After watching John be talked to by the voice, the billions of people who watched John were dwindling with each passing moment.
For a show that averaged a trillion people across the multiverse watching this was already a low number that then got lower.
It hit 1 billion viewers an hour in.
Then 100 million 3 hours in and when John started to cry.
Then 1 million 6 hours in as they continued watching this man cry because the voice made him remember so much that he couldn't handle it.
Most of the viewers that had watched till now realized that the hero that they had idolized was worse off than most of them, yet he kept it inside himself and kept moving forward. The ones that had gone through similar and worse situations than him were all shocked at how he was able to survive.
They don't know how they survived either though if they had been honest with themselves. They had tried to end it all but were stopped in different ways. The similarity between them was only one, and it was something that gets worse as time grows by, a part of themselves is lost forever.
For some it can be their happiness, others sanity, and some may even lose everything that made them who they were. All these people were doomed to remember who they were before they had suffered, they have to remember how things were, how much better they were. But they will never be like they were.
They can't get to that no matter how hard they try, the only thing they can do is move forward with their lives and try to find something that will heal them, if it even exists.
The people watched silently as the voice told them even more about John's past, which hadn't amounted to much despite the 6 hours, all that they had heard was that some trauma happened to his little sister that he cared deeply about.
It is unknown whether the company happened to blur out that clip so we don't know anything else or if the voice just didn't touch on the matter anymore, but now the voice specifically said something that roused peoples attention, causing a surge of people to flow back onto the show to watch what happens.
"John, it's time to face your past. You kept trying to move forward with your life but you can't do that without accepting your past. You especially need to acknowledge that what you were doing to try to fix yourself was wrong. It's the reason I was so rude to you, I couldn't bear to be rude for something so insignificant as that when you are suffering so much."
Everyone had 3 thoughts, all of which were questions. The first was, "What did he do that made that voice become upset with him?", the second was much harder to answer since they are unable to hear everything the system says, "What did the voice say that made him cry so much??", and the last was the hardest to answer, "What happened to him to make him that vulnerable from just some words?"
John pushed himself up and while crying he tried his best to smile, but the already plain looking man's face did not manage to look the slightest bit attractive with the tears that had stained and streamed down his face, but most people watching could feel his pain, they could see how this man is so used to moments like this that he is still able to keep up his smile.
Then he spoke. For the first time in hours, he had been crying and listening to the voice this whole time, but now he actually was saying something, first as a whisper and nobody was able to hear it, but what he said was "I know. I know that something is wrong with me, but I can't stop it." Then he spoke louder, enough for the few that were intensely listening to hear, "I want to be better, but I can't. I don't know who I am anymore, I'm just a smiling face on a broken man. Nobody notices beyond the face so I tried to fix myself."
"I tried, and I tried. I remembered old movies so I tried finding a girlfriend since they always seemed to help their broken partners. But how did that work out? She went and cheated on me right after I got attached to her. I couldn't bear that pain when I'm already broken myself." Everyone watching watched his rant with interest, and many of them were able to understand his pain of being cheated on when you were looking to your partner for help. A few that watched were disappointed in John since they realized that they wanted to put the burden on his partner, which they feel is despicable regardless of his pain.
John didn't stop there, "After that I still looked for companionship, but not romantic companionship, I started going to bars and picking up women. I just kept sleeping around trying to fill a void that continued growing as time went by. That was not the right thing to do, but I realized that too late. By the time I realized it 2 years had passed and I was 23 years old and doing the worst in my life I had ever been."
Most people that were older were not surprised by this revelation John gave them, it wasn't uncommon for people to do this, most of the people that were shocked by this were those that were teenagers and younger. It upset their parents greatly because the younger ones continued asking their parents what sleeping around was and if it was 'Going to a friends house to spend the night.'
"I realized that what I was doing wasn't helping me at all, it was just a temporary fix, so I devoted myself to work. I used the degree I had earned in Computer science and joined a company, in fact before I came here I was up for a promotion, it was the happiest I had been in longer than I can remember." John stopped crying while telling this story and actually had a faint smile on his lips while he remembered the pride he felt when one of his supervisors said he was one of the 2 up for promotion to a big position.
"I worked even harder than before, I kept trying to do better than before, I would get my work done as fast as possible so that I would be a good choice. What I didn't know was that my rival for the position was actually Carl. That bastard apparently paid off the CEO of the company with his fathers money so that he could get the position." Anger flashed on Johns face, but he started crying more instead of display any more rage.
"After weeks of me working so hard, it was announced that Carl got the position. It was apparently decided months ago, but they wanted to work me to the bone without paying me anything extra. Then not even 20 minutes after they announced it Carl himself handed me a pink slip and told me to never come back."
The voice that had listened quietly for so long finally spoke again to John, "Do you see now what I mean when I said that you were running? You didn't stop running your whole life, you even tried to push your pain onto someone else, that is why I was so rude to you. Then when you got back to your house you drank, you drank like you've never drank before." The voice then paused. for a moment.
"Do you want to know something about that night?" John pulled his face out of his hands, as if he was trying to focus on a place where the voice is coming from. Then the voice continued, "You were supposed to have died that night John, you got severe alcohol poisoning. So much so that you could have killed 2 people with it and still gotten hammered. You almost died, you once vowed that no matter what you could live on so that you can have a wife and daughter that can look at you proudly, but what would you have done if he didn't intervene with you?"
