prologue: Arika, Lost Another Piece.

In my fibble life as a 28 years old career woman, there are currently three exact moments where I could feel strongly how a part of my soul passed away, disappearing to nothingness.

First, is when I gave up my interests of fantasy worlds in favor of growing up, like the other girls my age were. It’s a phase every girl gets with growing up to twelve years old, you either try hard to conform to the society’s standard of a teenage girl or become one of those chuunibyous who tries so hard to be different and declares they’re ‘not like the other girls’. I unfortunately fell for the former category, but that wasn’t exactly why a part of my soul died that day.

You see, I used to get along a lot with my grandmother before ‘that’ happened. She’s not like the typical grandmother who knit me a sweater as a hobby, her hobbies were quite modern for her age– gaming on the computer, especially MMORPGs. She liked telling me about her past where she would play tabletop games with her little high school club and how in awe she is in the modern times that there’s exactly a genre of game where she could live on tabletop adventures without having to go through time management hell first.

….At the end, she still had to go through time management hell whenever she wanted to do boss raids with her friends, but again, praising the technology as she said, she learned how to use the internet for that. She’s pretty tech-savvy for a grandma, but that’s not my point here.

My point is, me and my grandmother shared an interest in fantasy worlds and video games. We would dream of an alternative world where magic is real, and then liven it up in video games. Being introverted that I am, however, I do not play online games as much as my grandmother did– it’s not like it’s legal for me to play them at such a young age, either. My grandmother would instead let me borrow her accounts from time to time, and play with me as she rambled about the lores of the game while backseating the hell out of my horrible gameplay of a kid who does not even play tutorials.

See where I’m going here? As I grew up, I found my grandmother’s interests rather stupid. Or more likely, my friends find it stupid, and as a teenage girl who had to conform to her own social circle, I lashed out at my grandmother on one of my visits. Oh by the way, she lives literally in the next town, reachable by less than an hour of a bus or train ride, so I visited her quite often every weekend until that day where I lashed out.

“Grandma, you don’t understand! Girls my age— no, even your age doesn’t play video games anymore!”

“Arika—”

“Girls like me would rather learn fashion from magazines, dress pretty, and not dwell on a world of elves and magic and such!”

….I did mention such things, if I wasn’t wrong. If I could go back in time, I would’ve slapped the hell out of that 12 year old me for being superficial. Because ever since that happened, a piece of my soul died with it. I think my grandmother’s heart was broken to pieces even more than I did, because ever since that happened, I never went on and talked to her again properly.

Even until the day she passed away, a year after that. Can’t clearly remember, was already bawling my eyes out of regret, and it wasn’t quite much of a pleasant memory. The terrible guilt a 13 years old girl could have is horrible to handle by one alone, even if she herself wasn’t much a part of the whole scheme of the world.

That was the second time a part of my soul died, along with my tears. Yet, as foolish and young as I am, I couldn’t even bring myself to open my late grandmother’s gaming computer ever again. I feel like it would make me get crushed by my guilt of never speaking to her again since I went on and lashed my own insecurities to her. It’s probably gone by now, sold to some antique PC collector or something.

As for the third time a part of my soul died…. It was when I decided to go on and became a career woman, which isn’t too far from the time it is now. I think, unlike the first and second time a part of my soul died, I felt like I threw away a whole box of my soul to conform, that I couldn’t explain it quite well.

I decided to dedicate my whole life to work ‘like normal people do’, and that was apparently too much for my boyfriend I only had for a month without doing anything. He immediately got turned off by the way I said I have no hobbies, it seems. Even when he’s not any better either, by saying that he got charmed by the way I focus on my work….

Which brings us back to today.

In which, instead of just a part of a soul, I think everything was the climax of myself throwing everything out of the window. It bit me back in the ass, if I were to say it crudely. I lost my job thanks to a silly little mistake which I got blamed for, and now I’m just swaying around on a train ride home, alone, with emptiness embracing me with all its cold, unforgiving temperature.

