As most people in the city of Seoul are getting off of work, I Kim Seo-Jun am stuck in a company finishing up work that was hastily and unfairly assigned to me.
Do I feel tired from constantly getting treated like this at work?
Who wouldn't?
But despite this, the motivation for my life has been to work hard for the sake of an ex-popular mobile game called 'Heroes of Arcana'.
Why is this that important to me you may ask?
Well, it is mainly due to the characters and stories inside the game becoming my emotional support after my parents had passed away from a car crash.
Around the time of my parents death, I had started my senior year of High School, and their death had greatly impacted me to the point of feeling too tired to even go to school.
Throughout the second half of my senior year, I would constantly visit a therapist but it would barely help.
At that point, my therapist gave me the advice of trying new things in order to lighten up my mood.
Coincidently around that time, Heroes from Arcana was just released and it was one of the most popular mobile games to be released so far.
I decided to give it a try and at first it felt like a normal game to me, but as I continued progressing through the story each of the characters introduced felt very unique and life-like.
One of the main selling points of the game is its incredible story telling where us, the players, decide the fate of the main story, resulting in the possibility of important characters dying forever.
Of course, as it is a mobile game, outside the main story portions, you can still use your characters to fight even if they have been killed off.
As I have read and watched the characters inside the game experience drastic events in-game and despite everything seeming bleak, they still had the willpower to protect humanity and live for a better future.
This had sparked a sudden motivation to be strong myself and live my life to the fullest.
But despite all of the popularity Heroes of Arcana has received, all things must come to an end at some point in time.
After 6 years of operation, the game is still well received but people have started quitting the game, but there are no new players joining the game.
Soon, as each year passed the player base continued dwindling until it became what it is today, with a total player count of 324 players.
* * *
As I got off from work it was already around 11:55 PM when I had entered the subway.
Because of the late time there is hardly anyone still around, and at most only a couple of people like me who had to do overtime, are here.
I then went on my phone and opened up Heroes of Arcana, which I did not have the time to check the entire day.
There was an extremely large notification in the middle of the screen.
[Heroes of Arcana will shut down after today, thank you for 10 long years of support~]
After reading the single line of text, I did not know what to feel at that exact moment.
But soon after, things took a turn for the worse as the subway began shaking.
The subway was suddenly speeding up and did not seem like it would slow down or stop at all, the few people on the subway with me began screaming for help.
Not long after, the subway had collided with something unknown, presumably a wall, causing it to crash.
The impact of the crash caused the ceiling of the subway to collapse and crush all of us inside.
As I had awoken shortly after from the pain, I could not feel my limbs at all.
I had felt extremely cold due to all of my blood escaping my body.
My eyes began feeling extremely tired due to the fatigue from work and the enormous loss of blood.
Soon I began slowly closing my eyes, but before that, the last thing I saw was my phone with a cracked screen next to me.
On the screen it displayed: [The game Heroes of Arcana is now officially closed! Thank you for being here to create wonderful memories with the characters in the game!] at exactly 12:00 AM.