A Hundred Lifetimes

I was never popular in school. I don't know why, maybe because I looked different from everyone else, being the only Asian in a white-majority school. Maybe because I was awkward and hard to talk to, or maybe because I kept moving houses and never had time to connect with people. Whatever the reason for my unpopularity, the result was as expected. I had few close friends.

As a child with all the free time of youth to burn away but without the friends to burn it with, I was bored for much of my childhood. That is, until I discovered video games.

Hour after hour, I would have competitions with friends made of pixels, driven by artificial intelligence. I would live the scripted lives of characters that existed not in my world, but in a world made of polygons and bits of code. In school, I was a loser, but here, I was a hero in a zombie apocalypse. I was an Italian plumber on a mission. I was the center of attention. And I loved every second of it.

But of course, every second I spent connected to the virtual world was another second I spent disconnected from the real one. As days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, my social life wilted away while my gaming life turned into an obsession, culminating to the point where I was actually playing my Game Boy during recess in school.

Which was how I met her.

I sat on a blue planter that cold February afternoon, wrapped up in layers of clothing like a sort of cloth burrito. With my Game Boy awkwardly held in my oversized mittens, my mind was preoccupied with training my Wartortle and didn't notice the girl bundled in a large pink coat, waddling towards me.

She was... strange, to say the least. Fair skin. Long, black hair that would reach down to her waist had it not been thrown about in all directions by the wind. A pink "Hello Kitty" beanie hugging the top of her head.

"Hello," She said. Or, at least, I think she said. The comically large pink scarf around her neck blocked much of her mouth, so it sounded more like a muffled "Hmmhmm." I looked up at her.

She pulled down the scarf from her mouth, revealing a warm summer smile. Her brown irises peeked out of her thin eyes.

"Hi," I replied, as the awkwardness began to settle in my mind. I broke eye contact with her and looked back at my Game Boy, hoping she would go away and leave me alone. But she didn't.

Instead, she sat right next to me. She leaned her head toward the screen, blocking my view.

"What'cha playing?" Her eyes were practically pressed against my Game Boy screen. Desperate to see, I moved my Game Boy to the right, far from her obstructive head. Her head quickly followed, like a cat to a laser pointer.

"Pokemon." Upon hearing the words, she lit up.

"I love Pokemon! Bulbasaur's my favorite!"

Woah. That was different. Up until then, I hadn't talked to anyone who played video games, much less anyone who played Pokemon.

"Really?" I asked, "Your favorite's the plant thing?"

"Yeah! What's yours?"

"Squirtle."

Small talk. Just... small talk. But it was talk. Not beeps and pings from a speaker that I was long accustomed to hearing, but voice created by a living, breathing human. It was the first time I had a legitimate conversation with someone in my grade in weeks, months maybe. And as the conversation went on that cold February afternoon, from Pokemon, to the Game Boy, to just video games in general, I smiled as a feeling of warmth settled in my body. Not because I was talking about a topic interesting to me, but because for once, I was a topic interesting to someone else.

Before I knew it, just as quickly as she had approached me, the bell rang and she stood up, waved goodbye, and started walking away.

And I stood there, not knowing what to do, watching as she got further and further. Then, she turned around.

"Oh, I almost forgot! What's your name?"

"Matthew."

"I'm Lily."

And with a smile, she left.



Since that day, we quickly became inseparable. On some days, she would bring her Game Boy and we would battle. Sometimes, we would just talk about video games, school, anything. But on most days, she just watched as I played Pokemon, her head frequently blocking my sight, her hair brushing against my face. (One day, I got fed up with her blocking my view all the time, so I renamed my Wartortle "ICANTSEE" so she would get the message. She laughed.)

After school, I'd go to her house, or she'd go to mine, and we'd spend an hour or two or three sitting in front of a television screen, in our own little world behind the glass, living the lives of karate masters, or street racers, or war veterans. And for the first time in what seemed like ages, I felt happy. Just happy knowing that I finally had another human to burn away my youth with, someone to laugh and cry with, someone who I could call "friend."

But it wouldn't last.

One day, three years after we met, my parents broke the news.

"We're moving again. We leave in a month."

No. I don't believe it. This couldn't be real. I had just found her. My life was just starting to get better. And now I had to leave it behind? I had to go back to being alone, I had to start over? What cruel god would grant me the fortune of becoming this close to her, only for us to be divided so soon?

I begged. I pleaded. I cried. But no matter how many tears I shed, no matter how hard I fought, it was inevitable. We were poor, and we could no longer afford to stay.

I counted down the days until we would be separated. And as the day inched closer and closer, we grew sadder and sadder, knowing that these would be the last days we would see each other again, these would be the last memories we ever shared.

Finally, the grim summer morning came. The twilight sky was dark. The sun was just as reluctant to start the day as I was, barely able to watch as it hid beneath the horizon, overshadowed by the somber trees crying their leafy tears that were swept away by the cold morning wind. She and her family came to help us pack and to say their goodbyes. As her parents said farewell to mine, I walked up to her and she walked up to me.