One such emptiness had made me miss my stop, but instead of panic as I usually would do— instead, there was nothingness. I heard a lot of urban legends of people being kidnapped by spirits during their train rides, and a little part of me wished it was true and would happen to me, as I closed my eyes wishing for the worst to befall as I fell asleep on the train.

Or so I thought.

But I didn’t.

I chickened out at the last minute, thinking that it wouldn’t be pleasant to be spirited away and became the soul fodder of some anomaly or spirit or both. So I took the next stop. Which, funnily enough, was one place of a bitter memory.

It was the stop of the town where my grandmother lived. As I reminisce about the three times I lost a part of my soul, a lot of them connect to my childhood here, after all. So I took myself out of the train, as I walked through the night only lightened up by the street lamps.

I don’t even have anywhere in particular to go here. My grandmother’s home had long been sold, probably belonging to an unrelated family or something by now. It would be rude if I just decided to stay over there as if they knew me personally. To begin with, I don’t think it would even be allowed.

So all I do is walk aimlessly, wishing on a whimsical memory to resurface and gain back my will to get through life. The streets have changed a lot since I was a child, obviously, but worse comes for the worse, I could just call for a taxi to get myself home.

“Meow.”

That was until I encountered that one fluffy menace humanity knew as a cat.

I, as with most people with heart, am not immune to a cat suddenly approaching me. Its glowing eyes shine through despite the darkness of the night and its black fur, and it gives slightly a creepy vibe, but I don’t care about that much. It’s a cat, and it came to me without me doing any gestures to make it come by my side! And it snuggles to my feet! I would’ve immediately consider adopting it if it wasn’t for the fact that my apartment not allowing pets—

“...Ah, right. How am I supposed to pay my rent from now on?”

Once again, I was embraced with hollow emptiness. Oh well, at least I could just pet this cat and think for later. I lowered myself to caress the head of the little critter, and while it accepted my hand at first, suddenly, it jolted itself away.

For some whimsical reason— I decided to chase it. There was not a single thought in my head besides feeling up its fluffy fur to ease my depression. I couldn’t even pay attention to the road, thankfully it was already late at night. As I chased it down the streets of my childhood, I could feel as if myself as a child was running along with me.

“Wait up, kitty!”

Strangely, for the situation I found the cat in, I could always find it within the range of my vision. It’s really dark and the cat was a black cat, but it was running away from me at a pace where I could’ve caught it with my eyes. I didn’t really think much of it at first, but as I chased it, I began to feel something was strange.

The cat suddenly stopped in front of an empty house.

Except, it’s not really an empty house. It’s the house of my grandma as I remembered it was, instead of the house it could’ve been by now. I could find my legs shaking, as if recalling an old trauma. In some ways, it was. Whatever kind of an apparition that black cat was, this was a rather unpleasant one to deal with. Yet, with my legs shaking and all,

I find myself stepping inside the house. It was dark, except for a single light source. A computer I knew belonged to my grandmother. One I thought was already sold to god knows where, was turned on as a single program was open on its screen.

“Huh? Elvens Trailblaze Online? That game was discontinued like fifteen years ago, didn’t it?”

I remembered it as my grandmother’s favorite game up until the day she passed. By the time she passed, she already became the first player who cleared its final event before the game closed down for good, but this is something I only heard from my mourning mother as she recalled her last days. I wasn't on speaking terms with her for a while, remember?

“Arika.”

I heard, faintly, my grandmother's gentle voice calling my name from the monitor. Not caring about the logic behind the apparition, the strangeness of the whole ordeal where I could just click on a dead game on a computer and a house that shouldn't be here, one thought crossed my mind.

I want to see my grandma again.

“Arika,”

The voice grew clearer by seconds. I reached my hand to the mouse to click on login and see if miracles do happen, but before I could do so, I was enveloped in a warm set of bright lights.

“Grandma…”

Ah, there were tears running down my cheek. It's a little too late to notice by now, huh?