In life, I was just an ordinary kid with an unfortunate name. In death, I'm a man with a mace. Well, a goblin cleric, but who's counting?

It all began on the night before my senior graduation. I lived in a small town in Tennessee, and was the only weeaboo in school, unless the others kept as secret as myself. No one ever heard my controversial political opinions such as the superiority of 2d girls or the hundreds of ways traditional Japanese culture was better than the degenerate hedonism of middle America. While my classmates were getting pregnant and gorging themselves on Country Kitchen, I studied the intricacies of Haruhi Suzumiya and ate lumpy homemade sushi in secret. While they partied and watched NASCAR, I waited for the newest chapter of Berserk and pretended my Mellow Yellow was ramune.

And I kind of had some friends, but mostly I just put in face time so no one thought I was gonna shoot up the school, and then spent my “me” hours engrossed in anime culture. The only person I really cared about was Sasha, the cutest, nicest girl who didn't know I even existed. If it wasn't for her, I'd probably still be alive right now. But on the day before graduation, when I tried to slink past the reprobate American teens hollering to each other about all the shit they were gonna do that night, we made eye contact.

I dropped a pen, I think that's what did it. It was hanging out of my messenger bag, the Star Wars patches disguising the fact underneath it was a replica of a bag my favorite cosplayer made for a Tokyo Ghoul costume. Out of one of the embarrassingly-well-stitched pockets my pen just kind of caught on the desk I was scooting past, attracting Sasha’s attention. Her blue eyes met the ones already staring at her (mine, duh) and her eyebrows raised. “Hey, can you bring a six pack of something? I don't know if we'll have enough.”

I froze. “Y-you mean me? I'm invited?”

She gave me a look like I'd just asked if sucking dick was vegan. “We’re just going up to the Aims. Can you bring it?”

Maybe she'd confused me with somebody else. My hair was stringy, but short and black. I slouched a bit, but was tall enough to make up for it. I had acne, worn jeans and a black shirt. Coulda been anyone, but looked sloppy. Definitely not one of the S-tier kids like Sasha with her perfect hair, smile, figure, and… well, everything.

So I wasn't special. I was just another guy who could bring beer. Did I want to? I had been planning on spending my last night in high school… well, pretty sadly. I was leaving a lot behind. Not experiences or memories or anything, but… Graduation. So long as I was still a student I could have some kind of stupid fantasy that something supernatural or mysterious or romantic could happen to me. I was still somewhat like my favorite anime characters. The moment I graduated, I’d be unable to go back to that fantasy. I’d planned to watch some School Rumble and Yu Yu Hakusho, then play some Persona 4. I’d have some ramen with the really expensive tonkatsu I’d ordered online and hidden in the fridge a couple days ago for this moment. I'd lament my dead childhood, and hail the coming of adulthood.

Or I could take this one fucking opportunity to do something I might remember happily ten years from now. Was it worth it? Probably not. Maybe. I dunno. If it had been anyone else, I'd have said no in a heartbeat. Normies are just not worth it.

But it wasn't just a normie staring at me with liquid glass eyes, it was Sasha. I made a decision then, and nodded. “S-Sure. What time should I be there?”

“I dunno, eight?”

“Huhuh, it’s a date!”

She gave me that look again. “No?” And then she turned back to her conversation, and I was forgotten again.

I got out of there as fast as I could, thinking of nothing other than Sasha’s face—the closest I'd ever come to it—the whole bike ride home. The hot august sun soaked my back and buttcrack with sweat, and by the time I got home to our shitty trailer I reeked. I hosed off before coming in, glad Mom was at work on second shift and couldn’t yell at me about dripping on the nice linoleum. And Dad was still asleep from third shift, so I basically had the whole place to myself. Even though I'd washed outside I took a rare second shower so as to be more fancy for my party, and then reheated some pizza while I looked longingly at the tonkatsu pork I wouldn’t be getting to that night. I guessed it wouldn’t be so bad as a graduation celebration meal instead.

But even after showering, eating, and spraying myself with more Axe than a forest full of lumberjacks, I still had hours to kill. I locked my room door—I don't really know why, for e of habit—and pulled my anime disk collection out from under my bed. Inside I had seasons upon seasons of DVD, laserdisc, and even a few blu rays of some of the most classic anime of the eighties, nineties, and early 2000s. Mostly high school anime. Lotta shonen battle stuff. But my hand paused over one particular sleeved DVD, one I hadn’t watched in years. I withdrew the first two episodes of Steins;Gate, and looked at it in silence. A show about adults, sort of, and even still they had weird adventures and met bizarre people. I'd never live in Akihabara like Okabe and Itaru, but maybe my life would one day be as exciting as theirs. I popped the disk into my old DVD player, hooked my thrice-repaired Sennheisers to a jack adapter (you can never be too careful when it comes to weeaboo audio), and immersed myself in the atmospheric world of Steins;Gate.

Six episodes and three hours later, it was time to face my destiny. I grabbed one of Dad’s many twelve-packs of Natty Ice, shoved it into a big backpack (no way it was fitting in my messenger bag), and started a wobbly bike ride out to the old Aims building.

