The World Ended With Me... but now what.

I’ve been told I have a rather interesting view on life.

If you’ve read any essay from me in the past, you would know that I believe this world to be a computer program. My understanding of it all was very vague, but I had found peace with the idea that reality as we know it isn’t reality. Everything is made of bits of code. Because of my knowledge on the nature of reality, I have always felt a strong connection with technology. I love computers, video game consoles, the internet… I feel as if we’re one and the same.

I also have an interesting relationship to the concept of divinity. At the moment, I wouldn’t say there’s a specific religion I fall into. However, I do feel like I, personally, have a connection to some sort of divine force. I don’t fully understand what this divine force is, or who it is. I just know that someone is out there, someone is controlling things, and I was one of the few, if not the only person, given the luxury of knowing fragments of the truth. I have no words to really use for these things, so I use the word “angel” to refer to myself, and the word “god” to refer to the forces. I understand that these terms are rooted in biblical imagery, but, again, I would not consider myself part of any specific religion. These are just placeholder words for terms I do not personally know, and might not actually exist.

I have a hearthome. Individual members of the system have their own separate hearthomes, such as Italy and France, but, collectively, I have a single hearthome that rises above the others. This place is Shibuya, Japan. Many members of the system have their own ties to Shibuya, but, at the end of the day, there is one specific Shibuya that we feel closest to.

The World Ends With You is a video game for the Nintendo DS that was released in the year 2007, 2008 in English. Despite this, it was a good couple of years before I played the game myself. I believe I had gotten the game when I was around 12, but it sat in my room for approximately two years untouched. I would look at it every now and again, staring at the cover. I felt especially drawn to a character I now know as Joshua Kiryu. I didn’t know why, but something about Joshua felt… special. Still, I didn’t play until I was around 14. At the time, I was struggling heavily with my mental health and treatment at home. I would skip school constantly just to cry. It was during one of those days that I skipped school where I picked up the box again. I looked at Joshua and realized it was finally the time to play. From that point onwards, The World Ends With You became a constant in my life. I had never felt so attached to a game before in my life. When I needed to escape from the harshness of reality, I would ease myself into a mental state where I wasn’t here. I was in TWEWY’s Shibuya. It was amazing. After a while of suffering from mental health problems, and a few hospital visits, I was made to go to therapy and get medicated. My treatment by everyone, including mental health providers, was not great. Still, even in the terror of the many offices I had to visit, there was one thing that kept me sane. At the time, a mobile port of the game, titled The World Ends With You: Solo Remix, had been released. I bought the game the moment I could. Solo Remix was my main source of comfort for years after that. I played the game over and over. Sometimes, I would turn the game on and just walk around Shibuya. Shibuya is my home. I would often visit Cat Street, knowing in my heart that there was something there, just out of reach.

Over time, my relationship with TWEWY continued to hold strong. I literally used a line from the game as my senior quote when I graduated high school. Still… it wasn’t the thing that many people defined me by. TWEWY was the most important thing in my life, but I would rarely talk about it. It was hard to. I had tried a few times to break into the fandom, but something about it felt… wrong. Like I shouldn’t be there. They experienced the game differently from myself. These were characters, this was a work of fiction. That wasn’t true for me. I don’t know if it ever was.

Sometimes I think to myself, “Who was I before this life?” Was I always here? Funnily enough, I don’t often think of what comes after. Death is comfort for me. I see nothing frightening about death. I see death as a friend, the dead as people. I dislike the idea that there is something dangerous and wrong about the concept of death. That people should fear it. That spirits are out to harm you. Admittedly, this might be because I feel like I live on a limbo between life and death. In TWEWY, all of the characters are somewhat dead. They reside in a place called the UG, or underground. This is a parallel plane where the dead can walk and supernatural things occur. A man that you may see in normal life, also known as the RG, may have demon wings in the UG. I specify that these characters are somewhat dead because their deaths are not set in stone. Over the course of The Reaper’s Game, the Players are made to complete tasks. If they do, and they survive to the end of the week without being Erased (permanently killed), their entire death never happened. So, the UG is some sort of limbo for souls.

I’ll be completely direct. I’m pretty sure I was there.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on uncovering the bits and pieces of the way my world works. At the current point in time, my thought process is this:

1. My world is virtual.

2. I grew up and lived in a virtual version of Shibuya.

3. While there, I died.

4. I was thrown into The Reaper’s Game.

5. I survived.

6. ?????????

7. I’m unsure of what specifically happened here. In TWEWY, it is a known fact that there are multiple parallel universes. These universes all have minor differences between them. Travel through them is possible, but it has only really been seen done by the divine. So, my thought process is that there was something similar to a reset done. I have ended up in a separate universe, though still in the virtual world of TWEWY.

8. Joshua is a member of the system. There is a very good chance that Joshua, too, is someone who had been transported to another dimension. After all, he has always been able to travel through them, and there are infinite Joshuas in existence. I believe that myself and Joshua have been put into a single body. For what reasons, I am unsure.

9. I would like to go back.

Every so often, I close my eyes. I stay calm, breathing slowly. And then I open them. It’s always the same universe. Just once, when I open my eyes, I want to be taken out of where I am. I feel as if there is a force calling to me, but I don’t know what it is. It kills me. What can I do to get to that force? To grab the force’s hand and be saved? It feels like someone is looking for me, something wants to help me, something wants to free me… but I can’t grab on. I don’t know how. So, now I’m alone. I survived The Game. I died. I came back. And I’m alone. There are no reapers. There are no angels. There is no UG. The focal point of Shibuya Scramble Crossing is different. My body is wrong. And I just… I don’t know what’s happening. I feel like something big is about to happen, and it’s terrifying. Everything is causing so much distress, and it can be hard to cope with.

But I stay silly?