That was the end.

That's what I thought when I wrote those words. But I've said it before, the story always goes on. But I never lied, I would never go back to the world I had known. But a new reality of my life.

Whispers.

They circled around me.

Am I alive...? I groaned as I felt my muscles ache. My eyelids slowly tugged themselves open, my head felt as if it were a lead weight as I swung to sit up. Vision was blurred like I was underwater while I swayed lucidly. People turned from left to right looking down at me, most were wearing glasses as my vision began to turn solid. Taking more of a survey over my surroundings, I found I was in a computer lab.

The corner I sat in was illuminated by harsh bland lights like spotlights on a stage. I took a small glance at what sat next to me. Stuffed pokemon dolls...? I counted them out: a Venusaur, a Charizard, a Blastoise, a Lapras, a Pikachu, a Snorlax, a Mew and a Mewtwo. The hacked pokemon. All round were scattered cards, hundreds of them. Mostly miscellaneous items like Masterballs, revives and potions. Nothing people really ever used when they played the card game. And a lone laptop with a silver sleek cover, gleaming in the harsh lights. My numbing heart winced, my thoughts racing why my laptop was with me. And not in the other world for anyone to read.

I ran my fingers through my hair and up my head, a lily-white hat slipping onto the ground. "What?"

"My god, she's alive!"

"That's impossible!"

"You saw that, I don't think it counts as impossible."

Shooting my head up, I saw men and women alike staring down at me, I would guess no more than 25 of them observed me. Most wore steel frames on the bridge of their noses and all wore such casual clothing. Deeper in the room were rows of computers. One difference that widened my eyes, they were real.

Real as in not a cartoon. Their faces etched with true shadows of every curvature in their skin. "Where am I?" I squeaked, checking my clothes to see the ones from the ga--- the other world. A red skirt just above my knees, deep blue legwarmers that matched my sweater vest.

They stood silently above me, motionlessly just gawking at me.

"I asked a question..."

Finally, a man cleared his throat, his rusty brown hair tossed about. He looked around 26, give or take. His caramel eyes stared down at me in a sort of confused fear. "R-Retro Studios."

I shut my eyes, searching my brain for any information I could grasp; though it was still fogged. "Retro Studios. The first branch of Nintendo in America, located in... Austin, Texas. In charge of Metroid prime series and Donkey Kong series. Founded originally in October of 1998, in year 2011 you were relocated."

"What?" The man asked quizzically, "2011? How do you know that?"

I shot him a look, "How wouldn't I know?"

"It is 1998."

My eyes widened, color draining from my skin. My voice low as I spoke, "Impossible--- I haven't even been born yet..." I looked up at them, "How did I get here?"

"You tell us."

"You think I'd know!"

A woman walked forward, her blonde hair snaking down her shoulders as her blue eyes shimmered past her ruby glasses. "Please, stay calm," she grinned, though obviously just as bewildered as the rest. But something in her eyes, almost didn't seem surprised that it happened. Just when. "To explain, we saw you basically come out of the game card. It was sudden. We were all analyzing the hacks that were within the card that was turned in to us a week ago. That's when suddenly, the Red Version suddenly went off. Jetting out electricity to the point it caused a power outage for, roughly, 30 seconds. When the power came back--- we found you, and all that stuff, lying on the ground." I read her name card quickly, it read "Aster Rain".

"And the game?" my breath strung the words together in a panic. But I knew. I knew but I didn't want to believe what could've happened. I wouldn't.

She looked past me with her lips pulled together with frustration. "A real waste. A lot of the hacks within it were creative. It was nice while it lasted. We were able to use our computers and create some avatars to observe. But I think we lost them too when the game exploded." Her words somewhat disgusted me as if forming an Avatar was like playing with dolls. But it was a crash on my shoulders as I realized what she said.

