Honesty between the lines

"Ahaha!"

I click away at my keyboard in my bedroom while responding to one of my online friends talking about our thoughts of a deep web game we shared around to play test together.

It was really creepy, but after hanging out with these guys for long enough, I learned the ins and outs about computer science and cyber security to know that I'll be ok.

This is the third one I've played around with in a virtual machine, not really caring if it's secretly a virus thanks to that.

I've made sure to delete any traces of my identity on the internet in order to keep my real world and the digital world apart without influence from bad actors taking my data.

I've even learned how to make money on the stock market just for the sake of funding myself the money necessary to make my own proxy sever in a different location to the place I'm actually supposed to be living, legally speaking.

As for where my bedroom is for that matter, it's on the top of the apartment building in a shed that I makeshifted into my own house.

I got permission from our landlord after I was persistent enough with sound logic and adding value to the table, and my parents didn't seem to care since they were temporarily impressed enough with my initive to indulge in my interests, even though those interests are nothing lofty.

All day I play video games, chat online, and watch some anime.

Ever since I was able to enjoy these things the same way I did before the 2020s, I've become a proud hikikomori.

*thump thump*

I hear a smack on the metal door of my makeshift bedroom, and whine at the fact I have to slug my way out of my chair to open it.

"What is it…", I say, suddenly feeling the physical discomfort of having to move my unhealthy body.

"You've been on your computer all day inside there, haven't you?", my childhood friend, Miko Amane, is cross.

At least, she acts cross.

I can't really trust whether or not her reactions towards the situation are actually genuine or simply impulses that are formed by her own expectations of what media has taught her how to act in this situation.

In the current situation of the brain it world, I can't help but assume everyone is an NPC just as I have been until I found my saving grace called a private life.

"Yes.", I say bluntly.

She pouts cartoonishly, and then bends over to pick up a plate of food she placed on the concrete roof's floor, and then waltzes her way into my domain.

The blinding light of the sun gives me a mingrain, and I'm too annoyed to be bothered by having my alone time interrupted by someone who knows me.

I'd be a different story if it was someone who I didn't know, that would make things exciting and personal, but I couldn't care less for these people who are nothing more than time constraining obligations.

*looks at the plate of food placed on my table*

Hmmm… well, I do have to be grateful at least that I am given the luctury to not have to be the one to think about my own survival.

"Thank you.", I say trying to make sure my attitude comes across as genuine instead of irritated by impulse.

"You really have to start caring for yourself you know. I'm not your mother, and yet I'm always babying you."

I roll my eyes, not because I disagree with her, but because she's right, and she likes to rub it in my face by repeating herself.

I don't like conflict, so I do say I agree with her, but it pisses me off that I always have to hear the same jab of words at me, whether it be from her or my family.

"I understand."

"No! You say that every time!"

"And I understand that what you need is actions instead of meaningless words, but you know why I don't leave this place!", I say on autopilot and emotionless.

"But how long are you going to be cooped up in here? You can't do this forever…", she says sounding concerned.

I haven't been completely honest with myself, because I just don't want to think about the other main reason for why I'm secluding myself.

Ha-ah *choak* Haaa-AAah *wince* H-help. I don't want to die… *silence*

It plays again in my head, and my heart feels gross, anxious, like I'm in a fever dream, but vivid, more vivid than anything I've ever experienced.

I always blame technology for why I was in such an emotionless and brain dead state, but that's the only reason I could find that sounded 'normal' rather admitting that my own depression was subconsciously caused by me, trying to suppress my own senses in order to not feel that pain again.

Ever since I recovered from my own self made depression, not only did the good feelings return, but the bad ones too, and more scared than ever of the real world, aware of my mortality.

I just distract myself in a different way these days, not by dissociating, but by paying complete attention to the present moment strongly enough to completely forget about that moment for as long as I am living my own life.

But other people remind me of that moment, so the best I can do is be alone to as to not have to give myself depression/numbness just in order to cope with the pain.

A girl, lying on her back in the clear water of a sewer pipe, eyes gouged out.

SHUT UP!

I need to stop thinking about this, I'm sick of feeling this fever dream and depression back to back in sprints!!

*pats shoulder*, hey, Akito, come on, it's alright it's alright.

Before I realised it, I was curled in a ball on my bed, I didn't even notice my body had entered a trance and had taken me here. Maybe I literally do get a fever whenever that happens.

I faded in and out of consciousness constantly as tears rolled down my eyes as Miko tries to hug me.

I always feel disgusted when people touch me, and I always put up with it despite how rare it is for the sake of politeness, but as usual while in an episode like this, I force her off of me.

She doesn't know what to do with me, and this is all she knows what to do, I understand that, but I don't know what to do with me either.

I just want to be left alone.

I just want to live my life without any of the triggers that resurface my suffering.