When I was in middle school, my parents finally bought me the Famicom I’d been begging for, and I played all kinds of games on it.

Famicom games were expensive back then, so I had to save up three or four months' worth of allowance to buy one. Deciding which game to pick was always a tough choice.

One day, my parents took me to a game store. After carefully deliberating for over an hour, I finally bought a cartridge.

I don't remember the title, but it was an RPG with a red cartridge.

When I got home, I popped it in and started playing right away. It was a bizarre game where you walked around a pitch-black space in first-person view, finding items as you went.

There were no stats. You just moved the controller through the pitch-black screen, and text with pixel art would suddenly pop up saying, "Found [Item]."

There were no enemies to fight, just endless wandering through the dark, so I got bored and stopped playing pretty quickly.

Several years later, I pulled the game out of the closet to give it another try. After inserting it into the Famicom, I noticed a feature that let you view all the items collected so far, so I checked it out.

"Obtained Famicom" — [Year]/[Month]/[Day]

"Obtained Starting Spot on Baseball Team" — [Year]/[Month]/[Day]\n"Graduated from [Blank] Middle School" — [Year]/[Month]/[Day]

My personal life history was listed right there.

"Enrolled in [Blank] High School"\n"Enrolled in [Blank] University"\n"Employed at [Blank] Company"

Feeling sick to my stomach, I was just about to quit the game when I noticed the very last entry.

"Died at [Blank]" — [Year]/[Month]/[Day]

It looks like I'm going to die in a year.