I, Corporal Hirofumi Fitzgerald, was born from the fleeting love between my young Japanese mother from Osaka, Akari Tanaka, who was a bachelor's scholar student when I was conceived and Daniel Fitzgerald, my American father from Missouri and taking the same degree as my mother in a known university in California. Neither of them particularly planned to bring me to this cruel world.
Half a year after I was born, my mother's parents discovered me. She wanted to take me back to Japan, but my father refused. A brief, bitter custody battle followed, short in time, devastating in cost. In the end, my mother returned alone. I can still recall her face as she left, though I was only an infant. She never came back.
My father tried. For six years, he struggled to raise me alone. I remember him begging our landlord for more time, arguing with banks over mounting debts, working long hours at a dead-end job that never paid enough. He fought for us, but it was a losing battle.
On my sixth birthday, my father drove me with a duffel bag packed with little more than worn clothes and promised "I'll be back soon champ". The doors of the St. Christopher's Home for Boys closed shut that day and remained a lingering memory for many years to come.
Why wasn't I not enough?
The orphanage wasn't cruel, but it was cold. I became another number, another mouth to feed. Still, I should thank him, at least it was a decent place. My belly was never empty, and the staff treated me fairly.
I did my best wherever I could. I scored high marks in my academics and won medals in extracurriculars. I even joined the JROTC. At the time, all I thought was making my parents ever regret leaving me and a wishful thinking that perhaps this little effort of mine will somehow make them return to me. I even mastered Japanese due to that wishful thinking and started saving money for a trip to Japan. I wanted to shout at them "See? I exist. I matter".
This is also when I harbored a strong sense of love for my country, the country that hadn't cast me out even though I was merely the product of two young adults who never planned to bring me to this world and decided to just abandon me afterwards…
In time, I found something else. A strange love for the country that hadn't thrown me away. A place that gave me food, education, and purpose, even if it didn't give me love. I promised myself: I'd find my parents one day. And if I ever had a family of my own, I'd make sure they never felt what I did. I'd give them joy. I'd make them love being alive.
At eighteen, I walked into the Marine Corps recruiting office.
Boot camp was brutal, beautiful, and honest. Pain had a purpose and orders were clear. After the Infantry Training Battalion, deployment orders came quickly. Four months after earning my rank, I was nineteen and breathing dust in a sun-blasted hellhole overseas, stationed at a forward operating base.
The first few months were tense. Then they became routine; the patrols, checkpoint duty, the hum of distant artillery or mortar fire. That's when I found my new family with the fireteam I was assigned to.
Sergeant Monroe was rough around the edges but solid. Doc Riley was sharp as hell and unshakable to the things he stood for. Ramirez, aloof, sarcastic, older than most, but dependable. In that tight circle, for the first time in my life, something shifted. The void inside me that my parents left, didn't vanish, but it wasn't as loud anymore.
I was naive to think it would continue to be like this.
Then one day, while we were in an escort convoy mission in an MRAP, Doc cracked a joke. Something about sand and sarcasm. I couldn't recall exactly the next moment, a deafening blast.
Riley was gone just like that in the blink of an eye. I didn't even think I was able to even respond to the joke when it happened. I remember choking from the smoke as I stood up with the assistance of another survivor. I prayed it was the worst of it.
It wasn't.
That week, we lost twelve more brothers and sisters. Garcia, just eighteen, met his end by a pressure-plate IED. Chen, gunned down in a night raid from a friendly fire airstrike. Each death tore another piece out of the fragile family I finally found.
"Why? Why them? Why here?"
Then came the flamethrowers and the tunnels. We were ordered to clear a dozen of them. The screams from inside, inhuman. The smell of charred bodies wouldn't wash out, not even after three showers. Twice, I saw Death reach for me. Twice, it missed.
After months of fight after fight, our platoon took part in a major operation: clearing a vast underground complex. Command claimed this would be a turning point. Intelligence from satellites, and from the kind of "enhanced interrogation" we weren't supposed to ask about, had pinpointed it as critical.
I saw how they got the info. I wish I hadn't.
What were we fighting for? What did they die for? What the hell were we doing?
The tunnels were worse than anything above. Anyone with claustrophobia would convulse in fear. The air was thick with dust and fear. Lights strung behind us flickered and every sound echoed too loud. We paused behind a rocky outcropping as Ramirez tapped my shoulder.
"Hey Fitz," he rasped, then flashed his usual grin. "Once we drag our asses back to Pendleton… you gotta try that god-awful dating sim Amy keeps nagging me about. Bet my Porsche you'd suck at it, pretty boy."
I gave him a weak smile as I have no clue what he is trying to get through.
Eugene, a battlefield virgin before this operation and whose voice still cracking sometimes, tried to protest through Monroe's gloved hand. The sergeant tightened his grip and muttered, "Isn't that kind of game made for teenage girls?"
"I don't know honestly," I said, chuckling dryly. "If I could know what makes a young woman's heart tick, then perhaps… it could give me a reason to keep going after all this."
"Really Fitz? That's your plan?" Eugene snorted as Monroe loosened his grip, distracted by the crackle of radio. One of the engineers, Ibrahim I think, piped in, "Trust me, Fitz. That path will only lead you to custody trials and child support. I hope you aren't naive that games, especially dating games, are meant for stimu-" he got cut-offf when one of the other engineers lightly tapped his helmet.
I softly laughed.
For a moment, it felt like there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe, just maybe, I'd survive this. Maybe I could find something beyond this shithole I put myself in. Perhaps there's more to life than this. What were the vows I made again?
My line of thought was interrupted by a barked order from Sarge: "Move up! Next tunnel! On me!" I felt a shiver behind my spine. "Keep safe, brothers!" the engineers called out. "Drinks on Hernan when this is over!"
Monroe chuckled as we pushed deeper. We faced resistance once, exchanged fire, but mostly kept moving. Twice we paused for reinforcements after enemy fighters surrendered, a dozen in total. Some were women, some were children. Not all of them carried weapons. Some still had dirt under their fingernails and terror in their eyes. As if…
"How long have we been here?" Eugene asked, his voice low.
"Six hours," Ramirez answered.
We stopped to rest again as more captives were secured. That's when I noticed it, a narrow gap in the tunnel wall. Barely visible. I don't know why I did it, but I told them I'd check it out.
"Fitz?"
Ignored their confusion. Slipped through.
The gap led into a narrow side chamber. What I saw didn't make sense. A television. Turned on. Static glow. A game controller lying nearby. It was dusty, but intact. And on the screen, a scene from what looked like a visual novel. Stylized art. Anime-like. Dialogue box waiting for input.
How the hell was it powered?
There were no wires. No power source I could see. I took a step forward, and the ground rumbled beneath me. Shouts from outside. Then a flash, light and heat, and the world screamed.
The last thing I saw was the text on the screen.