Itsuki Shimizu was seventeen—only a year away from adulthood, at least by law.
There was nothing particularly remarkable about him. He was not exceptionally intelligent, nor was he gifted in sports. No hidden talent waited to be discovered. He was, by all visible standards, painfully average.
At school, that was enough to make him a target.
His quiet nature, his timid posture, the way he kept his eyes lowered and clutched his books close to his chest—these things formed an invisible invitation for cruelty. Classmates mocked him, borrowed things they never returned, pushed him aside in hallways as though he were furniture rather than a person.
He endured it. Because that was easier.
Born into a respectable middle-class family, Itsuki grew up beneath expectations carefully arranged for him long before he understood what they meant. His parents were professionals—disciplined, accomplished, admired. From the time he could understand words like future and career, he was told he would follow the same path.
A public servant. Stable. Honorable. Secure.
But his heart beat for something else.
He wanted to create worlds—not serve one.
He dreamed of becoming a video game developer, of designing stories and systems, of building universes where people like him could be heroes instead of background characters.
Yet at home, he was reminded daily that he must become a role model for his younger siblings. Strong. Reliable. Successful.
And he felt none of those things.
Then came the day everything collapsed at once. He failed the scholarship exam—the very scholarship that was supposed to open the gates of the prestigious university his parents had already chosen for him. As if that were not enough, he arrived late to his part-time job, distracted and exhausted, and was promptly dismissed.
By the time he sat at the dinner table that evening, his appetite had long since disappeared.
His family spoke casually about their day, unaware that his world had already fractured. Itsuki stared at his plate, words trapped in his throat. He wanted to confess. He wanted to apologize. He wanted to explain.
But fear wrapped around his voice like chains.
After dinner, he retreated to his room without saying a single word.
That night, the city felt eerily hollow. No distant chatter of pedestrians. No comforting hum of traffic. Only rain—violent and relentless—striking rooftops like thrown gravel. Thunder growled across the sky, and flashes of lightning illuminated his small room in brief, ghostly bursts.
Itsuki lay on his bed, eyes fixed on the blank wall before him. His thoughts spiraled without order. Failure. Disappointment. Shame.
What would happen now? The scholarship was gone. The job was gone. His courage was gone. He could not cry. The tears refused to fall. Instead, something deeper tore at him—a quiet, unbearable pressure in his chest.
He felt like a discarded application letter, judged at a glance and thrown away without anyone bothering to read the contents.
An ordinary boy in an unforgiving world.
"I should've stayed a little kid… damn it!" Itsuki muttered, his voice tight, teeth gritted, eyes flashing with the kind of anxious frustration that made his hands tremble. "This… this is pathetic!"
He could feel every failure pressing down on him, crushing his chest. Every expectation he hadn't met, every disappointment he had caused—they all circled in his mind like vultures waiting for him to break.
His thoughts raced faster than he could contain. His parents' disapproval, his siblings' quiet hope, the judgment of teachers and peers—all of it pressed him to the edge.
And now, with every door seemingly closed to him, he did what he had always feared doing.
He took out a piece of paper and a pen and began to write while the music entitled My Way by Frank Sinatra was playing on the background.
A note. His last resort. Where each word was careful, deliberate, a mirror of the turmoil he could not speak aloud. A reflection of a boy drowning in regret and despair, reaching for a solution in a world that felt impossibly heavy. After that, he put on his VR headset and then lied on his bed waiting for it to kick in.....
Dear Mother, Father: "I know I haven't lived up to the expectations you placed on me, and that weighs heavily on my heart every day. I feel ashamed and lost, and sometimes I don't know how to face you because I don't want to be a burden...
Every effort I made ended the same way—insufficient. I am tired of disappointing those I care about. This choice is mine alone, and I do not blame anyone else....
I hope your lives become easier without me.....
....Your failure son, Itsuki"
He swallowed more than his body could handle—an overdose of SSRIs, a desperate attempt to silence the pain that had grown too loud to bear.
In that moment, he gave up. Not in some subtle, quiet way, but in a manner so final that no one could have imagined from someone so young, that he'd rather want to commit this sin of rejecting the gift of life than to continue its endless suffering, the exact thing he did not fully understood, that life is indeed full of suffering anywhere he will be at in every universe.