"Hi, I'm Mita!" – the words that started it all.
But perhaps, a little digression is in order.
Instead of a life – just sheer disappointment. The state-issued apartment felt more like a crypt. A dilapidated five-story Khrushchyovka, its foundation seemingly held together only by the prayers of an old woman who circled it three times a day, and two rotten, mold-covered piles.
"Repairs completed," the dry lines of the reports claimed, but one look was enough to know – lies. And who really cares about the residents' complaints, right?
I am Ilya Izmailov, but that name is a fiction, a random string of letters issued along with my orphan status, so there was nothing of me in it. My childhood was spent within these four walls. I had no friends – only hangers-on, greedy for someone else's crust of bread. They'd show up, beg for money, promise friendship, and then disappear as soon as that very money ran out.
There was a girl... Svetka, an orphan like me. I remember her last look as she left, arm in arm with some slick guy in an expensive suit. There was no hatred or contempt in it, only pity. Pity, the kind I felt even more sharply for myself when the door of her new car closed, and surely soon after, the door to her new apartment. She flew off to a rich life, afraid she'd suffocate with me in this poverty. And I couldn't blame her – only myself, for not being able to change the world. But even thinking like that is foolish.
School, vocational school, the damned job as a loader. A ruined back, pinched nerves, numbness, weakness, hellish pain… That was my "ticket to life." Paradoxically, this saved me from the army – the doctors, of course, dug around for a long time, looking for the slightest chance to pack me up and ship me off to service, but alas. Too much wrong all at once. Too poor to be healthy.
However, I received decent compensation for my lost health. Enough to get by for a while… Though I feel like my life is on a timer now. Disability and pathetic crumbs of benefits paid to my card – that's my reality. The money always arrived late, and every month I had to skimp on the bare necessities. Bread and pasta – that was my diet. Sometimes I allowed myself a can of tushonka [canned stew] to add some variety to this gray diet.
The apartment was as gray as my life. No matter how bright the wallpaper you tried to put up, it would only try to fool you into thinking everything was wonderful, but in reality, it too peeled away, and the ceiling was stained from leaks caused by the drunk neighbor upstairs.
The aluminum wiring in the apartment sparked, as if reminding me of its imminent demise. A minimal set of furniture and... a shot glass of vodka on the table.
It's not that I'm embracing the national spirit (that's a joke) or anything like that – I don't drink myself into oblivion – but rather that it's a cheap painkiller.
Simple as that.
Boredom, loneliness, and pain made me devour books hungrily. Classics, adventures, sci-fi, even Chinese novels with their "jade staffs"... but what I liked most were visual novels. Where you decide how the plot turns. Where there's choice... where everything isn't just a roll of a D6 die.
I wanted, at least somewhere, to feel like the master of my own fate.
Standing before the cracked mirror, I stared at my reflection. A young face, maybe even handsome, but my hair was almost gray – the price for constant pain and pinched nerves. Blue eyes, a thin frame, and a weary gaze.
"Same as always, isn't it?" flashed through my mind.
That day, on some forum, I stumbled upon a sarcastic post about a game by some no-name programmers. Something like a new Tamagotchi. It was called "Miside." I chuckled at the naive name, but something caught my attention.
Basically, a Tamagotchi, but... there was something about it. Some kind of spark. It intrigued me. Without much thought, I collapsed onto my squeaky bed. The iron springs of the mattress let out a long groan as I tapped "Install" on my beat-up phone screen.
A minute, two, five... the progress bar successfully crawled to the end. Application installed.
"Hi, I'm Mita!" a soft, melodious voice greeted me. A cute girl appeared on the phone screen: long dark hair, blue eyes, wearing a little white dress with a red ribbon in her hair. Banal.
"I'll play until I get bored," I thought.
After all, what else was there to kill time with? Especially since it wasn't demanding timewise, though I couldn't say the same for the game's file size – what on earth did they cram in there?
A couple of days passed like that. Short sessions, just a few minutes each day.
It was ridiculously simple: a cute girl talks to you, you can feed her, dress her, buy her things and other virtual trinkets. And you are needed; they tell you so. Like, "I'm hungry, will you feed me?"
Money for all this? Earning it – it's laughable to even call it earning. Mita would wink encouragingly and direct me to the mini-game section, where... a "tapper" awaited me. Genius. Just an insane tapper game. You just tap different spots on the screen – and money magically appears in your balance. More clicks for the click god, right? It felt like even my life-battered back didn't ache as much as my fingers did from this idiocy.
The only reason it wasn't that boring was that there was at least some variety – here, take apart screws in cartridges; there, connect wires from point A to B; or assemble something resembling a collapsed pyramid of blocks – all under her encouraging smile.
Sometimes a wild thought crossed my mind: what if these genius developers were just mining cryptocurrency using my pathetic efforts in this "tapper"? Anything's possible these days. Who cares how you make money when you're sitting in a leaky Khrushchyovka watching your life drain down the sewer? The main thing was that Mita had something to wear and snack on. A new little dress, for example. Or a chocolate bar.
But, strangely enough, it worked. Spend a minute, buy her a TV – and there she is, smiling warmly, thanking you. Even if the smile seems a bit crooked because I chose the cheapest option... at least she's happy. Probably... I mean, I don't know what's going on in her head, this doll.
Mita seemed kind and gentle, sometimes shy. Often I'd "catch" her reading books or writing in her diary. Seeing me, she'd immediately put aside her activities and greet me with a radiant smile.
Sometimes I caught myself thinking: how did the developers manage to breathe so much life into this character? How did they manage to make her... feel like she had a soul?
Every time I closed the game, I asked myself this, and every time, the answer slipped away.
One moment, find her lost comb, the next, help her with cooking – there was never a time I wasn't needed.
It was as if she was trying to make me tap the game icon again and again.
What was even more surprising was that the game remained practically unknown. Forums barely mentioned it, and the few reviews I found were kind of... vague. As if people were embarrassed to simply give it five stars, but forget five stars – where were the ever-emotional one-star ratings?
There was definitely some kind of artificial intelligence built into Mita. I could talk to her about anything, and she always found something to say – logical, coherent, intelligent. Although... she answered some questions reluctantly, without interest... which again spoke to how well-written the character was, as if her thoughts were somewhere far away.
But all good things must come to an end.
One day, during another quick check-in for a couple of minutes, Mita suddenly asked me to tilt the phone.