Cross Worlds

Prologue: "Bored with Life"

Everyday is the same. I wake up, go to school, and get beat up by some bullies, or they just taunt me and mess with me all day long. After that I go home, shower and eat dinner, and then immerse myself in one of my two daily hobbies for the rest of the day; anime and video games. Sometimes I like to mix it up and do a little bit of both, but if I end up having a lot of homework I can usually only do one of the two.

I have social media, but I hardly ever use it. I don't have any friends, so it's not like I have anyone to talk to on social media anyway. Social media is basically my "get out of talking to people" card. If I just act like I'm doing something on my phone, people usually leave me alone. Unless of course it's one of my bullies that never leaves me alone. They pick on me daily, no matter what I'm doing. That's okay though, as long as I have my anime and video games, I can continue living my trivial life just fine. At least, that's what I had always thought.

I woke up this morning like any other morning, but I felt...different. As I'm lying awake on my bed, I don't feel anything at all. Usually, I always feel anxious waking up in the morning because I have to go to school and deal with my harassers. That anxiety would only build as the school day would get closer, but today I go through my usual daily routine of eating breakfast, brushing my teeth, and changing into my school uniform, and the anxiety just isn't there.

Even as I'm walking up to the front gates of my high school, I can see my bullies waiting for me at the school's entrance, yet I still feel nothing. My lack of emotion must really tick them off because they start pummeling me after only a little bit of taunting. I'm unsure because I can't hear their voices. I can't even see their faces at this moment. The stinging sensation of their punches and kicks are still there, but I can't feel anything else aside from that.

The school day flies by and my bullies lose interest in me throughout the day, because of my lack of reaction to anything they say or do to me. It seems they've given up on me for now. "Maybe I'm not feeling anything from them because I've just grown used to their bullying..." I think to myself as the school day ends and I'm walking back home.

However, I'm wrong. My usual excitement that I get whenever I arrive home is gone as well. I take a shower, eat dinner, and then start watching anime, but I still don't feel anything. I switch to video games to see if there's any change, but the rush of emotions I always feel when doing those things is just...gone.

As I'm laying there on my bed, staring at my ceiling, it dawns on me. "Ah...is this what depression feels like..?" No, that isn't it either. I don't feel sad, nor do I feel like killing myself. I just can't figure this out. So, I retrace my steps in my mind. From the point I woke up to the moment I laid down in bed to think about all of this.

"Ah, that's it! What I'm feeling isn't emptiness or depression!" I sit up and laugh at myself for a moment after the realization hits me. Boredom. School is boring. Video games and anime are boring. Life is boring. As my grasp on the situation solidifies, a swirl of emotions wells up inside of me. Sadness, anger, guilt, regret...

"Is this what my life has come to? I've lost interest in the things that kept me going in life and now I don't even care that I'm being bullied?" I laugh. "I mean come on, just how sad and pathetic is that..?!" I slam my fist down into my pillow. "Is this how things are gonna be from now on..? When I get an actual job, am I even going to enjoy it? Am I just gonna live through life, bored until the day I die..?" I laugh a little bit again before throwing my pillow at the wall. "God dammit!"

What follows my shout is some banging on the wall. "Be quiet over there! How many times do I have to tell you Riku?!"

"A-Ah, sorry!" I shout back to my female neighbor. She just moved in next door recently. I've never seen her before, but sometimes when I rage at my games, she bangs on the wall to get me to shut up. I haven't had a neighbor in this apartment in ages, so it's easy to forget that I have to be quiet now so I don't disturb her. As for how she knows my name, she got it from the staff after my continual disturbances. "Well, at least you won't have to worry about that anymore..."

I walk over to the wall and pick up my pillow, just standing there for a moment before pressing my forehead against the wall. Tears spill from my eyes and I clench the pillow in my fist tightly as a bunch of needless thoughts worm their way into my mind. "Would my life be so boring and meaningless if I had friends? Maybe if I had a girlfriend? If I had a family..?" I bury my face into my pillow and walk over to my bed, trying to hold in my sobs so I don't disturb my neighbor. "Damn..." I grumble as I keep wiping my eyes, but the tears don't stop. Maybe I really am depressed after all.

I don't know when it happened, but I eventually fell asleep. I must've exhausted myself from crying so much. That's my first thought when I wake up to the sun glaring into my eyes. "Wait a minute... That's weird. I usually sleep with my curtains closed..." I think to myself as I look over at the window, my vision adjusting to see the curtains are wide open. "Weird... Maybe they blew open during my fit and I didn't no-" I pause for a moment when I sit up. "tice..?"

It becomes very clear to me that is not what happened. Even though the blackout curtains are the same, this is not my room. The layout is exactly the same, but that's the only thing that resembles my previous surroundings. It takes a moment for me to realize that I hardly know what half the stuff in this room is. The room has a cabin-like feel to it, but there are several things that look like technology from the future.

"Alright... Have I been kidnapped by some high tech agency orrrr..?" I hesitantly pull my blanket off of my body and freeze. I have never exercised a day in my life, so whose muscular figure is this? I quickly turn to get off my bed, but stop as I feel cool air coming out from under my bed. That and my feet don't touch the ground, which has never happened before either. I look to the ground and that's when I notice, "Oh cool, my bed is floating. No pun intended..."

I sit back up and see a control panel on the headboard. I have no idea what half of the buttons do, so I just hit the power button, and the bed slowly floats down to the ground. "Okay, that's actually kind of cool..." Now that my feet are touching the ground, I step off the bed and slowly make my way to the door. I jump as the door opens automatically once I get close enough to it. "Automatic doors...nice. God I really hope I'm not being watched right now..." I sigh as I slowly walk out of the bedroom into the hallway.

Even though the floors are wooden, the ground doesn't creak when I step on it. That fact does wonders for helping me sneak around. "Bathroom, bathroom..." I mutter to myself as I sneak around and peek through every automatic door upstairs. There's a room filled with books and a singular desk, another room that looks like some kind of gaming room with devices I've never seen before, and finally a bathroom. Each of the rooms are empty of other people, thankfully, so I step into the bathroom without much worry.

It dawns on me that in my panicked state, I failed to realize I was only in boxer briefs, and my face quickly turns red. When I look into the mirror however, I'm only filled with shock. The face that looks back at me is my own, but my once pale skin is now fair, and my body is both toned and scarred in a few places. My bullying was bad, but never bad enough to leave scars on my body, and I had never once been cut by anybody. I lean close to get a closer look at myself, and the next words that come out of my mouth are, "What in the hell is going on here..?"