My life was a disaster.

During my primary school days, instead of properly study, I went to bother other kids, bullying them for my own selfish reason.

But it's not my fault...

It's him.

All because he has everything and I don't.

Money, Parents, Friends.

I have none of them.

I got jealous of their perfect life so I tried to make their life worse but in truth, I just make things much worse for myself.

Their suffering only amounted to me pushing them and me taking their pocket money.

The bully didn't last long as I was caught by the teacher and was scolded heavily. It even got my father involved with the matter.

I didn't learn my lesson and even started to ditch school to go to the Internet Cafe to play games.

A year passed, I failed to advance to the fifth grade and ended up staying back for another year.

At this moment, the people I bullied were a grade higher than me.

Seeing them living their life better than mine, made me more frustrated. The way they looked at me… It made me uncomfortable. I was as though being viewed as trash.

Because I occasionally ditch school and not studying, I stayed back another year in fourth grade.

The gaps became bigger as time passed.

For some reason, out of nowhere, I have the urge to study properly. Probably because I kept seeing them smiling happily while I was having a pathetic look.

Yes, I started to study but that doesn't mean I stopped playing games. It has been a while that I've played the game and it has become an addiction for me.

At least I stopped ditching school for now.

With average effort, I graduate primary school with a simple passing grade, with nothing good to mention about.

After I have graduated from primary school, I no longer cared about what others think about me.

That was because my father suddenly, out of nowhere passed away. His death was caused by lung cancer.

The jealous was immediately replaced with worries as without father providing money, I can't do anything at all.

I can't even buy my own food.

What's more, not only he passed his soul to heaven, he also passed all of his debt to his sons.

Sons, I didn't mention but I have a big brother or should I say a stranger that I barely talked with.

With how shameless I am, I pleaded my big brother to pay all of the debt and even asked him to pay for my high school fees.

Not surprisingly, he didn't help me, not after what I have done as his little brother.

He used to dote on me but now he didn't even hesitate to leave me in the road and die.

Without much expectation from him, he left the house after paying the debt that he was supposed to pay.

He then cut all of his connections with me after settling the debt that he was responsible for.

When he did that I was so angry with him.

He could have paid off all of the debt, yet he didn't. He deliberately split the debt in half and paid only what he was responsible for.

Due to that, I hated him. I loathed him.

You may have realized it by now.

I was an asshole, I could only blame others for my uselessness.

With my 'decent' effort, I found a 'decent' job, which was being a cashier of a convenience store.

Well, not just a cashier but also janitor and re-stocker all at once.

Fitting myself into society, I then slowly realized how useless I am.

Sadly, the realization came too late.

Now I know earning money to survive in society was not easy at all.

The money father and my big brother got to pay my school fees, they're all from their hard work.

Me as a freeloader, I didn't even fulfill my task properly.

Time passed quickly and I was already 22 years old. At this time, the debt was finally paid and I could finally save money for my own needs without worry.

I decided to live my life as an average person with an average life. This is what I deserve after all with my lower than average effort.

There's one thing that didn't change though after all those years and that is playing games.

When I'm not working, I would spend my time at the usual internet cafe.

No matter what, I still couldn't stop playing games.

One night, I thought to myself.

'How are games made?'

I had been playing games for a long time and yet I didn't know where they came from.

For the first time in my life, I made a decision for myself without being influenced by others. It's my own decision.

'I want to know.'

Using my savings I finally bought my own computer and cooped myself inside my apartment.

With the help of the internet, I could easily find people sharing information on the process of making games such as tutorials, guidelines, and articles.

Most of my time was spent on tutorial video and I learned most of the basics stuff that I need to know to make games.

After a year of self-studying, with the knowledge I obtained, I started to develop my own games.

Making games take more effort and time than you think, especially for a beginner developer such as me.

It takes a total of ten years for me to complete a single game.

Throughout that time, by uploading the game on a website where Indie-game developers gathered.

I gained over one million of supporter and among the millions, there's quite a lot of them willing to donate.

I could even use that money to live comfortably without working as a cashier anymore.

Anyway, with the feedback from my supporter, I constantly grow as a developer, whether it was suggestion or critique, they're all useful to me.

Finally, the game was officially released and it started to make money too not counting the donation of my supporter I made one million rupiahs (roughly 70 USD from what I remember according to the conversion of 2000s) in a month.

It was three times better than being a cashier.

More than that, it was fun to make games! I enjoyed it a lot!

Time went by, I made more than ten games and a huge opportunity came to me.

A superpower company called Nero-X from Singapore invited me over to join their company as a game developer.

Without hesitation, I agreed mainly because I felt I could grow even more.

To be able to join a huge company meant that I could also improve myself.