My eyebrows furrowed together as I spun around shakily. My shoulders fell, my jaw dropping open as the tears swelled. I tried to blink them away. There it sat. All that was left. in thousands of pieces. "Everything I worked for," My voice crackled as I crawled over to it, I brushed my fingers over it tenderly while the water fell. Each salty bead splattering against the sprawled circuits. Crimson plastic sat askew in the corner I had awakened in. Everything had been done for nothing. I fell so easily to the ground, amongst the broken things. My hands cuffing over my face as I cracked, "He--- he's gone for nothing... And I hesitated. It's all my fault. My fault."

I should have been grateful for being alive, right? But for the second time in my life, my heart told me it wasn't nearly enough. Not for my happiness. Not for my life.

I let my body slowly droop onto the ground, curling up into a fetal position as I sobbed. Circuits entangled themselves with my hair, as if they were part of them. My fingers reached out across all the pieces to the Mew plush which held a blank stare at me. My hand retracted once more, she could never help me again. After whatever time passed, there was an awkward patting my shoulder. The woman who did so had no clue what was going on. But the blonde seemed kind enough. "What do you mean?" the onslaught of questions would come, but my answers would never satisfy them. "Gone. How? Who is he? What did you work for? What do you mean by hesitated?"

Wow. Was I as bad as her with questions?

My fingers slid past my puffed eyes for a moment as I muttered silently, as if another spirit was in my body. "You don't know how in love you are until it all has been stolen away." My voice drown in regret as I thought about the mother I could never see. Nothing was going to be the way it was before. I was never going to be able to understand in time. Blue was gone. Red was gone. Copycat, my Eos, my dawn, was gone. Those worlds are gone. "And I was too late to save him. Too late to realize... That I loved Red the most."

They all were probably exchanging the most bewildered and confused glances to one another, before staring down at me. Yet they all waited for me to rise back up, eyes fixating on the man who was brave enough to speak first. I scanned his name tag, "Conan Verde." I read it out loud in a lucid dreamy tone. The pain within burned, but I didn't want that. So I turned it all off again. I turned off my heart.

"Yes. You still have never introduced yourself." The dusty haired man affirmed suspiciously.

"Me," my tongue nearly slipped with Green. But then I remembered I was no longer in the game. The game no longer existed. That me was gone."Leaf. Leaf Verde."

He blinked to me with shock, "Are you possibly a niece I never knew about?"

Tentatively, I shook my head and stared at him like death was in my soul. "No. You will know me someday. But you have to do one thing to make sure of that."

Maybe, I thought with a vain hope, maybe if I change this one event--- The one that takes his life, my life would change then too. And I never would have been sucked into the game in the first place. Maybe this insufferable pain will go away then.

"Stop taking the route home you usually do." He gave me the oddest expression, I kept my dismal and broken one as I cracked out, "Just don't."

After that, the days past. The nice woman, Aster Rain, let me stay over at her place and took me to the building for her work while they "locate my parents". They never did, because one was always in front of me. I did tell them I was from 2014, but they couldn't quite believe it. But they couldn't write me off crazy because they all saw me emerge from a game cartridge. I ran though my memories constantly, praying to Arce--- God that one small thing would change in my eidetic memory. One sign of difference.

Until that day.

"My god..." Conan entered the work room of computers as he threw his coat into his cubical. A few looked up as he took a b-line to where I was held up in. Which was my own personal cubical where I played games on the old PC. Not hacking, I'm better than that now. "How'd you know?"

"Know what?"

"About changing my walking route home." The man's eyes were dark, "Last night, someone walking that route got shot in the head. I-if that was me... My wife--" it all came to him, his eyes showing that he might just have finally started to believe me.

"You listened." I smirked tiredly, "And, like I have told you people countless times--- I'm from 2014."

"But why me?"

I shut my eyes for a moment, leaving him in a hanging silence. A boy popping into my childhood. His caramel hair much like mine and bright copper eyes. A mother standing beside a father watching the boy and me run around a backyard. "Name him Fire. Name her Leaf." Yet I could also still see the past I knew so well. Though that's because it made me. Two lives swirled in my head, and would never leave.