I knew what I wanted to say. I wanted to say that I would write or call her every day, that I would never forget about her, that I would miss her so much. But the words wouldn't materialize from my mouth and all that my trembling lips managed to deliver were the words...

"Well... bye."

"Bye." She nodded. Her eyes looked toward the ground. A forced half-smile on her face that feigned happiness, but screamed sorrow.

And with that, I got in my car.

The driver door shut. I looked through the rear windshield to face her.

The sound of a key being inserted into the ignition. She looked right back at me with wet eyes. Her smile quivered, as if ready to collapse at any second.

The engine started. I waved and she waved back. This was goodbye.

And the car moved. Slowly, away from the cul-de-sac that was my neighborhood, dragging me unwillingly along with it. I gazed back at her, trying to imprint her face, her smile, her eyes, her hair into my memory, watching as she got further and further, until we turned the corner that permanently split us apart.

Only half a youth spent. And the other half was stagnant, and waiting to rot.



Weeks. Months. Years passed. The sweet memory of her slowly faded into obscurity, eclipsed by memories of new friends, new people. But still, the sweet memory lingered, hidden deep in my mind. Forgotten, and faded, but not gone.

I was in high school now. A long way from the days spent sitting on a blue planter, watching pixels flash and flicker. I had made a few more friends, gotten just a tiny bit more popular, and yet still, I spent more time with computers and consoles and handhelds than I did with anyone else. The time I spent with friends outside of school was exclusively through multiplayer games, where we could play and talk and see each other without even being in the same room.

In essence, I was back where I started. My friends were still just pixels, living in a world behind a screen. I could hear my friends talk, but it wasn't really their voice. I could play and fight and race against their characters, but I couldn't really interact with them.

I had no human friends. And I was colder than ever.

Then, one day, while I was cleaning my room, I stumbled on an old piece of technology, sitting on the bottom of a cardboard box stowed away deep in my closet, behind an unexplored forest of coats and shirts.

It was my old Game Boy, with a copy of Pokemon Blue still in the cartridge slot.

I had long forgotten about Pokemon. Curious to see where I left off, I turned it on. I continued from my old save file and took a look at the team I had.

Mediocre, of course. A Pigeot, a Magmar, a Gengar among other things. But one of them caught my eye...

A Blastoise nicknamed "ICANTSEE."

And suddenly, I remembered. Her hair that always got in my eyes, her obsession for pink that made her stick out in a crowd, her eyes that told me I wasn't the only one that was different in the school. I remembered every detail of her house, her family, and the spectrum of emotion that came with both. I remembered the first time we met by the planter during recess, I remembered the last time we saw each other on my cul-de-sac as the car took me away. And I remembered what I wanted to say to her before I left, what I couldn't say to her before I left. And how I failed to keep my promises.

Where could she be now? Could she still be in our old neighborhood? How was she? Does she remember? Does she remember...

I had to know.

Immediately, I hit a button and my computer roared to life. I searched every social networking site for her name and found a thousand, a million people with the same name. Lily, Lily, which Lily is she? No, her eyes don't look like that. No, her hair was different. No, her skin tone's off.

And then... there she was. A slightly older version of her, but the resemblance was obvious. He same iridescent eyes looking right back at me like the first time we met. Her same smile radiating warmth through the computer screen. The same "Hello Kitty" beanie pinning down the silky black hair atop her head.

I sent a message. And all of a sudden, we were together again, if only through technology. That night, we talked about how we've been, what's been different, what's stayed the same. We talked about video games, and school, and anything else that managed to ease its way into our conversation. The hearth inside me sparked to life after being dormant for years, and the same familiar feeling of warmth spread through me again. We reconnected. Our old routines started again.

Every lunch (which miraculously, was at the exact same time for both of our schools), we would call each other and talk, or watch videos together even when we were miles apart. And after school, I would go to her server, or she would go to mine, and we'd spend an hour or two or three exploring our own block-filled world behind the glass, fighting exploding deformed pigs, or giant obsidian dragons, or living skeletons that filled the skies with arrows.

Eventually, we started talking about seeing each other in real life. We planned to watch a movie, just the two of us. I couldn't wait to see her in person again, for the first time in six, seven years.

Soon, the day arrived. Dressed in nicer than usual clothing, I arrived at the cinema ten minutes early. I sat on a metal bench, looking up at a ceiling that must have been a mile above my head. Red, yellow, and blue neon lights weaved through the walls, filling the lobby with a multitude of colors. Giant movie posters plastered on the walls. An LED sign listing movie times and ratings placed atop large ticket booths on opposite sides of the room. The illumination from various arcade machines clustered behind my back.

Every second that passed by, I grew more and more anxious. Crowds of people quickly filled the theater, but still no sign of her. I checked my watch. 8:15 PM. She's 15 minutes late. 20. 25.

And suddenly, a pink drop amidst the ocean of heads. Slowly, the crowd diffused and there she was, looking up at the movie times. Her long hair reached down to her waist and gently followed the movement of the people that passed by her. The same pink beanie resting atop her head. She was beautiful.

I walked up to her.

"Hello." She broke eye contact with the screen and faced me. Her brilliant eyes lit up as she smiled and hugged me.

