Part 1: Game Changer

Hi. If you are reading this, my name is Ararima Haniki. Let me start by saying that what I have experienced is not like anything anyone has ever seen before. The way my life was before could never have predicted what was coming.

When I was born, my parents were both scared and surprised to find out that I had ageusia. In other words, my sense of taste was lost when I came into the world. The doctors revealed that most times there were treatments available for people who had this condition. Unfortunately for me, that wasn’t the case at all. I grew up unable to tell what I thought about a food or drink. It prevented me from being able to get the chance to participate in the generational passing of cooking meals for family reunions. It was supposed to start when I was ten years old. Because taste was vital in determining whether what I made was right or not, I often failed those lessons.

I wanted to learn how to make use of what had been holding me back for such a long time. Little did I know this would soon be possible.

You see, my father and I travel to this big convenience store which we always go to on the weekends to buy a VHS movie of my choice for us to watch together at night. We have a box TV which sounds very antique nowadays since I go to Dream Academy High where the technology there is extremely advanced.

However, in Aisle 2, I saw something new had replaced those VHS tape shelves. A single-player video game called Candiere’s Cafe.

At first, I was a bit hesitant. What happened? Why was this new item pushing over the reason I had fond memories of this place? Then I looked at the back of this game’s cover. My interest began to build. Maybe I could get a feel for what I wanted to do by playing it. My father bought the game itself and two game controllers since we also had a DVD player to insert the disk inside.

Upon startup, we sat on the couch and waited.

From that point on, what I would see for the first time would change everything I thought I knew.