place. Again.

But so was I.

Next stop: confusion. Possibly with palm trees.