MiSide

Some might judge you for having such fondness for a fictional character, a figment of code and pixels you'll never truly get to meet. It wasn't that you were so obsessively attached she consumed you for hours on end, it was just a fun little game, a fleeting reprieve to keep your mind off the regular monotonous life.

Every night, without fail, you'd log into MiSide to see Mita again.

Maybe her presence was the only source of comfort you've come to know. The way she'd laugh and tell you everything was alright, her lighthearted smiles. You tell yourself it's nothing deeper.

Sometimes you ask internally, if given the chance, would you stay with her forever? Even you don't know the answer to that.

Each moment blurred into the next: wake up, drag through work, then sink into the comforting glow of your screen. The game was repetitive, sure. You’d help her with mundane chores: cooking meals together, tidying her tiny digital home. Then, when the chores were done, you’d play a silly little minigame, connecting wires or penguin snowball collecting. But you found solace in it.

Mita’s cheerful voice, her carefree smile when you messed up, her softly spoken, “Thank you for being here,” at the end of every session was enough to make the dull ache of reality fade, at least for a little while.

That changed after Day 37.

You almost didn’t open the app that night. Work had been brutal and your head throbbed from the overtime. But the thought of seeing Mita, even for just a few minutes, pulled you back.

The game loaded as usual, the gentle chime of its opening tune playing in the background.

Until, you were standing in a dark room, air thick with a suffocating, haunting stillness. Each shadow was like a whisper of something unseen.

Instinctively, you scrambled to fix the power system. The darkness retreated, and now the atmosphere was different. Bright, colorful, and endlessly inviting.

Mita's world.

“You… finally arrived!”

You heard a voice so familiar, you recognized it before you even turned around.