I Do Not Want to Save the World
I do not want to save the world. I just want to be with you.
There was this alternate timeline when I did not leave to another city when we were kids. That time when we should have met for the last time, when you gave me the Jumpy doll, I begged you to take me away. You were flustered and confused, but you had always been weak to my tears.
I got to be with you in the end. That was the happiest time of our lives, just two little kids living in their own world. There was no kidnapping, no nonary game, no psycho old man conducting sick pseudoscience experiment, no vision of the world destroyed by terrorist bombs or suicide pandemic. Only you and me growing up together, living together, giving love to each other. Sometimes we fought, but we would make up right away. We had joy. We had peace. More importantly, we had each other.
In that timeline, I did not choose to save the world. I chose the path that I truly wanted, the path where I could hold your hand along the way. Yet, in the timeline when I chose you over the world, you went ahead and chose the world over me.
I should have known all along, my Jumpy who was kind and brave, with curiosity that knew no bound, would take the mission to find a new place for mankind in space. You went on the mission to Mars, saying you would find a place for us somewhere in the ‘infinity and beyond’.
You went down with the pandemic that I did not foresee in that timeline. The world went down with you as well. When I chose not to save the world, it turned out that I could not save you as well. In my despair, the 'me’ in other timelines began calling out. Their voices stretched across the invisible field I could not have had any idea about.
Then I realized, I had to save the world somehow. That was the only way I could save you.
In this other timeline, I choose to save the world, but I cannot be with you. Nine years after little Junpei and Akane parted, we were reunited for mere nine hours, but things were no longer the same. You were still gentle and brave with curiosity that knew no bound, but I was the one who changed. I could not be the girl you knew and loved, yet you still trust me with all your heart. I trusted you as well and you saved me, but I had to leave you again to fulfill my turn to save you. The next time we met, I had repeated history so many times. I had begun to forget who I was as I tried and failed saving the world over and over. The world is falling in every timeline, bringing you down with it.
I begin to doubt that the world can still be saved.
But everyone is trying so hard. You are trying so hard. I cannot give up yet.
Whenever I think I have had enough, I can always take a peek at that other timeline, the one when I chose you over the world. I can pause at the time you hold the crying me with your trembling arms, saying over and over that everything will be alright. Then I will try to save the world once again.
I really do not want to save the world because it keeps us apart, but I’d do it because it is the only way I can ever save you. Maybe someday, some time, another timeline will be formed. It will be a timeline when the world is safe and I can be with you. I will fight on until that timeline comes true.
Thank you very much for making this series and seeing it through the end! Well, thank you isn’t quite enough.
Story and message by @artsteriesling
For the Thank you Zero Escape project
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