It was supposed to be a department store, out in what was supposed to be a new business zone of the town. Neither of those things ever happened, so the wrecked shell of a building that never was served as a common hangout for teen thots and edgy spergs alike. I was grateful for the darkening sky as I rode, the heat of day beginning to dissipate and minimizing the sweat staining the much-cleaner navy tee I now wore. I skidded up beside the looming wall of the Aims building, looking up at the caving, dilapidated roof, and listened to the sounds of my “peers” inside. It took a couple deep breaths before I was ready, but at long last I hoisted the beer over my shoulder and stepped through a hole in the corrugated aluminum cladding and into a ring of light cast by a couple burning grills.

I didn’t immediately see Sasha, but there were about a dozen other people there. Some football guy took the beer off my hands with a “thanks bro,” leaving me empty-handed and feeing purposeless. Some rock blared on a crappy blue tooth stereo, and there were some hotdogs charring on the grill. I guess it didn’t feel too different than the occasional cookout the neighborhood would have, except instead of middle-aged people with sunburns and wife beaters and sandal-sock combos there were a bunch of scrawny girls in tight shirts and husky guys with buzz cuts and Fox sneakers. Nobody was wasted yet, but between my contribution and that of a few others, that’d soon be remedied.

Not that I cared about getting drunk. I’d done so with sake, in private, once. That was enough for me. So as more people arrived, and everyone had someone to talk to and drink with, I was alone in a throng of soon-to-be graduates. Smash Mouth was my soundtrack, and even if I wished to be the main character of my own anime, I felt like I was the crappy CGI crowd member in the background of everyone else. “Hey, when’s Sasha coming?” I asked a braided, knee-booted girl with more of a fondness for horses than nature intended.

“I think she went up to the roof,” she said, and went back to her conversation.

So, with nothing better to do and even less to lose, I went after Sasha.

There wasn’t any real way to get to the barely-functional roof of the Aims building, but someone a couple years back had stolen one of the firehouse’s long ladders, and propped it against one of the Aims building’s inside walls. It led up to a hole in the roof which was usually covered by a sheet of plywood, but which was already pulled aside as I clambered up and hauled myself over the hole’s lip. Sasha was there, all right. She sat with her legs over the side of the building on the far side from the road, and turned to look at me as I walked carefully over torn, rusty metal to reach her, sounding like I was stomping on the world’s biggest kettle drum as I approached.

“Hey,” I said, sitting down beside her.

“Uh, hi?” Sasha replied, giving me that stupid look again. “Do I—oh, you’re that guy…” She made as if to get up and leave, but I moved a bit further from her

“I’m not gonna do anything, Sasha.” I wanted to say something poetic, maybe about observing the beauty of the stars, but nothing seemed right, so I just kind of sat there, half-slouched, and looked out at the forest well beyond the bulldozed clearing that’d long since grown over with grass and weeds. I didn’t hear her stomping on the metal. After a few seconds Sasha sighed and sat down next to me again.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Pritchard.”

“Seriously?” She gave me a new look, one with some pity in it. “Sorry. Just never heard a name like that.”

I shrugged. “Just don’t call me prick.”

She snorted. “And you already know me, apparently.”

“I’m not a creep. Just you have a memorable name, I guess.”

“Sasha?”

“Y-yeah.” We didn’t say anything for a while. It really was nice up there. Despite the cheesiness of the line I didn’t actually say, the stars were gorgeous. Sometimes I did like to go outdoors on a scorching summer night, and as I’d spray myself with cold water to try to help sleep come more easily, I’d look up and imagine an alien was gonna come down and change my life, like in FLCL or Urusei Yatsura. It never did, but on a night like that one, with an ever-more raucus party below me and my crush beside me (and not fleeing at the sight of me) I felt I was living in some alternate reality anyway. It felt like real life was somewhere else. It was just the two of us, alone, and whatever passed that night was completely disconnected from whatever boring reality life would throw at me later. I’d heard Sasha was going off to college on the East Coast, something about Marine Biology. I’d probably never see her again.

“I like you,” I said. “Y-you’re pretty, and I like how you’re nicer than the other girls even if you don’t pay attention to people like me, and I’ve seen Sailor Moon too, it’s pretty good for a classic shoujo.” I’d seen her wear a Sailor Moon shirt once, a few years ago. I think that was the first time I’d really noticed her. And now this’d be the last time I talked to her, I knew it. My heart pounded and I could feel my sweaty hands shaking against the warm metal roof. I kept staring up at the stars as she got to her feet.

“O-oh,” she said. “I, I mean, uh, that’s really sweet but…”

“Sorry,” I said quietly, almost in a whisper. “We’ll never see each other again anyway. Don’t worry about it.”

“No, no worries,” Sasha said vaguely, and began walking away.

There was a whistling sound behind me, and her footsteps paused. “Woah.” More whistling. Fireworks?

I rose, careful of the roof edge which I put at my back, and stared at the spectacle in the heavens. Streaks of red and green were screaming through the sky, bright, impossibly so. They had to be some new kind of firework. They zipped this way and that, not following any particular path but swirling and sparking and breaking apart.

“Hey,” Sasha said, “does that look like it’s getting bigger to you?”

Yes. One of the lights, a green one, was indeed getting larger. Quickly. In fact, it was coming right for us. My heart literally skipped. It was a painful heavy lull brought on by the most intense fear I’d ever felt in my life. This now-giant ball of fire streaked with green lighting, filling my vision, consuming the sky, the metal at our feet reflecting back a dull light where it wasn’t rusted to pieces. I screamed and threw myself on Sasha, knocking her to the roof and covering her as though my wimpy, fleshy body could protect her from the ball of death looming in the heavens.

Everything went white, and then black, and then I was dead.