"Hi!" She apologized for being late, and the reason why flew right over my head. I didn't care. She was here now, and that's all that mattered.

But, she did arrive too late and we missed the movie we were supposed to watch. So, with twenty dollars and time to burn, we instead played endless rounds of DDR and Street Fighter at the arcade, laughing and shouting at close games, to the point where the theater management asked us to quiet down.

Afterwards, we sat outside, on a planter, in the cold February night. Our only illumination being the neon red cinema sign and the Nintendo DS that I awkwardly held in my oversized mittens. I walked through the familiar tall grass, looking for Pokemon as she sat beside me, watching. She laid her head against my shoulder, her hair sometimes slipping through and blocking my face. We stayed there until the last ounce of energy in my DS was used up and the screen went blank, until the last employee left the theater and it was just us two, alone, in our own little world.

She stood up.

"It's getting late, I better head home," she said.

"Oh. Yeah, okay."

And she waved, turned around, and started walking away. And I stood there, watching as she got further and further, closer and closer to her car parked in an otherwise empty plain of asphalt and painted lines.

She entered her car. She closed the driver door. She put the key in the ignition.

I don't know why there. I don't know why then. I didn't plan for it. But for some reason, I did it. I ran to her, just as her car's engine started. I knocked on the glass and she rolled down the window with a pleasantly confused look on her face.

And I told her everything. I told her that I liked talking to her, I liked spending time with her, both online and in real life. I told her that I liked everything about her, her eyes, her hair, even how her head would block me from seeing my Game Boy. I told her I liked her, and I wanted to be more than friends.

...But being completely improvised and slightly out of breath, I stumbled on my words frequently, and when I finished, she laughed and commented on how cheesy it was. But she said yes, and just like that, we were in a relationship.



The years we spent together sped by. In a blink of an eye, we graduated high school and went to the same college. Another blink, we graduated college and stepped into the real world. Another, we were married and living happily in a simple home. Time ticked faster and faster, and eventually, we had been together for 50 years. 50 years of countless games, countless lives lived and relived. And we loved every second of it.

One day, she complained of a migraine while we were watching a movie, but we thought nothing of it. We were old, and we had them all the time.

But I became worried as they quickly got worse and worse, to the point where she complained about headaches from sun up to sun down. She could no longer play games with me because the light intensified the pain in her skull. She couldn't sleep well, her brain acting like an erratic alarm clock set to go off at random intervals.

That is, until one day, where she finally slept. Slept for a long time, as her mind deteriorated further and further. The doctors told me she probably won't wake up again and even if she did, she wouldn't have more than a month to live.

"There has to be a cure, or a treatment, anything!"

"Unfortunately not. Her brain's ruined from lack of blood. Even if we restored blood flow, her brain will never fully recover."

I begged, I pleaded, I cried for a cure to be delivered, for a miracle to happen, anything. Anything to bring her back to me. I didn't want to lose her.

But it was inevitable. She was old. And she was going to die.

From then on, I spent every second by her side. The rhythmic beeping tone of her heart monitor told me that she was still alive, but served as a grim reminder of her inevitable death, each beep counting down the time she had left.

A week passed. Two weeks. Three. The month's end was slowly looming over the horizon and still she laid there, motionless. My Lily was wilting away right before my eyes, and I couldn't even say goodbye.

Then, one day, I saw a flicker of life in her eyelids. Slowly, they opened and once again, I gazed into her divine brown eyes. She looked in my direction and a happy tear ran down my eye. I could finally say farewell.

I don't know if she could hear me. But I said it anyway. I said I'm glad I met her, that one cold February afternoon on the planter. I'm glad I got to spend so much time with her, both in the real world and the virtual one. I'm glad I got to reconnect with her even when we were separated by miles of road and concrete. I'm going to miss her hair blocking my screen, and her head against my shoulder while we watched movies and TV shows. I'm going to miss seeing her smile that was always the highlight of my day, I'm going to miss getting lost in her thin brown eyes while sitting across from her at the dinner table. I'm going to miss living and reliving the lives of people behind the glass, in places we could only dream of visiting. I'm going to miss her. And I would never forget her.

The heart monitor began beeping slower and slower. My smile quivered, as if ready to collapse at any second. A waterfall rained down from my eyes as the time between heartbeats got longer and longer, and she got further and further. I ran my hand through her long, flowing hair one last time, held her warm, white hand one last time, and said...

"A hundred lifetimes we lived. I'm glad I got to spend every one of them with you."

And with a smile, she left.





Author's Note: A bit early (actually, a lot early), but regardless, Happy Valentine's Day. I'll go ahead and throw my attempts at romance at you to mark the occasion. 

Not gonna lie to you guys, this story hit a little closer to home than the last one I wrote. Had a lot of fun writing it, and hopefully it was fun (and not *too* sappy) for you guys to read.

But still, I don't know, I feel like it could be improved. What do you guys think? Too long? Too short? Just right? Comments are great, by the way.

Huge thanks to "George & Jonathan" for the song that inspired the title. Take a look at their album over here and give the song a listen waaaay down on the bottom of the website.