When I was born, I didn't cry. That's what my mother told the doctors in that marble-walled hospital in Shibuya.
She said it with pride, like silence was proof that I was destined for greatness.
"See? She's already composed," she had laughed, hair gleaming under the fluorescent lights. My father, towering beside her, nodded in quiet approval. Even as an infant, they didn't want me to be soft.
I was raised in a house that never echoed with laughter. It was filled only with footsteps, lectures, and the sound of clocks ticking too precisely. My parents owned one of the largest investment conglomerates in Tokyo. Their time was currency and I was an investment. Every hour of my life was scheduled; calligraphy at five, violin at six, English, Japanese and Mandarin at seven, etiquette lessons by nine.
My earliest memory of joy was the smell of rain. I used to watch droplets race down the window glass while my tutor scolded me for not paying attention. I would imagine the drops were people. They were free and allowed to fall wherever the sky chose. I envied water. I envied everything that could flow without permission.
When I turned eight, my parents started traveling more, leaving me with my aunt and uncle in Yokohama. They smiled for appearances, of course. They always did. My aunt wore perfume so strong it made me dizzy, and my uncle wore smiles that never reached his eyes.
They were "family," but they made sure I knew that I was just the rich niece sent to be monitored, not loved.
The house smelled like whiskey and dust. My aunt would gossip on the phone about how much my parents paid her. My cousins—two boys, one girl—mocked the way I spoke, the way I sat too straight and the way I didn't understand their jokes. I used to hide in the storeroom just to read. Books were the only things that didn't raise their voices.
But then came the nights.
When the house grew quiet, I learned that monsters didn't live under beds. They walked on two legs and smiled at you in daylight.
The first time my uncle entered my room, I thought he was drunk again. He was. The second time, I realized he didn't need alcohol to hurt me.
I was thirteen.
I still remember the sound of his breathing, the smell of tobacco and cologne and the way his voice cracked into whispers, telling me it was "our secret."
I didn't scream. I wanted to. But when I opened my mouth, no sound came out, like my body had already learned that no one would listen.
And no one did.
When I told my aunt, she blinked, sighed, and said, "Don't make trouble. He's a man with stress."
My parents…
When I finally found the courage to call them, my father laughed on the phone and said, "Stop reading those Western novels. You're starting to imagine nonsense."
My mother said, "Do not embarrass our family name."
I think something in me died that day. Not just the innocence people talk about. The part of me that believed people could be good vanished.
I kept learning, though. Because that's what I was trained for.
French, German, Mandarin, Korean, Russian, I learned them all. By fourteen, I could hold a business conversation in five languages and negotiate in three.
By fifteen, I could break a man's arm with judo. By sixteen, I could smile in front of cameras without showing a single crack.
They called me perfect but I wasn't. I was hollow.
I grew into a girl who flinched when someone walked too close behind her. I hated mirrors. I hated beds. I hated silence. I built walls of knowledge, trying to hide behind intelligence. My report cards were immaculate. Every score a scream for recognition that never came.
In high school, I was famous. I was the rich, beautiful girl with perfect grades, but everyone avoided me. My last name carried power and power made people afraid. The few friends I managed to make, the sweet, kind girls who liked my quietness, never lasted. Their families would get phone calls.
"Stay away from her."
And they did, one by one.
By graduation, I was alone again.
And when my parents came to the ceremony, they didn't even look at me.
My brother was beside them, smiling with that same perfect composure. He had already inherited everything. He had the company, the praise and their love.
I was an accessory they had over polished and put back in the drawer.
The day I left that house was the first time I felt air that wasn't owned by anyone. My aunt gave me an apartment in Shinjuku, probably just to get rid of me. I hated her, but I took it. I had no friends and no reason to exist.
But I had silence. For the first time, silence didn't terrify me.
University was… different. People there didn't care about family names but they cared about rumors. Everyone had heard of the "cold prodigy from Toshiro Holdings." They said I was arrogant and thought I was better than everyone. I didn't correct them. It was easier to be hated than pitied.
I lived between lectures and the glow of my computer screen.
It was in that apartment that I saw the ad:
"Masquerade of Dreams Shattered – The Otome Experience That Feels Real."
I laughed when I read it. It sounded pathetic but something about the art, the tagline—"Escape the masks of your world"—made me download it.
I didn't expect much. It was just another gacha game with pretty faces.
But when I played it, when I saw the opening scene. Those vast worlds, those stories, those faces that smiled without ulterior motives, I felt something I hadn't felt in years.
Peace.
The game didn't care about my family, my name, my silence, or my scars. It gave me choices. It gave me friends, allies and people who listened.
It gave me freedom.
I started logging in every day. At first I did it for a few hours, then for whole nights. I learned its systems, its lore and its flaws. I cried once, when one of the characters sacrificed himself in a storyline. I hadn't cried in over a decade. It terrified me, realizing I could still feel something.
MoDS became more than a game. It was a place where I wasn't "Himeko Toshiro," the girl of polished lies. I was whoever I wanted to be.
And for the first time in my life, I smiled without practice.
Now, sitting here in my Tokyo apartment again, staring at the headlines about the vanishings, I can still feel the warmth of that world. It's strange, isn't it?
How can a digital dream could feel more like home than the city I was born in?
I used to think my pain was my curse but maybe… maybe it was my beginning.