From there, my quality of life got better and better.

I climbed up from a mere cashier to one of the game developers of a huge company.

My monthly salary when I was a cashier, it was just a mere 30 USD but as a game developer, my monthly salary was 12000 USD.

Being able to make that much money, for me, it's unimaginable, me, who failed at life.

Though from this point in my life, I barely cared about money anymore.

It was ironic, previously I needed them so bad but I didn't have them.

Now, that I have them, I realized it was just something that I needed to survive.

At this time where I didn't care about money anymore, I truly realized that my passion was making games.

With me being too ambitious, I set a goal to accomplish in my life. I swore to myself that I would make VR-MMORPG, a revolutionary virtual reality game that could change how people view the world.

What I'm trying to create was not an ordinary virtual reality game, what I wanted to create was the VR-MMORPG that people dream of, similar to Sword Art Online, the NerveGear.

I wanted to create something of that caliber, to be able to dwell in another world and experience a second-life in another world.

With how fast technology was improving each year, I believed we could do it.

With such crazy imagination in my mind, the idea was then suggested to the CEO of Nero-X, hoping that he would consider my idea.

As expected, I ended up getting laughed at.

For the first time, the money in my bank account finally had some use.

I resigned from Nero-X and started my own company to pursue my goal, the only purpose of the company was to bring the technology of virtual reality to the next level.

Over the years, our research finally showed some results but the company went bankrupt before the final product was created.

I dumb and naive.

I know how to make games and that's all I know.

I had no experience in managing a company and by the time I realized it, my company went bankrupt and the project was taken over by someone else.

No matter what I do, I can only agree.

Feeling devastated, I could only leave the research of VR-MMORPG to Microsoft Corporation.

Many years have passed and I'm 78 years old already.

For the last few decades, I've been occasionally studying and improving my knowledge.

Though it wasn't put into use, learning still sparked the passion that has been etched inside of me.

Sitting in the living room, I turned on my television to see the news channel that I viewed every morning.

"Good morning! Today we have something huge to announce, huge news from Microsoft Corporation! And guess what?! It is related to Virtual Reality!"

"That's correct! The dreams of teenagers and adults finally came true. They have successfully created a real VR-MMORPG!"

Hearing the word 'VR-MMORPG' I tensed up.

The word itself jolted me into excitement.

Why wasn't I told by Microsoft that the product was completed?

Dropping my useless thoughts, I immediately ordered one for myself.

I was very excited! Extremely excited!

Ring*

Finally, the drone arrived with my package.

I quickly brought it in, unpackaged the box, and plugged in the device.

Following the instruction, I started the device by saying 'Start'.

The next thing that happened made me threw the helmet on the floor with anger.

[User age is above than recommended]

[Only users of 18-30 years old can use the helmet]

[Please contact Microsoft for further information]

As I expected, there's still something wrong with the game.

I instantly contacted someone I knew at Microsoft.

I needed some explanation from them.

"No need to say anything. I know what you want to say."

Before I could open my mouth, a friend of mine apologized first.

"I'm sorry."

"I cannot make an exception for you to play. It's not that I don't want to but I can't. It's for your sake. F-Reality Type-23 hasn't been perfected yet."

"For normal, healthy youngsters, it 'probably' won't cause any harmful damage but if underage kids or the elderly try to use F-Reality, it might cause unexpected problems."

"The worst case, you could go insane."

"What?! How could you release such an unfinished product?"

"It's the CEO's decision, we couldn't stop it. You already know the new CEO, he only cares about money. That's the reason we put the age requirement on the game. I'm sorry but we can't risk you going insane because of our product. It will cause an uproar, you understand right?"

'Shit!'

I knew it. Even though I was no longer involved in the project, I still visited them how they have progressed.

The last time I checked their product, it was far from perfect.

I already knew the answer but I can't help asking them this question.

"How much time do you need roughly to perfect F-Reality?"

"Probably twenty years more."

Hearing the answer I finally lost hope. I'm almost at my end, maybe in the next five years, I could've died already.

Due to how I spent my youth life, playing games every day, no exercise, eating unhealthy food. Now that I have reached old age, many diseases were developed.

If not the fact that the medical field has improved a lot along with technology field, I would've died already.

While I was depressed and frustrated with myself, a pain suddenly gushed through my chest.

I couldn't breathe no matter how hard I tried.

As I was too agitated and excited that I forgot to take my medicine with me into my bedroom.

I left it downstairs in the living room where I used to watch TV.

My house was too big and there was no one around to help me.

I was helpless.

Slowly, my sight went dark, I was lying on the floor hopelessly grasping my chest tightly because of the overwhelming pain.

I died of a heart attack

At least that's what I thought...

'Where am I?'