Chapitre 1: The beginning

At 19, life seems to be growing increasingly mundane for Simon, a first-year student at the University of Oxford. It's one of the few things that can give him a semblance of pride.

Indeed, Simon is more or less indifferent. He enjoys football as a hobby and wonders who will eventually win the Ballon d'Or this year. He also likes pop and electronic music, manga, and watches old movies that he missed over the weekend.

Apart from these passions and a girl he fell in love with in college, as well as the fact that he studies at Oxford because he wants to invent virtual reality games like SAO, it seems that nothing can impress him. He has experienced many strange situations, like a man having a heart attack in front of him, but besides feeling sorry, he moved on in five minutes and completely forgot about the man.

What Simon hadn't noticed about himself, in fact, is that he was much more than just a student at the University of Oxford or an indifferent cold guy. Behind his airs of indifference and daily routine hid a burning passion for a world quite different from the one he inhabited. Simon's true home was not the university lecture halls or the football fields, but rather the vast digital universes of video games.

He wasn't as indifferent as he thought, but he just lacked a little love, having been orphaned and witnessing the death of his adoptive parents, which made him indifferent to life and death.

Since a young age, Simon had been captivated by virtual worlds, where he could be whoever he wanted, do whatever he wanted, without any limits other than those of his imagination.

Virtual reality games were his true passion, and he spent hours perfecting his skills in immersive games where adventure and action blended with magic and mystery. But it wasn't just the excitement of the game that attracted Simon; it was the possibility of creating these worlds himself.

Since his teenage years, he had dreamed of becoming a game developer, of bringing to life fantastic universes where others could escape like him. His ultimate goal was to create a revolutionary game, a virtual reality experience that would transcend the limits of the human imagination.

Today, Simon went out for some fresh air and went to the café when suddenly he saw a little boy who, under his mother's negligence, was running towards the street just in front of him. He also saw a car speeding at full speed. Through the window, he saw that the driver seemed to panic at the sudden situation.

Without thinking, Simon instinctively ran with all his strength at a speed he didn't think he was capable of, took the boy in his arms to throw him towards a man he had seen reflexively. He couldn't throw him to the mother because he was afraid she wouldn't be able to catch him, as she was panicked.

Simon, who had managed to throw the child out of danger, suddenly saw the world spinning around him. He realized he had been hit by the car. Simon knows that even if he manages to survive, nothing will be the same again. He will have at least a handicap, but he would already have to survive.

Thinking about the fact that he sacrificed himself to save a life, he said with a smile: "Maybe I'm not as bad as I think I am deep down." He thought about his dream of one day being able to create a full virtual reality game. It was one of the things that motivated him the most to live before unfortunately closing his eyes.