The man irritatingly tapped his finger against the desk, "I don't have time for your teenage shenanigans. That's not enough."

"Fine. If you really want to know. Then you will. Just--- don't tell Alice or your children." I could still see myself in both lives hacking to entertain my brain. I could still see myself holding that bugged Red Version and becoming absorbed. The adventure still flowing on. Still me, falling in love. Just to have my heart shattered. In tell--- mom was right. But she will get her happy ending now.

Wasn't that good enough for me? I wondered my by chest still contacted tightly, it wasn't fair.

So I told my--- my dad all of it. Of who I am to him, the world I grew up in, what happened in the game. All of it. He was disbelieving at the beginning, but slowly grew to trust my words. By the end of it, he stood.

"We'll say you're sixteen. Get a full time job working here, if you are as intelligent as you say, then it will be just fine. Work with us to translate and localize. You can't really stay with me, but I'll talk to Aster about taking care of you for now." He told me before striding off. In mid-stride he paused, "That story... It would make a great book."

Well, it was technically. My heart tugged, hoping that wherever Blue and Eos might be, that they've seen it. That somehow, they were still out there and could. But denial couldn't change anything.

The months passed slowly, I working now at the Nintendo Headquarters of the USA. And I took my dad's advice. In my spare time, between localization, I worked on my story. Since the story was basically already written from my meltdown after defeating Mewtwo, all that was left was to add in the details, a prologue and true ending. Along with personal editorials for Alice Verde(mom) to read when dad hands it off to her as a piece of fiction published by a co-worker. It would really help with the closure. Plus, I had much free-time. Work there was so menial it bored me. But writing, that was fun. As long as I don't believe I am about to die and want my last words documented somewhere (Well I didn't want to end up like Albert Einstein whose last words were spoken in German to an only English speaking nurse. Lost. Forever). It wasn't even a year after what happened when I found it.

That happy ending.

Resting in my cube I roll both my shoulders back, listening to the printer's mechanical hum as it shot out pages into the cradle. The paper sliding against each other with slick tones. My eyes tracked each one, paragraphs upon paragraphs following one another in systematic like patterns while some entered with only seven words of a line.

After approximately seven minutes and three seconds, the 134 pages of erratic words printed out, the manuscript cover rolling out slowly. The words were printed clearly in the dead center:

"The Hacker"

"Leaf Verde"

On the office computer screen was a graphically designed cover by moi, hoping it would hint at what lied though the pages of my life story. Since I still worked for Nintendo, this would be published as a supernatural story to entertain the masses with promotion from the programmers who witnessed the fiction with their own eyes. Since children would possibly read the story, I was encouraged to cut back the language by peers and to write a happy ending.

To that day, I still never believed in them. Because my story went on.

So I kept it as is, labeling it YA (Young Adult) because it will blend in with all those other ones out there. For the harrowing main character. The drastic, impossible adventure to any other reader's mind. The heart tearing love triangle. The death and destruction mirroring our world, our future and our selves. To the naked eye, this story is a work of fiction.

But to me, it was a memoir.

Just then, in the back of my head, a voice told me that I was hungry. Alright, that was probably my stomach. So sliding back and out of my seat, listening to the droning pattering of fingers violently smashing against keyboards and stepped out at precisely the wrong time.

"hot!" I shouted out in agony as the dark mocha coffee was dumped onto my new white blouse, four cups and their joint container clattering against the office floor. "Shit, that's hot!" I continued to fume, "Every new coffee person runs into me! Just because the coffee machine is right by my cubical!"

Though I ranted, the new "servant" of the cooperation and I both reached down to clean the mess of spilled mugs. One of the Styrofoam containers was scribbled across with a cheesy science quote. More of the Conservation of Mass law.

Scrawled in permanent marker was easily read: "Mass can neither be created nor destroyed." I let out a hollowed sigh at the controversial statement. In reality, it's true. To me, it was so wrong.

"Sorry."