"I know what you would have done John, escaped. You would have finally escaped from not just your past but from yourself. So tell me John, what do you want to do now that you know you almost escaped. I know for a fact you brought more liquor with you, there is even some guns and a rope." The voice spoke to him in a harsh tone making everyone that has dealt with suicide in awe, this is not how you deal with a suicidal person, it just leads them to doing the act. What they didn't know however was that this was the push John needed, he didn't even hear anything past a certain point.
John replied, "How did you know about that? That I told myself years ago that I said that? I've only told one person about that and she's not alive anymore."
The voice after pausing, "John I have access to every memory of yours, you can try to hide something from me, but I will always find it in the end, even memories that you yourself have forgotten are free game to me. Now answer my question John. Are you going to keep fighting, or are you going to break down and wait to die?"
John looks down and puts his head back into his hands, he doesn't want to fight anymore, but he's honestly too scared to die. Like the voice has said, he had been running for his whole life, not physically but he has been running emotionally. He has tried to get help from the time he was young, but it never helped.
Or at least it never helped John in the way he wanted to be helped, it might sound great in hindsight to tell a young man that he is more emotionally stable that other adults that they see, but what every single one of them misses is that internally he was always crying out for these people for help. It ended up hurting him even more, because if these people that were meant to help you when facing these problems then who would be able to help you?
As time proved, nobody. John tried again and again to try to fix himself. He went to college, he made friends, he played games, he talked to girls, dated, and slept with girls. But nothing had helped him, which is why he devoted himself to his work, it was something much different from anything else he had done yet so he had high hopes, but those were dashed as well, showing him that his wound wasn't disappearing, it was just hidden.
All of those things he did though were just running from his problems, he has never truly faced them because he didn't know how to. The only positive role model in his life was the one that gave him his love of movies, it was also one of the people he missed the most. Most of the other people he knew all were horrible influences, and the only reason that he didn't turn into someone like them is due to his role model.
"John, I think you've come to a conclusion now, yes? It has been an hour already so please say your answer." John didn't notice time go by that fast, but he did now have an answer to what he will do, or at the very least a response.
"Do you know how to help me?" He asked with a desperate tone, to which the voice responded, "Of course I do. You have to keep moving forward." You could almost smell the sarcasm on the voice, you could also feel Johns depression when he heard the voices response.
"You said that I had two options, give up or keep fighting? I thought you said that moving forward was running away?" he looks up with a defeated tone. "Before? Yes, now? Nope. You are in a different world now, remember that John. You can unlock resistance skills, learn magic, meet actual allies and have the power to deal with those that betray you. Running away now would be if you were to kill yourself. So what will you do John? You have the opportunity to basically heal yourself, though I will warn you no matter how you go about fixing yourself it will be rough on you, but luckily for you, you have me. Unluckily for me though, I'm stuck with you."
The viewers that had flooded back into the channel all watched with anticipation, some actually wanted to see him die, others wanted to choke out whatever that voice was for saying that to such a broken person, there was something there that could drag in at least 1 type of every person.
This made the shows producers happy, they had already fired the fool who brought him to their show for how horrible he was. He had a horrible mouth on him, he didn't wreak havoc on a town and instead went into a dungeon? These had upset them very much, they got quite lucky with his mental breakdown though, it attracted many of the viewers they had lost back to the show and more people started to show an interest in him.
They also watched in anticipation because now that they had this unfunny new cash cow they wanted to keep milking him. Granted, if he killed himself he'd get immediate popularity and become the first person to kill himself on the show, it would ruin their long term profit. Their best hope was that he continue suffering while trying to fix himself, but it was against the rules to interfere with the game unless something threatened the world that he was on to an apocalyptic extent.
This gave one producer an idea, but he couldn't voice it just yet, he had to wait to see the resolution that had risen their viewers to almost 250 billion and counting.
"Fine." John spoke. "I'll keep going onward, just like I always do. I am too much of a coward to end myself no matter how bad it's gotten for me and like you said, I want to make my wife and my daughter proud of me in the future." John revealed a small smile when he said that line.
Truthfully the only person that knew for a fact that he wouldn't give up was the voice, X. That was because as it said, it knew him. Probably better than he knows himself, that's why as soon as it said that like about his promise it was already dead set that he wouldn't give up.
That's just the kind of person John happens to be, he stopped caring about himself long ago, hence his crying and debating for so long, but he still wants to bring a child into the world with the woman he loves, and when he does he wants her to be proud of her dad unlike how his father for him. He wants to be a good parent and a good husband who leaves the world a better place for them.
This is how John managed to live for this long too, if he never made this promise to himself he may not have made it to high school physically and maybe not even middle school mentally. That future gave him his strength to continue forward, even years after he last had to say it to himself it is still that effective.
Now, John is at least back to his usual self, that faint smile is evidence of it. After seeing that there were billions of people who were happy for him, and trillions that saw the news the next day as a trending topic, which worked out even better than the company had thought, they figured that the viewers would continue increasing slowly, but after the article written about how the writer felt inspired to keep living from seeing Johns drive and how he picked up the slightly hidden meaning behind why the voice said what it did, it knew that once it mentioned his dream he wouldn't give up. This sparked billions of similar tales from people.
2 weeks after the incident there was at least one article written like a thank you letter in each dimension to John for giving them the hope to continue moving forward in life, even though things had made them want to harm themselves, and some even had wished to die. But John's struggle was the spark they needed, they all gave themselves goals for their lives, something that no matter how dark they felt they would want to keep moving forward.