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Beep. Beep. Beep.
He gasps, eyes snapping open at the familiar ringing in his ears. For a moment the empty darkness in front is terrifying, before he recognizes the weight of his VR helmet still on his head. With a slow and heavy reluctance he pulls the gaming apparatus off, cradling the object in his lap like a small child.
The room is dark; dim even with the sharp, blue glow of his computer screen. Yet even in such terrible lighting he could know this place from anywhere else.... And it brings an ache to his heart like Hell.
He reaches forward, pressing down on the clock and the red numbers stop flashing as it's silenced. In the quiet of his home he doesn't more; not because he doesn't want to. No. He can't even begin to muster the will. So he remains sitting, stagnant in his paper throne amidst a liar's kingdom, and... He thinks.
Why.
Why was he here? Where did the New World go? Where had his kingdom gone? What had happened to all his friends and loyal subjects?
...Could it have been nothing but a dream?
The thought alone drops into his stomach like a stone, and it's more than enough to shatter the last of his resolve.
A breath catches in his throat. A choked whimper pushes its way out. His eyes burn. He curls in on himself, trying to stop the shudders passing through him, and he clutches at his head; tussling his own hair while his palms bare down into his watering eyes.
Gone.
It was all gone.
His home. One he and his friends had forged so painstakingly careful. The hours, the days, the years they'd taken to create a perfect place just for them; and perhaps anyone else who might wander through their doors. Now not a strip of code or grain of rubble was left behind.
And his family... The people who he had worked tirelessly for years for, even after they had left in case they one day returned. Whom he had loved and cared for even when the only trace of them he still had was their shadows. They had all abandoned him.
He was alone again.
He was Satoru Suzuki.
...And he was nothing.