I gave and unmotivated smile as the delicately-haunted room of people continued to move about its business, "It's oka---"

The voice which apologized to me... It was so familiar. So, so familiar. I couldn't help to look to the man I handed the cup to. His cardinal eyes melting my heart while his black locks of hair fell into his face so carelessly.

"Y-You're dead," my disbelieving voice stuttered.

The man possessing the pair of eyes which melted my heart smirked slightly, "Looks like a glitch overlapped with a hack when Mewtwo tried to kill me. Next thing I knew, I woke up in your world."

It was impossible. So, so impossible. But wasn't life just that?

Tears welled up in my eyes with no control, my heart swelling so large that my lungs were burning to keep it pumping. The words slipping away from my tongue as I stared at the soot-haired male through watery vision. But there was one thing I knew. I wasn't going to run.

Not anymore.

Both my arms were flung around his neck, pulling the coffee boy closer to my height of kneeling on the ground. My head burrowing into his wide-spanning shoulder as I shuttered with tears rushing like fast-flowing rivers. I had so many dreams of seeing him again. Always ending bitterly, because I'd wake up.

Please, let this one be real. I prayed with wound muscles wrapping tighter around him as I continued to sob ceaselessly. It was slow, his hand tenderly wrapping around my back and rubbing it like it was a small, fluffy bunny rabbit. My fingers wrinkled into the back of his shirt, my breaths short and choked.

It was then the gentle petting stopped, his hand moving to my chin. He pulled me back and wiped the tears from my eyes, his smile full genuine reality. What was real, I really wouldn't say. But what I spoke is what I knew was true--- and I wasn't afraid of the possibilities anymore, not when I looked at him.

"Red."

His lips parted slightly before speaking, "Yeah?"

"You," I said with a light hiccup. "It was always you."

The boy seemed to understand, but his lips restrained his joy. He spoke slowly as if he needed confirmation, "What?"

I tried to hide my childish laughter and bit my lower lip. I buried my head further into his broad shoulder as my smile burned. "It was always you who had my heart. Red," both our eyes held tightly on the words that would come next. The three words I know have been said too much and too loosely in life. But for me, there was nothing more true in the world, "I love you."

His face seemed to light up, though nothing really changed. Red let go of the restraint he had been holding for so long; for the time he believed, I believed, that the one who held my heart was Blue. Now, Red ran his fingers though my long ribbons of hair to hold the base of my head. His other arm rested around my waist like a belt as he pulled me closer, both our lips smashing together in a rough, passionate yet still a soft-tasting kiss.

A fire swarmed my insides, rushing through my blood as the static sealed our lips to one another. Fear, modesty, PDA worries were thrown out the window. All I knew is how much I adored the boy I was kissing. Our noses slid in perfectly with one another, lips just the right size.

I don't want to be cliché, but it really was the perfect kiss.

For a time, life around the two of us wasn't really apparent until our co-workers began snickering compulsively, followed by heckling like: "Get a room!" and "Way to go, Verde!" Parting, the two of us blushed like the child-like adults we were before resuming back to work.

My heart fluttered just as it did when I first saw the trainer standing on the lonely mountain, now a glow of happiness and confidence. For now, we were going to meet again. And again. And again. And it was going to last.

That's when Mr. Conan Verde looked over with a harsh glare, sinking like a knife into Red. The ever-awkward Red shot a panicked stare at me, sweat starting to role down the side of his forehead. I laughed slightly, thinking about everything again, like I hadn't once before.

I thought of how I once believed everything was based on codes and variables. That the human "heart" could be taken out an broken down into sections and chemicals that cause us to be attracted to one another. That the brain is really what has everything to say about anything.

But now I know love isn't something you can just analyze, as much as you wish you want it to be by the neurotransmitters set off in the brain's limbic system. Or by the amount of variables and controls in an experiment. Love isn't meant to be taken and studied in a closed environment. Love needs to be exposed in its most vulnerable, terrifying and beautiful form to ever be truly understood.